“No slave.”
She shifted her eyes away from me, as if she were trying to see herself in the future as a free woman. “How long?” she asked.
“Six weeks, more or less, to get there,” I said. I did not emphasize the more.
“After?”
I did not want to give her the after, but I knew I must. “After, you do as you wish. After, you are free.”
“And Tiso?”
“Tiso also.”
She stared at me straight on, as if deciding whether she could trust me.
“Have I not always treated you well?” I urged. “With honesty? Have I not?”
She nodded then, and relief overwhelmed me. If Bertha was to be wholly my responsibility after we arrived at Thornfield, so be it. At least the worst would be over. Or so I thought.
*
The journey, though not easy, was, thank God, uneventful. Molly and Tiso and I managed to get Bertha on board early, when the few onlookers simply saw a gentleman and an obviously unwell woman settling into the first stateroom. Although Bertha asked several times into what house I had moved her, she seemed as content there as she had been in her chambers at Valley View.
As for myself, I had a stateroom of my own, at the far end of the saloon. I would still come in the evenings to soothe Bertha with a mug of grog and a bit of laudanum, but for the rest of the time, I was able to move about as if she were unknown to me. Otherwise, I spent a great deal of my time making plans.
Of course there were whisperings among the passengers about the mysterious woman in the first cabin. There were speculations that she was an illegitimate daughter of Bonaparte, returning to cause trouble in France, or perhaps even the Infanta Isabel Maria of Portugal—poor Bertha, if she had still had her senses, would have enjoyed such an elevation in status. Others suggested she was a dangerous prisoner of some sort, off to meet her fate. Those who noted my evening visitations to the stateroom eyed me with curiosity and suspicion, but I ignored them. The one or two gentlemen who eased close to me in conversation did not get from me any satisfaction, and eventually they gave up, but the distance that I forced myself to maintain from them made the journey frightfully tiresome.
In the first week of June, we heard the cry of land being sighted, and nearly all the passengers scrambled up to the deck to see for themselves, I among them—I, perhaps, more excited and more anxious than the rest. I had not quite expected it, but when I heard that cry, when I saw for myself that dim strip of darkness at the horizon that I knew to be England, my heart fairly burst out of my chest.
*
Everson met us at the port of Liverpool, which was a frenzy of activity. It was, I realized, markedly different from the West Indies, where almost no one felt the pressure of time or the urgency of accomplishment. I had forgotten the pace of life at home.
Since I had visited Bertha’s room before debarking the boat, with what I hoped was one last dose of laudanum, the four of us—Molly and Tiso and Everson and I—contrived to move her, leaning heavily on my shoulder and already beyond consciousness, from the boat to the waiting coach with a minimum of difficulty. The crew and lingering passengers stared after us, disappointed, I imagine, to see that the sequestered passenger was only an oddly dressed woman with wild black hair, and not some fiend destined for the gallows.
Everson waved us off as we left, the whipcrack and the rattle of the coach telling us we were on our way. We were traveling as the mail coaches did, at maximum speed, changing horses every hour or two, and with any luck we would be at our destination before nightfall. I sat back, satisfied that all had gone so well.
*
Though it was well past teatime when we drove through Millcote, it was still twilight; but it was nearly dark when we came upon the road to Ferndean. By then my heart was pounding so strongly in anticipation that I could barely hear the footman’s question: “Shall we enter, sir?”
“Yes, indeed,” I called to him.
Nearly there, I thought. Everson had assured me that the house was ready, with heavy draperies at the windows and strong locks on all the doors. There was also to be a woman from the village, Mrs. Greenway, staying there as housekeeper and cook, who would teach Molly and Tiso the ways of the Yorkshire countryside.
I still held hopes of enticing Molly with her freedom and with the run of Ferndean Manor, to stay on at length in England. If Molly stayed at Bertha’s side, I assumed, things could remain for Bertha very much as they had been at Valley View. I could have my own life a half day’s ride away at Thornfield-Hall: close enough to Ferndean for me to be able to respond to emergencies, yet far enough that I might even forget from time to time that I had a mad wife ensconced there.
At last the lights of Ferndean appeared, and when we approached, Mrs. Greenway opened the door as Molly and I helped Bertha into the house. Tiso ran ahead of us, darting from room to room and up the stairs and back down, wonder in her eyes and a broad grin on her face. She poked at the fire in the grate, opened cupboards in the kitchen and chests in the bedrooms, rubbed her bare feet on the rugs—she had never seen a rug before, for in the climate of Jamaica, no one save the governor had rugs—and she even tested a dipper of water from a bucket to make sure, I presume, that water in England tasted the same. From the expression on her face, I gathered that it did not, though I myself had never noted the difference.
I had assumed that I would be able to leave for Thornfield-Hall the next morning. But it became clear, from the way Bertha clung to me as I tried to pay the coach driver, that my plan would have to wait. As soon as I could, I took her up to her room and began undressing her for sleep. She was only half-conscious, but awake enough to reach for me and try to pull off my clothing as well. I pushed her unruly hair back from her face and tried to lock her eyes with mine. “It is late, Antoinetta,” I said urgently. “You must sleep.”
“Fuck me,” she whispered, reclining on the bed.
“It is too late for that.” I kept my voice steady.
“Fuck me, you ugly bastard!” she screamed.
Suddenly I was filled with hate: the crudeness of Bertha’s language, the wildness of her hair, disgust even for the life I had lived for the past five and a half years—a slaveholder, married to a madwoman. I wanted it over; I wanted to be shut of Bertha forever. I could have screamed as loudly as she had—but I pressed my lips together and left her in her new bed, in her new house, screaming at me as I left for a walk around the grounds. It felt unforgivable: Ferndean and Thornfield now defiled by what I had done in bringing Bertha to England.
*