Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte tsaocb-2 Page 9

  Here was a hint of what I’d feared to hear from him. Once, during my brief infatuation with George, I’d hoped we could be more than friends, but now I wept harder and felt worse. If only he were Slade!

  Fortunately, he realized that I was too upset to talk, and he said no more. Back at Gloucester Terrace, I lay in bed, tormented by physical and mental agony. I’d forgotten that George had arranged a dinner party of famous literary critics for me to meet. When the doorbell rang, it was too late to cancel the party, and I had the further discomfort of listening to the guests talking and laughing, probably about me. After some hours my headache and nausea lessened enough that I thought I should make an appearance at the party. I got up and tidied myself, but facing a pack of critics was the last thing I wanted to do.

  What I wanted, in spite of all that had happened, was to see Slade again. If he didn’t love me anymore, I needed him to tell me so. Maybe then could I forget him, pick up the pieces of my heart, and go on with my life.

  I sneaked down the back stairs. George and his guests in the parlor didn’t notice. The clock struck ten o’clock as I slipped out the door. The night was warm; smoke and clouds in the sky glowed like brimstone in the light from the city below. I walked to Bayswater Road and hired a carriage. I alit outside the Royal Pavilion Theater, only to find it dark and quiet, as was the whole Whitechapel high street. The only person I saw was a beggar seated in the doorway.

  His body looked oddly truncated. Eyes as bright and unblinking as an owl’s gleamed in his bearded, grimy face. “Lookin’ for some-thin’, mum?”

  “I wanted to see Katerina the Great.” I noticed with a shock that he had no legs. His trousers were pinned up, covering the stumps. “Do you know where she lives?”

  “Maybe.” The beggar held out his tin cup. I tossed in a coin. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  We made an odd pair-he racing along the pavement on his hands, I trotting to keep up. The streets along which he led me were devoid of gas lamps. Tenements rose into the sky’s acid-yellow glow. Most of the buildings were dark except for the cellars, through whose windows I could see people sewing, making baskets, or doing other piecework. The beggar turned so many corners so fast that I lost my sense of direction. I felt like a lost soul being led through Purgatory by a guide not quite human.

  We stopped in an enclave of tall, thin, terraced houses built of brick, crowned by steeply pitched slate roofs. My guide jerked his chin at the one in front of us. “There.”

  As he pattered away, I looked up and down the street. Not a hint of life was evident. The only sounds I heard were clangs from distant factories. A shiver of fear and desolation crept up my spine. I looked at the house that the beggar had indicated was Katerina’s. I’d thought she would live in a residence as glamorous as she; then I recalled that she was but a foreign actress at a seedy theater. Dim light leaked around the curtains in the windows. Was Slade visiting his mistress tonight?

  I almost quailed at the idea of meeting him in Katerina’s presence. Steeling myself, I walked up the steps. My heart raced; my head still throbbed. The door was ajar. A strange, ruddy light glowed within. Eager for a confrontation yet dreading it, I pushed the door open further and peered inside. To my right was a parlor. Crimson and gold wallpaper and tapestries decorated the walls. Burgundy velvet sofas and chairs stood on a patterned red Turkey carpet. A carved table held a brass samovar. Red candles burned on the mantel over the fireplace. The profusion of color seemed to bleed outward and engulf me. I smelled coffee and exotic perfume. Timid yet curious, I stepped inside the house.

  To my left, a flight of carpeted stairs led upward. I heard a woman moaning, and a masculine voice, low and urgent. Although I am no expert on such matters, I recognized the sounds of a couple making love. Slade was with Katerina. Anguish lacerated my heart. I had hoped to find Slade here, but I’d refused to think that I might find him thus engaged. But I started up the stairs, as furtive as a thief. I was more determined than ever to confront Slade, even though it meant witnessing things that would only cause me more pain.

  Katerina’s moans turned to cries; the man’s utterances grew more insistent. They were nearing the climax of their pleasure. I knew how that pleasure felt. I had experienced it once with Slade, and, I confess, many times thereafter, alone in my bed; yet I was a virgin still. I had never experienced the ultimate fulfillment that Katerina was experiencing. Choking on rage, jealousy, and tears, I was halfway up the stairs when she began to scream.

  Her screams were piercing, shrill, loud enough to hurt my ears. I realized then that my perceptions had been distorted by my jealousy, that those screams expressed not rapture but terror and agony. These were not the sounds of a couple enjoying an amorous encounter. Rather, they conveyed the impression of a woman being tortured. I was so startled that I tripped on the stairs. I fell hard on my knee, with a resounding, painful thud. I exclaimed before I could stop myself. Then I heard rapid footsteps pounding down another set of stairs at the back of the house. A door slammed. The man must have left; I could no longer hear his voice. Katerina shouted words in Russian between her screams, calling for help.

  Should I go to her aid and expose myself as a trespasser, or steal away and avoid trouble?

  The daughter of a parson cannot turn her back on someone in need. I rushed up the stairs, to a chamber at the top, and almost fell across the threshold. A bizarre sight greeted my eyes. I thought it was a Crucifixion from a medieval painting. A naked figure lay on a background of gold, arms spread out and legs extended, like Jesus Christ on the cross. Sheer white fabric twisted around its groin. Its limbs and torso were marked with red gashes that oozed blood.

  As I squinted through my spectacles, trying to make sense of what I saw, the figure groaned and writhed. Its chest heaved, and there I saw female breasts. It was Katerina, on a bed covered by a gold quilt. Her wrists and ankles were tied with ropes to the wrought-iron bedstead. Her head tossed. Her dark eyes were huge with fright.

  She saw me and gasped out inarticulate pleas. I rushed to her and tried to untie the ropes that restrained her hands. She struggled so frantically that the knots tightened. “Be still,” I said.

  But she fought like a trussed wild beast. I looked around the room for something to cut her bonds, and noticed a knife on the rug. Its black handle and long, narrow steel blade were smeared with blood. It was the weapon used to wound Katerina. The thought of touching it made me ill, but I snatched it up; I cut the ropes. Katerina moaned, her hands clutching her deepest wound-a cut across her abdomen.

  “I’ll fetch help,” I said.

  She reached out and grabbed my wrist. “No! Don’t leave me!”

  Her grip was as strong as a bear trap. I tried to break free but could not. I tried to convince her that she needed a physician.

  “It’s no use,” Katerina said. “I am dying.” She breathed in short, uneven gasps. “Please stay with me. I do not want to die alone.”

  I snatched up a white shawl that lay upon a chair and pressed it to the wound on her stomach. As I desperately tried to stanch the bleeding, I saw that so much blood had already flowed that the bed was drenched. I noticed that Katerina was also bleeding from between her legs. Although suffering twisted her face, she tried to maintain her self-control. I stared at her, stricken. When I had seen her on stage, she had reminded me of my sister Emily, and now the resemblance was stronger than ever. When Emily took ill with consumption, she never uttered a complaint. She insisted upon going about her business despite the pain in her chest, the violent coughs, and the crippling shortness of breath. She fought for life until the end, when bodily weakness triumphed over her strong spirit; then she faced death with dignity.

  As I stood beside Katerina and held her hand, I saw Emily lying on the sofa in the parsonage. I remembered watching helplessly as she declined. Katerina coughed; blood spilled from her mouth. That had happened to Emily, her lungs ravaged by the disease. Now I wept for her all over again. But I was not so lost in memory
or grief that I forgot why I’d come. I did not overlook the possibility that Katerina might have information that I wanted.

  “Who did this to you?” I asked.

  Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

  I thought of the women mutilated and murdered in Whitechapel. “Was it John Slade?”

  A word emerged from Katerina in a fit of coughing. “Stieber…”

  That was the name Slade had mentioned. “Wilhelm Stieber? The Tsar’s spy?” When Katerina nodded feebly, I said, “Why did he do it?”

  Katerina mumbled in Russian. Had she forgotten how to speak English? I tried another question: “How do you know Stieber?”

  She moaned; her eyes rolled. She brought to mind a horse I’d once seen on a farm outside Haworth. It had fallen and shattered its leg. Its eyes had rolled just like Katerina’s just before the farmer shot it. “I work for him.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I go with men… I…” Katerina lapsed into Russian again, words that smacked of vulgarity. “… They tell me secrets.”

  I pieced together a story influenced by what I’d learned from Slade. “Russian men? You seduce them? And they tell you secrets about plots against the tsar?”

  Her head tossed. “Not just Russian. English. Stieber want to find man.” In her agony, her English had deteriorated.

  Excitement quickened my pulse. “Is it Niall Kavanagh?”

  Katerina gripped my hand harder. I winced. She said, “Man… have gun. Stieber want.”

  The scientist’s invention was a gun, I deduced. It must be unique in design, and so powerful that it could guarantee Russia a victory in a war with England. Wilhelm Stieber meant to obtain it for the Tsar. Wilhelm Stieber had ordered Katerina to use her charms on British men who might know where Kavanagh was. And if I could believe Slade, he meant to stop Stieber and keep the gun out of Russian hands.

  “Did Stieber find Niall Kavanagh?” I asked. “What about the gun?”

  Katerina didn’t seem to hear me. Her face was pale and waxen; she gasped out bloody saliva. When repeated attempts failed to elicit the answers, I reverted to my previous question: “Why did Stieber do this to you?”

  She spoke in a whisper so faint that I had to lean close to hear. “Because I betray him.”

  “You betrayed him? How?”

  “… I told…”

  Urgency agitated me, for her strength was fading. “Told whom?”

  She sighed, her breath moist and feverish against my ear. “Josef.”

  That was the Polish name Slade had been using. Katerina appeared to have been his informant as well as Wilhelm Stieber’s. It must have been she who had told Slade about Stieber’s comings and goings at Bedlam. Yet these explanations didn’t tell me whether that was all there had been to Slade and Katerina’s relations. That they had also been lovers was not my only horrific thought. If she had betrayed Stieber in the service of Slade, she might also have betrayed Slade to Stieber, and Slade might have retaliated by torturing and stabbing her. Perhaps I had misinterpreted a garbled story from a mortally injured woman. So many people had lately expressed doubts about my mental capacities; I had begun to doubt them myself.

  Katerina muttered something that I hopefully took for, “Stieber say I must die.”

  “But why torture you?” Why not just kill Katerina rather than make her suffer? I couldn’t believe that even a spy for the Tsar would be so cruel. Maybe the torturer was Slade, a homicidal lunatic according to the police.

  “… want know…”

  “Know what?” I demanded, avid for information that would exonerate Slade.

  She whispered, “Where is Josef.”

  I surmised that Stieber was on a hunt for Slade and meant to do to him what I believed he’d done to Katerina. “Did you tell him?” I cried. “Where is he?”

  Her body began trembling violently; her grasp on my wrist broke. Gurgles and moans erupted from her. Her long-lashed eyelids fluttered.

  “Katerina!”

  Her trembling and utterances rapidly diminished until she lay still, her eyes half-closed. She could tell me no more. I could not save her. She was dead.

  So stunned by shock, disbelief, and horror that I hardly knew what to do, I heard noises inside the house. They were footsteps, coming stealthily up the stairs.

  13

  My heart gave a mighty lurch and my breath caught as the footsteps mounted higher up the stairs. Katerina’s killer was coming back. Whoever he was, he meant to make sure that Katerina was dead or finish her off if she wasn’t. If I let him find me here, he would surely kill me, too.

  The stairs creaked. Light crept into the hall. I was trapped. Panic spurred me to action. I bent and snatched up the knife from the floor where I’d dropped it. I gripped it in both hands, prepared to fight for my life.

  The lantern appeared in the doorway. I saw the man who held the lantern aloft, and another man beside him. They wore tall helmets decorated with metal badges: they were police constables. Exclamations burst from them: “What in the devil?” “Holy Mother of God!”

  The one holding the lantern was a young man so fair that his eyelashes were white; the other a rugged, older fellow. As their gazes took in Katerina’s bloody corpse, then moved to me, their faces wore identical expressions of shock.

  “Put down that knife,” the older constable ordered me. “You’re under arrest for murder.”

  I gaped, stunned. They thought I’d killed Katerina! “But I didn’t-”

  He advanced cautiously into the room, his hand raised to ward off an attack and admonish me. “Put it down and come along peacefully, miss.”

  The younger constable beheld me with horrified awe. “Is she the Whitechapel Ripper?”

  “Looks like it,” said his comrade.

  “A woman! Blimey! And we thought this was just another domestic disturbance.”

  I realized what must have happened: The neighbors had heard Katerina screaming and fetched the police. Now the police thought me responsible for the murders of which Slade had been accused!

  “No,” I said, even as I looked down at myself and saw what they saw. My hands were red with blood, clutching the bloodstained murder weapon. My clothes were also smeared with Katerina’s blood. I looked every bit the murderess. “She’d been stabbed before I got here. I found her. The murderer ran away. I tried to save her.”

  The older constable lunged, wrenched the knife from my hands, and twisted my arm behind my back. I cried out in protest and pain.

  “This is a mistake!” I wailed as he marched me down the stairs. “I’m innocent!”

  He laughed. “That’s what they all say.”

  The constables took me to a dingy local police station and locked me in a small room. During an endless night, police officials interrogated me, badgered me, threatened me, and ordered me to confess. I grew so exhausted that I felt tempted to comply, if only they would stop. But I managed to continue proclaiming my innocence. After a while, they left me alone. I thanked God for the silver lining in the cloud: When I’d given them my name, they hadn’t recognized it. They didn’t know that Charlotte Bronte was Currer Bell, the famous authoress. I shuddered to think of what would have happened if they did. “Currer Bell arrested for murder!” the headlines of every newspaper would read. “Is Currer Bell the Whitechapel Ripper?”

  Near dawn, a Roman Catholic priest came to me. He brought a blanket to cover my bloodstained clothes, and he invited me to talk. Although I was raised to distrust Romans and I wondered if he’d been sent by the police to extract an admission of guilt from me, I was thankful for his company. His was the only kind face I’d seen since I’d been arrested, and when I told him what had happened at Katerina’s house, he said he believed me.

  “Have you a friend who might help you?” he asked.

  “Yes. His name is George Smith. He lives at Number 76 Gloucester Terrace.”

  “I’ll go to him and tell him what’s happened,” the priest promised.

  In the
morning, the police put me in a prison van-a long, covered carriage drawn by black horses. My fellow passengers were seven ladies of the street. Our ankles were chained to prevent us from escaping. As we rode through London, they sang obscene songs and yelled bawdy invitations to men we passed. I was so mortified that I wanted to die.

  How I regretted going to see Katerina! I was glad to have the information she’d provided, but what a price I’d paid! I was too upset to determine whether it could exonerate Slade, and I wondered whether it would do me any good now.

  We arrived at Newgate Prison, a massive brick edifice near the Old Bailey. Fear sickened me, for I had heard tales of how evil a place it was, filled with depraved, dangerous criminals. Its reputation attracted gawkers, who were gathered outside. They jeered at us while we clambered out of the van, hobbled by our chains. My companions jeered back, but I hung my head, as ashamed as if I were guilty.

  Two guards led us through the gate, to a courtyard surrounded by high walls with barred windows. The guards removed our chains and handed us over to three female warders, who ordered us to strip naked. Disrobing in front of strangers of my own sex was enough of an affront to my modesty, but I could see men leering from the windows. Although glad to shed my bloodstained clothes, I wept from embarrassment.

  The warders confiscated my pocketbook and some knives carried by the other prisoners. They made us line up at a water pump and wash ourselves. We had to share towels; there weren’t enough to go around. My skin crawled as I wondered what vermin I was picking up from the other prisoners. The warders gave us uniforms to wear-blue gowns, blue-and-white-checked aprons, and white muslin caps. After we dressed, they led us inside the jail.

  Galleries of cells rose three stories high, to a glass roof. They stank of privies. My throat closed up, my stomach turned, and I tried not to breathe. All around me echoed the deafening chatter and noise of hundreds of women who milled about a large room below the galleries. As we were brought into their midst, the inmates stared at us. Some were mere girls; others tough, hardened crones. Many called out lewd greetings or insults. The warders herded everyone into a line for breakfast. When I got to the front, I received a piece of bread and a bowl of gruel. The food was meager in portion, grayish and sour. Outrage rose up through my misery. I was a law-abiding citizen, a bestselling authoress. I didn’t deserve to be treated thus!