Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë (14 page)

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.

M
Y 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 Brontë 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!

But railing at my fate would do me no good; I must endure until rescue came. Walking to the tables where the women sat on benches to eat, I saw a vacant place. I started to set my food on the table, but one of the women said, “That place's taken.” When I tried other tables, the women said, “You can't sit there.” They were subjecting me to the sort of treatment that bullies at school inflicted on new girls. Soon I was the only person without a seat. I stood alone in the middle of the room, holding my food, all eyes on me.

“Sit here.” The woman who'd spoken patted the place next to her on the bench. She had a dumpy figure and the face of a prizefighter who'd lost too many matches. Her nose looked as if it had been broken and healed crookedly. Her eyes were shrewd in a broad face marked by a hint of a mustache.

I was afraid of her, but I sat. “Thank you,” I said politely.

The women smirked and repeated my words, mimicking my accent. With my first utterance I'd established myself as a member of a different class, an outsider.

“My name's Poll,” said the prizefighter. “What's yours?”

“Charlotte,” I said.

“If you aren't going to eat your food, Charlotte, I'll take it,” said a young blonde girl who sat on Poll's other side. She would have been pretty if not for the permanent sneer that twisted her mouth. Her hand shot across Poll to snatch my bread.

Poll slapped her and said, “Not now, Maisie.” She seemed to be the leader of this set of women. “What're you in for?” Poll asked me.

“I haven't done anything wrong,” I said. “I really shouldn't be here.”

The group hooted with laughter. “Neither have we,” Poll said, “but here we are, and so are you. Now, what're you in for?”

“Murder,” I reluctantly admitted.

“Really?” Maisie said. She and the other women stared at me in respectful awe.

A scowl turned Poll's face even more menacing. “You ain't no murderess. I am.” Her hand thumped her ample breast. “I knifed that son-of-a-bitch slave driver who beat me when I was workin' in the poorhouse. After I'm tried and convicted, I'll hang.” She apparently enjoyed special status in the prison because she'd committed the most violent, serious crime, and she didn't want someone else overtaking her. “You're lyin'.”