Jane Steele (29 page)

For minutes which stretched before me like miles, I stood at that window, still seeing the ghostly afterimage of her slim back and gleaming hair the instant before I lost her for the second time. Carriages and buses clattered over the bill, no longer visible in the road, but that was for the best—I had never wished Clarke harm in all my days, and if seeing me grieved her, I renewed my vow never to seek her out.

An unexpected peace flooded the air around me.

Some tragedies bind us, as lies do; they are ropes braided of hurt and bitterness, and you cannot ever fully understand how pinioned you are until the ties are loosened.

Other tragedies free us, as Clarke’s confession freed me.

You cannot know what it means, reader, to have thought yourself despised for your unworthiness for a period of years—to have supposed your very nature poison, and your friend right to have thus abandoned you—and to learn thereafter that you were loved not too little but too well.

•   •   •

E
ast India House was a fortress; the building loomed over me like a conqueror, the lower two floors absurdly high-ceilinged, and the entrance guarded by six positively enormous Ionic columns. A frail wind whined in my ears, tugging the tailcoats of the men
dancing about with their arms full of papers in a chaotically choreographed tribute to wealth. Never had I set eyes on a place which so pungently reeked of power and money, and I hesitated, fearing the consequences should I provoke the lion in its den.

Better you than the residents of Highgate House,
I thought.
You have been Jane Stone, Jane Smith, and today you will be Jane Steele—the only woman suited to this task.

I adopted an aloof air and entered the front hall.

If the shareholders were already assured of the Company’s ruthless dominance by the exterior of East India House, the interior hammered the point home; everywhere I looked was marble and crystal and carvings and paintings of faraway lands. Finding Augustus P. Sack’s office would have been daunting, but a clerk with waxed grey moustaches escorted me, somehow exuding hauteur and deference simultaneously. A knock produced an instant reply of “Come in!” and the stranger presented me to Sack, making a prompt exit.

“Well, well, Miss Stone,” Augustus Sack purred, quitting his desk to drop a kiss above my outstretched hand. “I was very intrigued indeed by your letter.”

“Yes, I suppose you must have been.”

“Do sit down. Tea or a little wine, perhaps?”

“The latter, if you will join me.”

“Miss Stone, a beautiful woman need hardly ask that question—and may I state in addition that your present costume quite takes my breath away?”

It had not escaped my attention that Mr. Sack’s shrewd eyes had examined my attire, landing with a spark of lust upon the Punjabi diamonds.

“Governesses are expected to be such drab creatures. It is a life of terrible drudgery even when one is not living in fear of one’s employer, Mr. Sack.”

“Frightened you, did they, the scoundrels?” Mr. Sack commiserated. “Happily, you are safely under the care of John Company now, Miss Stone.”

Mr. Sack poured claret from a decanter on a carved mahogany sideboard; he was just as I remembered him, doughy and pink faced, with gleaming cheeks and fat fingers. Now I saw that his rich attire—a maroon coat on this occasion, with a yellow silk necktie—matched his office, for everywhere I looked were signs of needless expense. From ivory cigar box to silver-chased gasogene, Company executives seemed to display wealth like peacocks spreading their plumage.

He ushered me into a chair, equipped us with wine, and perched on the front of his desk. “First, Miss Stone, let me offer my solemn oath that you may tell me anything in complete confidence—I gather that you departed Highgate House in great anxiety, which I confess does not surprise me, considering the dark history of Thornfield and his shadow, Singh. If we are to be friends, we must trust each other.”

So I am already promised immunity for stealing the trunk,
I thought, delighted.

“I am yours to command, Mr. Sack, so harrowed was I by my recent experiences.”

The sympathetic frown he manufactured was revolting, so sharply did his eyes cut from my necklace to my face and back again. “We speak of desperate men, Miss Stone. Please—tell me everything.”

I did not tell him everything, and several of the things I told him were bold-faced lies.

Tremulously, I informed Mr. Sack that after the knives had driven him away at breakfast, I had feared for my life. However, I had determined to wait at least until I was given my first quarterly wages, having no other means of returning to London. In the meanwhile, I had launched a secret investigation of the house’s occupants
and learnt what Mr. Sack had been doing visiting Highgate House thanks to covert eavesdropping (not untrue); thus had I heard the story of the trunk and its contents.

“The tale sounded to me quite preposterous, but I continued in my quest to discover all I could,” I informed him shyly. “There seemed no other choice if I wished to escape their clutches.”

“None at all, none in the
world
, Miss Stone—you did quite right,” the Company diplomat soothed. “Please go on.”

Leaving out the pieces of the story which reflected badly on Sack was simplicity itself. I knew my employer had robbed David Lavell and his wife, Karman Kaur, but said nothing of Sahjara’s kidnap; I knew John Clements and Jack Ghosh were both dead, but implied Mr. Thornfield or Mr. Singh were to blame. The Company man’s ruddy cheeks creased in sympathy whilst his stare bored into me with all the gentility of a bullet.

“This Jack Ghosh person’s death was the final straw,” I lamented. “Oh, Mr. Sack, it was so horrid—their claims it was an
accident
, the blood on the floor. I redoubled my search for the trunk, and . . .” I allowed myself to blush.

“And enterprising woman that you are, you found it, and you took it in order to escape the clutches of these fiends,” he said softly.

Pretending a coquettish version of guilt, I said nothing.

“The trunk was hid amongst Mr. Sardar Singh’s things, I imagine?”

Dumbfounded, I blinked at him.

“Why do you say so, Mr. Sack?”

“Because it’s that posturing heathen who taunted me with word of it upon my arrival back in England. This was before the loss of John Clements, of course—wretched business, that, and I don’t know that this Inspector Quillfeather will ever get to the bottom of it, more’s the pity. I thought Thornfield to blame at first, and told the Director so, but now I have reached another conclusion.”

These assertions sounded nonsensical—that either man would ever stoop to poisoning anyone (as I had once done) was ludicrous, I thought, and the notion that Sardar Singh had made any communication to Augustus P. Sack whatsoever beggared belief.

“I don’t understand . . . Mr. Singh seemed so contemptuous of you,” I faltered. “You claim he was a correspondent?”

“He did hate me, the swaggering savage, and wished me to live knowing his crimes would go unpunished. See for yourself.”

Going behind his desk, Mr. Sack produced a folded letter. This he passed to me, and upon opening it, it was all I could do not to recoil in horror. Many a time had I watched Mr. Singh as he wrote, and many a time posted letters for him; these were his exact characters, from angular downstrokes to oddly spiked capitals. It read:

Dear Mr. Sack,

As little as I desire ever to see your face again, I can no longer live without informing you that I picture it often upon your making the discovery that you have been thoroughly bested. All subterfuge is futile at this point: we do indeed have the trunk, and should you ever attempt to recover it again, know that I will not hesitate to destroy you utterly.

Your Company has raped my entire culture in systematic fashion; what is in my possession will remain there, and any attempt by you to steal it will result in your bloody death. Highgate House is a fortress, and I its guardian. Lacking any other avenues by which to make you suffer for your arrogance, I send this letter; think upon its contents often, Mr. Sack, for the treasure you seek will never fall into your hands the way our great Empire did.

Charles knows nothing of this and would not believe your lying tongue should you attempt to tell him—it is partly for his sake that I write you, indeed, for you have brought a good man to
the brink of mental ruin. Live in discomfort, Mr. Sack, knowing that once, at least, one of the pure ones snatched a bone away from an English cur.

Your enemy, and your better,

Mr. Sardar Singh

My head spun; for it sounded like him, not the usual mellow-tongued Mr. Singh but the warrior whose voice abraded my ears that day in the hall, when he stood in the snow-swept entrance hall and called the Company rapists and the Sikh royals their pimps.

Meanwhile, my entire plan was ruined; I had intended to draw any imminent fire away from Highgate House by proving that the trunk existed and offering it to him myself. The glad news which was to have distracted Sack, bought me time whilst I thought of the perfect way to kill him, was not news after all.

It was not news because apparently Mr. Singh had been lying to us.

“You see how they blame me for their woes.” Mr. Sack sighed. “I only wished to see justice done regarding the trunk’s recovery, you understand—David Lavell was a Company stalwart, and he would have wanted this fortune to be held in trust by the Company for Sahjara when she comes of age. Had Mr. Singh merely hated me as any guilty party hates the law, he may not have been angry enough to risk such a foolish correspondence; but all is tangled in his mind with Charles Thornfield’s subsequent madness, you see, and the pair are quite devoted to each other. It is easier for Singh to blame me for everything than to consider that the fault lies squarely upon their shoulders.”

“Madness?” I echoed, stricken. I quickly corrected myself. “Do you mean to say I was living under the authority of a . . . a lunatic?”

“Oh, but then you don’t know what happened to Charles Thornfield at the Battle of Sobraon,” Mr. Sack crooned. “Clements did, and so do I, you see. We were there.”

The answer was evasive—I should have liked something clearer; but Mrs. Fairfax either could not, or would not, give me more explicit information of the origin and nature of Mr. Rochester’s trials. She averred that they were a mystery to herself, and that what she knew was chiefly from conjecture. It was evident, indeed, that she wished me to drop the subject; which I did accordingly.

R
eader, I did not drop the subject; and I confess that, greatly as the letter from Mr. Singh had disturbed me, all thought of him was crowded out at the prospect of Charles Thornfield’s bloody biography being revealed at last.

I hardly needed to feign my agitation. “Won’t you please explain? It would soothe my conscience so to know that I am right in coming to you.”

“Let there be no doubt whatsoever about
that
, Miss Stone!” Mr. Sack exclaimed. “David Lavell was a friend, and his treatment at the hands of these reprobates—shocking, simply shocking.”

I recalled Mr. Thornfield’s account of the same circumstances and gritted my teeth into what I hoped was an encouraging smile.

Sack wasn’t his superior, and anyway he was winning a fortune off Lavell at poker—Karman’s fortune. Lavell couldn’t sink low enough for Sack’s taste.

“Oh, do make all clear, I beg—he unnerved me, but I never thought him mad.”

Mr. Sack puffed air into his rosy cheeks; he made a show of considering, checking his watch against the richly gilded clock, whilst I channelled my real anxiety into breathless anticipation. Thankfully, I knew I had him, for he was the breed of braggart who enjoys imparting salacious information to delicate-seeming females.

“There really is no putting off a lovely young lady when she makes a fair request of me,” he concluded with a sudden air of gallantry.

“Only you can ease my mind, Mr. Sack.”

“In that flattering assessment you are correct, Miss Stone,” he simpered, and I could see the half-humble, half-preening attitude he took with foreign dignitaries and their wives. “Though I must confess part of my knowledge comes secondhand—my former colleague John Clements helped to nurse Charles Thornfield and was thus the audience to his most ghastly ravings. I am of such a tenderhearted nature myself that I can hardly bear to see anyone suffer, and yet . . . sometimes, I think God visits punishments upon the living as well as the dead, and Charles Thornfield was greatly culpable regarding his own disastrous circumstances.”

At least fractionally, this was true, for Mr. Thornfield had told me himself—an infected slash across the back of his shoulder, a long convalescence spent in Clements’s company.

“Any man who would rob his closest friend’s sister has much to answer for,” I agreed.

“Aye, there’s the crux of it!” Mr. Sack’s ability to swagger whilst stationary cannot be exaggerated. “Between you and me, Miss Stone, Charles Thornfield was desperately in love with Sardar Singh’s sister, Karman Kaur. I shock you, I see—forgive me. Jealousy of her husband, David Lavell, caused him to take the crudest measures, and ones which led, as crude measures so often do, to tragedy.”

I folded my hands primly. “I gathered that Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh preferred to rob their own loved ones than allow them to live as they pleased.”

“Precisely so, Miss Stone.” Mr. Sack ran a fat finger over the lip of his wineglass, reflecting. “Lavell was a dear friend as well as a colleague—a handsome devil with an adventurer’s appetites, and his wife adored him. Oh, we sowed a few wild oats in the Punjab, but you must understand, reputations abroad
shatter
if a gentleman cannot keep pace with the local elite! The Director knows this to be true. What are a few card games, a few harmless flirtations, when failure to carouse with the natives leads to their instant censure?”

Nodding, I twisted my lips into a gracious frown.

“Thornfield couldn’t stomach it despite being born and bred there,” Mr. Sack huffed. “Pitiful really, how he doted on Karman Kaur when she would have none of him. She was a goddess, Miss Stone, a warrior queen, and all hell broke loose when those miscreants stole what was hers to share with her husband as she pleased. What, allow him to default on his gambling losses? What self-respecting woman would dream of such a thing?”

“Strange that a woman so loyal to the Khalsa should marry an Englishman.”

“Not at all! She had grown up with the Thornfields, and Lavell had nothing but praise for the Sikhs—a political of the highest order, he was, and the first man to say that the East India Company didn’t stand a chance against the Khalsa on their own ground. These bastards made their own artillery, you understand, based on English designs, and when you’ve your own foundries, you’re your own master. All the better if your army is a hundred thousand strong! As I recall, the line Lavell took was that once the Khalsa had trounced John Company, the world’s greatest armies would join forces and rule the territories from Calcutta to St. Petersburg. He was very popular in Lahore, and not just with Karman Kaur.”

I swallowed bitter disgust, for this confirmed all my friends had told me—Company spies flattering the Sikhs whilst infiltrating their empire, Sikhs defying the Company whilst their leaders betrayed them.

Small wonder that Sardar Singh longed for vengeance.

“Anyhow, Karman wouldn’t have cared a fig about Lavell’s politics. It was, how shall I put this, a
love
match, Miss Stone,” Mr. Sack added in a greasy tenor. “Screaming fights, tender reconciliations—they burnt the candle at both ends.”

“What did she say when the theft was discovered?”

“Now mind, we never learnt
who
pilfered her treasure until I discovered Sahjara’s trunk,” Mr. Sack boasted with a hand over his breast. “But we all knew what happened after it went missing—Karman Kaur ordered a Khalsa cavalry uniform altered to fit her, sharpened her
tulwar
, saddled her best horse, and joined the army to seek a new fortune for herself and Lavell.”

I forced myself to relax clenched fists.

“She did not consult anyone over this step, I take it.”

“Not her!” He chuckled. “Magnificent, she was, Miss Stone, a stunner of the first water. So she had lost a tidy sum—why whinge when the Khalsa were poised to annihilate John Company in the name of the Guru? Lavell was called to Amritsar to negotiate, and Karman was off like a shot to Ferozepore after sending word to her brother to look after his niece. By the time Sardar Singh and Charles Thornfield discovered her plan, she had already joined a Sikh encampment, to the delight of all the men she met there. She distinguished herself in action at Ferozepore as well as at Aliwal and Sobraon.”

“The Khalsa did not win the Battle of Sobraon.”

“No, they were slaughtered,” Mr. Sack returned cheerily.

He moved to refill our wine; by the time he had passed the glass back to me, my spine tingled with horror. It did not matter that
Karman Kaur may well have joined the ranks of the Khalsa anyhow; it did not matter that Mr. Singh did not think Mr. Thornfield a murderer. Mr. Thornfield saw every step leading to her decision like paces towards a gallows, saw the fateful instant when the loss of her treasure propelled her into a harrowing war, and he thought himself wholly responsible. It did not matter that I knew any woman would be lucky to be loved by him—would, as I had put it, be the happiest woman in the world.

The last one wasn’t,
he had told me, for he had set her death in motion.

“The Battle of Sobraon was butchery at its most primitive,” the political continued almost gleefully. “It had been pouring rain for days, and the Sutlej River was as bloated as a pagan prince. The Khalsa had been pummelling our Bombay brigades with heavy artillery for hours when the order came to return the bombardment. When that failed, the Bengali troops as well as the King’s Light Dragoons launched counterattacks which the Khalsa repelled like true barbarians—hacking down the wounded, finishing the dying as if they were cattle in an abattoir. After confronting them from the west and the south and the east, the Sikh line began to collapse, which is when the true carnage began.”

“It sounds sufficiently apocalyptic already, Mr. Sack.”

Mr. Sack adopted an introspective look. “All those rains, Miss Stone—the surging of the Sutlej’s waters, the vulnerability of their position. One pontoon bridge linked the Khalsa back to the Punjab. Think about it—a single thread of boats leading to the only possible escape after the fords had flooded. The Company may have had . . . friends, let us say, on the Sikh side, friends who understood the value of this bridge. Or they may not, and God Himself may have weakened the moorings linking the line of ships—who can say for certain?”

My stomach turned over.

“Can
you
, Mr. Sack?”

“I, a mere diplomat? You compliment me extremely, Miss Stone.”

“Go on,” I urged.

“The bridge of boats collapsed and took the Khalsa with it,” he mused. “It was never a retreat, for they fought madly every second . . . but it was a reckoning. They had murdered our wounded, and the generals thought it best that an example be made.”

“What sort of example?”

Augustus Sack lifted his wineglass, swirling the liquid within as a gentle smile touched his lips. “I did not arrive until the Khalsa had been conquered, but this was the colour of the Sutlej when I saw it after the rout. We fired every weapon we had into that river. Ten thousand Khalsa men and one woman died that day, either drowned or shot whilst in the act of drowning.”

“That’s horrifying,” I breathed because I could not help myself.

“All the more so for Thornfield.” Mr. Sack sipped his vintage, clearly unperturbed by its shade. “The woman I refer to is Karman Kaur. Thornfield was in the thick of it and, in his later delirium, it became clear to my man Clements that upon spying Karman in the watery massacre, Thornfield tried to save her. The fool got sliced in the back for his trouble. He nearly drowned in blood and gore before he made it to Karman on a riverbank covered in corpses, but she was so full of holes that only meat remained of her. Head half blown off, body riddled with grapeshot. Pity. She was remarkable. He spent over twenty hours on that beach with her remains amidst the carnage, unable to move from blood loss. Oh. Have I delivered too graphic an account for your taste, Miss Stone? My apologies.”

In truth, I did feel faint—with rage, with grief. “Blood has always upset me, and imagining . . .”

“Here, a bit more claret will restore you.”

Crimson liquid splashed before me. “Mr. Thornfield was delirious afterwards, you say?”

“He had suffered a large wound which went untreated for a full
day after taking a literal bloodbath, so that is hardly surprising.” My eyes shot up to the political as I realised Augustus Sack was actually enjoying my distress. “Thornfield was on the brink of death for a fortnight. I was busy planning terms of the treaty with the Director, but Clements was with him for much of it. The illness was an ugly one, Miss Stone. Fever visions, night terrors—often you could hear his screams, before Clements had managed to calm him.”

If Mr. Thornfield had been the one to relate the story, I should not have been able to bear it; seeing his face, his attempts at a wry brow, his guilt like a gouge through his breast, his natural stoicism—all should have conspired to tear me in two. Learning the details from an utter villain, however, one I knew had ordered a child kidnapped and starved, that was a simple matter of endurance. Mr. Sack could smirk knowingly all afternoon, relate any repulsive tragedy which had befallen Mr. Thornfield, and I could sit there, blithely picturing my knife in his guts.

“Tragic, no doubt, and yet I cannot fully sympathise when the man so unnerves me,” I owned, downing half the claret. “Thank you. Mr. Sack, I feel much restored.”

I had puzzled him, for he beamed in approval whilst his eyes narrowed to cruel slits. “Forgive me—I should never dream of upsetting a lady of your myriad charms intentionally. Where was I?”

“Mr. Thornfield was ill, but . . . I have heard nothing to indicate he was mad?”

“Ah, yes!” The portly diplomat settled himself back in his chair. “I first knew Charles Thornfield as a strapping young medico with a head of hair so black it was nearly as blue as his eyes. After the battle, he was finally brought back to our camp by a Bengali company, and the wretch was so covered in dried gore that an orderly shaved his head. When he could walk again, and speak a little, after three weeks’ time, the new growth was white as goose down. The entire camp was unsettled by it—they thought him possessed by a devil.
And perhaps it was something to do with the circumstances in which he found his lady love, but he developed the most extraordinary aversion to touch thereafter. Clements clapped Thornfield by the bare arm one afternoon whilst he was shaving and nearly got a razor in his eye. He began wearing gloves soon thereafter, even when the Director demanded his services in the second Sikh conflict. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a man performing surgeries whilst wearing gloves, Miss Stone? Madder than a full March moon, and he has never fully recovered.”

“Clearly not,” I said, half smiling. “Not if he couldn’t manage to puzzle out that his closest friend kept the trunk under his nose all that while.”

“You most eloquently return us to the topic at hand, Miss Stone.” Mr. Sack tapped all ten fingers of his hands together. “I confess to having been testing you—I know it was early days for you at Highgate House when I was present, but nevertheless I could not help but wonder whether a connection formed between you and Charles Thornfield. How foolish would I have been to take into my confidence a confederate of his, sent to sound me out? But now I see that you, like him, are merely a thief.”

His words, warm at the outset, deepened to a sickly-sweet growl.

I glanced at the time and then at the window, where scattered snowflakes drifted to their sooty demise. No one, I realised, knew I was here save Sack and the grey-moustached clerk who had shown me in; suddenly I wanted someone else present, anyone else.

Draining my wine, I shrugged. “I am not accustomed to being called names, Mr. Sack, but you can see my dress and the necklace for yourself, so I can hardly contradict you. Anyhow, I have already made my full confession. What do you want from me?”