disreputable lodging houses and taverns stood amid shops stocked with ropes and sails, quadrants and brass sextants, chronometers and compasses, and preserved meat and biscuits guaranteed to keep during long voyages. We proceeded to the wharves that had existed long before the new walled docks on the other side of the river had been built to accommodate large modern steamships. The wharves handled London’s coastal trade, and international trade in goods that didn’t need guarding. Here, the river was crowded with passenger steamers, lighters, and barges. Stevedores loaded grain, coal, tea, wool, produce, and timber onto ships that looked rundown, blackened by the smoke that puffed from their stacks. Laborers pushed wine casks in handcarts to the warehouses. The fragrance of coffee and spices competed with the stench of hides. When we alit from the carriage, Slade’s eyes scanned the scene.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“A friend who owes me a favor.”
While we trudged along the wharves, I heard loud swearing near a particularly disreputable hulk of a steamship. Discolored sails furled around its masts. Its hull was scuffed, patched, and stained with algae. The captain stood on the dock, shouting orders peppered with curses to a crew comprised of turbaned lascars and a Jamaican with skin as black as ebony, who were fixing the paddlewheels.
Slade called, “Francis Arnold! Why don’t you junk that crippled wreck of yours?”
The captain turned and scowled. He had a long torso and short legs; he wore a threadbare military coat and cap. Fierce blue eyes blazed under shaggy brows and tousled, sun-bleached yellow hair. “The Gipsy is as seaworthy as any ship in the world.” His accent was unexpectedly cultured. His complexion was a weathered red-brown, lined and freckled, with a tracery of white scars on his left cheek. “Who in hell are you to say-” He stared in wonder and recognition. “No! My eyes deceive me!” His face broke into a grin full of white teeth. “It can’t be John Slade!”
“In the flesh,” Slade said.
They exchanged greetings, which involved punches, backslapping, and jokes in different languages. Captain Arnold said, “What have you been doing all these years?”
“Working for the Foreign Office, among other things.”
“Ah.” Captain Arnold raised a bushy eyebrow. He obviously knew Slade was a spy.
Slade declined to elaborate. “What have you been up to?”
“Carrying cargo to and from America and the West Indies,” Arnold said. Slade later told me that Arnold belonged to a breed of ship captains who had no fixed schedule and no regular ports of call. They took on cargo wherever they could find it and transported it anywhere. Their vessels were often built of junk from marine yards, and they sometimes had space for passengers. “I just returned from Antigua.” That explained why he didn’t know that Slade was the most wanted man in England. Now he noticed me hovering uneasily in the background.
Slade drew me forward. “May I introduce Captain Francis Arnold. He and I served together in the East India Company army.”
“He saved my life during a brawl in a tavern in Lisbon.” Captain Arnold touched his scarred cheek. He bowed to me, said, “It’s an honor to make your acquaintance, um-?” and looked questioningly at Slade.
Slade swallowed. “This is my wife, Charlotte.” He seemed as abashed as I felt. To appear before strangers as a married couple was one thing; to lie to a friend was embarrassing; but the truth about our lack of a legal relationship would have disgraced me worse.
“Your wife, eh?” Captain Arnold punched Slade’s shoulder. “Well done, man! My congratulations. I never thought you’d settle down. You did right to wait. You’ve found yourself a lovely woman.” He smiled at me.
I blushed hotly.
“What brings you here, Slade?” Captain Arnold said. “Are you taking your bride on a tour of your old comrades in hell-raising?”
“I need a favor,” Slade said.
“Just ask.”
“We need to go to Cherbourg. Can you take us?”
“I’d be glad to, but why not take the packet? It would be much more comfortable for your wife.”
“We’ve run into some trouble. We can’t leave England in the usual manner.”
Captain Arnold asked no questions. “I can get you to Cherbourg.” Later Slade told me that Arnold had a sideline: he smuggled people out of countries in which they had enemies after them or were wanted by the law. “There’s just one problem. Business hasn’t been good lately. The big ships undercut the small operators like me. I don’t have the money to take my ship out without payment up front.”
He and Slade put their heads together and figured the cost of the journey. The price they settled on would use up almost all the money Lord Palmerston had given me. How Slade and I would manage later, I knew not; but we paid, gladly. We were on our way to France, and that was all that mattered.
34
Captain Arnold led us up the Gipsy ’s gangplank. The Jamaican carried our bags aboard. He and the lascar crewmen wore sharp knives. They were alien and frightening. As we went below deck, Captain Arnold said, “You’ll have to hide down here while we travel out of England. I apologize for the accommodations. They aren’t very pleasant.”
That was the understatement of the century. The room was a compartment inside the empty cargo hold, its door a panel cleverly designed to look like part of a solid wall. Not much larger than a closet, it smelled of the tea, spices, coffee, and wool that the ship had carried. It contained a washstand and basin, a chamber pot-and a single mattress covered with an old blanket. I tried to hide my dismay.
“I’ve slept in worse places,” Slade said, affecting a light tone. “And my wife can put up with it for a short time.”
“I’ll leave you to settle in, then,” Captain Arnold said, “while I get the ship ready for the journey.”
Alone, we stood in awkward silence on either side of the bed, which nearly covered the grimy floor. Slade said, “We’ll take turns sleeping. You can have yours first. I’ll go up and help Captain Arnold.”
Hidden behind the sliding panel, I felt as if I’d been sealed into my coffin. I examined the bed, which smelled stale, as if it had been used by people who didn’t wash. I spread the shawl Kate had lent me over it before I lay down. Exhausted, I promptly fell asleep.
I dreamed that I was hurrying through the criminal lunatics’ ward in Bedlam. I carried the dying Oliver Heald cradled in my arms. Drenched with blood, he looked up at me, smiled a ghastly smile, and said, “Anything for my favorite author.” Ellen Nussey and Arthur Nicholls trailed us, arguing about whether I had gone mad and should be committed. Julia Garrs stood by an open door and beckoned me. Entering, I found Niall Kavanagh’s secret laboratory. The mutilated corpses of three women hung from hooks like sides of beef. They sizzled in the fire that Lord Eastbourne had set. I lay strapped to a table. Gas hissed as Wilhelm Stieber bent over me, fixed clamps around my head, and turned the crank on his torture machine. A jolt of lightning seared my mind and ignited the gas in a white, thunderous, rattling explosion.
I awakened with a scream caught in my throat. I sat up, and the nightmare faded, but the rattling continued. The panel opened, and Slade entered the compartment. He carried a tray laden with bread, cold meat, and cheese, a teapot and cup. “I’ve brought your dinner.”
“What’s that noise?” I said.
“They’re hauling up the anchor.” Slade set down the tray and crouched beside me. “What’s the matter?”
“Just a bad dream. What time is it?”
“About ten o’clock at night.”
I’d slept the whole day. Now I heard the Gipsy ’s steam engines roar. The ship began to move, plowing through the river. In spite of my nightmare, I felt refreshed and alert; dreaming often purges the emotions. I realized, more clearly than before, what had happened.
I was no longer Charlotte Bronte, the respectable spinster daughter of Haworth’s vicar, or Currer Bell, the toast of literary London. I was a fugitive on the run, a criminal in the eyes of the law. Cut off from society, from my friends and family, I was leaving my homeland, perhaps for good. Surely I would never write another book. My name would sink into infamy, then obscurity. Yet I didn’t collapse into tears and sickness and utter helplessness as I had
