Emily's Ghost Read online

  Emily’s Ghost

  ALSO BY DENISE GIARDINA

  Saints and Villains

  The Unquiet Earth

  Storming Heaven

  Good King Harry

  Copyright © 2009 by Denise Giardina

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Giardina, Denise, 1951-

  Emily’s ghost: a novel of the Bronte sisters / Denise Giardina.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-393-07135-1

  I. Brontë, Emily, 1818–1848-Fiction. 2. Brontë family—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3557.I136E45 2009

  8I3’.54—dc22

  2009010722

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

  Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London WIT 3QT

  For Phyllis and my other walking companion

  I have read many Brontë biographies over the years. But I especially appreciated Juliet Barker’s The Brontës, and Barker’s willingness to meet with me and answer my questions. Thanks as well to the wonderful Brontë Parsonage Museum; to David Evans at Aitches Bed and Breakfast in Haworth for his hospitality and advice on walking the moors; to Michael Book and the West Virginia Raptor Rehabilitation Center; to Carolyn Sturgeon and the Brontë discussion group at the Kanawha County (West Virginia) Public Library, as well as the research librarians there; as always, to my agent, Jane Gelfman; to my editor, Jill Bialosky; to Colleen Anderson, Julie Pratt, Faith Holsaert, and Arla Ralston for writers’ group advice; to West Virginia State University; and in memory of Arline Thorn and John Richards.

  The lines from Antigone used in chapter 6 are translated by Don Taylor from Sophocles: The Theban Plays, Methuen Publishing Ltd., London, 1986; 1991 (reprinted by permission of Methuen Publishing Ltd.).

  No coward soul is mine

  No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere

  I see Heaven’s glories shine

  And Faith shines equal arming me from fear

  —EMILY JANE BRONTË

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  EPILOGUE

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  PROLOGUE

  Emily Brontë got on with her life as before, except she caught cold more easily. One moment in chains, coughing and struggling for breath, but going about her daily tasks as best she could. Then in an instant Emily would fly, as unfettered as Nero. Free.

  But she must warn her father. Dear Papa. She decided upon an afternoon when a light snow dusted the ground so that Haworth, poor, mean Haworth, looked like a sugar-powdered confection. Branwell, her brother, near gone with drink and laudanum, slumped upon the sofa with a book, though he dozed more often than he read. The chores were done, the sisters returned from their midday walk, and Charlotte and Anne had sat down to their notebooks. Emily picked up a sheaf of papers and went with her dog Keeper across the hall to her father’s study. Patrick laid down his Bible, which he had been perusing as he studied the lessons he would preach upon that Sunday. Keeper stretched out before the fire with a grunt and fell asleep.

  “Papa,” Emily said, “I want to speak to you about something very important, but difficult.”

  Patrick nodded and waited, his hands in front of him on the desk, his fingers touching. Out the window at his back, a pale drifting of snowflakes swirled around the church.

  “I don’t know how to say it except plainly. And I am sorry for the pain I must give you. But I believe I am dying.”

  Patrick sat still. His face was grave, but he did not seem surprised. Then he stood, took Emily’s hand, and led her to the small settee in the corner, where he drew her close.

  “I have thought you looked ill,” he said. “You are thinner than ever you were. But how can you be sure you are dying?”

  “I don’t mean I shall die tomorrow, or next week, or even next year,” Emily replied. “I get along, I do my chores and I take my walks. I write.” She hesitated and then met his eyes, the right one clear thanks to the removal of a cataract, and the left whose pupil remained milky. “But I am certain I have consumption. I am short of breath. I have coughing spells.”

  “But should not Mr. Wheelhouse—”

  “No,” Emily said. Then she added, “Now and then I spit up blood. A diagnosis from Mr. Wheelhouse could be no more clear than that.”

  Patrick looked at his daughter and was silent.

  “I tell you now because I want your promise. I want to live my life as normally as possible. I do not want to be coddled, or protected, as you know Charlotte and Anne will wish to do. I want my freedom. It is my most precious possession, Papa, and I don’t want to lose it.”

  Patrick bent his head suddenly, covered his face with one hand, and began to sob. Emily put her arm around him and leaned her cheek against the top of his head.

  “I want you to know something else, Papa. I have written a book. A novel.”

  “A—a novel?”

  “Yes.” Emily longed to tell him that his other daughters had written novels as well, but she dared not do so, not until they were ready to tell him themselves. “I call it Wuthering Heights. It is in London, Papa, ready to be published. I am nervous to have it so far away, as though I have sent a child off to school.” It was not a happy comparison, she realized as soon as the words were out of her mouth. “But I copied a few of my favorite scenes before I sent it off, and I have one of them here.” She indicated the sheaf of papers in her hand. “May I read it to you?”

  “Yes,” Patrick said. He wiped his eyes and sought to compose himself.

  Emily began to read the words of her character Catherine as she faced death. “The thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I’m tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it. Nelly’”—and here Emily stopped and explained, “Nelly is another of my characters, Papa”-“you think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength: you are sorry for me—very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for you.’”

  Emily stopped and folded the paper. She ducked her head in a fit of shyness.

  Tears welled in Patrick’s eyes. “Should death be so welcomed, child?”

  “Oh, not if one expects a long life, Papa. But if one knows death is imminent, then should it not? And think, Papa. Think who I shall see.” She took one of her father’s hands, the skin dry and parched, between hers.

  “But let us pray,” Patrick said, “that the time comes no sooner than it must.”

  “Oh, no,” Emily said. “Besides, I have another book to write.”

  Part One

  1

  At night, the door to other worlds opened wide. Emily waited as darkness fell, so ecstatic she shivered and wra
pped her arms tight about her chest. She was allowed her ablutions first because at age six, she was the youngest. Though the water in the basin was no longer frozen as it was in the morning, it was still so cold she blanched when she splashed her face. She finished quickly, assured that Miss Evans would excuse her for spilling a few drops on the floor. She was much more careful when Miss Andrews, who was not so kind, supervised the proceedings.

  Emily was first in bed, which was cold. At home, Aunt Branwell made certain a warming pan rested between the children’s sheets while they said their evening prayers. No one at the Clergy Daughters’ School tended to such niceties. Though Miss Evans might have, if she had been allowed. But the Reverend William Carus Wilson dictated what must be done, not Miss Evans. And he did not allow his charges, as he called them, to be coddled. His students must submit to the discipline of God Almighty in order to judge whether they were worthy to enter the Kingdom. Mr. Wilson’s certainty on this point increased in proportion to his absences.

  Emily thought nothing of the Reverend William Carus Wilson, for she had not met him. She did not even wonder about him, so he was not real.

  She waited in bed for her sisters. Charlotte arrived to share her bed, wrap her arms around Emily against the cold, twine her legs with her younger sister’s, and shiver. Emily breathed on Charlotte’s fingers, close to her face, to warm them. They drew the single blanket as close about them as they could. At last their older sisters Maria and Elizabeth clambered onto the cot beside them, likewise clinging to one another for affection and warmth.

  As Charlotte’s body warmed her, Emily’s mind began to wander. The rush candles on the tables cast their shadows upon the walls. The flames wavered, and light danced across the rough stone with each icy draft that blew through the cracks in the old latticed windows. Emily watched and was lost in the movement of light and shadow across glass and stone. When all the girls were settled, the candles were blown out. But often there was enough of a moon to keep the shadows alive.

  Then the ghosts came and told the stories.

  Emily did not consider their names. She simply knew them. You, and you, and you. You lived here so many hundreds of years ago. Before this school. In a cottage on this very spot. And you and you loved one another, and you (in her mind she pointed her finger) were jealous.

  The story repeated itself night after night until at last, at their precious half hour of recreation just after tea, she told Maria. It was snowing outside, and dark, so no one went out to play. The girls huddled in groups, glad for a time to talk and even dare to laugh in the schoolroom without adults chastising them. Miss Andrews would be off, in one of her usual foul tempers, to oversee the punishment of some poor unfortunate girl who would suffer most of all from losing this morsel of freedom. Tonight, that girl was their sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth had not been feeling well, she had stumbled over her lessons as she often did and been accused of not paying attention. She was slow, Emily thought, through no fault of her own. But Elizabeth sat in the cold hallway trying to recite French verbs while Miss Andrews stroked her long nose between thumb and forefinger.

  Emily once, after carefully observing this characteristic habit of Miss Andrews, had asked the teacher if her nose was not so long because she pulled upon it. Miss Andrews’s anger rendered her temporarily speechless but Miss Evans, overhearing, could not help but laugh aloud.

  “Our little Em!” Miss Evans declared. “She is an imp, is she not?” But at the look on the face of the other woman, she fell silent.

  Emily, unnoticed by anyone except Miss Andrews, suddenly narrowed her eyes as if to challenge the teacher. Miss Andrews slammed shut the book she had just opened and walked out of Emily’s hearing, careful to maintain her dignity. Then she turned and said, barely able to maintain her composure, “There is something about that child that is not quite right.”

  Miss Evans was startled. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I don’t care if she is a clergyman’s daughter.” Miss Andrews glared in the direction of the child, who had returned to her piece of embroidery. “There is something”—Miss Andrews lowered her voice—“something possessed about her.”

  Miss Evans was alarmed for the child’s sake, and said no more. She was careful then to divert the attention of Miss Andrews away from Emily as much as possible. But one could not change the fact that Emily, the youngest, was the nursery darling of the older girls. When Emily was shy, they thought it endearing; when she was overcome with an irrepressible mischievousness despite her reserve, they were delighted. And as Emily became more accustomed to the Clergy Daughters’ School, though she could not say she was happy, she became more outgoing. Especially when she had made her new friends.

  At last she told Maria about them. They sat upon the floor, cross-legged, cradling the small cups of coffee that were their treat for that time of day. Nothing more would be forthcoming save a small oatcake just before bedtime. But at least they were warm, the fire in the great hearth banked against the cold. Maria made the Clergy Daughters’ School bearable; since Emily could hardly remember her dead mother, Maria stood in her place. Though she missed Papa, she did not mind quite so much being away from home, for there she had missed Maria. Emily sipped her coffee and settled into her story. The white drifts outside kept calling her gaze toward the window, but she never interrupted her account.

  “This school was built where their cottages once stood, you see. And their graves are not far from here. But they come back to the cottages because they were happy. Or, some of them were.”

  “What are their names?” Maria asked.

  Emily knew it would have to come to that. She thought, whispering to her friends, What are you called? Then she gave a small nod and said, “Henry. And Mary. They loved one another. But Edward was jealous. And one day Henry and Edward were swimming in the pond and Henry began to drown. Edward didn’t go for help. He let Henry die.” Emily paused to consider the terrible scene, and then said, “Edward wanted to marry Mary when they grew up but she said, Never. And then one night when the moon was full, the devil came for Edward. He rode a black horse up and down past Edward’s cottage, and at last Edward was so frightened he ran outside and fell into the pond and drowned just like Henry. And the next day Mary found a rose blooming on Henry’s grave, though it was winter and snow was on the ground. She heard Henry’s voice saying he was waiting for her. Then she died holding the rose but she is happy because now she is with Henry.”

  Charlotte had come close and was also listening. She gave a shudder. “I don’t know if I like that story. I don’t like stories about the devil.”

  “But it’s like Papa’s Irish stories,” Maria said. “You know how the devil is always showing up.”

  “I don’t like those Irish stories,” Charlotte said, looking around at her friends. “Emily is the only one who likes Papa’s Irish stories.”

  “I do like them,” Emily agreed stubbornly. “Anyway, the people in my story aren’t Irish. They live here.”

  “They’re dead!” Charlotte pointed out. “They don’t live anywhere.” She shivered again, but more because she was secretly thrilled by the story, and also cold—her seat a bit further from the fireplace than her sisters’—than because she was frightened. Her best friend, Mary Taylor, overheard this last exclamation and came to see what had caused it.

  “Emily has told a story,” Charlotte said, generously, she thought. “But it is the sort of story you would expect from a child.”

  Several of the girls were gathering round. Charlotte was glad to see they were all her friends.

  Mary Taylor looked closely at Emily. “Your sister Charlotte already tells stories,” she said.

  “I know,” Emily replied. “She makes hers up.”

  Mary Taylor said with a bit more of a scoff than she intended, for she was at heart a kind girl, “Of course you do too.”

  Emily started to reply that her friends came to her at night and told her the stories. But she sensed no one should be told s
uch a thing. Not here, not at the Clergy Daughters’ School. She was very young, but she must learn to keep secrets that were hers, and hers alone.

  Still, to make up for what she feared was rudeness, Mary Taylor asked Emily to repeat her story. Emily complied, and as she began again, other girls joined them, listening intently. They sighed at the final denouement, and several applauded. Everyone agreed that not only was the story fine but that Emily—who also read “very prettily” as Miss Evans noted of her dramatic way with a text—told it with a great deal of presence. Even Charlotte was impressed, and gave her younger sister a pleased hug.

  Emily would have gone to bed that night happier than she had ever been at the Clergy Daughters’ School. Except that Maria, in the next bed, could not seem to stop coughing.

  The Reverend William Carus Wilson returned the next evening for a residence of several months. He had been away for some time, visiting various wealthy benefactors. Raising money for the school, Miss Andrews said admiringly. His lovely family would not accompany him this time, since they stayed on at the request of their latest host, a viscount. So Mr. Wilson would have more time to devote solely to his poor pupils.

  Miss Andrews tried to raise everyone’s spirits over the impending arrival. But Emily gathered that no one seemed to like the clergyman, or look forward to seeing him, except Miss Andrews. Even Miss Evans was coolly polite when she spoke of the visitation. She was also nervous.

  “My friends all say he is a terror,” Charlotte explained to Emily. “So make yourself even smaller than you are.”