Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Southwark is populated by dock laborers, boatmen, and other folk who make their living on the water. Their disreputable lodging houses and taverns stood amid shops stocked with ropes and sails, quadrants and brass sextants, chronometers and compasses, and preserved meat and biscuits guaranteed to keep during long voyages. We proceeded to the wharves that had existed long before the new walled docks on the other side of the river had been built to accommodate large modern steamships. The wharves handled London’s coastal trade, and international trade in goods that didn’t need guarding. Here, the river was crowded with passenger steamers, lighters, and barges. Stevedores loaded grain, coal, tea, wool, produce, and timber onto ships that looked rundown, blackened by the smoke that puffed from their stacks. Laborers pushed wine casks in handcarts to the warehouses. The fragrance of coffee and spices competed with the stench of hides. When we alit from the carriage, Slade’s eyes scanned the scene.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “A friend who owes me a favor.”

  While we trudged along the wharves, I heard loud swearing near a particularly disreputable hulk of a steamship. Discolored sails furled around its masts. Its hull was scuffed, patched, and stained with algae. The captain stood on the dock, shouting orders peppered with curses to a crew comprised of turbaned lascars and a Jamaican with skin as black as ebony, who were fixing the paddlewheels.

  Slade called, “Francis Arnold! Why don’t you junk that crippled wreck of yours?”

  The captain turned and scowled. He had a long torso and short legs; he wore a threadbare military coat and cap. Fierce blue eyes blazed under shaggy brows and tousled, sun-bleached yellow hair. “The Gipsy is as seaworthy as any ship in the world.” His accent was unexpectedly cultured. His complexion was a weathered red-brown, lined and freckled, with a tracery of white scars on his left cheek. “Who in hell are you to say—” He stared in wonder and recognition. “No! My eyes deceive me!” His face broke into a grin full of white teeth. “It can’t be John Slade!”

  “In the flesh,” Slade said.

  They exchanged greetings, which involved punches, backslapping, and jokes in different languages. Captain Arnold said, “What have you been doing all these years?”

  “Working for the Foreign Office, among other things.”

  “Ah.” Captain Arnold raised a bushy eyebrow. He obviously knew Slade was a spy.

  Slade declined to elaborate. “What have you been up to?”

  “Carrying cargo to and from America and the West Indies,” Arnold said. Slade later told me that Arnold belonged to a breed of ship captains who had no fixed schedule and no regular ports of call. They took on cargo wherever they could find it and transported it anywhere. Their vessels were often built of junk from marine yards, and they sometimes had space for passengers. “I just returned from Antigua.” That explained why he didn’t know that Slade was the most wanted man in England. Now he noticed me hovering uneasily in the background.

  Slade drew me forward. “May I introduce Captain Francis Arnold. He and I served together in the East India Company army.”

  “He saved my life during a brawl in a tavern in Lisbon.” Captain Arnold touched his scarred cheek. He bowed to me, said, “It’s an honor to make your acquaintance, um—?” and looked questioningly at Slade.

  Slade swallowed. “This is my wife, Charlotte.” He seemed as abashed as I felt. To appear before strangers as a married couple was one thing; to lie to a friend was embarrassing; but the truth about our lack of a legal relationship would have disgraced me worse.

  “Your wife, eh?” Captain Arnold punched Slade’s shoulder. “Well done, man! My congratulations. I never thought you’d settle down. You did right to wait. You’ve found yourself a lovely woman.” He smiled at me.

  I blushed hotly.

  “What brings you here, Slade?” Captain Arnold said. “Are you taking your bride on a tour of your old comrades in hell-raising?”

  “I need a favor,” Slade said.

  “Just ask.”

  “We need to go to Cherbourg. Can you take us?”

  “I’d be glad to, but why not take the packet? It would be much more comfortable for your wife.”

  “We’ve run into some trouble. We can’t leave England in the usual manner.”

  Captain Arnold asked no questions. “I can get you to Cherbourg.” Later Slade told me that Arnold had a sideline: he smuggled people out of countries in which they had enemies after them or were wanted by the law. “There’s just one problem. Business hasn’t been good lately. The big ships undercut the small operators like me. I don’t have the money to take my ship out without payment up front.”

  He and Slade put their heads together and figured the cost of the journey. The price they settled on would use up almost all the money Lord Palmerston had given me. How Slade and I would manage later, I knew not; but we paid, gladly. We were on our way to France, and that was all that mattered.

  34

  CAPTAIN ARNOLD LED US UP THE GIPSY’S GANGPLANK. THE Jamaican carried our bags aboard. He and the lascar crewmen wore sharp knives. They were alien and frightening. As we went below deck, Captain Arnold said, “You’ll have to hide down here while we travel out of England. I apologize for the accommodations. They aren’t very pleasant.”

  That was the understatement of the century. The room was a compartment inside the empty cargo hold, its door a panel cleverly designed to look like part of a solid wall. Not much larger than a closet, it smelled of the tea, spices, coffee, and wool that the ship had carried. It contained a washstand and basin, a chamber pot—and a single mattress covered with an old blanket. I tried to hide my dismay.

  “I’ve slept in worse places,” Slade said, affecting a light tone. “And my wife can put up with it for a short time.”

  “I’ll leave you to settle in, then,” Captain Arnold said, “while I get the ship ready for the journey.”

  Alone, we stood in awkward silence on either side of the bed, which nearly covered the grimy floor. Slade said, “We’ll take turns sleeping. You can have yours first. I’ll go up and help Captain Arnold.”

  Hidden behind the sliding panel, I felt as if I’d been sealed into my coffin. I examined the bed, which smelled stale, as if it had been used by people who didn’t wash. I spread the shawl Kate had lent me over it before I lay down. Exhausted, I promptly fell asleep.

  I dreamed that I was hurrying through the criminal lunatics’ ward in Bedlam. I carried the dying Oliver Heald cradled in my arms. Drenched with blood, he looked up at me, smiled a ghastly smile, and said, “Anything for my favorite author.” Ellen Nussey and Arthur Nicholls trailed us, arguing about whether I had gone mad and should be committed. Julia Garrs stood by an open door and beckoned me. Entering, I found Niall Kavanagh’s secret laboratory. The mutilated corpses of three women hung from hooks like sides of beef. They sizzled in the fire that Lord Eastbourne had set. I lay strapped to a table. Gas hissed as Wilhelm Stieber bent over me, fixed clamps around my head, and turned the crank on his torture machine. A jolt of lightning seared my mind and ignited the gas in a white, thunderous, rattling explosion.

  I awakened with a scream caught in my throat. I sat up, and the nightmare faded, but the rattling continued. The panel opened, and Slade entered the compartment. He carried a tray laden with bread, cold meat, and cheese, a teapot and cup. “I’ve brought your dinner.”

  “What’s that noise?” I said.

  “They’re hauling up the anchor.” Slade set down the tray and crouched beside me. “What’s the matter?”

  “Just a bad dream. What time is it?”

  “About ten o’clock at night.”

  I’d slept the whole day. Now I heard the Gipsy’s steam engines roar. The ship began to move, plowing through the river. In spite of my nightmare, I felt refreshed and alert; dreaming often purges the emotions. I realized, more clearly than before, what had happened.

  I was no longer Charlotte Brontë, the respectable spinster daughter of
Haworth’s vicar, or Currer Bell, the toast of literary London. I was a fugitive on the run, a criminal in the eyes of the law. Cut off from society, from my friends and family, I was leaving my homeland, perhaps for good. Surely I would never write another book. My name would sink into infamy, then obscurity. Yet I didn’t collapse into tears and sickness and utter helplessness as I had at other times when disaster struck. I felt as if a storm had swept through my life, cleared everything away, and left me calm. If the worst had already happened, what more had I to fear?

  I didn’t foresee the dangers that lay ahead. I had a sense of lightness, a great relief despite my sorrow. I felt more alive than I ever had. Suddenly I was famished. I gobbled the food that Slade had brought. It seemed the best I’d ever tasted. But when I’d finished eating, how alarmed I was by Slade’s appearance! He was unshaven, his clothes dirty from working on the ship, the skin under his eyes shadowed. He looked tired to death.

  “When will we be at sea?” I asked.

  “Early tomorrow morning.”

  “Then you’d better sit down. You’ll be more comfortable.”

  Slade reluctantly eased himself onto the bed and sat beside me. Neither of us spoke as the paddlewheels churned and the ship steamed down the Thames. After a while I felt him relax: he’d fallen asleep.

  When one is in love, each new discovery about the beloved is miraculous. I’d never seen Slade sleeping, and I gazed upon him with fascination. Slumber erased his usual guarded expression, drained the tension from his muscles. He looked young, innocent, and vulnerable. My desire to touch his face had nothing to do with lust. I felt a new, purer affection toward Slade. Yet it was wrong for me to be in bed with a man to whom I wasn’t married.

  That undercut my happiness only for an instant. Ideas I’d never entertained before argued with my sense of propriety. Who said I was doing wrong? Society did. But society had already turned against me because it believed I’d broken the rules. Why should I be obligated to obey them any longer? Why hold myself to society’s standards of honor? I experienced an elating sensation of recklessness. Perhaps I was now free to live as I pleased.

  During our journey down the river, troops stopped and boarded the Gipsy. I remained calm as they tramped through the ship. Slade slept on, and I didn’t wake him when I heard them outside our compartment. I fancied myself his protector. When they were gone, I congratulated myself on my newfound bravery. Little did I know how severely it would soon be tested.

  Hours passed. The engines began to roar at full throttle. A rapping on the panel awakened Slade. Captain Arnold called, “You can come out now.”

  As we emerged up on the deck, my eyes were dazzled by the sun, a brilliant beacon that had just risen above the horizon where sky met ocean. The sea was calm, colored violet, rippled like shirred silk. The coast of England was a mere smudge behind us, France not yet visible in the distance. Other ships rode the waters, but none near. The Gipsy blazed a steady course, paddlewheels splashing, smoke billowing from her stacks. The light had a strange, animated quality; it glinted and danced; whatever it touched shimmered with radiance. I was conscious of each breath of fresh salt air that swelled my lungs, of my heart’s rhythm, of the blood swiftly flowing in my veins—and of Slade, who stood in the bow beside me.

  I exclaimed, “We’ve lived to see another day, and I am truly thankful!”

  “As am I,” Slade said. “Better alive than dead, has always been my philosophy.” Sleep had knit the raveled fabric of his health; his color was good. But the eyes he turned to me were clouded by dark thoughts. “Now that we have a moment’s leisure, I must tell you how sorry I am for involving you in such bad business.”

  I couldn’t let him shoulder the entire weight of guilt. “It was my own choice to become involved.” I could have walked away from him in Bedlam, and I had not. That I had pursued him was wholly my fault.

  “I’m not talking about what’s happened these past two weeks,” Slade said. “I mean the first time I saw you three years ago, when I struck up an acquaintance with you to further the investigation I was conducting. It was selfish of me. I should have left you alone.”

  “Do you regret knowing me?” I said, hurt by the idea.

  Slade said with passion, “Never! My only regret is that you must regret knowing me, and that I have destroyed your love for me and ruined your life. I promise to make things right for you and set you free of me.”

  “But I don’t!” My passion more than equaled his. “You haven’t! To be free of you is not what I want!”

  Incomprehension rendered his face blank. “But when we were at the laboratory, you indicated that you didn’t want anything to do with me except to find Niall Kavanagh and get us out of trouble.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” Now was the time to correct his mistake under which I’d allowed him to labor because I couldn’t express myself honestly. “I’m in love with you still. That’s why I’m here.” Slade’s company was as important to me as finding Niall Kavanagh and saving England. “I wanted to be with you then. I do now.”

  Slade shook his head. Gladness tugged his mouth into a smile even as he frowned in disbelief. “Can this be true? Surely I hear you wrong.”

  I hurried to sweep away his conviction that he was a pariah and that I thought myself too good for him. “I didn’t declare my feelings for you because they seemed so hopeless. But things have changed.”

  “Not all things. There’s still blood on my hands. I’m still a fugitive.”

  “So am I.” I endeavored to share the thoughts I’d had while he was sleeping. “We’ve gone beyond ordinary law and morality. The past is over; we can only go forward. And if I am to be alone in the world but for one companion, I thank Heaven that my companion is you.” This was the most fervent, unguarded, and audacious speech I’d ever made to a man; yet I felt neither hesitation nor shame. Some force within me had overpowered the shy, convention-bound woman I once was. I flung my arms open wide. “I will be with you on any terms.”

  Slade leaned back from me, alarmed. “You are too generous.”

  “It isn’t generosity that compels me, it is pure selfishness. I want you. I mean to have you if you still want me.” Even though my brazenness astonished me, I said, “Whatever time I have left on this earth, I want us to live it to the fullest together, and if you refuse me this, then God damn you, John Slade!”

  I was shocked by my profanity, and further shocked when Slade threw back his head and let loose a boisterous laugh that carried across the water. “Well spoken for a parson’s daughter, Charlotte Brontë! You’ve just made me the happiest man alive!”

  He lifted me off my feet and spun around. I laughed, too, with the same joyous, reckless abandon. Sea and sky whirled past me. Giddy and lightheaded, I exulted. Then Slade’s expression sobered. He stopped whirling and lowered me to the deck. I felt the smile vanish from my face. The sun struck his at an angle so that all the light of the day seemed to emanate from his eyes. Never had I so wanted him to kiss me; but he did not. Instead, we gazed at each other in full, awed realization of the pact we’d made. I heard myself utter words I’d never imagined speaking.

  “I don’t care if we can’t marry. I’ll be your wife in fact if not in name or law.”

  I was dizzied by the thought of the physical intimacy that my proposition implied. Slade was visibly shaken by the heat that flared between us. Then his eyes crinkled with sly humor. “I’m pleased to tell you that the sacrifice of your virtue won’t be necessary.”

  Contrary to a popular fallacy, ship captains are not permitted to officiate at weddings while at sea. Any marriages thus created are not recognized by the law. But circumstances had favored Slade and me. Captain Arnold was an ordained clergyman who’d served as a chaplain for the East India Company’s army, who preached Sunday sermons aboard his own ship. Indeed, he had converted his entire crew to Christianity. I know not what reason Slade gave him as to why we wanted him to marry us after telling him we were already married. Maybe S
lade explained; maybe Captain Arnold was bound by loyalty to take his old comrade’s request in stride; at any rate, he agreed.

  Slade and I took turns washing in cold seawater in a shower bath that the crew had rigged up in a shed on deck. I dressed in a lilac-colored gown I’d bought in London, Slade in a clean set of spare clothes from his valise. That very morning Captain Arnold performed the ceremony. Slade and I stood side by side in the bow, with the crew for witnesses. I had no veil or flowers. Our music was the sound of the ship’s engines and churning wheels. It wasn’t the wedding I’d envisioned. In fact, I’d been so certain I would never marry that I’d avoided trying to imagine the impossible. Now I could hardly believe I wasn’t dreaming.

  “If anyone present knows any reason why this couple may not be joined together in holy matrimony,” Captain Arnold said, “speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  I thought of Jane Eyre and her first, ill-fated wedding to Mr. Rochester. I almost expected a stranger to materialize and declare the existence of an impediment. But none did.

  Captain Arnold said, “Do you, John Slade, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better and for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death do you part?”

  Slade turned to me. I doubt that any other bridegroom had ever looked so serious and ardent. He said in a quiet, firm voice, “I do.”

  I looked into his eyes, and I began trembling violently; I felt hot, then cold, as realization sank in: I had gained the man I loved, but with what consequence? My happiness would be dependent on Slade, our fates entwined. I felt my separate identity dissolving. In another moment, Charlotte Brontë—and Currer Bell—must give way to Mrs. John Slade. What a solemn, strange, and perilous thing was marriage! Yet my attachment to Slade never faltered. When Captain Arnold repeated the ritual question to me, I answered, “I do,” without hesitation. Triumph swelled inside me. Slade smiled as if he’d read my last-minute doubts but never believed they would prevent our marriage. It seemed predestined, a step along a course from which neither of us could deviate.