Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte

43

A week after the scene at the Crystal Palace, I returned to Bedlam. It was a rare, fine summer morning in London, shortly before eight o’clock. The sky was blue, the air freshened by a cool wind. Pigeons fluttered, their wings flashing white in the sun, above the dome of the insane asylum. The horrors that I’d experienced there still gave me nightmares, but today I felt no fear as I entered Bedlam. Slade was beside me. He limped from the gunshot wound in his thigh and leaned on a cane, but fortunately the bullet had gone straight through, causing no serious damage besides an alarming loss of blood. That he hadn’t died was a testament to his strong constitution and will to live.

We walked together beneath the shade trees on the grounds of Bedlam. I carried a gift- wrapped box from a confectionary store. We climbed the wide staircase with the other visitors, then proceeded to the criminal lunatics’ wing. I hesitated, my heart suddenly pounding, outside the iron door, that portal to hell.

“Don’t be afraid,” Slade said, his hand closing warmly around mine. “Everyone who worked for Wilhelm Stieber is gone.”

“I know.” The police had arrested the doctor who’d tortured us. Wagner was dead, accidentally killed by me. Friedrich had hanged himself in Newgate Prison. We had learned this from a Foreign Office agent who’d come to see us at the hotel where we were staying. But I had to steel my nerves as the matron admitted us to the criminal lunatics’ wing and led us down those dismal corridors. She unlocked a door, put her head in, and said, “You’ve a visitor.”

While Slade waited outside, I entered the cell. Julia Garrs sat primly on her bed. She smiled, and her violet-gray eyes sparkled with pleasure. “Charlotte! You’ve come back to see me! They said you wouldn’t, but I knew you would.”

“Hello, Julia.” Tears stung my eyes because she again reminded me so painfully of Anne. “I brought you a present.”

She tore open the wrappings. “Oh, I love candy! Thank you so much.”

“I wanted to thank you,” I said. “You saved my life.”

When Lord Palmerston had sent his troops to Bedlam, Julia had guided them to me. If not for her, I would have been murdered by Stieber.

She nodded as if she understood, even though I couldn’t tell her what had happened. I said, “If there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.”

“Could you find my baby?” she asked. “And tell him that I’ll be with him soon?”

All I could say was that I promised I would. I pitied her, and I thanked God that Anne was at peace. I bid goodbye to Julia, then joined Slade in the corridor. He said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes.” I had set off a chain of events, and I felt obligated to witness all the consequences.

The matron led us to another cell. Slade and I peered in the window. Niall Kavanagh crouched on the floor, dressed in pajamas, his red hair tousled; his spectacles had slipped down his nose. Pen in hand, he scribbled frantically on sheets of paper. His writings and diagrams looked like utter nonsense.

“He’s been doing that every day,” the matron said. The army had taken Kavanagh straight from the Crystal Palace to Bedlam. The doctors had removed the bullet that Slade had fired into his shoulder and stitched up the wound. They’d also discovered that he was suffering from pneumonia, not wool-sorter’s disease. He wasn’t going to die yet. “His ma and pa came to see him yesterday, and he got so violent we had to tie him up in a blanket gown.”

I pitied Sir William and Lady Kavanagh. As I wondered what terrible new ideas he was formulating, Kavanagh looked up. His face was puffy, his gaze blurred. He didn’t seem aware of me. Then he bent his head over his papers and continued scribbling. My heart ached because I saw Branwell in him. But I took comfort from the fact that my brother had come to his senses and repented of his sins in the end, while Kavanagh had not.

“What will become of him?” I asked Slade.

“He’ll probably spend the rest of his life here.”

“But shouldn’t he be tried in court and punished for what he’s done?” After all, he’d murdered the three women in Whitechapel, and he’d almost killed the Queen, not to mention millions of other people.

“Imprisonment in Bedlam will have to be punishment enough,” Slade said. “Kavanagh can’t be put on trial. He can’t go out in public, not even to be hanged. God only knows what he might say. He has to stay in Bedlam, where his ravings won’t be taken seriously and the doctors can control him with drugs. Otherwise, the whole story might come out. And the government does not want the story to come out.”

Queen Victoria had cleaned up after the fiasco at the Crystal Palace with admirable if not gentle efficiency. She sent for the army to restore peace at the Great Exhibition, then ordered Slade, George Smith, Mr. Thackeray, and me to accompany her, Prince Albert, and the royal entourage back to Buckingham Palace. When we arrived, we were given rooms in the guest quarters. The Queen’s personal physician removed the bullet from Slade’s leg and dressed the wound. I kept vigil by his bedside while Slade slept.

In the morning, after breakfast, a servant escorted me to a chamber where I found George and Mr. Thackeray sitting at a vast, highly polished table beneath a crystal chandelier. They didn’t appear to have slept any more than I had. They had dark shadows under their eyes and the stunned look of people who had wandered into strange territory and didn’t know if they could ever go home. They rose when I joined them. We remained standing while the Queen and Lord Palmerston entered.

We made our bows; the Queen acknowledged them with a brisk nod. She seated herself across the table from us, motioned us to sit, and said, “I’ve summoned you here to talk about the sorry business at the Great Exhibition.”

Standing beside her, Palmerston smiled, but with less humor than usual. “We must ask you not to discuss it with anyone, not even among yourselves.”

I suspected he was sorry to have missed out on the excitement. Perhaps he also thought he could have handled the situation better than we had.

“Oh, don’t mince words,” the Queen said impatiently. “We’re not asking. It’s an order.”

“My apologies, Your Majesty,” Palmerston said.

“It would serve no good purpose for the British people to learn what almost happened,” the Queen said. “It would only frighten them and destroy their confidence in the government.”

Neither George, Mr. Thackeray, nor I dared to suggest that since the threat to Britain had been engineered by one of its own officials, perhaps the government deserved to lose some of its citizens’ faith in it. When the Queen said, “Do you swear to keep the events of last night a secret?” we each solemnly said, “I do.”

“You are free to go,” Palmerston said. “Unless you have questions you’d like to ask.”

“I hope Dr. Crick is not in trouble?” I said.

“Fortunately for him, no one was hurt when his airship exploded,” Palmerston said. “I’ve had him sent home. He won’t be punished.”

“The only thing he’s guilty of is having the bad judgment to fall in with you, Miss Bronte,” the Queen said, cutting her eyes at me.

Mr. Thackeray spoke up. “What’s to become of Dr. Kavanagh?”

“That is yet to be determined,” the Queen said.

“What about his research?” George asked.

“Her Majesty has declared it a state secret,” Palmerston said. I understood that it was his idea. “We’ll collect Kavanagh’s papers and equipment and put them in a secure place.”

“Shouldn’t his work be continued?” Mr. Thackeray asked.

“It could be used for the good of mankind,” George said. “Why, it could revolutionize science.”

“Possibly,” the Queen said, “but his theory about the cause of disease is too extreme to be sprung on the world all of a sudden.”

“His techniques for culturing the animalcules are too dangerous to let fall into the hands of our enemies during this troubled age,” Palmerston said. “His work must be suppressed until the time is right to make it public.”

I couldn’t imagine when that would be. “But Wilhelm Stieber knows about Dr. Kavanagh’s research. He’ll tell the Tsar.”

Palmerston’s smile thinned. “Not if we can help it.”

“Your Majesty, may I ask how Mr. Slade is?” George said, looking at me.

“My physician tells me that Mr. Slade is expected to make a full recovery. But you could have asked Miss Bronte.” The Queen gave me an unpleasant, insinuating smile. “I daresay she knows more about Mr. Slade than anyone else does.”

I covered my embarrassment by asking, “Is there any news of Lord Eastbourne?”

“He was caught this morning at his home, where he’d gone to pack his things and fetch money to leave the country,” Palmerston said.

“What will become of him?” Mr. Thackeray asked.

“He will get his comeuppance,” the Queen said, “never fear.”

“In the meantime, we would like to thank you for your service to the Crown,” Palmerston said to George, Mr. Thackeray, and me. “I’m sorry that because of the need for discretion, we can’t give you any medals, but please know that you are held in the highest honor.”

“Yes,” the Queen said. “Mr. Smith and Mr. Thackeray, you are heroes. And you, Miss Bronte, are a heroine.” She pronounced the last word as if she’d had another one in mind.

We thanked her and Lord Palmerston. After she had dismissed us, George and Mr. Thackeray and I were escorted out of the palace to a carriage that waited to take us home. Mr. Thackeray said, “That was certainly a hullabaloo, wasn’t it, Miss Bronte?” I noticed that he didn’t call me Jane Eyre. I suspected he never would again. “I could have dined out on it for the next ten years if I hadn’t been sworn to secrecy.”

George held out his hand to help me into the carriage. “May I?”

“Thank you, but I’m not going yet.” I wanted to wait for Slade.

George dropped his hand. “I understand.” He sounded dejected. I recalled that he’d seen me kissing Slade last night. He’d deduced that there was no place in my heart for him. “Well, then,” he said with an attempt at a smile. “I hope to see you the next time you’re in London.”

As I bade goodbye to my friends, I felt a distance between us. Last night they’d seen a new side of me, and it had frightened them. Because of me they’d become involved in a near disaster. Our friendship would never be the same, I regretted as I watched the carriage roll out the palace gate. But although I had lost something valuable, I had found what I had set my heart on that day I’d visited Bedlam. I turned and went back inside the palace, to Slade.

Now the bells at St. Sepulchre’s Church tolled eight o’clock. A huge crowd massed outside Newgate Prison to watch justice served. Men, women, and children pressed against the railings that surrounded the scaffold, a platform some ten feet high and ten feet long, which abutted the wall of the prison. Upon the scaffold, the gibbet consisted of two parallel beams supported on two wooden pillars. A roof sheltered a pair of benches. Slade and I sat in the gallery provided for privileged spectators, amid government and court officials and their guests. I felt sick to my stomach with anticipation and dread.

I had never witnessed a hanging before, although public executions were a popular form of entertainment in London.

“You don’t have to watch,” Slade said, uneasy for my sake. “We can leave now.”

“I must. We’ll stay.”

I knew he wanted to see his investigation through to its end, and I felt a duty to witness the consequences brought about in part by my actions. It was my duty as a writer to look straight at them, so that I would be able to tell the story with firsthand authenticity. Gazing at the gentlemen and ladies seated with us and the people in the crowd below, I was startled by their gay conversation and laughter. They showed none of the sorrow, fear, or sobriety that befitted the occasion; only ribaldry, humor, and drunken debauchery did I observe.

“It’s like a carnival,” I said.

“Or like Romans come to watch the gladiators fight,” Slade said. “This is blood sport in the name of the law.”

Two sheriffs emerged from the prison. As they sat on the benches on the scaffold, the crowd’s noise quieted to an expectant hum. The hangman came out next and stood by the gibbet. Then the pastor appeared, escorting Lord Eastbourne.

Men cheered and booed, boys whistled; they doffed and waved their hats. Ladies and girls applauded. My attention riveted upon Lord Eastbourne. He wore a formal black suit; his wrists were tied behind his back. His jaw was tight; his ruddy complexion had gone pale. His eyes looked straight ahead as he mounted the steps to the gallows. He seemed unaware of the crowds, their jeers. I shrank from him, afraid that our gazes would meet, that I would see the hatred and anger he must feel toward me because I had played a role in his downfall.

Lord Eastbourne ignored the galleries. If he knew that Slade and I were there, he gave no indication. He stoically took his place on a trapdoor set into the platform, under the gibbet.

The crowd fell almost silent. Only a few coughs, a crying child, and the faraway sounds of the city disturbed the hush that engulfed the execution ground. My heart raced; I could hardly breathe. The pastor asked Lord Eastbourne if he had any final words.

Lord Eastbourne could have said that he was guilty of nothing except rash ambition and going behind the Queen’s back. He could have pointed out that he’d tried to put Niall Kavanagh out of action and undo the damage he’d done. He could have added that letting me rot in jail and letting the government think Slade was a traitor were not capital crimes. He could have protested that he’d been sentenced to die only because someone had to pay for the fiasco at the Great Exhibition. All these statements would have been true. But nothing he said could alter his fate.

Lord Eastbourne shook his head. He didn’t lower himself by pleading his case to the riffraff. He stood tall and proud while the pastor intoned prayers for him, but I was close enough to see him trembling. The hangman drew a white cotton nightcap over his head, bound a muslin handkerchief over his face. I saw his breath suck and puff at the cloth over his mouth. The hangman placed the rope around Lord Eastbourne’s neck and tightened the noose. He bent and withdrew the pin that held the trapdoor in place.

The trapdoor fell, opening a rectangular hole beneath Lord Eastbourne.

He dropped some two feet into the hole.

I winced as the rope pulled taut. I heard him grunt, his neck snap.

With his white-shrouded head canted at an angle, Lord Eastbourne writhed for a terrible moment. Then he was still. His clothes were limp and loose, as if the man had gone out of them. A corpse swung from the gibbet.

The crowd went wild. People cheered, stamped their feet, and howled. Police forced the mob away from the scaffold. I felt so faint that the riotous scene wavered before me.

Slade took my hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

When we were inside a carriage, riding through the crowds that streamed away from Newgate Prison, I recovered enough to say, “I thought I would feel that Lord Eastbourne got what he deserved and justice had been done. But I don’t.” There was a hollow in my heart, a sense of unfinished business rather than vindication. “It’s as if his death wasn’t punishment enough. And I feel evil because I participated in the taking of a human life, which I am beginning to doubt anyone has the right to do, even in the case of traitors or murderers.”

“I know,” Slade said. “Those have been my thoughts, too, at every execution I’ve seen. Hanging is an eye for an eye, but it doesn’t always satisfy the need for vengeance. That can persist even after the criminal is dead, when he’s beyond our reach.” A frown darkened his features, which were thin and drawn from the hardships he’d suffered. “And in this case, Lord Eastbourne wasn’t the only guilty party, or the one who most deserved punishment.”

I nodded, equally distressed. Wilhelm Stieber was still at large.

“That reminds me. I may have some news of Stieber.” Slade took from his pocket a letter that he’d received this morning. He opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. “It’s from the Foreign Office. They’ve been searching for Stieber, canvassing Whitechapel, questioning the European refugees. One of their informants sighted Stieber aboard a ship that was bound for Casablanca.” Slade added bitterly, “He’s given us the slip.”

I murmured in disappointment, but I wasn’t surprised. Slade exclaimed, “I wish I could have killed the bastard!”

“You were faced with a difficult choice,” I reminded him. He had loved me enough to sacrifice his revenge, and he’d put the good of the many ahead of his own momentary, long-desired satisfaction. “You made the right one.”

“… Yes,” Slade said.

I knew he was thinking over the events of that night, wondering what he might have done differently. I told him a deep-seated belief of mine: “If one thing had turned out differently, so might everything else. If you had killed Stieber, perhaps you couldn’t have saved us all.”

Slade looked skeptical, then resigned. “Perhaps I could have. But there’s not much use in debating; we’ll never know. It’s over.”

“It is,” I said, relieved. “If England and Russia go to war someday, we can be glad that Niall Kavanagh’s weapon won’t be used by either side. Perhaps Stieber will get his just desserts. But for now we can think about our future.” We had discussed it this past week, and we’d agreed that the first thing we must do was break the news of our marriage to my father, in person. Furthermore, I wanted a real wedding, in our church at home. “Shall we leave for Haworth today?”

Slade wasn’t listening. He continued reading his letter, and a strange expression of gladness mixed with dismay came over his face.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’ve been reinstated. I am an agent of the Foreign Office once again.”

“But that’s good news.” I was delighted for him, because I knew this was what he wanted, his honor and the Crown’s trust in him restored. “Isn’t it?”

He put aside the letter and took my hands in his. The anguish in his eyes told me everything. Tears welled up in my eyes. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes, I hate to say. The bad news is that I’m being sent out on an assignment.”

I clung to him in a futile attempt to keep him with me, but duty had called; he must answer, and I knew he wanted to go. His work was in his blood, as writing was in mine. I would not ask him to give up his vocation. He’d offered to do so when he’d proposed to me three years ago, but I had refused because I couldn’t let him make the sacrifice and I couldn’t leave Haworth. The only compromise would have been to live apart, which neither of us had wanted. Now that we were married, I must brave the separation.

“An assignment where?” I asked faintly. “To do what?”

“I can’t tell you,” Slade said. “It’s supposed to be kept secret. In fact, I won’t know myself until I board the ship.”

“When is that?”

Slade exhaled in sad regret. “Tomorrow morning.”

I was alarmed. “But you’re wounded. How can they put you back to work so soon?”

“My wound isn’t serious. It’ll heal while I’m en route to wherever I’m going.”

“After everything you’ve been through for the sake of England, don’t you deserve a respite?” I said, indignant. “Couldn’t you ask for one?”

“I’m afraid not,” Slade said.

“Perhaps if we told your superiors at the Foreign Office that we are newly married, they would grant us a little time together.”

“They wouldn’t.” Slade explained, “The Queen herself ordered that I should go on this mission.”

I remembered the Queen’s barbed references to my vigil at Slade’s bedside during our night at Buckingham Palace. She was aware that we were lovers, even though she didn’t know we’d married. I also remembered her anger at me for bringing the business with Niall Kavanagh, Wilhelm Stieber, and Lord Eastbourne to a head, even though I’d done it inadvertently and things would have been worse if I hadn’t. A part of her blamed me for the near disaster at the Great Exhibition. She couldn’t forgive me, and she still couldn’t forget that I had been involved in the endangerment of her children three years ago. She’d been forced, once again, to declare me a heroine, but she had found a most personal way to punish me.

“She’s sending you abroad to separate us!” I was so infuriated that I forgot all the respect I owed the Queen. “That cruel, petty, hateful, diabolical harpy!”

Slade drew back, shocked by my outburst. “I don’t believe she would do that.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re a man. I’m a woman, and I know what women are capable of doing to other women they don’t like.”

“All right, if you say so.” Slade clearly wanted to avoid an argument. “But be that as it may, I can’t defy Her Majesty.”

Nor could I. I had thwarted Wilhelm Stieber, defeated Lord Eastbourne, and sabotaged Niall Kavanagh’s bomb, but I was helpless against the Queen. I wept with all the rage, despair, and heartache that I’d accumulated during my adventures. “I’ve found you and now I’m losing you again!”

“I won’t be gone forever,” Slade said, although he looked as miserable as I felt.

“What if you don’t come back?” That was the fear I’d harbored during his three years of absence.

“I will. I promise.” Slade enfolded me in his arms, held my head against his chest. He spoke with tenderness and passion. “We’re husband and wife. Not even fate can separate us forever.” He kissed my hair while our carriage bore us on our last journey through London and I sobbed. “And I’m here now. We’ll make our last day and night together count.”