Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë (25 page)

By seeking out Dr. Forbes, I had gone back to the point where my perils had begun. Now my path lay in other familiar territory. Niall Kavanagh had been sighted in Whitechapel, the very neighborhood of London in which I had witnessed Katerina's murder; now, to Whitechapel I must return.

I parted from Dr. Forbes and joined Ellen and Mr. Nicholls. As we walked through the cold, misty night toward our inn, Ellen said, “What did you and Dr. Forbes talk about?”

“A mutual acquaintance,” I said.

“Did you get what you came for?”

“More or less.”

Ellen fell silent, and I felt bad because my evasiveness had hurt her feelings. Mr. Nicholls said, “What shall we do now?”

“We should retire for the night.” I was exhausted.

“That suits me.” Mr. Nicholls yawned, bleary-eyed and bloated from a long day and a large supper. “What about tomorrow? Are we going back to Haworth?”

“Back to Haworth! Why, we've only just gotten here!” Ellen turned her pique at me on Mr. Nicholls. “How can you even think of going home?”

To his credit, he refused to be provoked into another quarrel. “If Miss Brontë wants to go, we'll go. If not, we'll stay.”

“We'll stay another day,” I said. “Tomorrow we'll rent a boat and go rowing on the lake.”

“That sounds capital,” Mr. Nicholls said happily.

“Yes, quite.” Ellen cheered up, too.

Late that night, while Ellen slept soundly in her bed in the room we shared, I wrote two notes by candlelight. The first was to Papa:

I only hoped I would live to explain. I was bound for the place where a fiend killed and mutilated women, in the city where I was wanted for murder. Would I ever see Papa again?

The second note I addressed to Ellen and Mr. Nicholls:

I left the notes on the table for Ellen to find in the morning. Then I packed my things and quietly departed.

T
HE SECRET ADVENTURES OF JOHN SLADE

1851 February. That winter in Moscow was the longest and coldest winter Slade had ever known. By day he picked pockets in the streets and stole money from alms boxes in churches. At night he went to ground in Kitrovka, the haunt of brigands, drunks, itinerant laborers, artists down on their luck, and fugitives from the law.

A permanent pall of smoke and mist hung over the marketplace in Kitrovka. Vendors sold sausages and herring from stalls set up in the snow; toothless women kept pots of soup warm under their skirts. Dirty, unshaven, and haggard, Slade blended in with Kitrovka's populace. He lived in its shelters—low houses with dark, smoky rooms that stank of boots, latrines, and cheap tobacco. The men slept side by side on and under bunks made of boards, like corpses dressed in rags. Fleas, lice, bedbugs, and rats abounded. Fights broke out often. Slade never stayed in the same place two nights in a row, because the police made the rounds of the shelters, looking for fugitives. He caught a bad cold that developed into a wracking cough. Still, he was thankful for the blizzards that swept through Moscow: the police didn't like working outdoors during them, and the manhunt for him died down after a few weeks. By then Slade had saved up enough money for a long trip.

One frozen, gray morning he waved down a sleigh on Yauzky Boulevard and said to the driver, “Take me to Sergeev Posad.” That was a town some forty miles northeast of Moscow. Slade had a friend there who would smuggle him out of Russia.

The driver was a squat, red-nosed man with icicles in his shaggy beard. He looked Slade over and sneered. “I don't give free rides to beggars.”

“I can pay. I'll give you fifty rubles now and fifty when we get to Sergeev Posad.”

Greed vied with suspicion in the driver's eyes. “You must be wanted by the law. Double the price, and we have a deal.” He held out his hand, and Slade dropped a hundred rubles into it. “But we can't go now. It'll be safer after dark.”

Slade had no choice but to consent. “Where should we meet?”

“Behind the Ryady Bazaar. Eleven o'clock.”

The night was as still as if an ice age had paralyzed the city. The smoke from thousands of chimneys rose in vertical columns. Trudging through the snow, Slade avoided the main avenues where street lamps burned, but the snow reflected light from the full moon and a million stars onto him. He felt conspicuous and vulnerable, alone in the glacial landscape. Twice he thought he heard footsteps nearby. Twice he stopped, listened, looked around, and detected no one. Ill and exhausted, desperate to leave Moscow, Slade ignored his instincts.

The four people converged upon him from different directions. They cornered him in an alley bordered by the blank walls and locked rear doors of shops. Two blocked each end of the alley. Slade cursed, angry at himself for getting trapped. He turned in a circle, viewing his captors. One was a beggar who wore layers of clothes, his feet bound in rags. The second was a hunter dressed in smelly, uncured leather and fur; the third a dumpy woman in long skirts and babushka; the fourth a slender man in the kind of cheap black coat and hat worn by many men in Moscow, including Slade himself. Slade realized that he'd seen these people before, separately, on several occasions. Maybe they were brigands who worked as a team; maybe they had marked him out as a target and had followed him in order to rob him. But Slade had an inkling that the truth was much worse.

“The great John Slade,” the hunter said. His face was smeared with soot. His eyes gleamed with malice. “We meet for the first and last time.”

He spoke English, his accent as British as high tea at Windsor Castle. Shock coursed through Slade as he realized who these people were and what they meant to do.

The woman reached inside her coat. Slade lunged at the same moment she pulled out a knife. He caught her wrist as she tried to stab him. She was stronger than he'd expected—she was a man in disguise. Weakened by illness and starvation, Slade could barely hold her off while she forced the blade toward his throat. Her companions drew daggers. They rushed Slade from behind.

He spun around, hauling her with him. The beggar jabbed at Slade. His weapon plunged into the fake woman's back. She howled and staggered. Slade flung her at her companions. Her body struck the three men; they fell. Slade raced out of the alley, toward the Ryady Bazaar. The streets outside its cavernous buildings were empty of the crowds that shopped inside them by day. As Slade ran, he heard the assassins galloping over the rutted, frozen snow, gaining on him. The sleigh stood outside the bazaar. He was ten paces away from it when three men leaped out of the sleigh, drew pistols on him, and fired.

Slade dropped flat on the snow. Bullets zinged over him. Screams sounded behind him, then thuds. The shots had hit his pursuers. Slade scrambled and crawled in a desperate attempt to flee. The three men from the sleigh ran toward him. One of them was Plekhanov, the man who'd recruited Slade into the Third Section. He and the other police fired again. Someone tackled Slade. Looking backward, he saw that only three of the assassins lay dead; the slender man in black hung onto his legs. Slade kicked and fought. He and the assassin rolled in the snow while they battled over the knife in the assassin's hand. The police yelled. A whip cracked. Slade heard hooves crunch on snow, the grating of the chains that towed the sleigh, and the rumble of its runners. He broke free of the assassin and ran toward the sleigh as it skimmed down the street. He jumped aboard.

The police surrounded the assassin and fired shot after shot into him. They thought he was Slade. The driver flailed his whip at Slade and cried, “Get off!”

“You sold me out to the Third Section,” Slade said. Furious, he grabbed the whip, beat the driver with its butt, and pushed him off the sleigh. He seized the reins and whipped the horses. As the police discovered their mistake and came running after him, the horses sped forward in a gallop. The sleigh picked up speed; the police fell behind. Slade gasped in relief and triumph.

He was free to make his way back to England. There he would hunt down Wilhelm Stieber, who must have already gone there to further his plan for Russia to gain unrivaled power over the world. When Slade found Stieber, there would be hell to pay.

W
HILE DESCRIBING MY RECENT EXPERIENCES, I HAVE MORE than once remarked that reality parallels fiction. Indeed, the story of Jane Eyre seems eerily prophetic in hindsight. Now, after fleeing the Lake District, I found myself living her flight from Thornfield Hall. Both of us were leaving all that was familiar, comfortable, and dear, to venture into an uncertain future.

There were profound differences between her situation and mine, however. Jane had run from Mr. Rochester, in order to save him and herself from sin. I was running toward John Slade, and I must prove him and myself innocent of terrible crimes. Jane drew comfort from nature—a lovely summer day, sunshine, pastures, and streams. On that cloudy morning when I arrived in Whitechapel, I found slums, dirt, and unwashed humanity. She had lain down by the roadside to die; I followed the trail to Niall Kavanagh. Yet neither of us had second thoughts about the wisdom of our actions.

I had endowed Jane with the strength to survive. Now I drew strength from her. If she could prevail, then so could I. Furthermore, I had advantages that I'd not given Jane. Lord Palmerston had sent me off from Osborne House with a pocketbook full of money. I was able to buy a ticket for a first-class carriage on the train to London; and, when I arrived, to secure a room in a first-class hotel. I went shopping and splurged on three expensive frocks, with accessories to match. I also bought an imitation-gold wedding ring. Standing before the mirror in my room, I looked every inch the fashionable London matron. If Wilhelm Stieber and the police were looking for a bedraggled fugitive in prison uniform, they would never spot me.

The neighborhood where Dr. Forbes's friend had seen Niall Kavanagh had been affluent and respectable years ago. The white stucco building on Flower and Dean Street was part of a terrace left over from the Regency era—three row houses with ironwork balconies and curved bow windows. On the corner was a tavern where foreigners sat drinking. Across the street rose grimy, newer brick tenements. The terrace itself had fallen into disrepair. The stucco was gray with soot, the ironwork rusty. As I mounted the cracked stone steps, a man left the tavern and sauntered toward me.