Fifteen Wild Decembers (eBook)

CHAPTER 1
1824

Charlotte was crouched beside my bed in her nightgown, shaking me out of sleep.
‘Tell Papa you want to go home,’ she hissed, fingers digging into my arm. ‘All of us. Before he leaves tomorrow.’

‘What?’ I sat up, blinking in the darkness. It seemed only minutes ago that I’d watched a mistress moving down the dormitory, extinguishing rushlights and calling for silence. Quite sure that I wouldn’t be able to sleep, I’d fallen almost immediately into a deep, dream-filled slumber. Now it was taking me a moment to resurface.

‘Hush!’ said Charlotte, scrabbling closer on her bare feet like a little monkey. ‘We have to get out of here.’

‘But I’ve only just arrived,’ I said.

Only that morning, I’d said goodbye to Branwell who didn’t need to go to school because Papa was teaching him at home, to Tom kitten and Snowflake and to the chickens in the yard and the blackbirds and house sparrows. Aunt had come to the door to see us off, Anne clutching at her skirts and crying a little because she was too young to come with me. I kissed them both, then held on to Papa’s hand as we set off for the walk to Keighley, from where we were to join the Leeds to Kendal coach. I did my best not to get distracted by a little brown nuthatch searching for grubs on the trunk of an oak, to keep up as Papa’s long legs cut through the purple moor grass. At midday our coach had stopped at an inn, where dinner was followed by an unexpected wait because of some problem with the change of horses. After that I fell asleep in my corner of the carriage, and when I woke, my limbs were stiff and Papa was dozing, with his chin dropped and his scarf pulled up high to save his chest from the cold. The houses along the roadside looked different now, low to the ground and built from butter-coloured stone. Deep-set windows squinted at me and leaves lay in drifts at the roadside instead of being whipped away by the east wind. I saw neat fields and copses, mild-faced sheep on a hillside. Then the land began to hunch and fall away again, as if something was simmering beneath the surface. Lone trees dotted the fields, branches like black skeletons. I slept a little more. When I woke, the landscape had changed again. Rocks pushed through the earth’s pelt, fell in slate-like layers down steep hillsides. We crossed a stream dashing over stones. Dark water, white foam. I saw a snow-topped mountain in the distance, one side steep, the other falling away more gently.

‘Ingleborough,’ said the elderly lady who had been sitting opposite me since we left the inn. I’d noticed her earlier smiling at my questions. She pointed at the horizon. The mountain was immense, a grey god dwarfing the fields beneath, scree sliding like rubble down its slopes. When I screwed up my eyes, I could see rocky outcrops and sheer, shadowy crags. Beneath the mountain’s highest point, two horizontal ridges cut through the thin veil of snow. Sunlight and shadows flickered across the lower slopes, clouds rolled over the summit. A whole world in motion! I wanted the coach to set me down right there so that I could feel the earth spinning beneath my feet.

It was dusk by the time we arrived at Cowan Bridge. As Papa lifted me down from the coach, I heard wind rushing through trees, sensed land rising somewhere in the distance. A doorway opened in a stone wall by the roadside and a servant ushered us inside. We followed her past a row of cottages edging a courtyard. I saw squares of dark earth, the remains of summer blooms, trimmed neatly back. Ahead of us, windows glowed at ground level. There was a low hum of noise. The servant led us along a dimly lit corridor to a small room with mahogany furniture and a bright fire.

Governess, wrote the headmistress in the final column of the school register. I’d already watched her enter my name, age, and today’s date in the previous columns. Her hand was firm and neat, the letters looping steadily across the page, but I liked the way the ink shone wetly, looking like it might spill over in any direction. I cared only for what was immediate or magical, but I knew what a governess was and felt a kind of pride that the word was now connected to me by that column in the register. I’d come to school to learn how to earn a living, imagined the work of a governess to be irksome but insignificant, like helping the village children at Sunday School, that my real life would be unaffected. Miss Evans blotted her work and there, in the rows above this new entry, I found my sisters: Maria Brontë, age 10, Elizabeth Brontë, age 9, Charlotte Brontë, age 8, the ink already slightly faded, the entries dated earlier in the year.

‘Charlotte is finding her feet now,’ said Miss Evans, blotting the page again though it didn’t need it, and then serving tea from the tray that a maid had brought in. The headmistress’s hair was arranged plainly on either side of a precise parting. It looked so soft that I would have liked to reach out and touch it, the curtains too, the thick purple velvet held back with tasselled swags. I sat upright on a stool by the fire, trying to stay awake, not to drop the cup she’d passed to me, which was translucent in the firelight, its gold rim shining. A design of mint-green foliage twined from the base of the cup and curled around a handle so delicate I feared it would snap beneath my fingers. ‘And Elizabeth is a sensible girl. Very good with the younger ones.’ Next to Elizabeth’s name in the register, I’d seen the word Housekeeper instead of governess. Miss Evans leaned towards Papa as if she wished to tell him a secret. ‘Maria’s abilities are exceptional though, Reverend Brontë, well beyond her years.’

Papa’s eyes sparkled in the dim light. He’d always taught us that pride was a sin, so must try to hide it now. ‘My dear, late wife must take the credit for that.’

Miss Evans nodded as though she’d known Mamma herself. ‘Her French is coming on at an extraordinary rate for a girl of ten.’ Her eyes were very dark, I noticed, almost black, and when she blinked, she held her eyelids shut for longer than other people, so that she appeared to be thinking deliberate and clever thoughts. ‘We do all we can to encourage her.’ A sudden smile broke the surface as she turned to me. ‘Now Emily, you look exhausted. A quick hello to your sisters and then to bed.’

It was the first time I’d slept in a dormitory, in a bed of my own. I’d expected to share with Charlotte, as I did at home, but she was paired with a girl of her own age, in a bed halfway down the long room, and Maria and Elizabeth were even further away, at the far end of the dormitory. Through the high window opposite me, I could see the pearly moon, a scattering of bright stars. I pulled the thin blanket around me and thought of the mountain I’d seen from the coach that morning. It too would be surrounded by darkness, but it would not be afraid.

‘Hush!’ said Charlotte again, placing her fingers on my lips now. She glanced down the room at the sleeping humps in each bed. ‘This is a terrible place, Emily! Papa won’t make us stay, not when he knows how we’re suffering.’

‘We are?’

‘The cook is disgustingly dirty and mean and half-starves us. And the big girls steal what little food we do have, and Miss Andrews does nothing to stop them.’

‘Who is Miss Andrews?’ I asked, wondering in my sleepy state if I’d got the headmistress’s name wrong; thinking too of the Madeira cake I’d eaten in her study earlier in the evening, which was almost as good as the one Nancy Garrs made at home.

‘The cruellest woman in the world.’ Charlotte’s small breath was hot against my ear. ‘She hates Maria most of all because she is so clever. And Reverend Carus Wilson, who is the governor, is a tyrant who detests children and says we are all going to hell. We’re only allowed to write home once a quarter, so I haven’t been able to tell Papa how awful everything is till now.’

As always, I had plenty of questions, but my eyelids were heavy. It was an enormous effort to keep them open. To cheer her up I said, ‘He won’t be cross for long,’

She shook her head impatiently. ‘Nobody takes any notice of me. You have to speak to him, before he leaves tomorrow.’ There was the sound of footsteps somewhere nearby. I saw the flicker of a lamp moving in the corridor outside. ‘It’s life or death!’ said Charlotte, digging her fingers into my arm. ‘I mean it.’

After breakfast—a thin porridge which, despite Charlotte’s warning, no-one tried to steal from me—a bell rang. I followed everyone to the schoolroom and then stood and watched as girls of all ages hurried to fetch books and slates from a set of shelves to one side of the schoolroom. Without instruction or discussion, they found their seats and then bent their heads over their work, each of them appearing to know exactly what to do. They reminded me of the ants in the garden at home, emerging from their dusty nests on summer mornings with a sense of purpose. I liked to sit on the steps and watch as they moved the rubble of their lives from one spot to another, all part of some mysterious scheme.

‘You’ll join the youngest class with Margaret Cookson and Jane Sykes,’ said the teacher who’d rung the bell. She was younger than the headmistress, had a coronet of fair hair pinned around her head. I followed her to a table near a stove at the very back of the room, where two girls of my age or thereabouts...