Thornfield Hall (34 page)

Once outside the house Mr Rochester went straight to release Pilot from his kennel. The animal greeted his master and attached himself firmly to his heels. Mr Rochester sent the handsome footman to Millcote for the fire engines. The footman would have to run as there was not a horse in the stable for him to ride. Mr Rochester then asked the rest of us if we'd be willing to help carry out of the house some items of
furniture. The ground floor was so far untouched. It was in the upper storeys that the flames roared and flickered like a coronet of fire.

I took the opportunity to race into my housekeeper's room and scoop up all the spare cash I could find in the bureau drawer. I would have liked to rescue the bureau where I had worked so many hours but it was too heavy for me to carry. The money went into the pocket of my dressing gown where it joined my bible. Then I quickly retreated to the safety of the lawn.

When Mr Rochester decided it was too dangerous to risk bringing out more furniture he collected all the servants together on the lawn and addressed us. He assured us that we would be looked after and compensated for the loss of our belongings. We all murmured our gratitude. My eye was caught by the presence on the lawn of a chair that someone had had the good sense to rescue. I sank into it with relief and surveyed the scene in front of me.

Thornfield Hall was ablaze. The flames leapt upwards into the sky. The conflagration had roused the village people in Hay. They were coming down the drive and straggling across the lawns to offer their help. I could not imagine what they could possibly do against the fiery diadem that crowned Thornfield Hall. Among the orange flashes and sparks that lit the night sky I saw something move on the roof, a solid mass among the flickering and shifting tongues of fire. The smoke billowed round, obscuring my view. A gust of wind gave me a brief glimpse of a pale shape flitting among the chimneys. As it approached the battlements I saw it was a figure in white with a great mane of dark hair. A concerted gasp from those around me told me I was not dreaming. The others had seen the apparition too.

Frantically I went through my mental list of servants. Their names eluded me, so I pictured their faces and then looked
around me to match my image against a real person. I was not alone in doing this. The servants themselves were clutching at each other to check they were really there. There was a brief panic about the absence of the handsome footman until they remembered he had gone to Millcote to fetch the fire engines.

Mr Rochester groaned aloud as he looked up to the roof. He shook his fists at the sky and gave a wail that sent Pilot cowering to the ground. ‘She has come back to haunt me! She has come back to haunt me.' He pointed dramatically at the skyline. ‘Will I never be free of my cursed wife?' He held up his hands to heaven in supplication and then on an impulse dashed inside the burning building. Afterwards people claimed that he went to rescue her. I fear I have a different interpretation. He thought her spirit had returned to haunt him.

The flames writhed and flickered on the roof and the figure, desperate to escape the heat and the scorching fire, climbed the battlements in a fruitless attempt to cheat death. With arms outstretched and her white robe billowing about her she launched herself from the parapet. She fell like Lucifer, crashing down upon the paving stones. All around me the servants and the villagers shivered with horror. The mad wife, the mad wife, they muttered. Few of them had seen her but her story was well known in the neighbourhood. After the interrupted wedding it had passed, with embellishments, through the servants' halls, the drawing rooms and the parsonages. The entire population of Hay would know some version of the scandalous events.

I sat helpless in my chair and watched the tragedy in front of me. I had waved Bertha off scarcely eight hours ago. She had been with Grace. Grace would not have let her return alone. Was it indeed a ghost? An apparition, as Mr Rochester thought. Had we all dreamt it? Such thoughts buzzed about in my head,
distracting me from the simple fact that whatever it was, it had summoned Mr Rochester from safety into danger; he had gone back into the burning building. My first duty was to get him out.

I roused myself and approached the inferno. I called to Mr Rochester to return. It was too late to save her. A footman – the not handsome one – gallantly plunged into the building. He had to drag Mr Rochester from under a beam that had fallen on him as he tried to climb up the great staircase. The footman returned unscathed but Mr Rochester looked terribly injured.

By now help was arriving from more distant neighbours. I went to the crumpled figure in white that lay sprawled on the ground. Her nightgown had flown upwards as she jumped. I pulled it down to cover her for decency's sake, for she was naked underneath; she must have been sleeping in her bed when the fire started.

Her body lay face down on the stones and the hair covered her face as it had done when I first saw Bertha chained to the bed. I drew back the hair to reveal the face, blackened by smoke and with a great wound on the forehead. There was little blood; she had died instantly. My heart stopped with a great spasm and then started to beat again. It was not Bertha who lay dead on the ground. It was Martha.

‘So the mad bitch is dead.' The voice came from behind me; it was Carter, the surgeon who spoke. He leaned over and felt at the neck of the body. He straightened up. ‘I don't know why I bothered. No one could survive a fall like that. I'll tell Rochester he is a free man at last.' He strode off, satisfied that his duty was done. I stayed silent, my throat paralysed by shock.

I did not move from the body, keeping a sort of vigil by her. The other servants came to gawk from a safe distance at the famous madwoman from the attic. They knew she existed but had had very little contact with her. They all remarked on the
swarthiness of her skin. They could not see that their own faces were blackened by the smoke. This simple explanation for the dark complexion of the corpse did not occur to them.

First my mind and then my body began to work again. I found myself sifting through various shreds of information, trying to weave them into a satisfactory fabric. Martha had no family to make enquiries after her. Old John had accepted that she would leave Thornfield Hall to live with me and Grace. Her silence would not concern him. Bertha was Bertha Mason now. As far as she was concerned Bertha Rochester was already dead. What would happen if I let everyone continue to believe the body was Bertha's? It would make no difference to Bertha. Mr Rochester would be free of a burden that had blighted his life. If – or when – he found his beloved Jane he would be able to take her to church and marry her in good conscience and in the eyes of the Lord.

Those were the advantages in letting the corpse be identified as Bertha's. The next important question was, ‘Could I get away with it?' The new servants knew Martha a little but did not know Bertha. Although her existence was no longer a secret she had clung to her familiar territory of the third storey and the back stairs. Most of her time had been spent in private feeding baby James.

As these thoughts ran round my head I watched the people from the village of Hay as they gawped at the body and whispered behind their hands about the lunatic wife of Mr Rochester. They stood well back for fear the contagion of madness might leap from the dead woman in search of a new body to inhabit. Everyone believed the madwoman to be dead. It would be uphill work to convince the assembled locals of their error. I decided to let Bertha stay dead.

At last the fire engines from Millcote arrived. As they set about their work Carter returned to me, wiping a bloody knife
on his handkerchief. ‘Bad business. Just had to amputate Rochester's hand. He is dreadfully damaged. Poor chap. One eye's definitely gone. Taking him to my house. Look after him there.' I said nothing. I was so glad I had found the chair. This latest news would have felled me to the ground.

Mr Carter's gaze wandered round the scene of devastation and he shook his head in disbelief at the horror of it all. His attention fell upon the dead woman at his feet. He poked gently at her with the toe of his boot, stirring the fabric of her nightgown. ‘Not the first time is it that she's played with fire? Nearly burnt Rochester in his bed one night. Mad bitch. Good riddance.' He put his knife in his pocket and surveyed the crumbling wreck that had once been Thornfield Hall.

Carter turned towards the still blazing building. ‘One good thing. Rochester got rid of all his horses. Mesrour is safe up at Ferndean. Stables here are empty. Fire is a terrible thing for horses.' The thought of horses trapped in blazing stables unmanned him for a moment. His normally dogmatic manner deserted him as he asked pathetically, ‘Don't suppose you managed to rescue any brandy? I could do with a nice big tumbler full with a splash of hot water.' I shook my head. He knew the question was hopeless even as he asked it. Away he loped, to see to his surviving patient.

Cook and the maids came to tell me they had found shelter for the night. The villagers were making room for them and for the stable lads in their cottages. The footmen had gone with Mr Carter to help look after Mr Rochester. I promised I would be in touch with them all to settle any outstanding business and gave them some coins from the cash in my pocket.

Mr Wood came to inspect the corpse. I thought he might have a care for the living but his mind was on theological matters. As I sat by the still-warm body he pontificated about
the manner of her death. ‘She jumped from the roof I am told. I fear the unfortunate wretch may have committed the sin of suicide. They say she was mad. So often madness is the punishment for sin. I do not think in all conscience she can be buried in holy ground.'

‘Perhaps she jumped to escape the heat of the flames?'

‘Such little faith. The fire might have abated.' He went on to lament that the deceased Mrs Rochester had not sought the consolation of religion in his church while she was alive. He thought that to be a grave mistake for one so disturbed in her mind. Little did he know that Bertha, shrouded in widow's weeds, had sat in the gallery many a Sunday; she was one of his best attenders.

He chuntered on about the disgrace. The Rochesters had been buried at his church since Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor in the civil wars. There was much to object to in what he said but I let it pass. I hoped he might offer me a bed for the night. It would be a comfort to sleep in my old home, even though the present incumbent was not to my taste. It was not to be. He wafted away without a thought to my situation. I was not fully a servant so the villagers did not invite me; I was not gentry so the parson ignored me. I began to think I should have to spend the night beside the burning ruin of my former home.

A horse and cart pulled up a safe distance from the flames. The driver dismounted and came over to me and my silent companion. He doffed his hat. ‘Mrs Fairfax, I am glad I find you safe.' It was Mr Merryman. I was very pleased to see him.

‘I'm glad you thought to bring your cart,' I said and offered my hand, for all the world as if we were meeting in a parlour of an afternoon, not sitting outside a smouldering house in the small hours of the night.

‘I did say you would be very welcome at the Rochester Arms. Very unfortunate circumstances though.'

‘Could you supply me with a room in your inn? And perhaps an outhouse where I can store the body of this poor soul. There is no one else to look after her.' Mr Merryman was happy to oblige.

Men were still lingering round the smouldering mass, watching the drama as the ceilings caved in and the rafters fell. They all wanted to say they had been there the night Thornfield Hall burnt down. They came to help carry the corpse to Mr Merryman's cart with murmurs of mingled pity and horror.

‘Poor mad soul. At peace now. I saw her. She were on the roof. Squire went in to rescue her. I saw him up there myself. He got all the servants out. He tried to stop her jumping. Fought with her on the roof.' They exchanged these and similar snippets of fact and fiction as they gently carried the body and exclaimed at how dark the lady's skin was and how tall she was for a madwoman.

I wanted to ask why madness stunted your growth but I restrained myself. I did not want to interrupt the process that was taking place around me. They were all conspiring to create a story, to build a myth. According to this version of events, Thornfield Hall had been set on fire by Mr Rochester's mad wife whom he kept confined in the attic. Like a noble master he had made sure all the servants were evacuated and then had gone on the roof to rescue his lunatic wife. In spite of his efforts she managed to jump from there to her death. I noted how well Mr Rochester came out of this version. From being his wife's gaoler and a failed bigamist he had become the hero of the hour. All I had to do was to stay quiet and let the process of mythmaking run its course.

The errors of fact were many and various. The fire had been started in the library by Mr Rochester himself. He had been
drinking brandy and had a candle to read by; it was not the first time he had been careless with candles. His wife was no longer mad, though her abilities were somewhat limited. To the best of my knowledge she was a woman with a trust fund on her way to live somewhere south, very far south of Grimsby.

Martha had left Thornfield Hall in the same coach as her baby son. For some reason or other she had abandoned the journey. I prayed to God that she had also abandoned her son. I knew Martha's first thought in a burning building would be to save herself and not her son. I pictured the child left to the mercy of the flames, his little limbs unable to move him from danger, his tiny mouth sucking in the deadly smoke. I shuddered so at this dreadful vision that I rattled the whole cart and startled the horse.

‘Steady now, steady,' Merryman urged the horse and put a hand on my arm.

I gathered my wits. Reason asserted itself. Would Bertha let Martha take the baby from her arms? Even though Martha was the child's mother, it would not happen. Bertha would hang on to the child. She would not let a second child be taken from her in the night. She would resist and Bertha was a woman who knew how to fight; she had gouged and bitten her own brother.