Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë (40 page)

“Not yet, at any rate.” I gave Slade my hairpin.

He set to work on the lock, but the mechanism was stiff; the hairpin broke. So did the others I gave him. Slade took up the file that Kavanagh had left us. He sawed a few strokes on a bar of the cage, then on the shank of the lock. “The lock seems to be made of a softer alloy, and there's only one piece we need to cut in order to get out.”

He filed two scratches on opposite sides of the shank, indicating where we should cut. We took turns filing. It was slow, tedious work. The file was dull, and soon became duller. After some three hours we'd barely managed to nick the lock. We developed sore, running blisters on our fingers. The oil in the lamp burned down; the flame went out. Slade and I continued working in pitch darkness. We blindly passed the file to each other. My ears rang with the rasp of metal against metal. The lock seemed to grow thicker as I labored. We must have continued all day, or night, or around the clock—I knew not which. We grew hungry, thirsty, and tired. After an eternity, we stopped to rest.

“If you have any new ideas about how to free ourselves, let's hear them,” Slade said.

I started to say I did not, when a faint noise stopped me. “Did you hear that?”

We listened to the quiet sound of a door creaking open, somewhere above us, then soft, stealthy footsteps descending. “Dr. Kavanagh is coming back!” I whispered.

“It's not him,” Slade said. “That's not his gait. And there are several people coming.”

I was so weary, my mind so disoriented by the darkness, that it took me a moment to think who they might be. “Lord Eastbourne and his men?”

Then I heard low, masculine voices with a foreign accent. Slade tensed beside me as a current of dread ran through both of us. He said, “I would prefer Lord Eastbourne.”

We stood up in the cage and waited helplessly. A yellow glare burst like a sun in the darkness. All I could see was that brilliant, radiating spot. Slade and I raised our hands to shield our eyes as it drew nearer. Squinting, I perceived three figures approaching. One man held the lantern from which the light emanated. Another walked by his side. Each held a pistol aimed at Slade and me. The third man followed. My eyes adjusted as the two men in the lead stopped at the cage. I recognized their blond hair, their military bearing, the cold, classical handsomeness of one and the puffy, unwholesome face of the other. They moved apart, and the third man came to stand between them. Dressed in black, he seemed made of the same darkness as the shadows in the dungeon. His silver hair, his pale, hooded eyes, and his gold-rimmed spectacles gleamed with a light of their own.

It was Wilhelm Stieber and his two Prussian soldiers.

Terror stabbed deep into my heart, which pounded so hard that my ears filled with the sound of my blood roaring. My bowels turned to water; my lungs contracted; I felt weak with cold, sickening despair. All our running to keep one step ahead of Stieber had been futile. He had caught up with us at the worst possible time.

A smile of gratification curved his cruel, sensual mouth. “Ivan Zubov,” he said to Slade. “But of course that is not your real name. The time for pretenses is long past. John Slade, what a pleasure to meet you again.”

I sensed the animosity Stieber bore toward Slade, a malicious presence that consumed the air, as threatening as the pistols that his men aimed at us. Slade stood firm, his shoulders squared, his head high. His own hatred for Stieber radiated like a hot, fierce energy from him toward his foe. The space around the two men crackled, as if two bolts of lightning had met.

“Wilhelm Stieber,” Slade said. “I could say that it's a pleasure to see you, but that would be a lie.”

Stieber peered at me. “Ah, Miss Charlotte Brontë. How convenient to find you with Mr. Slade. You have spared me the trouble of tracking you down.” Evil cheer crinkled his smooth skin as he noticed the file lying on the floor of the cage and the lock with the two tiny notches we'd worked so long to make. “Did Dr. Kavanagh imprison you in this cage?”

“Yes,” Slade said.

Stieber chuckled. “He did me a favor.”

“Indeed. How did you find this place? You couldn't have gotten any clues from Dr. Kavanagh's laboratory. It was already burning when you arrived.”

At first I did not understand why Slade would converse so civilly with Stieber when he wanted to lunge at the man's throat. Then I realized that he wanted to keep Stieber talking, to delay the violence that Stieber surely meant to do us, and give himself time to think of a way to escape.

“I consulted some members of the Royal Society in London.” Stieber smiled, smug and condescending: he'd seen through Slade's ploy but he couldn't resist the chance to show off his cleverness. “Dr. Kavanagh has many enemies among them. When I told them that I was an Austrian police official and Dr. Kavanagh was wanted for a murder in Vienna, they were glad to furnish me with information about his family. I then traveled to Ireland. Imagine my chagrin when his mother and father informed me that you—and your wife—had already been there.” Stieber brimmed with sly humor. “Congratulations on your marriage.”

“Many thanks,” Slade said evenly.

“Sir William and Lady Kavanagh were under the impression that you work for the British government,” Stieber continued. “I corrected their mistake. I told them that you were a mercenary hired by the Russians to kill their son. I said that I could save him if they told me where he was. They were more than eager to cooperate.”

I was horrified that he'd tricked the Kavanaghs. I felt anger flare in Slade, but all he said was, “You're too late. Kavanagh is gone.”

“I know.” Stieber's eyes narrowed with hostility, as if he blamed Slade and me for Kavanagh's departure. “Where is his invention?”

“He took it with him,” Slade said.

I had gathered that Stieber was a man of rare intelligence and perception; now I watched him review the news about Dr. Kavanagh, combine it with facts already in his possession, and swiftly grasp the situation. “Kavanagh intends to deploy his invention.”

“Bull's-eye,” Slade said, pointing at Stieber.

For the first time I saw Stieber confounded. He turned away, attempting to hide the fact that he'd suffered a devastating blow. For once he appeared fully human.

Slade hurried to take advantage of Stieber's weakness. “Kavanagh is going to demonstrate his weapon in public. It will be seen by hundreds of people. It won't be a secret anymore. And he's sure to be caught. Too bad for Russia.”

I'd not thought of how Kavanagh's actions would affect Stieber. Now I realized that Kavanagh had put himself beyond the grasp of Stieber and the Tsar. But that was small consolation.

Stieber faced us. He'd regained his smoothest, hardest, most imperious countenance, but the blood showed through his pale complexion. A vein pulsed at his temple; the sinews in his neck tensed like cords of steel. His rage was frightening, and Slade and I were captive scapegoats.

“Where did Kavanagh go?” Stieber demanded.

“He refused to tell us,” Slade said, “but he went not long ago. Maybe you can catch up with him, if you leave at once.”

I prayed that his attempt to send Stieber away would work, but Stieber glared, his rage magnified by contempt. “Do you think I'm so stupid? That I would let you go? After hunting you for so long? After you and your woman have caused me so much trouble?” His laugh flared his nostrils. “Dr. Kavanagh has evidently decided to let you live because he wants you to tell his story in case he can't.” His intuition amazed me yet again. “But I won't repeat his mistake.”

He gestured at the soldiers. The ugly one moved closer to the cage, his gun leveled at Slade's chest. The other aimed his weapon at me. Stieber said, “Tell me where Kavanagh went.”

“I already told you, we don't know.” Slade's voice was steady, but I knew his thoughts were racing as fast as my own. Staring at the pistol trained on me, I wondered if all my life's labors, all my striving toward publication, fame, and love, would soon end with a single gunshot. Would my remains never come to light? Would no one ever know what had become of me?

“I don't believe you.” Stieber shouted, “Tell me!”

“All right, I do know,” Slade said in a startling about-face. “But you'll have to torture the information out of me. Wouldn't you like to finish what you started in Bedlam?”

He wanted Stieber to open the cage, I deduced; he wanted to lure Stieber within fighting reach.

“It would be my pleasure,” Stieber said. “You have sixty seconds to tell me where Kavanagh went. If you don't, then my comrade will begin firing bullets into your wife. You will watch her die slowly and painfully. Then we'll do the same to you.”

He began counting in a measured, ominous cadence. I was mute, paralyzed by terror. That Slade and I would die together was little comfort.

“Go ahead. Kill us if you like.” Slade's brazenness didn't hide his desperation. “But you'll be making a fatal mistake. You need us to find Kavanagh.”

Stieber stopped counting. He regarded Slade with sudden, disappointed comprehension. “You really don't know where Kavanagh is. In that case, you're just wasting my time. You and your wife have outlived your usefulness.”

“You're wrong,” Slade hurried to say. “Haven't you noticed that we've always been one step ahead of you, one step closer to Kavanagh? Let us out, and we'll help you catch him before he demonstrates his invention.”

Stieber laughed, a short burst of anger and hatred. “How? When you don't have any more notion as to his whereabouts than I do?” He ordered, “Shoot the woman.”

The soldier cocked the pistol. Slade jumped between me and the gun and shouted, “No!” I looked around to see the other soldier take aim at my back. Slade wrapped me in his arms and held me against him as we stumbled about the cage, like dancers trapped in a shooting gallery. Now that all his ploys had failed, I tried desperately to think of a way to save us.

Our situation was akin to one I'd encountered while writing novels. I would reach an impasse where I'd created problems with the plot that I couldn't resolve. I'd learned that the only solution was to relinquish logic and conscious rumination and let my mind float free. I had also learned to attain this state under circumstances not conducive to rational thought. I'd begun writing
Jane Eyre
in rented quarters while my father lay recuperating from delicate, painful eye surgery and I had a toothache. I had finished it at the parsonage while Branwell raved drunkenly. Those distractions had barely impinged on me. Now I closed my eyes. The sounds of Stieber's threats and Slade's protests faded. My mind spun backward through memories of the house in Whitechapel and the laboratory in Tonbridge. They swam around an image of Niall Kavanagh's face. Time seemed to stop, my fate suspended.

Sometimes the solution to my problem strikes me like a stingray harpooning a whale. It did now, with such speed that I couldn't reconstruct the line of intuition that snapped my eyes open and my mind back to the present. I blurted, “Mr. Stieber! What does Niall Kavanagh look like?”

Stieber glanced at me in surprise. I felt Slade inhale a sharp breath. Confusion spread across Stieber's gaze. Slade laughed softly as he exhaled. He knew that I had found the coin with which to buy our lives.

“Describe Dr. Kavanagh,” Slade said.

Stieber glared instead of replying.

“You can't, can you?” Slade said. “Because you don't know what he looks like. You've never laid eyes on him. Or his invention.”

It was true; I could tell from the frustrated rage in Stieber's eyes, the compression of his mouth. The fearful, suspicious, unbalanced Kavanagh had completely managed to evade Stieber.

“You couldn't pick him out of a crowd,” Slade mocked Stieber.

“No matter,” Stieber said. “You've seen Kavanagh. You will describe him and his invention for me before you die.”

“Certainly. Niall Kavanagh is about forty years old, not very tall, with spectacles. His invention is a bomb.” Slade said, “Of course there are many men who fit his description. And the bomb is small enough to hide in a box.”

Stieber was silent. He regained his machine-like aspect, cold and calculating. His men stood immobile, their fingers on the triggers while he weighed his need to find Kavanagh against the likelihood that Slade and I would foil him. I knew he longed to kill us as punishment for Slade's trickery and betrayal of the Tsar. All the air seemed to leak from the dungeon, leaving us in a vacuum that reeked of decay and nerves. My heart thudded against Slade's while our suspense mounted to agonizing heights and our fate hinged on Stieber's decision.

At last Stieber motioned to his men. They lowered their guns. He said, “I only need one of you to identify Kavanagh. Mr. Slade, you are coming with me. Your wife will stay behind. If you cooperate, she won't die.”

As I stammered in horrified protest, Slade said, “Two pairs of eyes are better than one. If something happens to one of us, you'll have the other. Either we both go, or you can kill us now.”

Either Stieber didn't want to waste time arguing, or he saw the wisdom of Slade's words. “All right. You both shall accompany me.”

My breath came in rapid, dizzying gasps. Slade held me up, but his knees buckled under his own relief.

“Be warned,” Stieber said. “If you should attempt any tricks, I will kill you. If we do not find Niall Kavanagh, I will kill you.”

He didn't say that he would kill us even if we did find Kavanagh for him. We all knew that after we had served our purpose, he couldn't let us live because he didn't want to gamble on the outcome of another round with Slade. But neither Slade nor I objected. We'd been granted a chance to save ourselves, catch Niall Kavanagh, and confiscate his bombs and his cultures before he set off a plague that would kill millions of innocent people.