Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë Read Online Free Page B

Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë
Pages:
Go to
wrist and ankle cuffs, chained to beds. How they struggled and moaned! These were scenes from a medieval torture chamber. I’d stumbled upon the dark heart of Bedlam.
    I was headed back the way I’d come when I felt a touch on my shoulder. My heart vaulted up into my throat with a mighty thump. Gasping, I whirled. Before me stood a young woman, small and thin and pale. She wore a plain gray frock and a white shawl. A white bonnet framed brown, curling hair and delicate features. Violet-gray eyes too large for her face calmly met my gaze. Shock paralyzed me, and not just because she’d crept up on me so unexpectedly.
    I am haunted by those I have loved and lost. Although they are dust in their graves, I encounter them time and again in persons I meet. This woman was my sister Anne in every lineament.
    â€œExcuse me, madam,” she said, and her voice was Anne’s, sweet and gentle.
    The terrible memory of Anne’s passing swept over me like a black wave. Anne had meekly accepted every remedy we pressed upon her; foul medicines and painful blisters added to her suffering, but she patiently endured. I took her to the seaside for a change of air, a last-resort treatment recommended by her doctor. Alas, it didn’t work. Anne died at the age of twenty-eight, in Scarborough. She was buried there, on a headland overlooking the sea she always loved. But here, with me, was her ghost.
    â€œWho are you?” was all I could think to say.
    â€œI’m Julia Garrs,” she said, and curtsied. “What’s your name?”
    â€œCharlotte Brontë.” Now reason overpowered fancy. I saw that she was not my sister reincarnated. She was some ten years younger than Anne had lived to be, and prettier; she had a full bosom, Cupid’s bow lips, and thick, black eyelashes. She was a stranger.
    Relief flooded me as I said, “What do you want?”
    â€œI’m lost,” she said. “Will you help me get home? My baby is there. He needs me.”
    I deduced that she was a visitor who’d wandered here by chance just as I had. “Certainly.”
    She smiled, and as I escorted her along the passage, she took my hand. Her fingers were cold and frail, and I shivered: it seemed that Anne had reached from her grave to touch me. I lost my sense of direction and could not find the door. We turned corner after corner until we came upon a matron. She was a heavy woman with a coarse, red, common face. “Julia!” she said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
    Julia shrank behind me. I wondered how the matron knew her name and why she was frightened. “We’re visiting the asylum. We got lost,” I explained.
    The matron sneered. “You may be a visitor, mum, but she ain’t. She’s an inmate.”
    I was shocked. “But—”
    â€œBut she looks so normal.” The matron laughed. “I know. All the visitors think so. You’re not the first one she’s tried to fool into helping her escape. She charms the attendants into letting her out of her cell.” The matron’s tone hinted at the sort of wiles Julia employed. “Then she goes looking for her next mark.”
    â€œIs this true?” I asked Julia.
    She clung to my hand but averted her eyes from mine.
    â€œOh, it’s true, all right,” the matron said. “She’s in Bedlam ’cause she killed her own baby. Born out of wedlock, it was. She drowned it in the bath. Afterwards, she went mad. Thinks it’s still alive.”
    I stared at Julia in horror. The matron yanked her away from me and said, “Come on, then, girl. You’re going back to your cell.”
    As she led the reluctant but meek Julia down the corridor, she said to me, “You hadn’t ought to be here, mum. This wing’s not on the public tour. It’s for the criminal lunatics.”
    Stunned by fresh shock, I said, “How do I get out?”
    The matron pointed.

Readers choose