“Yes,” I said. Hitchman’s fist remained poised above me.
“Did he also accompany you to Balmoral Castle?” Kuan asked. “Did you tell him of my plan to kidnap the children?”
Weak with terror and shame, I nodded. Kuan suddenly reached towards me. Panic exploded in my heart, for I thought he meant to rip it out of my chest. My back was pressed against the railing; Hitchman’s grasp imprisoned me. But Kuan’s fingers merely grazed my cheek in a caress almost tender.
“Miss Bronte, I am most disappointed in you,” he said. His voice was reproving yet gentle, his gaze almost affectionate. “Your deceit is unforgivable. I regret that you will not enjoy the good fortune that I offered you. Instead, you will reap your punishment for betraying my cause as well as myself. So will your family suffer on your account. I will send my men to execute them rather than set them free.”
“Please don’t hurt them!” I knew not what I was babbling. So eager was I to save my family, myself, and the children that I would have said anything. “I’m sorry for what I did. I’ve learned my lesson. I promise I’ll be loyal to you from now on. Have mercy!” I pleaded.
“No more lies, Miss Bronte,” Hitchman said scornfully.
He closed his hands around my throat. I clawed at them, trying in vain to tear them away. “Help!” I screamed.
My voice drifted across empty ocean. T’ing-nan giggled. The crew waited, immobile. In my mind arose an image of the stone tablets inside Haworth Church that bore the names of my mother and my sisters Maria and Elizabeth. Never would I rest beside them. Never would Papa, Emily, Anne, Branwell, or Mr. Slade know my fate. After Hitchman strangled me, I would simply vanish beneath the waves.
Then Kuan said, “No. Wait.”
Hitchman paused, although his hands still encircled my throat. “We can’t let her live,” he said. “She could have destroyed you. She’ll try again.”
“She is no danger to me here,” Kuan said. “She cannot get away. Nor can she communicate with her confederates.”
The reprieve gave me hope. I held my breath and silently prayed for deliverance.
“We’ve no use for her,” Hitchman said.
All along I had feared Hitchman; now he was eroding Kuan’s favor towards me, and my chances of survival.
“I do indeed have further use for Miss Bronte,” Kuan said. “I need her to care for my hostages.”
I started to expel my breath in a sob of relief. Then Kuan said, “We shall wait until we’re far from England, near some foreign port where we can engage a nursemaid to tend the children.” He smiled at me-a dreadful smile that anticipated revenge. “Then we’ll dispatch Miss Bronte to the hell reserved for traitors.”
41
That night i did my best to hide our grave predicament from the children and keep them quiet, but they were restless. Vicky asked me time after time what was going to happen to us. I didn’t know what to tell her. Bertie sulked and roamed the cabin like a caged animal. I tried the door and discovered that although the lock was strong iron, the door itself was loose in its frame. I searched the room for any instrument I could use as a lever to pry it open. The bunks were built of wooden rails, and after considerable effort, I managed to wrest one free-but even if I could force the door, how would I get the children off the ship and across the ocean to safety?
I hid the rail under my mattress in the vain hope of later making use of it. The motion of the ship made me so ill that I lay on my bunk while the children fretted and I wondered what was happening at Balmoral. I imagined Mr. Slade and the Queen’s soldiers riding the roads, searching the forests and villages, and finding no trace of us. Later, I learned that that was indeed how Slade had spent the hours after our disappearance. I worried that his agents wouldn’t reach Haworth in time to free my family before Kuan’s henchmen arrived to kill them. What I never imagined were the events taking place at the parsonage. Here shall Branwell’s letter to Francis Grundy continue and explain:
The hours that I passed in the cellar were the worst I’d ever known. Nausea, tremors, fever, and chills tortured me. I lay helpless on the floor, which was wet and foul from my effluvium. The dark pressed in on me like the death I welcomed yet dreaded. Anne did her best to nurse me, holding my head in her lap, stroking my brow. Emily uttered frequent, disgusted exclamations. Father prayed to the God who had forsaken us.
After an eternity, the sickness departed. It left me exhausted, but my mind was miraculously lucid. For ages it had been so obsessed with thoughts of my dear, lost Lydia, my own misery, and my craving for liquor and laudanum that there was no capacity for anything else. Not a single line of verse, not a single new idea, had occurred to me in all that time. But lo, the voice of Inspiration now spoke to me! It told me how I might deliver us from this hellish nightmare.
I pushed myself upright. Anne said, “What’s wrong?” Oh, the powerful temptation to lie down and allow whatever would happen to happen! But the voice whispered, This is your last chance. “Help me get up,” I said, gasping as I struggled to rise.
“What for?” Emily said. “There’s nowhere to go. And there’s certainly nothing you can do.” I could feel her bitter scorn towards me, like poisonous fumes in the darkness.
“Be still and rest,” Anne said.
But I clambered to my hands and knees. I crawled across the cellar, groping my way. A wall suddenly materialized before me and slammed against my head. I yelped in pain.
“What are you doing?” Father said, puzzled and anxious.
I felt along the cold, rough stones embedded in the earthen surface of the wall. “Looking for the bottle of whisky that I just remembered I hid.”
There was silence, during which I sensed them thinking that they’d believed they’d disposed of all the liquor I’d squirreled away in the house but I had outwitted them. Some months ago, desperate to secure the bottle in case of urgent need, I had forced myself to venture into the cellar. My family, knowing I was afraid of it, hadn’t thought to look here.
“Trust you to find a drink, even at a time like this,” Emily said with a sneer in her voice.
“I’m not going to drink the whisky,” I said.
Blind luck favored me. My hands found the large, square stone I remembered. I tugged it loose and dropped it to the floor. I reached into the void that I’d dug and that the stone had concealed.
“Then why do you want it?” Anne said.
My fingers touched smooth, cool glass. I pulled out the bottle and shook it. The whisky sloshed inside. “To buy our freedom.”
This provoked exclamations of surprise and confusion. Father said, “What are you talking about?”
“Pay him no mind,” Emily said. “He has gone completely insane at last.”
Clutching the bottle, I staggered around the cellar, bumping into walls, until I stubbed my foot against the stairs. I crawled slowly, laboriously, up them.
“What are you doing?” Anne said.
If I told them my intentions, they would surely try to dissuade me; coward that I am, I would just as surely let them. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, I thumped on the door and called loudly, “Hello! May I please speak with you gentlemen?”
Father and Anne tried to hush me for fear that I would make the men angry. Emily said, “It’s no use. They won’t let us out.”
But I kept calling and thumping. After some time I heard footsteps in the passage outside. “Be quiet!” called a man’s irate voice.
“Forgive me for annoying you, good sir, but I’ve got something that I think you would like to have,” I said in the polite, ingratiating tone that I’d often used to wheedle my way into company and out of trouble.
No immediate reply came, but I felt the man’s presence still on the other side of the door. Would his curiosity work in my favor? At last he said, “What is it?”
“Open the door,” I said, “and I’ll show you.”
I felt him hesitate. I hoped he was bored with sitting in the parsonage and wanted diversion. To my delight, I heard him unbolt the door, which then opened a few inches. I saw the man, his figure lit from the lamps in the passage behind him. I hastily backed down a few stairs, out of his reach.