Thornfield Hall Read online

  ‘You will need that.’ Outside the corridor was dark but at the library end there was an ominous scarlet glow. ‘You take the women’s side. I will rouse the men.’

  I had to run to keep up with him as he raced down the corridor. All the time I was racking my brain trying to remember how many live-in servants we had. There had been so many comings and goings that I had quite lost track of them. I found the new cook first. A phlegmatic woman, she insisted on getting properly dressed while I went to wake the two kitchen maids and the housemaid who had replaced Leah. Cook assured me that four was the full complement of female staff. They had all managed to scrabble into their clothes. How I envied them as I flapped about in my dressing gown. Cook even had her stays on.

  I led my little flock out into the main corridor where we rendezvoused with the menservants. The two new footmen were there. They too had managed to dress, but then men’s clothes are so much more convenient than women’s with their endless hooks and loops and buttons. Mr Rochester appeared, herding the boys who worked in the stables, the garden and the kitchen. They assured me they were all there. As they preferred to travel in a pack I believed them.

  We could hear the fire now. The flames roared and crackled and we could smell the smoke. Mr Rochester held his candle aloft as he led us down the main staircase. Calm, confident and positive, he was in full command of the situation. It will be worth a fire if it returns him to his senses, was the foolish thought that ran through my head. Like a Moses, he led us through danger into safety. I thought all peril was over. I did not understand the full power of fire, that ferocious and greedy element that devours everything in its path.

  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 ha
d 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.

  Martha must have returned secretly to Thornfield Hall. There she must have hidden herself on the third floor. The door at the foot of the stairs had been left unlocked after Grace, Bertha, Martha and the baby had left. She could have sneaked in, up the back stairs, along the gallery and up to the third floor. There she had hidden herself. Late that night I had made a final tour of the rooms. I had stopped short of going into Martha’s bedroom. I had descended the stairs and locked the door behind me.

  I must have locked Martha in.

  The
thought screamed in my ears and vibrated in my brain. I had not checked the room Martha used. I had never let her have a key to the staircase door. When she had discovered the fire, she must have run down the stairs. Her way out would be blocked by the locked door. As the flames and smoke and heat battered at the door she must have climbed up into the attic, opened the trap door and climbed out onto the roof. There she would have found temporary relief, until the fire found its way inexorably upwards. In the end the heat drove her to take that final fatal leap.

  Disturbed though I was I said nothing to my rescuer; silence has often been my friend. I let Mr Merryman talk as he drove me and the body to his inn. As he guided his horse through the darkness I listened as he worked on his account of the fire at Thornfield Hall. He seemed to be unaware that I had been present for the whole time and that he had arrived after all the main events had taken place.

  Mr Merryman was not going to let a few inconvenient facts interfere with a good story. It became clear that he had assigned himself a leading role in the drama. By the time I saw the sign outside the Rochester Arms he had been first to arrive at the fire, well before the fire engines. Soon he would be claiming that he had seen Mr Rochester on the roof struggling to save his mad wife from the flames.

  It was all very satisfactory from my point of view.

  The Rochester Arms welcomed me with a bed and a bowl of water. The mirror provided me with a view of my smoke-blackened face and hair. Washing turned the water black and yet my face and hands were still several shades darker than normal. I left word with the landlord that I was keen to acquire some respectable clothes first thing in the morning. If the local ladies had any spare items for loan or sale I would be happy to inspect them. I took out my bible, kissed my daughter’s name, lay my head on the pillow and fell into a disturbed sleep.

  After a bath in the morning I made a selection from the clothes that were on offer and paid for them with some of the cash I had rescued from my housekeeper’s room. I was particularly pleased to find some stays that almost fitted me. I really cannot tackle a day’s work unless I am properly laced up. My hair still smelt of smoke and was not its usual snowy white, but my mind was clear and I had a good breakfast. People often play a guessing game when they wonder what they would save from a burning building. Now I know. A bible – and cash. Do not ask me to choose between the two.