Jane Slayre (32 page)

He would try to make my children friendly to the little beggar. The darlings could not bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last days, he had it brought continually to his bedside. But an hour before he died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature."

"I'm sure you did the best you could," I allowed her by way of forgiveness. It didn't hurt me any to comfort her now.

"John does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it. John is like me and like my brothers--he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting me with letters for money. I have no more money to give him. We are getting poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part of the house or let it off. I can never submit to do that--yet how are we to get on? Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully and always loses--poor boy! He drinks the blood of common rabble! John is sunk and degraded--his look is frightful--I feel ashamed for him when I see him." She burst into noisy tears.

Bessie persuaded her to take a sedative draught. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed and sank into a doze. I then left her.

More than ten days elapsed before I had any further conversation with her. She continued either delirious or lethargic. She took but little nourishment from what Eliza would provide.

I was surprised to learn that Eliza abhorred hunting or killing of any sort. She recognised its necessity to keep her alive, but allowed herself only meager portions. She trapped small forest animals in cages, as Jimmy the footman had showed her, then she killed them as humanely as possible and drained the blood out into cups. Georgiana, of course, hunted alone, and she had perhaps acquired her mother's skill at it. She was well fed, by the look of her, and she preferred not to share.

Eliza would sit half the night sewing, reading, or writing and scarcely utter a word either to me or to her sister. Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary by the hour and take no notice of

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me. But I had brought my drawing materials, and they served me for both occupation and amusement.

One night, for I had taken to following their schedule while I visited, I fell to sketching a face. What sort of a face it was to be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a square jaw. I smiled at it when I finished, and I felt a little less lonely even having him on paper to observe.

"Is that a portrait of someone you know?" asked Eliza, who had approached me unnoticed.

I responded that it was merely a study and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Georgiana also advanced to look. They both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their portraits, and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline. This put Georgiana at once into good humour. She proposed a walk on the grounds. I agreed, as walking at night was no longer such a challenge to me.

Before we had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential conversation. She had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter she had spent in London two seasons ago--of the admiration she had there excited--the attention she had received. I even got hints of the titled conquest she had made, before she took off after a deer and I went back to the house alone.

In the night, these hints were enlarged on. She liked to speak of her romantic conquests, which were more numerous than I'd imagined considering she had such a child's face. Strangely, she never once brought up her mother's illness, or her brother's death, or the gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after dissipations to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her mother's sickroom, and no more.

Eliza still spoke little. Three times a night she studied a little book, which I found, on inspection, was a Common Prayer Book. She had found others of her kind, those who lived as she did, with

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an abhorrence of killing and a preference to feed their cravings as humanely as possible. I marvelled that she had found two such others in her own neighbourhood. Mostly, she seemed to want no company and little conversation. I believed she was happy in her way.

She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than usual, that John's conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had profoundly afflicted her. Her own fortune she had taken care to secure, and she planned to use it to devote to a vampyre church in Italy, a place where those of her kind could go to seek forgiveness and learn new ways to live and deal with their affliction while still being answerable to God. I wished her well with her endeavour.

On a wet and windy night, Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa over the perusal of a novel. Eliza was gone to attend a saint's-day service with her church group, for in matters of religion she was a rigid formalist. I went upstairs to see how the woman fared who lay there almost unheeded. The very servants paid her but an intermittent attention. The hired nurse, being little looked after and entirely too human, would slip out of the room whenever she could. Abbot, I'd learned, had fallen down the stairs when carrying laundry, hit her head, knocked it loose, and was no more, a stunning loss for Aunt Reed. Bessie was faithful, the dear, but she had her own family to mind and could only occasionally come to the hall.

I found the sickroom unwatched, as I had expected. The patient lay still and seemingly lethargic. The fire was dying in the grate. I renewed the fuel, rearranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now gaze on me, and then I moved to the window.

"Who is that?" I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for nights. Was she reviving? I went up to her.

"It is I, Aunt Reed."

"Who--I? You are quite a stranger to me--where is Bessie?"

"She is at the lodge, Aunt."

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"Aunt. Who calls me aunt? Why, you are like Jane Slayre!"

"I am." I explained how Bessie had sent for me.

"Is the nurse here? Or is there no one in the room but you?"

I assured her we were alone.

"Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own child."

"It is forgiven, Aunt. I have been quite happy with the life I have made."

"The other--" She stopped. She made an effort to alter her position, but failed. Her face changed. "Go to my dressing case, open it, and take out a letter you will see there."

I obeyed her directions and read the letter.

It was short and contained an inquiry into my health and whereabouts. The writer, my father's brother, desired to take over as my guardian with the purpose of not only overseeing my care and education, but to train me in the ways of the family, the Slayre ways passed from generation to generation. As he was unmarried and had no heirs, he was eager to adopt me and bequeath his fortune to me upon his death. It was signed, John Slayre, Madeira, and dated three years back.

"Why did I never hear of this?" I asked.

"Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly denied ever to lend a hand in lifting you to prosperity. I told him you were dead. I could not abide your family vocation at the time. Slayers? The world did not need more of such cruelty in the name of justice. Justice? Bah! And I could not bear to think of you becoming one of them. I remembered the time, Jane, that you showed me the stake you had carved, all on your own, with no formal training or instruction. It is as your uncle always said: slaying is in your blood. It would be your destiny one way or another. And now I see the mercy in what you do, in what your uncle has done. I understand now that there is grace in it. There is beauty. There is goodness. I pray you, please, show me mercy."

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"Mercy, Aunt? But I have forgiven you."

"Ah, no, dear. No, no. I am asking--nay, begging--you to do for me what your uncle did for my husband, your uncle Reed."

"What?"

"A stake! A stake through the heart. I cannot bear more than I have borne, Jane. I cannot live with so much death, so much blood and loss, on my conscience. My children have grown away from me. My John is--" She began to bawl. "Oh, my dear John. I am remorseful, Jane. I repent and I am ready to die. I wish to go to heaven, or to see if I can try. Do you believe I can get there, Jane? That God will make a place for me?"

I remembered my uncle's ghostly words. He had told me that only in death, following true repentance, could a vampyre be reunited with its soul to find the way to heaven. I could end my aunt's earthly torture. I had come armed with stakes and would not have been caught around Gateshead without several. I had one up my sleeve and two in my pocket even now.

But to do as she asked? She was my family, after all, as much as I had denied her in the past. "I don't know, Aunt Reed. Are you sure you are repentant?"

"I am." She shook her head and cried. "You'll never know the pain I suffer for my actions. How I blame myself for taking innocent lives, and for allowing my John to run astray, for cheating you of your uncle Slayre."

She seemed so earnest, so desperate. I felt it my duty to oblige.

"I suppose we should say a little prayer?" I offered.

"Pray for me once I am gone. The nurse could be back any minute. My daughters might come in and try to stop you. I don't want you to be stopped, Jane. I have written letters, in that same drawer where you got that one, to each of my daughters to explain. Now, I am ready. Send me on my journey, Jane, as only you can do."

She closed her eyes and stretched out, quite like a corpse, just awaiting my blow. I slid the stake out of my sleeve and studied her for some seconds. It was a mercy, she said. The same mercy my

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uncle Reed had begged of my father's brother, John, to spare him, to take his body and return his soul.

"God help me," I whispered as I held the stake in two hands, raised it over my head, and drove it home straight through Aunt Reed.

Though I had slain enough vampyres to know what to expect, I somehow thought she would cry, whimper, or at least jump from the shock. To change her mind at the last second and blame me for taking her life. To sit up, eyes gaping, and say, "What have you done, you evil child!" But she said nothing. She was simply gone, from body to dust. Aside from the top of her night rail sticking out, I couldn't even tell where she had been under the blankets. How would I explain it?

The letters, I remembered. I would bring the letters to Eliza and Georgiana and simply hope that they would understand. Be at God's peace, I bid my aunt before I left the room.

I almost wished Abbot had been around after all these years. Nothing like a little zombie beheading to take the edge off staking one's aunt.

CHAPTER 26

A MONTH ELAPSED BEFORE I quitted Gateshead. How I missed Thornfield, my home! Absence had not helped remove Mr. Rochester from my heart, but had only driven him deeper into it. I thought of him constantly. Had he married Miss Ingram? No, it had only been a month. But I was sure the wedding was imminent. My days with Mr. Rochester were numbered as it was, and I was missing out on them the longer I stayed.

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We closed Aunt Reed's dust up in her coffin and buried her in the family plot next to Mr. Reed, John, and their numerous victims, with a small service and few tears. Bessie Leaven was the only one to cry, and I believe it was more for memories of times past than for Mrs. Reed. Mrs. Reed's perfectly human brother Mr. Gibson had come from London to settle the estate's affairs, and he took Georgiana back to London with him. I wasn't sure he knew what he was getting into, but it was no longer my concern.

Eliza requested me to stay another week to help look after the house, see to callers, and answer notes of condolence while she prepared for her journey to Italy.

"Good-bye, Cousin Jane Slayre," she said when we parted. "I wish you well. You have some sense."

How other people felt when they were returning home from an absence, long or short, I did not know. My journey seemed tedious, fifty miles one day, a night spent at an inn, and fifty miles the next day. I was glad, at least, to see the sun again. I mused that seeing Mr. Rochester would eclipse even my joy at feeling the warmth of daytime sunshine on my face.

I was going back to Thornfield, but how long was I to stay there? Just before I left to return, I had a letter from Mrs. Fairfax. She reported that the party at the hall was dispersed. Mr. Rochester had left for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return soon. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make arrangements for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage. She expected the event would take place soon.

The question followed, where was I to go? I dreamt of staking Aunt Reed. How much easier it was than I had imagined, how I had given her the peace she craved. Perhaps I should try to find my family. I had a name at last, John Slayre, Madeira. I didn't like the idea of travelling to Madeira on my own, but I would enjoy learning more of my parents and of my supposedly inherited skills at slaying. Was it possible I was denying my natural talents? Could I not