Death of a Schoolgirl: The Jane Eyre Chronicles (2 page)

Reader, I am delivered of a son.

What a noble burden it is to be entrusted with the life of another!

The midwife settled the little stranger in my arms, and with a bit of adjustment I became comfortable. That is,
we
became comfortable, young master Edward Rivers Rochester and his mother. My baby relaxed in my arms, and I sighed with happiness.

Everything about this moment seemed right. Satisfyingly so.

“Jane, my darling. My brave, brave girl. We have a son. Shall we call him Ned?” My husband, Edward Fairfax Rochester, planted a tender kiss on my lips and another on the top of our baby’s downy head. “Welcome, little man.”

I unfurled our son’s tightly clenched hand and counted all the fingers. Five, I assured myself. I repeated my investigation with his other hand. From there I moved to his budlike feet—pink and fresh and new—and examined his curled toes. How could he be so impossibly small? So tiny? So vulnerable?

Mrs. Alice Fairfax, our housekeeper and Edward’s second cousin on his mother’s side, hurried into the room. “He is perfect. What a blessing! I shall go tell the others. They will be over the moon with joy.” In short order, I heard happy voices from the other side of the bedroom door.

Inwardly, I laughed. My son was less than five minutes old and already he had set the household aflutter.

Spent with the exhaustion and emotion of a long labor, I adjusted the unaccustomed bundle. I stared down at Ned’s wrinkled, red face and wondered,
Who is this?

With a yawn, Ned blinked up at me. Long lashes framed eyes the same color as his father’s. At that moment, I fell unreservedly, irrevocably in love with my baby. I knew I would do anything to safeguard my child. Anything! A lump formed in my throat, a pain squeezed my chest, and I burst into tears.

“Are you all right?” Edward stroked my hair and gestured frantically for the midwife, a quiet grandmother from Millcote, our nearest town. A woman much recommended for her experience, but whom I valued for her manner. Her reddened hands were rough to the touch, but gentle when assisting me.

“’Tis to be expected, sir.” The midwife peered over Edward’s shoulder as she sipped her well-earned cup of tea with three lumps of sugar. “Tears are part of the package. A body’s heart overflows wi’ joy.”

Oh, my little one!
my heart sang.
Sum of my heart’s desires! Forgive me for I am new to this business of being a mother. I pledge to you all that I am, and all that I have, to safeguard you. You lie here trustingly, but the world is vast and I am so weak right now.

As I wept, with joy and fear and frustration, my husband put his arm around me and our son. “It will be all right, Jane,” he promised me. “We will be enough. I promise you, we will be.”

But it takes more than a promise to protect a child.

I have reason to know.

Ferndean Manor, Yorkshire

October 13, 1820

In the months and days that followed Ned’s birth, my thoughts often reverted to my own orphan childhood. When I was but a year old, I lost both my parents to typhus and was taken in by my mother’s brother, who, upon his own deathbed soon thereafter, entreated his wife, Mrs. Reed, to care for me. She did so in the barest sense—she did not, after all, send me directly to the workhouse—but extended to me, a blameless infant, none of the affection and indulgence she lavished upon my three cousins, her own children, who tormented me mercilessly. I was alone in the world without protectors, without a guiding hand or kind heart to ease my journey.

I shuddered to imagine such a fate befalling my son. Tucking his blanket around him, I was struck anew by how wholly dependent he was at six months of age.

These days Ned was not the only one who relied on me. His father saw the world through my eyes. When fire destroyed Thornfield Hall, the Rochester family home—a conflagration set by my husband’s first wife, Bertha Mason, and in which she also perished—it not only burned the mansion to the
ground; it nearly cost my husband his life. A beam fell on Edward, partially crushing him, partially protecting him. His right eye was knocked out, and his left hand was damaged so badly that amputation was done directly. The other eye, in sympathy to its twin, alternated inflammation with good health, severely limiting his vision. Recently, I feared his sight had gotten worse.

Most cruelly, his injuries took from him his ability to ride horseback alone, an activity previously perfectly suited to his personality and love of the outdoors. Nowadays, my husband often visits the stable, standing with his forehead pressed against the slats of his horse Mesrour’s stall, the old comrades communing and remembering happier days. Robbed of his ability to ride, Edward finds it difficult to get out among his tenants and talk to them as he should. Reading is impossible, and writing is nearly so.

“Mr. Carter has arrived to examine Mr. Rochester,” Mrs. Fairfax said as she stood in the doorway. “Your husband waits for you. Hester can watch after the baby.” This was a gentle rebuke. Our housekeeper worries that I will spoil our son with too much attention.

I planned to.

Hester Muttoone, my son’s wet nurse, had had much experience in the nursery, certainly more than either the childless widow Mrs. Fairfax or myself. Watching Hester’s deft movements with Ned, I realized how awkward I was, how tentative, a beginner at motherhood. Yet I was determined to do many of the chores often relegated to a baby’s minder. These small tasks brought me pleasure; I admit that I was in awe of my son. But Hester held him, cleaned him, and offered him her breast as though my child was wholly unremarkable.

“The girl is fully capable. You will spoil him.” Mrs. Fairfax made a clucking sound with her tongue, a weak attempt to scold me.

“But he is my own, my firstborn child.”

“Ah, and we would all give our lives for our young master. Be assured of that,” Mrs. Fairfax said. “But Ned’s father relies on you to help him. Master and Mr. Carter are in the garden.” She paused and cocked her head toward the window. “Perhaps you will still have time to stroll the lane together. Mayhap you can pick the last of the rose hips before the birds get them all.”

If we could hurry through Mr. Carter’s visit, I had every intention of taking a walk that afternoon with Edward. Indecisive weather marred our autumn. The scent of rain and change was on the air. A storm moved in from the coast. The yellow tassels of the furze nodded winningly, as the fern fronds waved sleepy heads in the woods surrounding our home. Leaves had begun to turn, a prelude to their drifting down and leaving bare branches in their place.

We lived far from human society. Ferndean Manor lay half buried, deep in a thick stand of trees. Millcote, the closest town, was thirty miles away. To reach the main road into town, one must travel a lumpy, uneven grass path, a trial to passengers in carriages.

“Tell Mr. Rochester that I am coming.” I ran a fingertip along the crown of my son’s head and down his plump cheek. In response, his lips pursed and he suckled the air.

“As you wish.” Retreating footsteps and the squeak of door hinges signaled that Mrs. Fairfax had at last left me alone. I studied my little boy, committing every inch of his form to memory. He was already growing so quickly!

In truth, I needed a few moments of privacy to gather courage to face what lay ahead. Mr. Carter visited Ferndean regularly to check on Edward, my darling husband, once a strong and mighty man, now my sightless Samson. With each examination our hopes soared, only to be dashed and come crashing down, as a pheasant falls from the sky when felled by a percussive gun.

“What if he pronounces my improvement beyond his
skills?” Edward had asked me only last evening as we sat together companionably beside the hearth, basking in the dying embers. His stern brow, interrupted with a scar from the conflagration, creased with concern. “What if I can never see more than the haze of light as it pours through the window? Or the dancing red tongue of a candle’s flame?”

“Then I shall have to be your eyes. Such deficiency matters little. I am here for you. All my heart is yours, sir. Always and forever.”

I relived this poignant moment as Hester entered the nursery and executed a sloppy partial curtsy. Keeping her protruding eyes downcast, she took her accustomed place on a chair near Ned’s crib. I gave my son one last kiss and started toward what we euphemistically called “our garden.”

I passed by Mrs. Fairfax, who struggled mightily to keep a slight expression of disapproval on her face. She aims to make me a more conventional lady of the manor and endeavors to mold me into her ideal of a country squire’s wife. It is a challenge—because I care little for outward appearances—but one she approaches with tact and persistence.

Alice Fairfax had known my husband since he was a lad. She worked as Mr. Rochester’s housekeeper for many years, but after the fire, he settled an annuity on her. How fortunate we were that when she heard of our marriage and Ned’s impending arrival, she had written inquiring if we might have need of her!

At first, however, our new roles caused friction.

Mrs. Fairfax was accustomed to running the master’s household. But now I—who had once been hired by her to serve as a governess for Mr. Rochester’s ward, Adèle—was her mistress. She would tell Cook to make lamb chops, and I would ask for veal. Cook would take advantage of our confusion and serve up leftover pigeon pie. Mrs. Fairfax demanded that we eat on good china and drink from crystal glasses. I would have been content with an old chipped plate and a tin
mug. She would suggest that we inventory all the bed linens to determine what needed mending, and I would think that could wait until the bluebells finished blooming. What did I know of fine living? I was, after all, little more than a grown-up orphan girl. The shift from governess to mistress was still fresh with me, and my new role proved an awkward fit. Mrs. Fairfax frequently reminded me, “One can’t converse with servants on terms of equality. One must keep them at due distance, for fear of losing one’s authority.”

Over my more than twenty years on this earth, I have found that most of the kindness I have enjoyed was delivered from the hands of servants, not masters! I think I can be excused if I parted company with our servants reluctantly.

But I knew the good widow was right. I looked to her for guidance in a multitude of matters, including the art of entertaining, although currently our situation was complicated by our cramped quarters here at Ferndean.

This house was built as a hunting lodge for the Rochester men. Gradually, nature had encroached upon the property, seeking to reclaim that which was rightfully hers. The location was both out-of-the-way and unhealthy. In addition, it had been long ignored, thus rendering the main building almost uninhabitable, with the exception of a few rooms that had been done up to accommodate my husband’s late father when he used to visit during hunting season. Therefore, we made do with limited space, living a cramped existence, especially considering our growing family.

So far, we had not had any visitors who wished to come and stay, but that might change. I have a handful of cousins. On my father’s side are my cousins Diana, Mary, and St. John Rivers, delightful people whose companionship I enjoy. On the Reed side, I have been less fortunate. No doubt they feel the same about me.

I am no great beauty, nor even passing pretty; indeed, I am possessed of a pale coloring and a small stature that renders me
quite ordinary. I have heard myself compared, not inaccurately, to a house sparrow. Certainly, like that ubiquitous bird, I tend to blend into my surroundings. Although my features are irregular, I compensate for that by keeping my person neat.

In addition, I have two talents I might reasonably claim. First, given a pencil and paper, I can reproduce anything I’ve seen with reasonable accuracy. Second, if people were to look beyond my unassuming façade and their own prejudices, they would notice my curious and analytical mind, a faculty that gives me a talent for quiet observation.

I also have another dependable virtue: my compassion for those in reduced circumstances. After all, I know what it feels like to be alone and without resources.

As I walked down the hallway, my heart caught in my throat. A tingle ran up my arm. Someone or something begged my attention.

I whirled around, expecting to face an intruder or the source of my unease.

I was alone, but I thought I had heard a voice, calling out to me.

I entered the parlor and found it empty, except for the lingering scent of pipe tobacco. I moved to the window, disturbing Pilot, my husband’s Newfoundland.

No one was there.

Sensing my alarm, Pilot rose from his bed and nudged me with his cold, wet nose.

“Do you see someone or something, old friend?” I traced the gray in his muzzle. “No, I imagine not.”

It could only be my imagination. Lately an unsettled feeling had gathered strength within me. At present, it was vague, but insistent. I shook my head to clear it. There had been no reason for alarm. None. Ned was in his crib. Hester was there with him. Leah, our maid of all work, and Cook clattered about in the kitchen. I could see Edward and Mr. Carter through the window from where I stood. Turning the other
way, I watched Mrs. Fairfax struggle with the front door, which was heavy to open and harder yet to close. The recent wet weather had warped its frame.