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Nearly the End of Their Book
We waited for Thursday’s call, the code word, but it didn’t come. I read the narrative carefully, looking for some clue as to what had happened to her. I had suspected that Thursday might decide to stay if it was impossible to capture Hades. The denouement was drawing near; Jane would go to India and the book would end. Once that had happened we could switch the machine off. Thursday and Polly would be lost forever.
From Bowden Cable’s journal
IOPENED my eyes, frowned, and looked around. I was in a small yet well-furnished room quite close to a half-open window. Across the lawn some tall poplars swayed in the breeze, but I didn’t recognize the view; this was not Thornfield. The door opened and Mary walked in.
“Miss Next!” she said kindly. “What a fright you gave us!”
“Have I been unconscious long?”
“Three days. A very bad concussion, Dr. Carter said.”
“Where?—”
“You’re at Ferndean, Miss Next,” replied Mary soothingly, “one of Mr. Rochester’s other properties. You will be weak; I’ll bring some broth.”
I grabbed her arm.
“And Mr. Rochester?”
She paused and smiled at me, patted my hand and said she would fetch the broth.
I lay back, thinking about the night Thornfield burned. Poor Bertha Rochester. Had she realized that she had saved our lives by her fortuitous choice of weapons? Perhaps, somewhere in her addled mind, she was in tune with the abomination that had been Hades. I would never know, but I thanked her anyway.
Within a week I was able to get up and move about, although I still suffered badly from headaches and dizziness. I learned that after the servants’ staircase had collapsed I had been knocked unconscious. Rochester, in great pain himself, had wrapped me in a curtain and dashed with me from the burning house. He had been hit by a falling beam in the attempt and was blinded; the hand shattered by Acheron’s bullet had been amputated the morning following the fire. I met with him in the darkness of the dining room.
“Are you in much pain, sir?” I asked, looking at the bedraggled figure; he still had bandaged eyes.
“Luckily, no,” he lied, wincing as he moved.
“Thank you; you have saved my life for a second time.”
He gave a wan smile.
“You returned my Jane to me. For those few months of happiness, I would suffer twice these wounds. But let us not speak of my wretched state. You are well?”
“Thanks to you.”
“Yes, yes, but how will you return? I expect Jane is already in India by now with that gutless pantaloon Rivers; and with her goes the narrative. I don’t see your friends being able to rescue you.”
“I will think of something,” I said, patting him on the sleeve. “You never know what the future will bring.”
It was the morning of the following day; my months in the book had passed in as much time as it takes to read them. The Welsh Politburo, alerted to the wrongdoings on their doorstep, had given Victor, Finisterre and a member of the Brontë Federation a safe conduct to the moldering Penderyn Hotel, where they now stood with Bowden, Mycroft and an increasingly nervous Jack Schitt. The representative of the Brontë Federation was reading the words as they appeared on the yellowed manuscript in front of him. Aside from a few minor changes, the book was traveling the same course it always did; it had been word perfect for the past two hours. Jane was being proposed to by St. John Rivers, who wanted her to go with him to India as his wife, and she was about to make up her mind.
Mycroft drummed his fingers on the desk and glanced at the rows of flicking dials on his contraption; all he needed was somewhere to open the door. Trouble was, they were fast running out of pages.
Then, the miraculous happened. The Brontë Federation expert, a small, usually unexcitable man named Plink, was suddenly ignited by shock.
“Wait a minute; this is new! This didn’t happen!”
“What?” cried Victor, rapidly flicking to his own copy. Indeed, Mr. Plink was correct. There, as the words etched themselves across the paper, was a new development in the narrative. After Jane promised St. John Rivers that if it was God’s will that they should be married, then they would, there was a voice—a new voice, Rochester’s voice, calling to her across the ether. But from where? It was a question that was being asked simultaneously by nearly eighty million people worldwide, all following the new story unfolding in front of their eyes.
“What does it mean?” asked Victor.
“I don’t know,” replied Plink. “It’s pure Charlotte Brontë but it definitely wasn’t there before!”
“Thursday,” murmured Victor. “It has to be. Mycroft, stay on your toes!”
