Bull Inn. A boxing match was in progress. Two country lads were throwing fists at each other. Spectators roared, laughed, drank their pints, and flung down coins. They welcomed me, and soon the wine was flowing like fire through my veins. I felt like a candle burned down to its end, the wick sputtering in a pool of wax. My head whirled. I remember nothing of the hours that ensued, until I awoke in an upstairs room. A maid from the inn came and told me I’d slept all day and it was time to go home. Dizzy and nauseated, I staggered through the village. It was the dead of night; the streets were deserted. Stars shone like evil eyes in the black sky. The wind howled from the moors. Having laboriously scaled the hill, I fell against the door of the parsonage. It was locked. I banged loudly, calling for someone to let me in. It was opened by a big, brutish man I’d never seen before. “Who are you?” the stranger said. Surprised and disturbed, I said, “I am Branwell Bronte. I live here. What are you doing in my house?” He hauled me inside, then slammed and bolted the door. I fell to my knees. Terror kindled in me, for even though my senses were still befuddled by drink, I knew something was seriously wrong. “Where are my father and sisters?” I said. “What have you done with them?” Two more men materialized in the hall. I blinked, unsure if they were real or my vision had multiplied the image of the first man. He said, “It’s the son. I couldn’t leave him outside to make noise and attract attention. What should we do with him?” Another of the men said, “Put him down with the others.” The third man opened the cellar door. They forced me towards the stairs. How I shrieked and fought! Since childhood I have always been afraid of the cellar; I cannot shake my notion that it is haunted by goblins. But I was too feeble to resist. I tumbled down the stairs into the black pit. The door slammed and locked. The cold miasma of the grave enclosed me. “Let me out!” I shrieked in terror. “I beg of you!” I tried to crawl up the stairs, but I was trembling so violently that my efforts failed. Whimpering, I curled up on the floor. I heard whispers and rustling movements. “No!” I cried, thinking that the goblins were coming to pull me down into hell. “Go away!” “Branwell, is that you?” said a voice near me. “Leave me alone!” I pleaded. Cold fingers touched my cheek. I screamed and writhed until the being that I’d taken for a goblin said, “It’s Anne.” Now I recognized her voice, and the murmuring voices of Emily and my father. Such relief overwhelmed me that I wept. We embraced in the darkness. “What has happened?” I asked her. “Why are those men holding us prisoners?” Anne told me a fantastic tale of murders, of Charlotte and a Foreign Office spy and the Queen, and a pursuit of a villainous madman. I did not understand most of it; nor could I believe it. But the fact remained that we were locked in the cellar, at the mercy of strangers. “What are we going to do?” I asked. Father said, “We must trust in God to deliver us.” Anne clasped my hand. “Help will come,” she said. I was suddenly overcome by sickness. My stomach convulsed and heaved as if there were a wild beast inside me trying to get out. I vomited time and again, while tremors wracked me. Oh, what pain, what mortal suffering! “O, death, take me now!” I begged. “Release me from this misery!” Anne stroked my forehead and spoke soothing words. Emily said, “Enough! You’re only making things worse for the rest of us!” With such scorn and hatred did she speak! It stabbed me to the heart. I began to sob. But Emily cared not for my feelings. She said, “If you were the man you should be, you wouldn’t have let those men throw you into the cellar. You would have fought them and rescued us. At the very least, you could have run for help.” She berated me with accusations that I was weak, wretched, selfish, stupid. I knew she was right. Such woeful shame did I feel! Such a poor excuse for a brother and son was I! “You’re no good to anyone including yourself,” Emily said in a tone so cruel that it withered my spirit. “You might as well die.” But though I prayed for an end to my sorrows and humiliations, there leapt within me a contradictory desire almost as strong. Emily’s harsh words had awakened some long-dormant part of me that wanted to live. It urged me to rise up and prove her criticism undeserved, to fend off the shadow of death that encroached upon me. I realized that I might have but one more chance to atone for my evils, to show some small degree of the heroism I had craved all my life, before I died. Beneath my sickness and tremors, a force hardened like a steel tendon inside me. It was my will, which I had thought long gone. “I’m going to save us all,” I declared. But my voice was as weak as my body. Anne and Papa said nothing; Emily uttered a disdainful laugh and said, “Just how shall you do that?”
40
A rhythmic creaking noise pierced the veil of sleep that enshrouded me. I became aware of the hard surface upon which I lay, a rocking motion, and a sensation of nausea. My head ached; my tongue felt furry inside my parched mouth. Rough, thick fabric covered my body, which was stiff and sore. I heard splashing noises. Above me was the night sky, filled with stars that wheeled, like lanterns on a carousel, around a full moon. A cold, reviving breeze swept my face; I inhaled the scent of the ocean. My memory was a blank. More puzzled than afraid, I sat up, and the world rocked; my stomach slid to and fro inside me. I saw that I was in a boat-a small, open craft. A man sat not far from me, rowing. His oars splashed in the ocean, which spread all around us, its black waves shimmering with reflections from the moon and stars. For one frightful moment I imagined that I had died and that the man was Charon, ferrying me along the River Styx. Then I recognized him. It was Nick, the mute servant of Kuan.
“Good evening, Miss Bronte,” said Hitchman’s voice.
I turned and saw him seated behind me in the boat. Eerie lights from the sea played across his face, which wore its familiar, sardonic smile.
Terror surged within me. “Where are the children?”
“Right next to you,” Hitchman said.
Now I became conscious of warm, solid weight pressed against me. Vicky and Bertie lay under the blanket that covered us. Their delicate faces were pale in the moonlight. Vicky’s eyelids fluttered; Bertie whimpered. I felt them stirring.
“How long have I been asleep?” I said, trying to speak calmly and hide my fear lest it rouse his suspicion.
“Long enough,” came the reply.
My heart plunged, for I calculated that I must have slept through an entire day. By now the Queen must have discovered that the children and I were gone, and Mr. Slade must have begun a search, but still no one had rescued us.
“Where are we?” I said.
“On the North Sea,” Hitchman said.
I looked backward as Nick rowed and our boat cut across the water. Lights twinkled on a distant shoreline. My hope that Mr. Slade would come for me waned further.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“To meet Kuan.”
Ahead loomed the dark form of a steamship floating at anchor. I deduced it to be the vessel that Kuan had stolen from the opium traders and that had brought him to England. Lanterns burned on its deck. Skeletal masts supported weather-beaten sails on rigging that was like the web of a giant spider. The huge, curved wheel-houses bulged with latent power. The funnel rose tall enough to impale the heavens. Nick brought our boat alongside the ship. A ladder was mounted on its hull.
“Up you go, Miss Bronte,” Hitchman ordered.
Still weak and sick from the laudanum, and trembling with fright, I climbed the ladder. The ship’s hull was scarred from long journeys, infested with barnacles, algae, and wormholes. Two Chinese sailors hauled me aboard. Their narrow, hostile eyes stared at me; they wore pistols and daggers at their waists. More Chinamen loitered around the deck. I felt as though I’d stepped onto foreign territory. I despaired, knowing that Mr. Slade would never find me there.
Hitchman, Nick, and the sailors brought Vicky and Bertie and the dinghy onto the ship. Hitchman said, “Come, Miss Bronte, I’ll show you where you’ll live during our voyage to China.”
China! I felt a stab of horror. I never imagined events would reach this point. Hitchman and Nick carried the children down a flight of stairs below deck. My responsibility towards Vicky and Bertie outweighed my fears for myself: Whatever happened, I could not allow harm to come to them. I followed them into a narrow passage that smelled of coal smoke, tar, and fish as well as those odors produced by humans living in close, unsanitary quarters. We entered a tiny chamber that had four bunks mounted on the walls, a washstand, and a porthole window.
“See to the children,” Hitchman said as he and Nick laid them on the two lower bunks. By now they were restless and yawning. “Make sure they behave themselves. Nick will bring you food and water. You’ll find everything
