The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë (48 page)

The hours that I passed in the cellar were the worst I’d ever known. Nausea, tremors, fever, and chills tortured me. I lay helpless on the floor, which was wet and foul from my effluvium. The dark pressed in on me like the death I welcomed yet dreaded. Anne did her best to nurse me, holding my head in her lap, stroking my brow. Emily uttered frequent, disgusted exclamations. Father prayed to the God who had forsaken us.

After an eternity, the sickness departed. It left me exhausted, but my mind was miraculously lucid. For ages it had been so obsessed with thoughts of my dear, lost Lydia, my own misery, and my craving for liquor and laudanum that there was no capacity for anything else. Not a single line of verse, not a single new idea, had occurred to me in all that time. But lo, the voice of Inspiration now spoke to me! It told me how I might deliver us from this hellish nightmare.

I pushed myself upright. Anne said, “What’s wrong?” Oh, the powerful temptation to lie down and allow whatever would happen to happen! But the voice whispered,
This is your last chance.
“Help me get up,” I said, gasping as I struggled to rise.

“What for?” Emily said. “There’s nowhere to go. And there’s certainly nothing you can do.” I could feel her bitter scorn towards me, like poisonous fumes in the darkness.

“Be still and rest,” Anne said.

But I clambered to my hands and knees. I crawled across the cellar, groping my way. A wall suddenly materialized before me and slammed against my head. I yelped in pain.

“What are you doing?” Father said, puzzled and anxious.

I felt along the cold, rough stones embedded in the earthen surface of the wall. “Looking for the bottle of whisky that I just remembered I hid.”

There was silence, during which I sensed them thinking that they’d believed they’d disposed of all the liquor I’d squirreled away in the house but I had outwitted them. Some months ago, desperate to secure the bottle in case of urgent need, I had forced myself to venture into the cellar. My family, knowing I was afraid of it, hadn’t thought to look here.

“Trust you to find a drink, even at a time like this,” Emily said with a sneer in her voice.

“I’m not going to drink the whisky,” I said.

Blind luck favored me. My hands found the large, square stone I remembered. I tugged it loose and dropped it to the floor. I reached into the void that I’d dug and that the stone had concealed.

“Then why do you want it?” Anne said.

My fingers touched smooth, cool glass. I pulled out the bottle and shook it. The whisky sloshed inside. “To buy our freedom.”

This provoked exclamations of surprise and confusion. Father said, “What are you talking about?”

“Pay him no mind,” Emily said. “He has gone completely insane at last.”

Clutching the bottle, I staggered around the cellar, bumping into walls, until I stubbed my foot against the stairs. I crawled slowly, laboriously, up them.

“What are you doing?” Anne said.

If I told them my intentions, they would surely try to dissuade me; coward that I am, I would just as surely let them. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, I thumped on the door and called loudly, “Hello! May I please speak with you gentlemen?”

Father and Anne tried to hush me for fear that I would make the men angry. Emily said, “It’s no use. They won’t let us out.”

But I kept calling and thumping. After some time I heard footsteps in the passage outside. “Be quiet!” called a man’s irate voice.

“Forgive me for annoying you, good sir, but I’ve got something that I think you would like to have,” I said in the polite, ingratiating tone that I’d often used to wheedle my way into company and out of trouble.

No immediate reply came, but I felt the man’s presence still on the other side of the door. Would his curiosity work in my favor? At last he said, “What is it?”

“Open the door,” I said, “and I’ll show you.”

I felt him hesitate. I hoped he was bored with sitting in the parsonage and wanted diversion. To my delight, I heard him unbolt the door, which then opened a few inches. I saw the man, his figure lit from the lamps in the passage behind him. I hastily backed down a few stairs, out of his reach.

“Well?” he demanded. “What have you got?”

From my vantage point I could discern little about him except that he was much bigger than myself. Fortunately, my plan did not require brute strength of me as much as cunning. I held up the bottle so that the lamplight glinted on it.

“This is the finest-quality Irish whisky,” I said. “May I offer you a taste?”

The man opened the door wider. Two other men appeared behind him. The light was now sufficient that I got a good view of them. The man who’d answered my call had narrow, hostile eyes deep-set in a fleshy face, and a complexion like raw meat.

“What do you think you’re doing?” demanded the man at his right, who looked enough like him to be his brother.

The other man ordered, “Shut that door.” He was fair of hair and sharp-featured. Although he and his comrades all wore dark coats and trousers, his looked tailored to fit him. His speech suggested higher society than theirs. Surely he was their leader.

“But he’s got whisky,” said the first man.

A person recognizes in others the desires that he himself possesses. I could sense their thirst for the liquor; I could see it in the way they looked at the bottle. The leader thrust his hand through the doorway and said, “Give me that.”

I held it out of his reach. My family made not a sound; yet I felt them waiting fearfully. “If you let me come up,” I said, “I’ll serve you all a drink.”

He and his comrades studied me. On their faces I read suspicion mixed with disgust at my decrepit appearance. Once I would have been ashamed that my fellow humans beheld me thus, but now their low opinion of me was to my advantage. I smiled at them, striving for the charm that had won me many friends and lovers in my youth. Their faces assumed another expression that I’d seen too often of late. It said,
Here’s a harmless buffoon who can help us while away the time.
They shrugged and grinned at one another.

“Come on, then,” the leader invited me.

Up the stairs I scrambled. I felt like a soul risen from the depths of hell. But Father, Emily, and Anne were still trapped in abysmal darkness below me. The men barred the cellar door. They hovered around me as I faltered into the dining room. Playing cards lay strewn across the table amidst burning candles, and tobacco smoke tainted the air. The windows were dark with night, and the wind keened outside. I estimated that I’d spent some twenty-four hours in the cellar, but how much longer these men had held Father, Anne, and Emily captive, I knew not. If anyone had come to the parsonage to see us, they must have gone away believing we were not home. The men must have kept themselves well hidden so as not to arouse suspicion. No rescue would come from outside quarters. All was up to me. My legs quaked under the burden of responsibility.

But I hid my thoughts behind an idiotic smile as I fetched four glasses. My hands shook as I poured whisky. I said, “A toast to new friends!”

The men raised their glasses and drank. I only pretended to follow suit, for although I desperately craved the whisky, I must keep sober. There was a slackening of tension in the atmosphere, and the men’s faces relaxed; already the liquor was doing its work. Now I cast about for a way to keep my companions occupied for as long as I needed.

I said, “May I join your game?”

“How much money have you?” the leader asked, his eyes alight at the prospect of enriching himself at a fool’s expense.

“None, alas,” I said, “but for every hand I lose, I’ll recite you a verse.”

“That suits me,” said one of the leader’s comrades.

“What better fun have we got?” said the other.

We sat down and played, and I lost every round. While I recited poetry, my captors cheered and egged me on. I felt myself once again to be the Branwell Brontë who had entertained audiences in taverns all over England. That I refilled the men’s glasses time after time probably accounted for their enjoyment of my verse. If only I had ever won such an enthusiastic reception from publishers! But never had my poetry served such a serious purpose as now. Soon we were on first-name terms. The leader was Cecil; the two brothers, Jim and Bill. Soon they were quite tipsy.

“Tell me,” I said, “what brought you here?”

“We were sent by the chap we work for,” Cecil answered. “He’s kidnapping the Queen’s children. Your sister’s supposed to help him. We’re here to make sure she does. She’s been told that if she doesn’t, her family will die.”

He uttered this astounding explanation in a tone as matter-of-fact as if he were talking about the weather. My first reaction was shock; the second, disbelief. Had my fevered brain dreamed up these men? But they seemed as real as I. Their story explained why Charlotte was absent and seemed as creditable a reason as any for the imprisonment of our family.

“When is this kidnapping to take place?” I said.

“It should have happened yesterday,” Cecil said while Jim dealt the cards again. “We’re waiting for word.”

“What are your employer and Charlotte going to do with the children?” I asked as casually as I could.

“Take them to China,” came the reply. “They should be aboard his ship off the coast of Aberdeen as we speak.”

Horror seized me as I realized that whatever was really going on, these men would never free my family and myself. Surely they knew that as soon as they did, we would set the police after them and their employer. They must have orders from him to murder us and thereby ensure our silence. Cecil didn’t care if I knew about this kidnapping because I would be dead and unable to interfere.

Sweat broke out on my forehead and tremors shivered through me, but I hid my terror behind loud, careless laughter, as though I thought kidnapping and treason to be the best prank in the world. “Let’s have another drink!”

I took the glasses to the sideboard and poured out the last of the whisky. While the men were busy looking at their cards, I dipped my hand into my pocket and brought out the vial of laudanum that I’d bought before I came home, before my drunken revel at the Black Bull Inn an eternity ago. For a moment I held it in my fist, resisting my desire for it. Then I quickly apportioned the laudanum among three glasses. I pocketed the empty vial and set the glasses before the men. They drank without noticing that I abstained. I sat down, endured another game, and waited.

Eventually they began to yawn as the combined effects of whisky and laudanum took hold. Jim canted backward in his chair and dozed off. Bill dropped his head onto the table and fell asleep amidst the cards. Cecil stared at me, the only person still alert. Suspicion and anger battled drowsiness in his gaze as it moved to his empty glass then back to me.

“What did you put in that last drink?” he demanded.

Rising clumsily from his chair, he lurched towards me. His knees buckled; his eyes rolled up inside his head. He crashed to the floor and lay unconscious. Never had any venture of mine succeeded so brilliantly. I staggered to the cellar door, unbarred it, and flung it open.

“Father! Anne! Emily!” I cried.