Page 102 of John Eyre

“Will you tell me the rest?”

“I don’t know.” A weary sadness glimmered in her eyes. “Is there a chance you’ll believe me?”

John’s heart clenched. She’d asked him something similar once. A hypothetical question posed in the arbor, in the stormy, early morning hours after a wounded Mrs. Wren had been sent off with Mr. Carter. “Did you tell Blanche Ingram?”

“I did.”

“And she didn’t believe you?”

“No. She did not.” Bertha’s mouth curved in a bitter smile. “More’s the pity.”

“I’m not Miss Ingram,” he said.

“No. But your reaction will be the same. You’ll think me insane. Either that or a fantasist. Some soft-headed fool obsessed with otherworldly claptrap.”

He gave a humorless laugh. “Good lord, Bertha. Do you have any notion of the things I’ve seen since I’ve come to Thornfield? That I’ve imagined I’ve seen?”

Her eyes met his. “Such as?”

“The wolf you describe in your journal. I encountered him once myself on the road to Hay. It was the day you fell from your horse.”

She frowned. “The wild dog you mentioned?”

“I wasn’t likely to admit to having seen a wolf, was I?”

“But you did see one?”

“As plain as day. A great black creature, with glistening fangs. He was coming through the mist. And that’s not all I’ve seen.”

Her gaze sharpened. “Go on.”

John told her about the night he’d arrived at Thornfield, seeing Helen standing at the crossroads with her hand raised in warning. He told her about the sounds he’d heard—the fingers scraping on the panels of his box bed, and the rattle of chains from the floors above. He even told her about those bleak sleepless nights in the weeks after his arrival when his guilt had conjured Helen’s image, kneeling at the foot of his bed in silent accusation.

“And you know about the face I saw in my shaving mirror,” he said. “I didn’t imagine it.”

“No. I don’t suppose you did.” Her brow furrowed. “I’ve seen strange things myself. Though nothing too terrifying since I’ve come home to Yorkshire. He’s too afraid of me to toy with me overmuch. After what I did to him in Bulgaria—”

“What did you do?” John asked. “What happened after you found the boys?”

She stood abruptly and walked to a nearby table. A tray reposed upon it, containing a decanter of wine and several cut-crystal glasses. She poured herself a measure and took a long drink. “It smelled of death, that chamber where he kept them. Just like the lair where he slept. I believe there may have been bodies there, too. Other victims. Other children.”

John’s stomach tightened. “In there with Stephen and Peter?”

“Yes.” She lowered her glass. “They didn’t want to come to me. I had to coax them out one by one, with whispered words and empty promises. How they clung to me, then! It broke my heart. But I hadn’t the luxury of tears. I had to be strong for them, and for myself.” She took another drink. “At sunrise, I emerged from the vault, knowing that I took my very life in my hands, and theirs along with it. If Edward had been awake—if he’d dared to brave the sunlight to capture me—I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance. He was too strong.”

“But he wasn’t there,” John said.

She shook her head. “I took the boys to my room. They were so weak after climbing the stairs, I had to let them lie down upon my bed. While they rested, I went to the chamber with the window overlooking the courtyard and waited for Mr. Poole.”

“In your journal, you said you’d given him coin the previous day and sent him on an errand.”

“I had. I sent him to buy a horse at the twice-monthly market outside the village—two horses if he could find them—and to procure as much rope as he could. And he did, God bless him. He came back midmorning in a cart pulled by two enormous Bulgarian drafts. He used them, along with the rope, to tear the front door of Nosht-Vŭlk straight off its hinges.” She stared into her empty wineglass, her expression meditative. “That’s when the real difficulty began.”

“Tell me,” he urged her. “Please.”

“I went back through the wardrobe and down the secret stair. But first I retrieved the two phials of laudanum from my room. I gave a few drops each to the boys and Mr. Poole, then took a few drops myself.”

John recalled the patent medicine the boys had been taking. How angry Bertha had been when she learned John had put a stop to it. And what of her reaction to his own laudanum use? She’d been relieved to hear of it. As if the knowledge of it had assured her of him somehow. “Did you believe it would repel him?”