John Eyre Read online

  Edward Rochester is stronger and more powerful than I am, both in law and in fact. This is his homeland, not mine. His people, no matter that he chooses to disavow them. While I have no allies save Mr. Poole. If I’m to escape this place, it must come down to my own ingenuity.

  27 April, midday. — I write this entry with an unsteady hand and a heart that has twice, this long night, come close to beating its last. In making my plans to escape my husband, I failed to appreciate the true nature of the man I was dealing with. Man, I say. But he is no man. He is something else entirely. I pray to God that I—

  But I must calm myself and start at the beginning or risk my account sounding like the deranged ravings of a lunatic. No one will ever believe what I have seen—what I have done—if I cannot relate it clearly. Would that there was a drop of laudanum remaining to steady my nerves!

  My ordeal began yesterday at sunset. I knew my husband would eventually discover that I’d taken the key to his vault, but I hadn’t reckoned for how severe his reaction would be. Indeed, it was out of all proportion—or so I believed at the time.

  At sunset, when he rose from his slumber, he came to my room. I stood to meet him, a branch of candles flickering on the desk at my back. I was as wary of his presence as ever, but no longer strictly afraid. Hope of escape had made me bold. That was my first mistake. Had I been more on my guard, I’d have noticed right away that something was different about him. He looked sated. As if he’d just partaken of a nourishing meal—something I hadn’t enjoyed for many days. It was a mistake to provoke him.

  “You have something that belongs to me,” he said.

  “Such as?” The key to his vault was still in the pocket of my skirt, along with my Nock percussion pistol. I longed to reach for it, if only to give myself additional courage.

  “You have my key,” he said, approaching me slowly. “Give it to me now.”

  “What key? Not the one to the front door, else I’d be gone by now.” I sidestepped away from him. “By-the-by, where are the house keys? I’ve had no luck in finding them.”

  “I warned you—”

  “They must be secreted away somewhere. I know they’re not on your person.”

  “Bertha—”

  “You’ll need them to unlock the front door and bolt it again when we leave this place. It’s but three more days until the date of our departure. Have you forgotten?”

  He circled around me like a wolf stalking its prey. All the while I edged closer to the door. “You came to me when I slept,” he said. “Do you deny it?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because, my dear, it means your very life.”

  A chill went down my spine. I took another step away from him. “From the moment I married you, was my life ever anything but forfeit?”

  His eyes gleamed with an unnatural light. “No, indeed. But I might have kept you awhile longer as my pet.” He came closer. “You saw me at rest. What else did you see?”

  Try as I might to present him with an innocent countenance, the expression on my face must have told him all.

  “Did you see my brides?” he asked. “The ones who came before you?”

  Women of a trivial nature, he’d called them. Women possessing neither souls nor hearts. I’d thought he’d meant his prior lovers. Ladies he’d met who hadn’t been worthy of marriage. Good lord, had those desiccated bones with their scraps of feminine clothing truly been his former wives?

  I stared at him in slow-dawning horror. By this point, I was disposed to think him a veritable Bluebeard. “I saw bones.” My voice shook, betraying me for the coward I was. “I saw Agnes.”

  The name didn’t appear to register with him.

  “Agnes,” I repeated with growing anger. “Did you not even mark her name? She was my maid. An honest and hardworking servant girl who you killed in cold blood.”

  “I assure you, there was nothing cold in the way I disposed of your maid. She felt the full warmth of my embrace before she exited this life. And quite happy she was to experience it.”

  My jaw went slack. Such shock I felt. Such disgust. And with it, an incandescent rage that he should do such a thing—that he should get away with it. When next I spoke, my voice no longer shook with fear. It trembled with fury. “You contemptible beast. What sort of man are you?”

  He paid no heed to my words, only stalked toward me with a single-minded intent. “Enough of these games. Where is my key?”

  Something in his face told me that he was no longer capable of distraction. In a moment, he would make a physical search of my person, finding both the key and my pistol. That, I couldn’t abide. Clutching my skirts, I feinted toward my bed, only to dart around him and out the door of my room.

  He reached for my throat as I ran past, and he might have subdued me if not for the presence of my silver timepiece locket. After touching the chain with his palm, he drew back with a muffled oath, allowing me vital seconds to get away.

  I plunged down the stairs with my heart in my throat. His heavy footfalls sounded behind me. This, I knew, was the end of the road. I couldn’t outrun him. He would soon eat up the seconds I had gained. And then he would take the key. He would disarm me, and he would kill me.

  There seemed only one way to ensure my survival. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my pistol at the same instant I reached the landing. I spun around, my back against the wall. He was there on the stairs, midway down and still in motion. Raising the pistol in my hand, I aimed for his heart and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet fired straight and true. Edward’s face contorted—more with surprise, I think, than with pain. And then, he crumpled and fell down the stairs. He landed beside me, his neck bent at an odd angle. He didn’t move again, nor did he appear to draw breath.

  A surge of unimaginable relief tore through me. All those years of target practice at Thornfield. Those many seasons hunting with Papa, learning to wield my rifle. If only I’d known I was preparing for such a day! And now, here I was. And here Edward was—in a heap at my feet. He was dead. I had killed him.

  One hand at my midriff, I descended the rest of the way to the hall, trying to catch my breath. I was standing there—slowly going into shock, I expect—when my attention was arrested by a bone-chilling sound.

  It was him. My husband. He rose to his feet before my eyes. Unharmed. Undead.

  “You,” he said. His gaze fixed on me with murderous intent.

  And I ran for my life. There was no time to reason any of it out. Like any hunted animal, I could focus only on escape.

  In a fortress filled with locked doors, there was but one place that offered a chance of safety. My husband’s vault was nearby. I fumbled for the key as I approached it at a dead run, my palm so damp with perspiration I feared I would drop it. Somehow, I managed to insert it in the lock. Opening the vault, I slipped inside and slammed the door behind me. I was just sliding the interior bolt when my husband’s fists connected with the door.

  He hit it so hard that it rattled in its frame. “Bertha!” he roared. “You can’t hide!”

  I cowered in the darkness at the opposite end of the vault. For a man who had just taken a bullet, Edward seemed to have enormous strength. He’d break down the door, I knew it.

  Trying desperately to calm my racing pulse, I inhaled great gulps of air. My knees were weak. I leaned on the wall for support, very much in danger of collapsing.

  But it wouldn’t do. There was no time for cowering weakness. As my husband shouted my name and pounded on the door, I rallied my wits and what was left of my courage.

  The tinderbox and two oil lamps were easy enough to locate by feel in the darkness. I lit them both. The light immediately helped to dispel some of my panic. When next my husband shook the door, I called out, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  “Open it, Bertha,” he said. “Or I’ll tear it fr
om the hinges.”

  Indeed, I believed he could. It was beginning to sink in that my husband was an unnatural thing. Worse than a fortune-hunting parasite. Worse, even, than a wife-murdering Bluebeard. He was truly some variety of monster. “I wouldn’t do that,” I said again. “Not if you value your collection.”

  That was enough to give him pause. “By all that’s sacred, if you touch a single artifact—”

  At that, I hoisted a small statue of Osiris from one of the shelves and pitched it against the wall. It shattered with a sound loud enough to make me flinch. I can only imagine how it must have sounded to him.

  “Damn you!” he cried in something very like anguish. This was followed by a stream of invective—oaths and slurs against women that I’m loath to put to paper. Suffice to say, he was in a towering rage. He gripped the door and pulled it so hard the hinges creaked in protest.

  In response, I gave an old Etruscan urn the same treatment as the statue of Osiris. At the sound of its demise, Edward ceased his attack.

  “Can you hear me?” I asked. “Every time you attempt to break down that door, I’m going to smash another and another.”

  “I’ll tear you to pieces,” he said. This was followed by more harsh words in a language I couldn’t understand, and then: “You’ll scream to your god for mercy.”

  “Perhaps. But can you do it before I set the entire room ablaze? I have two oil lamps in here, and these scrolls will make marvelous kindling.”

  That quieted him for another long moment. “Think of your family,” he said at last.

  “I have no family. Isn’t that why you chose me? Because I had no one to protect me? No one to care if I died in mysterious circumstances?”

  “Think of your homeland. If you damage another item, I’ll come down on England like a plague. Your countrymen won’t—”

  “What care I for England? It’s my own well-being I’m concerned with.” I heard him pacing outside the door. My eyes darted over the shelves. There weren’t enough artifacts left to continue smashing them all through the night. And as boldly as I spoke, I really didn’t relish the thought of setting myself on fire along with his books and papyri. What I needed—all I needed—was to hold him at bay until dawn.

  He muttered something in Bulgarian, or possibly Romani. I could no longer guess. “I would have given you an easy death,” he said. “A lover’s kiss. But you’ve lost the privilege of it.”

  My stomach tightened with a fear I dared not show. “What’s this?” I mused in a loud voice. “A ceremonial wine goblet?” Picking up another artifact—a cup carved with strange symbols—I held it at the ready. “From a funeral rite, I think. Pity it must meet its end.”

  “No!” he cried. “Don’t harm it!”

  “Then stop threatening me. Stop beating at the door. I will not be terrorized.” My words were greeted with dead silence. I was silent, too, for a time—very much concerned with what he might be planning next. And then I asked, “Why were you not injured when I shot you?”

  “Your aim was poor.”

  “My aim was excellent. I know I struck your heart. Why were you not killed outright?”

  “I cannot be killed,” he said.

  I choked on a sound of disbelief. “Nonsense.”

  “Believe what you will. As long as you open the door.”

  “Not at present.” He didn’t need to know that I intended to stay in the vault all night. “Not until your anger has cooled.”

  “I’m not angry. Not anymore.” At that, his tone gentled, becoming almost seductive. “Remember how it was between us in Egypt? In Athens? The two of us in harmony, with none of this arguing. Remember the pleasure I gave you? It can be so again. Only open the door.”

  I wondered if this was how Eve had felt when tempted by the serpent. Such was my husband’s voice—it wrapped around me, a low, persuasive baritone intent on weakening my resolve. Reiterating over and over again his single request.

  Open the door.

  “Enough,” I said. “You can’t trick me into acquiescing. I’ve shot you, and you’ve threatened me with a painful death. As far as I’m concerned, our marriage is over.”

  It didn’t dissuade him. He kept on, pacing and muttering at the door for hours.

  The best I could do was to block him out of my thoughts and to focus, instead, on what I was going to do next. In a cold sweat, I sank down into a sitting position on the Turkish carpet. Opening my locket to check the time, I saw that it was still early. I had many hours to go until sunrise. Many hours in which to formulate a plan.

  Edward had said he couldn’t be killed. A fantastical claim! Yet I couldn’t fully discount it. How, then, was I to defeat this man? This creature?

  I took a mental account of what I had learned thus far of his weaknesses:

  Sunlight

  Silver

  Laudanum

  Whether these weaknesses were real or imagined, I didn’t know. My husband claimed them as such. Since the first day I met him in Cairo, he’d assiduously avoided the sun. As for silver, he can’t bear to touch it. On our wedding night, he said it was toxic to him. That it caused a painful rash whenever it came into contact with his skin. Then, I’d suspected it of being a mere fancy. But now I wasn’t so sure.

  Days ago, when his lips had brushed the silver chain of my locket, he’d drawn back as if scalded. His mouth had looked redder afterward. Almost scorched. And then again today, when he’d attempted to grab my throat. Had it been the silver that thwarted his efforts?

  And what of his intolerance for laudanum? A strange allergy, to be sure. The very smell of it repulsed him. He couldn’t abide to be near it. I’d tasted but two drops of the stuff and it had been enough to repel him.

  Of course, there was a good possibility that these weren’t weaknesses at all. That they were nothing more than Edward’s crazed imaginings. He was plainly a madman. A deviant who made his bed among the corpses of his victims.

  But I couldn’t dismiss an incontrovertible fact: I had shot him and he hadn’t died. Not only that, he appeared to have suffered no injury at all. He was outside that door. Vigorous. Relentless.

  I realized then that escaping him wouldn’t be enough. We were married, and I had signed away to him even that part of my fortune which was to be mine irrespective of marriage. Wherever I went, he was bound to follow, demanding his legal rights over my money, property, and person. The only hope I had was to kill him. And since that had failed so spectacularly, there was but one course remaining. I must conquer him somehow.

  The prospect was daunting. I was mulling it over—imagining all sorts of outlandish scenarios—when I heard a faint scratching sound. The same scratching sound I’d heard when last I’d visited the vault alone.

  The fine hairs rose on the back of my neck. But this time I couldn’t run away. I was stuck there with it.

  Muffled as the sound was, it only became more insistent as the next hour ticked by. Where was it coming from? I performed a cursory search of the room. In the meanwhile, Edward appeared to have gone. To where I didn’t like to think.

  I looked behind the shelving as best I could, scanning for hidden spaces in the lamplight. There was nothing. Not a single crack in the plaster. “Is someone there?” I called out softly.

  Scratch, scratch.

  My pulse skittered wildly. I stood, stock still, in the center of the vault, straining to listen over the sound of my blood pounding in my ears. But the vault had fallen quiet again. I sank back down on the carpet, legs too unsteady to bear my weight. And then I heard it once more.

  Scratch, scratch.

  I realized then, with a jolt of fresh horror, that it was coming from below. As if someone—or something—was underneath the very ground I sat upon. Crawling away from the edge of the carpet, I began to roll it back. It came up easily, revealing a sight as ominous as any I’d
seen since my time at Nosht-Vŭlk.

  There was a door in the floor. A simple square with a bolt set into it. I drew the pads of my fingertips over the latch.

  And something beneath responded.

  Scratch, scraaaatch.

  My heart stopped. Was it one of Edward’s victims? Another servant he was in the process of disposing of? Or was it something else? Something worse?

  Withdrawing the vault key from my pocket, I tested it in the lock, both relieved and disappointed to discover that it fit. My constitution couldn’t handle much more. I’d been frightened enough for a lifetime. But if some poor soul was entombed below—a living victim that I could render aid to—then I knew my duty.

  Unfastening the latch, I lifted open the door.

  Thornfield Hall

  Yorkshire, England

  May 1844

  The first of May fell on a Wednesday. A bright and blooming morning, rife with the fragrance of spring. It was the ideal weather for a wedding.

  His waistcoat buttoned and his cravat arranged in an elegant knot, John shrugged on his new frock coat and made his way downstairs. His trunks were already packed and corded. By this time tomorrow, they’d be on their way to Rome, right alongside the trunks belonging to Bertha and the boys. She would be Mrs. Eyre, then. His wife.

  John still found the reality of it difficult to believe. When he’d left Lowton, he’d had no expectation of forming a family, let alone falling in love. And yet, in less than a year, Bertha and the boys had become his whole world. What doubts he had were eclipsed by the great love he felt for them.

  Entering the hall, he found the doors standing open. Outside, Jenkins waited with the carriage. Someone had hung a wreath of bloodred roses on the door and twined rosebuds into the horses’ manes.

  Strange that. John’s wedding to Bertha wasn’t a grand occasion. Indeed, she’d several times referred to it as a “mere formality.” A tedious but necessary ceremony that would enable them to set off for Europe without delay. There would be no guests at the church, save the two people who were obliged to witness the affair.