Thornfield Hall Page 16

  I try to imagine Mr Rochester presenting the local gentry with a very dark baby he had brought with him on a ship from Jamaica. I hear him explaining that the dusky child is his firstborn son and therefore the true heir to the Rochester fortune. I can see the nudging, the head-shaking. There would be whispering behind hands that would soon break out into outright scorn and contempt. People in Yorkshire do not take seriously any births that occur outside the county boundary. If you are not born in Yorkshire you do not really exist.

  ‘He say I been going with slaves. He say that to me! He is the one who is down the slave cabins with my brother up to no good.’ Bertha’s voice grew shrill with indignation. Grace patted her hand and mopped her brow. She gave her a sniff of smelling salts to soothe her. Bertha’s voice when she took up her tale again was quiet and subdued.

  ‘One night I sleep very deep. Baby not wake me to feed. In morning cradle empty. Mr Edward tell me baby dead. Died in night. Has taken body away. I go mad. He give me potion to drink. I sleep. When I wake I find I am on big ship. In little room. In dark. Door locked. He bring food but I sick all time. These hurt.’ She tapped her breasts. ‘All big with milk. It leak out. My frock all wet. No little mouth to suck them. I cry and cry.’

  Tears dripped down her face as she remembered the voyage to England. I pictured her locked in a tiny cabin in the bowels of the ship, dependent on Mr Rochester for all her needs. We had all heard about the dreadful journey the people from Africa had been forced to endure before the navy put a stop to the trade. The suffering was beyond my imagining.

  ‘When the boat stop I in smoky cold town. Mr Edward put me in coach with nasty smelly woman and bring me here.’ She gestured to the window. ‘No bright flowers, no colourful birds, most time no leaves on trees.’

  My heart went out to the poor soul. I knew the agony of losing a child. At least I had been able to lay my baby girl to rest and had a gravestone to mark her existence – not just an empty cradle and a tuft of hair.

  ‘I very tired. Can I go to bed now?’ Bertha turned her childlike gaze to Grace, who led her away to prepare her for bed. Bertha sat quietly while Grace brushed her hair and dressed her in a clean nightgown. Through the open door I watched as Grace tucked her into bed like a giant child and dropped a kiss on her forehead. Within seconds Bertha was asleep. She was reaping the blessing of her limited intellect; she could not keep an idea in her head for very long. Grace returned to the sitting room, closed the door to Bertha’s bedroom and pulled the tapestry across it.

  Grace gave me a mocking grin. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked, smooth as a society hostess. ‘Or something stronger. You’ve gone a little pale. Your beloved master does not come out of that story very well, does he?’ She sniggered as she put the kettle on the fire.

  That put me on my mettle. ‘We don’t know her story is true. We’ve no proof, no evidence, no… What do the lawyers call it?’

  ‘Corroboration.’ Grace, as always, was well-informed on legal matters. ‘You should read the newspaper more,’ she told me. ‘Not just recipes.’

  I let her win that one.

  ‘I have ears to hear.’ Grace waggled them with her fingers. ‘I have now heard Bertha’s story and I have heard both the brother and your sainted master himself acknowledge the truth of it. She is the legal wedded wife of our Mr Rochester. I do not doubt any longer.’

  That really knocked the wind out of my sails. When I recovered the power of speech I begged Grace for more details. I wanted evidence. I did not want to believe that my master had been so cold-blooded and determined in his deception of us all. Grace took a swig from her glass of porter, wiped the foam off her top lip and began.

  ‘Two nights ago, the dim-wit that I now know as Richard Mason, arrived up here late at night. He claimed that he was Bertha’s brother and that he was here with Mr Rochester’s permission and agreement. Stupidly, I believed him; the door to the stairs had been unlocked for him.

  ‘It was John who unlocked it for him.’

  ‘Tell him not to do that again. I did try to keep him out but his knocking on the door woke Bertha. I could hardly turn her brother away. Anyway this cobweb of a colonial thought it was a good idea to visit his poor mad sister in the middle of the night. When he hasn’t so much as sent a message all the time I’ve been here.

  ‘Once he was here he had much to say about his own troubles and tribulations. You should have heard him complain. The sugar crop failing, the plantation mortgaged, the slaves in rebellion. Never a word for his sister and her sufferings. The way I see it he was hoping to get her to persuade Rochester to give him a loan, a little slice off her dowry. That shows you how out of touch he is. As if she has any influence on Rochester! Apparently their father gave thirty thousand pounds when Rochester married her. Our colonial boy would like some of it back, if you please.

  ‘It seems the bottom’s dropping out of the sugar trade. The navy has put a stop to bringing slaves from Africa. The poor plantation owners cannot buy new slaves!’ Grace’s face made clear her opinion on the slave trade. ‘It seems that the only way they get new ones is by breeding them. Understandably the slaves are not too keen on doing that. Life is not as comfortable as it was for the plantation owners. Mr Mason would like a little help with paying his bills. The smell of money has brought him here. Rochester is a very wealthy man now.’

  She glared at me. ‘Guess where Bertha’s baby went when one morning he disappeared, leaving his cradle empty. It seems he miraculously made his way to the slave quarters. Remarkable, isn’t it? Walking away from freedom at a month old!’

  ‘You mean the baby did not die. They just took him away and then lied to her.’

  ‘They took him to the slave quarters. The child was brought up as a slave. Ten years ago.’

  I sat frozen with horror.

  Grace continued. ‘There was a rebellion this Christmas. It was serious; I read the reports in the newspapers here. Anyway in the upheaval the boy escaped. He must have made for the hills with the other runaway slaves. I hope he’s safe there. I hope he lives long enough and grows strong enough to take his revenge on Mr Richard Mason and Mr Edward Rochester.’

  I was silent. I found it hard to believe that my master could be a part of such wickedness. The cruelty of the crime was for me beyond words. Grace found the words; she enunciated them savagely.

  ‘This Richard Mason, this apology for a human being, was so obsessed by his own misfortunes that he let slip that the baby Bertha thought was dead, was in fact alive. Just let it slip. Didn’t confess to the crime or break the news to her properly. Just popped it into his list of complaints. He was so mightily miffed that he had borne the cost of feeding the boy for ten years for no return. Just as he was old enough to be of some real use as a worker the perishing lad took it into his head to run away. And so poor Mr Mason lost all his profit. I think we are supposed to weep for him.’

  ‘Bertha heard this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She went for her embroidery scissors. She stabbed him in the shoulder. I think she was aiming for his heart. They didn’t go deep enough to satisfy her; they’re only small scissors. So she gnawed at the wound with her teeth. When I got to her she was telling him she would suck the blood out of him. There was terrible screaming and scuffling and rolling about on the floor. Mason shouted for help. Then he called for Mr Rochester. He probably thought I would stand by and let Bertha finish him off. I was certainly tempted to. The shouting must have woken Mr Rochester. He arrived very quickly and helped me pin down Bertha. He did a very neat trick with a cord and bound her hands. I sat her on the bed and stayed with her while Mr Rochester dragged the wounded wastrel next door. Mr Rochester spent some time trying to bandage up his friend and stop the bleeding. They were talking about what had happened.’

  ‘So you went to the door and put your ear to the keyhole.’

  ‘No I did not. There was no need. They left the door open. Mason was on that
big four-poster bed, whimpering and fussing and crying like a baby. He was only too happy to give his side of the story. It all matches with what Bertha has told us about being bundled onto a ship. She must have spent more than a month mourning her dead baby with nothing but the sea for company. If she was not mad when she started the voyage she would be at the end of it.’

  ‘You’ve still not proved Mr Rochester is married to her.’ I did not want to believe what I had heard and so grasped at straws. ‘It might be a fantasy of Bertha’s. She might have had an inconvenient baby and Mr Rochester obliged the brother by smuggling her away to England to avoid scandal.’

  ‘True. But I heard Mason refer to Bertha as “your wife” and Rochester did not deny it.’

  I made one last feeble attempt to avoid the awful truth. ‘The family never said he was married.’ Even as I spoke, it sounded hollow.

  ‘You can see why. They must have known she was slow in her mind. Perhaps Rochester didn’t. In the right circumstances Bertha manages, but when things go wrong…’ Grace shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘And things have gone very wrong for her, the poor soul.’

  ‘And I left her to the unscrupulous Mrs Morgan and the negligent Carter.’ I hung my head in shame. ‘A baby dying is very hard to bear. I know that. To be plucked away from your family and taken to a strange place at the same time doesn’t bear thinking about.’ I got up and went to the window to feel the fresh air. I looked out over the Rochester lands and thought about my master. ‘My master’ – how long had I taken those two words for granted? Not anymore. What was it the lawyers had said when Mr Edward came into the inheritance? Business interests in Liverpool. Factories near Manchester. Then there was the connection with Jamaica. Why send your younger son there for a bride? There were plenty of wealthy heiresses in Yorkshire. The West Indies, slaves, sugar, cotton. It all added up. The Rochester wealth did not all come from good honest farmland.

  To tell a woman her baby had died when it lived, to drag her across the ocean and then shut her away from the world: these were the acts of a monster. My— I mean Mr Edward had always been a fair and generous employer to me. He must have had some reason to carry out such cruel deeds. I rallied to his defence.

  ‘Don’t forget the baby, living evidence that Bertha had been unfaithful to him. Bertha says she wasn’t. She would say that, wouldn’t she? We only have her word for it.’

  ‘To be fair, Mr Rochester himself is dark and swarthy. Some couples wait twenty years before a baby arrives. It doesn’t mean the wife found a handy young footman to do the business.’

  I fell silent. ‘No one will ever know the truth of that for sure.’

  ‘Some things we do know.’ Grace spoke earnestly to me. ‘We suspected she might be his wife. Now we know for sure. I heard Mason and Rochester both speak of her as Rochester’s wife.’

  I accepted defeat at her hands. No one else in the world could have told me such a thing and be believed.

  Grace was still putting forward her case. ‘They had no reason to lie. I am a servant. To the gentry that makes me blind and deaf; they speak freely in my presence. It was only when he came back with the governess that Mr Rochester realized he’d been indiscreet. He forbade both Miss Eyre and Mason from speaking to each other. Then he locked the door to Bertha’s bedroom so I heard no more.’

  ‘That tallies with Sam’s version. He saw Miss Eyre act as lookout when they put Mason in the coach. Miss Eyre is away at the moment. She’s been summoned to a sick relative. She never said a word to me but went straight to the master. Master! That word again. I must think about this. It’s not fair to say I only read recipes, Grace. I do read the newspaper. I do know what’s going on in the world and I do try to sort out right from wrong.’

  I was glad that Mr Rochester was absent from the house. There were many things I wanted to think about calmly and clearly. For a start I had to stop referring to him as ‘my master’. He was my employer. I vowed to call him ‘Mr Rochester’ in future though I found it very hard to break the habit of so many years.

  I wrote back to Miss Eyre, whose relative was taking a long time dying, and assured her we would look after Adele. I also told her that Mr Rochester had gone to London to buy a coach for his intended bride. It seemed kind to give her a warning so that she could prepare her face for when the official announcement was made.

  Then there was Miss Ingram to consider. Mr Rochester’s courtship of her was of a strange nature. He lavished attention on her in public and then proceeded to ignore her when there was no audience; he made no effort to visit her at Ingram Park, no fond notes travelled backwards and forwards. It was not a promising start to a lifelong union.

  My own conscience troubled me. Could I stand calmly by and watch Mr Rochester commit bigamy? A wicked piece of me wanted to see the Honourable Blanche’s face when she discovered that there already was a Mrs Rochester. Baroness Ingram’s servants would have their hands full on that day if it ever came. They would need more than smelling salts. The hysterics would be spectacular; the ornaments and the hairbrushes would fly. I reminded myself I was bound by a bible oath to keep Bertha a secret. Now I understood why that oath had been so important to my employer.

  Grace and I mulled the problem over together and could make no progress. In the end we decided to share our news with the other servants who had taken the oath. There could be no harm in that. ‘Just the fact of the marriage,’ Grace warned me. ‘I don’t think we should tell them about the baby. It’s too sad and too complicated.’

  ‘Agreed. We don’t know the rights and wrongs of that. She wouldn’t be the first woman to look elsewhere after a few years of a sterile marriage. It is more sensible though to pick someone with a passing resemblance to your husband.’

  Grace pulled a knowing face at me. ‘How long were you married, Alice, before your daughter came along?’

  I ignored her. ‘Let’s stick to our business.’

  Grace ticked the points off on her fingers as she went through them. ‘All we know for sure is that they were legally married. Just because it happened in Jamaica doesn’t make it any less binding. We have a witness, Mr Mason. Rochester was there when he called her his wife. He did not deny it. So it’s not just Bertha’s word.’

  ‘It is enough. I will tell the others.’

  That evening I shooed the stable lads back to their dormitory after supper with a flagon of weak ale and a long string of instructions and warnings from Old John. The rest of us gathered round the big table with our favourite comforts. Tea for me, ale for Old John and Sam. John and Leah had each other’s hand to hold and the knowledge of a tiny growing child to keep them happy. Mary, the cook, needed nothing more than the opportunity to rest her hands and her feet. Bertha was still too troublesome in the evening to be left so Grace could not join us. I had armed myself in preparation for a shocking piece of news; I had my bible in my pocket and my stays laced tightly.

  John, the young husband to be, was horrified by the news that Mr Rochester was married to Bertha. The first banns for his own wedding to Leah had been called and he was full of idealism about enduring love and the sacred nature of marriage. ‘Isn’t there something about marriage being until death us do part? That’s what it says and that’s what it means.’ He gazed soppily at Leah who beamed back at him. ‘If master tries to marry someone else, we should stop him before it’s too late. It’s… what’s it called?’

  ‘Bigamy. You can get sent to prison for it. But not for long. Magistrates think having more than one wife is punishment enough. Chap in Harrogate just got caught. Mind you he did have three wives and was busy acquiring his fourth.’ Sam grinned at the idea of four wives. ‘Makes me glad I was a sailor. One in every port.’

  ‘That reminds me. Where is Sophie this evening?’ Old John gave Sam a knowing leer.

  I wasn’t having that sort of talk so I quickly spoke up. ‘She is with Adele. In theory she knows nothing about our mysterious lady. She was not here when we took the oath. Unless someone
has been blabbing.’ I gave Sam a significant look. I was pretty sure Sam and Sophie shared more than the initial letter of their first names. I turned to Old John. ‘What do you think about this?’

  ‘You know I’m a bit of a free thinker. Not a churchgoer at all. Well, for what it’s worth, here are my thoughts. A man in master’s position needs a wife. No disrespect to Miss Bertha but she’s not a fitting wife for a gentleman of standing. The way I see it he should marry Miss Blanche, if that’s what he wants. There’s no way he could get his hands on her without a wedding. She’s a fine horsewoman but she has a mighty wilful way with her. He’ll need a tight rein on her. That’s his lookout. I don’t see why a few words from a clergyman years ago in Jamaica should stop him. It’s a lot of mumbo jumbo.’

  ‘And Mary. What about you?’

  ‘It may be mumbo jumbo but it’s how the world works. You’re married. You stay together. Through thick and thin.’ She gave Old John a savage look. ‘You don’t think I’d be here now if I’d not taken that vow. I’d be over the hills and far away while you were still mixing bran mash for your beloved horses. I haven’t lived with the smell of horse shit for years from choice. I did it cause I have to. It’s my duty.’

  Old John’s jaw sagged and his eyes opened wide. Mary was usually the silent partner, loyally nodding her agreement to her husband’s views. She patted his lean arm and smiled at him. ‘It’s good to give you a shock every now and then.’

  ‘And, Leah, what do you think?’

  ‘To be honest I think that Miss Blanche is a nasty piece of work. I wouldn’t choose to have her as mistress here. I saw the bruises on Martha’s arms. I don’t know what the master sees in her but I do know that Miss Bertha has been very unhappy. And I can’t help noticing that now she really only goes wild when Mr Rochester is here. Seems to me, married or not, they’d be better off living hundreds of miles apart.’

  I saw the glimmering of a solution on the horizon. The youngest and most inexperienced of us had provided an answer. I patted the bible in my pocket and tried to remember where I would find the phrase ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings’.