Thornfield Hall (14 page)

By the time Grace and I arrived Mr Rochester had grappled her to the floor and was holding her wrists behind her back.

‘A garter.' He waved an imperious hand at me. ‘Give me a garter. God dammit, woman, don't pretend you don't wear them. I want to tie her hands.'

I have done many things for the Rochesters. I have rubbed old Mr Rochester's knobbly hands; I have watched without comment as Mr Rowland pinned butterflies on boards and I have cared for some poor mad friendless creature without any guidance or thanks from the man who made me responsible for her. All these things I have done. But here I draw the line. I will not take my garters off for him. I set my face and stood firm and still.

Grace saw which way the wind blew and decided to oblige him. She passed him a garter and one of her stockings. Somehow or other between them they got Bertha upright and in a chair. There was foam round her mouth as a torrent of angry words spewed out. I have never heard her say so much. And such words! I blush to remember them.

‘Get her out of here. I told you I never want to see her or be reminded of her. Lock her up. Throw away the key.' His dark eyes flashed fire at us.

Grace took her charge by the shoulder, ‘Come, Bertha.' Mr Rochester jumped at hearing the name.

‘Don't believe what she tells you,' he snarled at Grace. He pointed an accusing finger at Bertha. ‘The truth and she are long parted.'

Grace ignored him and continued to talk soothingly to Bertha, promising her sleeping draughts, a warm bed and feeling better in the morning. Then she held her by the arm and led her like an obedient burly child from the room.

I was left alone with Mr Rochester. He had pulled off his cravat and loosened his collar, his hand clawing at the red marks on his neck. He leant against the mantelpiece, his chest
heaving as he struggled to calm his breathing. I felt I should speak to my master, that there should be some comment made on the scene that had just been enacted. The savage expression on his face warned me to stay silent. Whatever I said would simply add fuel to the fire and by talking I might reveal more about my part in the incident than was good for me. Finding out Bertha had been in my room checking the accounts would not please him. I pressed my lips together, made him a bit of a curtsy and left.

I spent a tense and restless night. I had crept up to the third-floor rooms and tested the door. It was locked. The silence behind it was ominous rather than consoling. When I rose from my troubled slumber I was in an agony of expectation. The master was sure to summon me and ask me to account for the events of the previous evening. I was mentally packing my bags and wondering where I could go.

None of it happened. I was not summoned; I was not dismissed. There was no angry scene.

I discovered that Mr Rochester had left first thing in the morning. He'd roused Old John from his bed and got him to saddle his favourite horse, Mesrour. He had ridden off while the frost was still on the fields. Old John was devastated. ‘Summat must have happened. For him to go off like that.'

‘Summat did,' I told Old John and gave him a highly censored version of events.

‘Must be bad blood between them two. Fighting in library. Well I never.' As soon as I was able I went to visit Grace and enquired about Bertha. ‘Snappish, is she this morning?' It was
Grace's favourite understatement for the demented behaviour of her charge.

‘Not anymore. Last night she talked and raved and cried and talked some more. Then she wept and wept until she fell asleep with exhaustion. Now she doesn't want to wake up.'

‘When she does you can tell her Mr Rochester has gone. Left without a word this morning.'

‘So we are off the hook.'

‘Looks like it.'

Grace whistled through her teeth. ‘Interesting. If you had been sitting by your library fire when a crazed creature closely followed by two of your servants came to attack you, wouldn't you at least ask a few questions? How did she get here? Why wasn't she watched? That sort of thing.'

‘Why did Bertha suddenly attack him? It happened as soon as I said his name. She's not the world's best reader but she obviously recognized it on the bill. She must have heard the family name before.'

‘We don't use the name much. You call him the master, most of the time. Or worse. My master. I have nothing to do with him.' Grace tossed her head and looked very smug when she said this. It is easy for people who have a generous salary and a son to help them in their old age to act so independent and haughty.

‘Old John thinks there must be bad blood between her and Mr Rochester. Something shocking in the past. Has Bertha said anything?'

‘She has said plenty. I couldn't stop her raving about him. It poured out of her, with plenty more choice words that a lady like you wouldn't understand.'

‘What sort of thing is she saying?'

‘Mr Rochester kidnapped her. He locked her up on his ship. He drove her mother to her death. He stole her father's
money. According to our Bertha he's done enough to get his neck stretched at the next assizes.' Grace ticked each crime off on her fingers as she spoke.

‘But there must be a germ of truth in there. Something that stays Mr Rochester's hand. He does not suffer fools gladly. You would expect him to have a major rage, a huge attack of temper. Something stopped him. There's something more he wants to keep hidden than her presence in his house. That's why he went away in a hurry. He made us swear to keep her identity secret. We call her Bertha. Bertha who? There's one of the Rochester secrets at the heart of this. The Rochesters love secrets.'

‘O yes, they've got a secret, one great big secret.' Grace paused to add drama to her announcement. ‘Bertha claims that she is Bertha Rochester. Says she's married to him. That she is his wife.'

I did a most unladylike thing. I gulped. A huge mouthful of air made its way into my mouth and down my gullet. I felt it travel like a rolling ball down inside my stays. Grace gave her harsh laugh. ‘I thought that would give you a turn.' She appeared to enjoy my embarrassment more than was strictly necessary.

It was some time before I found my voice. ‘Do you believe her?'

‘If I believed everything my patients told me…'

‘It's true that the master went to Jamaica as a young man. There was never a word about his marrying.' My voice trailed away as I recalled that news about Mr Edward had never been forthcoming from his father and brother. Enquiries about his health or his whereabouts had been abruptly discouraged. There was one slender piece of evidence to support Bertha's claims. ‘She wears a wedding ring.'

‘True. So do I.' Grace waved her left hand in my face. But you'd be hard put to it to find a Mr Poole. The Mrs is a courtesy
title. I wear the ring to avoid impertinent questions. I put it on myself when I moved to Yorkshire.'

‘You are not from these parts?'

‘No. I am from further north. I came here when my son was born. That's how I know the word “husband” has many different meanings.'

I waited in case she would tell me more about herself; she did not take the opportunity so I returned to the subject of Bertha and her claim. ‘Just imagine for a moment that what she says is true and she is indeed Mrs Rochester. Then she is the mistress of this house. She should be in the drawing room, receiving visitors, ordering the dinners, sleeping in the big bedroom. I should be taking orders from her!'

For a moment we were silent as we considered the alarming prospect of Bertha being in charge of us, rather than of our looking after Bertha.

‘In a good spell she might be able to manage.' Grace was judicious. ‘She would need a lot of help. There'd still be work for you and me.'

‘It can't be true,' I told Grace with confidence. ‘Mr Rochester has made it clear that she is nothing to him. His father and brother never announced his marriage. That's not the kind of thing you keep secret. The master does not admit to having a wife and he certainly does not acknowledge that Bertha is his wife. How can he keep her in the same house as if she is a stranger?'

‘Lots of married folk do exactly that. It's how they manage when they dislike each other. He treats her the same way many men treat the wives they no longer want.'

‘Never. He has not spoken her name or acknowledged her existence. What kind of a husband does that?'

‘A husband who hates his wife and yet cannot be free of her. He keeps her locked away and pretends she does not exist. A
man can do that with a wife. Ask my son. He knows. The law can stop a man who mistreats his maidservant or his mother but it cannot and will not stop him ill-treating his wife.'

I did not have enough knowledge of the law to dispute with Grace but I assured her with some warmth that my brief experience of marriage had not been of obedient slavery to a capricious master. Marriage had opened the door of a cage for me. I had been glad to escape from the many rules for good behaviour imposed upon me by my mother, who was obsessed by the notion of gentility.

‘We do not have any proof. Just the word of a woman who is generally regarded as mad,' Grace admitted. A broad smile broke out on her naturally stern-looking face. ‘I've just remembered. I saved the best till the last. Bertha claims that she had a baby.'

‘That does tend to happen if people get married.' I contrived to look demure and innocent as I spoke. Although I count Grace as my closest friend I wanted to pay her back for the unladylike gulp she had shocked out of me.

‘Pshaw!' She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Not just an ordinary baby. A black baby!'

‘Now that I do not believe. She really is making it up. And just where is this unlikely baby?'

‘It seems it died.'

That silenced me.

THE HONOURABLE BLANCHE INGRAM

1827

I
N THE ABSENCE OF OUR MASTER TRANQUILLITY
soon returned to Thornfield Hall. Our routine was strenuous – we worked long hours – but we worked with good hearts and were free from anxiety. We were all skilled in our trades and worked to a high standard. Criticisms and quarrels were few. Old John grumbled that he had too many hunters in the stables and no one to ride out on them. In truth he loved to see the heads of the bright-eyed creatures gazing out of every stall. The new grooms managed to exercise them without breaking their legs – the horses' legs, that is. Old John had no care for the grooms' legs. On occasions Mary cooked for us some of the delicious recipes that Monsieur Alphonse had shared with her. Just to keep her hand in, she said, in case there should be another big dinner. Leah and John were beginning to look at each other with big moony eyes and Sam was busy building a model of Nelson's
Victory
no more than six inches high. All was harmony in the servants' hall.

Matters were as satisfactory on the third floor. Bertha had returned to her usual state of placid indifference to her
surroundings. She ate her meals and went to her bed as Grace directed her. In between she gazed at the sky, smiled at Leah or me when we came to sew in the afternoons and said very little. In all she was the most undemanding presence it was possible to imagine.

We spent companionable evenings by the fire in my room. Grace had her pint of porter and her pipe. I had my knitting. Bertha would be busy checking the sums in my accounts. This was an activity that absorbed her completely. She would crouch silently over her task, the tip of her tongue protruding through her teeth, and she would work with great concentration. She worked quickly and carefully and never made any mistakes.

We heard no more from her about being married to our master. The name of Rochester never passed her lips and in view of the kerfuffle it had caused previously we avoided using the master's name in her hearing. An ordinary person needs a reason to throttle a man when he is sitting quietly by his fireside. But, as Grace says, the mad do not work like that. I thrust the thought that Bertha might be Mrs Rochester to the bottom of my mind and bid it stay there.

In this way the months ticked by happily until the autumn. The trees were bare when the letter arrived from Mr Rochester. To my surprise he gave warning of a visit. Perhaps Bertha's attack on him in the library had persuaded him that arriving unannounced was a little unwise. Not only did his letter surprise me, it also caused me considerable dismay, as I foresaw much labour and many responsibilities ahead of me. He planned to hold a great ball at Thornfield Hall at Christmas and to invite the hunt to meet at Thornfield on Boxing Day. I was pretty confident that the hunt master would oblige him by accepting his invitation.

The previous hunt dinner had set a standard that would be difficult to repeat and this time we had no Monsieur Alphonse to help us. I had set a brisk pace of work all year and so we were all on top of our routine tasks. The store cupboard was full and the house was clean and the bedding mended. Well done me, I thought, and braced myself for a busy few weeks.