My Plain Jane

by Cynthia Hand

  Wellington nodded. “We haven’t had a Beacon since you were small. You wouldn’t remember, I suppose.”

  “What is a Beacon?”

  “A Beacon, my boy, is a seer with, shall we say, extra abilities. Our previous Beacon could command ghosts with a word. From what I understand, ghosts often comment on the Beacon’s attractiveness, as though there’s some sort of supernatural glow about them, visible only to ghosts. The Beacon was an invaluable—you might say necessary—part of what we do here.”

  “We haven’t had a Beacon in years, though?” Alexander frowned. He’d always tried so hard for the Society, but now he learned he would never be enough, no matter how much he gave?

  “Oh, we can function without a Beacon, Alexander. We have been functioning quite well, as you know. Considering that our funding has been slashed and we have so few seers . . .” Wellington took a sip from his tea and stared across the room, deep in thought. “The Society is in trouble, my boy. More trouble than I wanted you to know about. The continued existence of the Society depends upon seers like you. And this Miss Eyre, if she is indeed a Beacon. We need her to join us.”

  A chill ran up Alexander’s spine. “Sir?”

  “Promise her whatever you must. Better pay. Better lodging. We need a Beacon.”

  “Sir, I know there aren’t many seers at the moment, but we still have Mr. Sussman and Mr. Stein. They’re both fine agents—”

  “They’re dead.” Wellington sat up straight and placed his teacup on the tray once more. “They’ve been killed in the line of duty. It’s just you and Branwell now.”

  What a sobering thought.

  “You must persuade Miss Eyre,” said the duke. “She could be the key to restoring the Society to its former glory.”

  Alexander drained his tea and stood. “Then I shall return to Lowood at once.”

  The duke nodded and shook Alexander’s hand. “I know you won’t fail me again.”

  “I won’t, sir. You have my word.” He departed, having completely forgotten to turn in the ghost-filled talismans in his haste. Oops.

  SEVEN

  Charlotte

  Charlotte woke in the dead of the night to find a strange boy sitting on the edge of her bed. (Don’t get too excited, dear reader—it was only her brother.)

  “Bran,” she gasped, sitting up so fast she nearly cracked heads with him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Can’t a brother stop by to see his favorite sister?” he whispered.

  She forced herself to remain stern. “Not at an all-girls boarding school,” she admonished. “If Miss Scatcherd sees you here, we’re dead.” She glanced down the long row of beds at her two sleeping sisters. “Am I truly your favorite?”

  He grinned and pushed his mass of unkempt red hair out of his eyes. “Actually my favorite sister is Anne. But you’re a close second.”

  They retreated down the hall to a corner of the library where it was less likely they’d be discovered. Then Charlotte lifted her spectacles to her face so she’d know where to punch him in the arm. “What are you really doing here?”

  “I happened to be in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d surprise you,” he said. “Ow. Oh, I suppose I’ve missed you, too, Charlie.”

  “Don’t call me Charlie, Branwell. You’re supposed to be at home, helping Father with the parish. However did you—”

  “Actually I’ve come to tell the most marvelous news,” he said. “It’s really the best news, ever. Can you keep a secret?”

  “Of course.” It was Bran who couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. As evidenced here.

  He straightened his shoulders, his chest puffing out a bit. “I’ve been recruited into the Society.”

  That was not what she’d been expecting him to say.

  “The Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits,” he elaborated when she didn’t immediately respond. “It’s an elite group of distinguished persons who locate and extricate ghosts—”

  “I know who they are,” she said. “But . . . why? Why did they recruit you?”

  (It should be noted here that Charlotte loved her brother. He was only a year younger than she was, and he was a dear. But he was also—hmm, how do we put this nicely?—the family foozler, which was a pre-Victorian word for “screw-up.”)

  “They heard about my accident,” Bran explained a bit nervously.

  Charlotte frowned. “Accident?”

  He blushed and pushed his spectacles up on his nose. (Bran, unlike Charlotte, actually wore his glasses on his face, instead of on the end of a wand.)

  “Don’t tell me you agreed to another dare,” Charlotte chided. Just in the last six months he’d nearly died falling out of a tall tree someone had dared him to climb, he’d nearly choked to death on blackberries during an impromptu pie-eating contest, and he’d singed his eyebrows off in some incident involving a lit candle and a handful of gunpowder.

  “Well, there was this old bridge, see, and this boy from the village kept saying I was lacking the proper spine to try to cross it. I was doing fine until I got to the middle. No trouble at all. But then the train came, and I had to jump.”

  Charlotte closed her eyes. “You jumped from a bridge. Was it over water, at least?”

  He nodded. “It wasn’t a terrible drop, and the river was quite deep, so I didn’t break my neck.”

  “How wonderful.”

  “But I did—temporarily, mind you—drown. For a few moments. My heart stopped beating. But then it started again,” he added cheerfully. “So I met the Society’s criteria.”

  Charlotte stared at him. “What? Just . . . what?”

  He laughed at her obvious confusion. “They are desperate to enlist young men who’ve been technically dead for at least a full minute, and then brought back. They learned of my accident at the bridge—it may have been in the local newspaper—” He coughed. “And now here I am, the newest initiate in the Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits. Why, just this month I participated in my very first relocation not far from here.”

  “With Mr. Blackwood?” Charlotte couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You were at the Tully Pub?”

  He grinned. “It was dreadfully exciting, Charlie. I did make a bit of a mess of it, but it turned out all right.”

  She whacked him in the arm again. “Why do all the good things happen to you?” A brilliant thought occurred to her. “Earlier I did ask Mr. Blackwood if they might take me on as an employee, and he refused, but perhaps if you were to speak for me . . .” She trailed off because Bran was shaking his head.

  “The Society is comprised entirely of men,” he said. “No women allowed.”

  She frowned. “But that doesn’t make any sense. I know for a fact that they—”

  “Besides, even if you weren’t a girl,” Bran continued, “you wouldn’t qualify. Like I said, they’re interested in those certain persons—male persons, that is—who’ve experienced death firsthand.”

  “But why? What’s so important about brushing shoulders with death?”

  Bran pressed his lips together. “I really shouldn’t say.”

  She waited.

  “You see, when you die and come back, it can change your perspective,” he informed her gravely.

  “Naturally,” she said, and waited.

  “I see dead people,” he blurted out.

  She blinked. “Pardon?”

  “After you die, temporarily, anyway, you can see the dead and commune with them,” he said. “Well, sometimes. Seers are rare—not everyone who dies comes back with such an ability. Which is why the Society seeks us out. It’s a gift, they say, and a great responsibility.”

  “Oh.” Charlotte swallowed down a lump of disappointment in her throat, both because she was a wretched female and because she had never died, not even once. It all felt so wildly unfair.

  “I’m the new apprentice to Mr. Blackwood,” Bran said. “He is the star agent—”

  “Yes, I’ve met him,” Charlotte sa
id. “He is impressive. Long coat. Brown eyes.”

  There was a noise from the hall. She and Bran froze. Then a pair of small dark shapes appeared from around the corner. Charlotte lifted her spectacles. Drat. It was her sisters. (Normally she quite enjoyed the company of her sisters, but this news of Bran’s was just very good and she wanted to grill him about it, which she couldn’t very well do with her little sisters standing there. Double drat.)

  “Bran,” the younger girl cried. “I knew I heard your voice!”

  “Annie, my little mouse.” Bran dropped to his knees and opened his arms as she ran to him. He reached out a hand to Emily. “Em.”

  “What are you doing here?” Emily asked, frowning deeply. “If Miss Scatcherd sees you . . .”

  “Bran has been given a new employment . . . opportunity,” Charlotte explained quietly. “He was working nearby and decided to pop in to see us. Isn’t that nice of him? But now he has to go before he gets us all expelled.”

  “What kind of employment opportunity?” Emily never could mind her own business. (In that way, she was entirely like Charlotte.)

  Anne gazed up at Bran. “Aren’t you going to be a parson, like Father?”

  “No, darling, I’m going to be—”

  “Actually, he can’t tell us,” Charlotte interrupted. “He’s been sworn to—”

  “I’m an agent for the SRWS,” he announced.

  Charlotte sighed.

  Anne’s mouth went into a little O. “The Society? However did you manage that, Bran?” Anne was precocious for a twelve-year-old. Charlotte sometimes thought Anne was smarter than all the rest of them put together.

  “It’s, er, kind of a funny story,” Bran said.

  “So you’re a ghost hunter, then.” Anne took her brother’s face in her small hands and looked at him with the utmost seriousness. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

  “There’s no danger. Ghosts can’t harm the living,” Charlotte said. “Unless you’re the sort who’d be scared to death.”

  “No, I mean, you won’t scare away Maria and Lizzie, will you?” Anne asked earnestly.

  All four Brontë children fell silent. They never spoke of their older sisters. Their father couldn’t even bear to hear their names. He’d wanted to bring them all home after the Graveyard Disease had taken the two oldest and so many others at the school. But they couldn’t afford it.

  “They keep me company sometimes,” Anne said. “Don’t make them go, Bran.”

  “I . . . won’t,” Bran stammered. He glanced around quickly. “Have you seen them here at the school, Annie, dear?”

  She smiled but said nothing.

  “What do you mean, has she seen them?” Emily crossed her arms. “She can’t have seen them. They’re gone.” (Emily was the no-nonsense one of the family. She didn’t believe in ghosts. Not yet, anyway.)

  “What does Father have to say about this whole Society situation?” Charlotte was suddenly keen to change the subject.

  “He doesn’t know. He thinks I’m studying business in London.” Bran ruffled Anne’s hair. “You won’t tell on me, will you?”

  Anne shook her head. (Unlike Bran, she was quite capable of keeping secrets.)

  The clock in the hall chimed four.

  “I must be off,” Bran said, extricating himself from Anne’s thin arms and rising to his feet. “But I shall return tomorrow, dear ones. If Mr. Blackwood allows me to accompany him this time, but I think he will. We’re becoming quite bonded after all we’ve been through together. So you’ll get to see me in my official Society capacity. Hard at work. I won’t be able to converse with you directly, but I will see you in the morning.”

  He crossed to the window and was halfway out of it before Charlotte could process what he’d said.

  “Wait!” She caught him by the arm and pulled him back into the room. “Why is Mr. Blackwood coming here tomorrow?”

  “We’re recruiting a new member. Extremely confidential business, though. Don’t tell. Mr. Blackwood returned to London, but now we’ve been sent back. So I’ve got to make sure his clothes are pressed and laid out for tomorrow’s engagement with Miss—”

  Charlotte clapped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t say the word ‘engagement’ so loudly around here, Bran. Especially when it has to do with Jane Eyre.”

  His brown eyes widened theatrically behind his glasses. “How did you know we are seeking out Miss Eyre?”

  “I’m a genius,” Charlotte said impatiently. “That, and Mr. Blackwood’s already been to see her three times. So it’s rather predictable, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You’re going to press Mr. Blackwood’s clothes?” Emily, as usual, had gotten stuck on the insignificant detail. She smirked. “You know how to press clothes?”

  “I’ll do whatever he asks of me,” Bran said brightly. “And if I don’t know how, I’ll learn. I think very highly of Alexander . . . Mr. Blackwood. I’d like to impress him if I can.”

  “But Mr. Blackwood cannot see Miss Eyre,” Charlotte said. “It is quite impossible.”

  Now it was Bran who frowned, an expression that did not come naturally to his face. “Why is it impossible?”

  “Jane landed a position as a governess. She’s gone from Lowood.”

  “She left last week,” Anne said mournfully. “She was my favorite teacher.”

  “Charlotte’s been moping for days,” Emily added.

  Charlotte swallowed. It was all so obvious now, what was ailing Jane. Jane Eyre could see ghosts. She must have died once. She, like Bran, was a seer. This was why Mr. Blackwood had attempted to recruit her. It was also why Jane so often appeared to be talking to herself, Charlotte realized. She must have been speaking to figures that others could not see.

  Why had Jane not told her? She’d thought they were friends—best friends—so why would Jane keep something so vital from her?

  Perhaps, Charlotte thought, she didn’t know Jane Eyre at all.

  “I should inform Mr. Blackwood of this news at once.” Bran was grinning again—Mr. Blackwood would be pleased with him for bringing this vital information. And Charlotte had given this information to Bran. She’d been somewhat useful, then.

  The girls took turns hugging and kissing their brother. Bran slipped out the window, shimmied his way awkwardly down an adjacent tree (but miraculously avoided injury), and disappeared into the fog.

  Charlotte walked her sisters back to bed.

  “Bran looked well, didn’t he?” Anne sighed drowsily as Charlotte tucked her in.

  “Yes, dear. He did.” He did, Charlotte thought. His eyes had been bright, his cheeks flushed with excitement. It was good to see her brother with a purpose. But it made her all the more keenly aware of her own lackluster future.

  She tried sleeping, but after a time gave up and went to her hiding place in the stairwell with a candle and her notebook. A series of rapid thoughts were cycling through her brain, and she felt compelled to write them down. Mostly on the subject of the sheer injustice of being withheld from all the truly worthwhile forms of employment simply because she was a girl.

  Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do, she wrote, her pen flying across the page. They suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

  She took a deep breath and felt some of the tension drain from her. Writing could let out the pent-up emotions the way a doctor might bleed his patients. But it also made her feel empty, like this writing was all that she would ever be permitted to have. Could she subsist on only these thoughts and dreams, these has
tily scribbled wanderings of her mind? A shiver worked its way down Charlotte’s spine. No. No. She would not tolerate it. She would—how had Jane put it?—she would imagine a different life. She would seek it.

  She hurried back to the bedroom, dressed quickly, and slid a carpetbag out from under her bed, in which she packed her meager possessions.

  “What are you doing?” Emily whispered.

  Charlotte was unable to keep the quiver of excitement out of her voice. “I’m going to work for Mr. Blackwood. He wanted Jane, but he’s going to get me, instead.”

  “You think he’ll accept you?” Emily sounded both worried and envious. “Didn’t he already refuse?”

  “I will persuade him.”

  “But what about school?”

  “I have learned enough here.” Charlotte laid her notebook, a tightly sealed bottle of ink, and a handful of pens on top of her clothes and shut the carpetbag. The handle was broken on one side, but she could manage it. She smiled.

  Emily sat up. “But it’s not proper, Charlotte. You’re a girl. It’s not dignified to run about begging for a job.”

  Charlotte’s chin lifted. “I would always rather be happy than dignified,” she said, her cheerful tone returning, and out she went.

  EIGHT

  Jane

  “You must put on your finest dress,” Mrs. Fairfax said, combing through Jane’s wardrobe, which consisted of two gray dresses, so the combing consisted of choosing the dress that looked the least worn. “I guess this one will have to do.” Jane had been called down to the parlor to “be presented” to the master of the house, and update him on her progress with Adele.

  Mrs. Fairfax laid the dress on Jane’s bed and then fluffed the pillows and shook out the bed skirt. Mr. Rochester had been away for a few days, and his sudden return had put the housekeeper in a state of flurry.

  Jane’s cheeks flushed, partly because of her lack of fine things, but partly, she suspected, in anticipation of seeing Mr. Rochester again. With his dark eyes. And his tall ways.

  “I hope Pilot will be there,” Helen said, pretending to admire herself in the mirror, even though she had no reflection. “I think he likes me.”