It’s snowing again,’ said Charlotte, going to the window. I looked up to see that the light was already fading though it was only three in the afternoon. The church was a dark mass beyond the graveyard, blurred by the flurries of snow, the green-grey tint of the sky. ‘And the wind’s getting up.’
I put down my pencil. For the last two years, we’d been taking lessons in drawing. I’d been trying to capture the muscular build of a brown hare, the shading of its ears, but I knew Charlotte well enough to guess she had not come into the dining room to report on the weather. ‘I’m going to school after Christmas,’ she said. She’d left the door ajar and the draught from the hallway caused the fire to expand and then climb up the chimney in protest. ‘Near Dewsbury. I didn’t want to say until it was settled.’
I stared at the fire, at the holly which we’d brought in from the lane that morning. Anne had woven the branches into a crown for the mantelpiece, the glossy leaves and crimson berries bringing festive cheer to the room.
‘Papa made proper enquiries,’ she hurried on. ‘Roe Head is small and select and close to my godparents at Mirfield. They already know the sisters who run the school, have promised Papa that they’ll keep a close watch over me.’ She paused to take a breath. Though she was months off her fifteenth birthday, I’d already outgrown her by a foot, and even Anne looked likely to overtake her soon, no matter how greedily Charlotte ate. Her little hands twisted the front of her dress, as if trying to form it into a different garment. ‘I don’t want to stay here forever. None of us can.’
‘Papa teaches us everything.’ Which was almost true, except for drawing as I said, and music which Mr. Sunderland the organist came to teach. Recently I’d started learning Latin, using my own Bible for translation. And how could Charlotte say that she didn’t want to stay here when there was no more perfect spot on the whole earth than this house cradled by the moors? This village wedged into the jaw of the hillside, the narrow, blackened cottages shouldering one another for space like ageing teeth.
‘It’s not enough. Aunt says we’ll only find positions if we can show we’ve had proper schooling. Because there’s so much competition nowadays.’
‘Branwell isn’t made to go away to school.’ I sounded like a petulant child, despised myself for it. I did not need Charlotte to explain that it was different for our brother, had always known that we must one day become teachers or governesses, the only respectable occupations for girls like us. I’d tucked this knowledge away in some hidden part of my mind though, covered it in sheets like antique furniture stored in an attic. All these years I had been perfectly happy at home with Tom the cat and Grasper, our ancient terrier, and a young tawny owl named Sir Walter Scott that I’d found injured on Penistone Hill, one of its legs hanging powerless beneath it. I was nursing him to health, feeding him on meat scraps from the kitchen until he was well enough to soar free again.
‘I’m to enrol for a year and then prepare you and Anne after that.’ She smiled. ‘You’ll definitely be able to go as well, just later.’ The fire crackled and shifted. Charlotte glowed with unconcealed excitement as though she’d brought me a precious gift. As if Cowan Bridge and our two dead sisters had never existed.
I fetched my cloak and went out alone before anyone could object. In the last year, Aunt had taken to reading out loud to me from the newspaper, her voice loaded with significance. The stories were all the same: women who had put themselves in the way of danger, young ladies who took foolhardy risks and then found themselves subjected to ungentlemanly behaviour. She said the moors were too lonely for a young girl to go walking alone, especially with so many of the farms abandoned since the mills took over. The only people you might encounter up there—she’d raise her chin at that point and glance suspiciously towards the window, hoping to catch a collective of vagabonds plotting unspeakable deeds on the garden path—were strange sorts, travellers and drifters, people who lived outside society. When I asked why she didn’t trouble the others, she said that Anne was still a child, and Charlotte might as well be—that neither of them cared for wandering off on their own like me.
‘Remember Sally Westhope,’ she’d warn, knowing that I didn’t. The story was familiar though—the milliner’s daughter who’d gone missing and was discovered on a boggy stretch of land towards Oxenhope two days later. She’d been face-down when they found her, her dress and petticoat, it was whispered, up around her waist. There was little point arguing with Aunt, but I did not see why Papa and Branwell could roam wherever they wanted, taking the loneliest of paths with only their own enjoyment in mind, and no thought for danger. Why God’s wondrous earth should be available only to them, while I must learn to conceal my existence, to fold myself out of sight, into the smallest possible space.
When I reached the top of Penistone Hill, I stopped for breath and looked back down into the valley. Nothing was straightforward with Charlotte though she looked so small and malleable. What was true one day—that school was a dangerous place, that the world beyond our home was perilous—was no longer so, simply because she had changed her mind. The truth according to Charlotte had proved as slippery and treacherous as the ice at the edge of a beck in early spring. I walked on, Haworth Moor stretching into the distance before me now. In summer it was a purple, rolling carpet, alive with the hum of bees, but at this time of year it was a more muted landscape, dun and grey and black against a sky of wintery blue. There was still colour to be had—clumps of coarse copper grass, the silver underside of the heather, exposed by the wind—but you had to look harder to find it. More than a year, Charlotte had said, before she and Papa thought I might join her at this new school. I pictured the two of them planning my future for me before I’d even known it was in question, then had a sudden vision of myself shaking my sister until her teeth rattled. I strode out still faster. By the time I’d passed the farmhouse at Top Withens and then skirted the boggy area around the base of Delf Hill, I’d escaped her. I walked on until I came to one of the small becks that threaded down the hillside here, stopping to push back my bonnet. Anne and I had spent an hour in this exact spot last summer.
‘That rock,’ I’d said, pointing to a stone in the middle of the water, ‘is Gondal.’ I’d stretched out on my front to observe it from eye level. The rock was bright and spongy with a forest of moss.
‘This one’s called Gaaldine,’ said Anne, finding a smooth, flat stone nearby.
Islands that grew in our imagination, occupying all of our time. Gondal was a land of moors and mountains, with a king named Julius Brenzaida who did as he pleased, taking a wife for himself, and also a lover. He was a wild and conniving man, who had his eye on conquering the neighbouring Gaaldine, which was a tropical island with palm trees and giant crabs running along the shoreline. There had been sunlight on rushing water that day; swallows swooping over the glittering surface. I walked on more slowly now. All this was mine, but for how much longer?
I was just approaching the deep crease in the hillside that was Ponden Clough when something struck my cheek. I looked all around and then above, though there were no trees on this stretch of open moorland that might have shed a sharp twig or a nut. I checked on the ground but whatever had hit me had disappeared into the tussocky grass that grew hereabouts. I rubbed my cheek and saw a faint streak of blood on my finger. At the edge of my eyeline, I caught a movement in the bare heather. At first, I thought it was a grouse, waited. Then I saw a head of brown curls and dark eyes, my own self emerging from the earth. I stepped off the path and strode straight towards the crouching figure, but the boy was already gone, leaping over the mounded heather towards the lip of the clough. Determined to tackle him, I broke into a run, but by the time I reached the clough he’d already started down its steep side. He was barefoot, goat-sure, dressed in rough, country clothes the colour of mushrooms. I wheeled around, looking for an object to throw in retaliation. Finding nothing, I started down the hillside after him, in the direction of the flat-headed gritstone outcrop which was called Ponden Kirk on the map in Papa’s study, but which Tabby called the Fairy Cave. A narrow tunnel ran through that jutting rock, she’d told us, all the way from one side of the outcrop to the other. It was too dangerous to climb down to—the hillside was slippery even in the height of summer—but anyone who passed through the tunnel would be married within the year. I’d lost interest at that point and returned to my sketch, a noble profile of Julius Brenzaida.
I was close enough now to see the fissure in the rock like a narrow doorway, my feet slithering beneath me as I descended. The boy was standing right by the entrance, grinning over his shoulder at me. He was older than me, perhaps by four or five years. His hands and feet looked too large for his body, and he had that stretched look which meant he was about to turn into a man. In my haste, I lost my footing on a ledge of rock that ran with water, saved myself from tumbling to the bottom of the clough only by grabbing a handful of long, coarse grass. It cut into my palms, burned my skin. By the time I’d scrambled down the last few feet to the Fairy Cave, the boy had disappeared inside the entrance. I could see the shape of him though, blocking the light ahead of me. I went inside and the rock was clammy to the touch, cold as death. I pushed forwards, fingers feeling my way, prodding beak-like at the stone. Ahead of me, I could hear him moving and then I couldn’t. I stopped and for a moment I felt sure that we occupied the same space, that I could hear his light breath, smell him on the air, damp, animal-like. I scrambled towards him and then I broke through into the winter sunshine on the far side of the cave and my knees were damp and my hands had turned to ice. I climbed to my feet in the cold, shattered light and looked all around me, but the boy had disappeared and there was nowhere left to go.
Charlotte left us in the middle of January, a wretched-looking creature sitting very upright in the cart which Papa had hired, her face dwarfed by her bonnet. Mirfield was too far for her to travel home for weekends, so we would not see her again until the summer holidays. Watching the cart set off, I told myself that it would be a very long time before it would be my turn to go. Aunt had on several occasions made much of the expense involved, and part of me still believed that the world would change in some remarkable way to prevent it ever happening.
In the beginning, I was a poor, scared creature, Charlotte wrote. I am sure you can picture it. Even with his glasses on, Branwell had to squint to read the letter. There are only a small number of girls here, all of them hearty, well-fed beings who delight in games and running around. They were impatient of me at first, could not understand why I rushed to finish my work in order to continue with my own studies; why I did not want to set down my books and catch a ball with them. They pressed me on the matter but soon learned that it was hopeless, the ball flying past me on every occasion. I do not understand the point of games. They seem the perfect way to ruin a period of recreation. Why must one always be running up and down and growing hot in the face instead of observing, considering? Mostly they are girls of wealthy families who do not need to trouble themselves greatly about the future. Yet kindly enough they have now grown accustomed to my oddities, and Miss Wooler who is the headmistress, and her sisters who help run the school, take care that everyone is in good health and spirits. I have made two friends! Ellen Nussey is a good, gentle girl who arrived a short time after me and took pity on my homesick tears. Her family are from Birstall and are in the cotton business. Mary Taylor is a hard-headed and sharp-tongued girl from Gomersal. She has a younger sister, Martha, who is also boarding at Roe Head and has a lively, endearing nature. Mary says that I am ugly and that, though I am well-informed, my arguments are not always sound. I like her very much. I only wish Emily could be here with me; I think she would be happy.
Here Branwell broke off and finished reading in silence, which we understood to mean that the rest of the letter was private business about The Twelves, or their newly discovered territory which they’d named Angria. He barely noticed Charlotte’s absence, he assured us at least once a day, but one morning he rose before dawn so that he could walk all the way to and from Mirfield, which was nearly twenty miles away, to see her.
Charlotte’s next letter was even more cheerful.
The other girls have grown accustomed to my odd ways, helped in part, I believe, by my friendships with Ellen and Mary, both of whom are well-liked. It takes little to impress schoolgirls: some little bit of knowledge that I have stored away—a poem, some event in ancient history, a passing acquaintance with an artist’s most famous works—seems to astonish them, though they, in turn, are equally astonished by my lack of understanding when it comes to grammar or the most rudimentary ciphering, which still seems the most baffling of subjects! I now see that our lessons at home were more comprehensive than any curriculum devised for young ladies. Would you believe that not one of these girls has heard of Herodotus? The names of Ovid or Virgil spark something in their minds—perhaps they have heard their brothers or fathers mention them—but they have no acquaintance with their works, even in translation. I have told them nothing of Glasstown or Angria of course, but when we are gathered round the fire in the evening, they press me for stories to entertain them. I like to shock them with some of Tabby’s wilder tales and sometimes I frighten them with ghostly stories that I invent as I go along. One night a girl became hysterical with fear and I got into trouble with Miss Wooler. She is rarely cross with me for long since I am now top of the class and have every intention of remaining there!
I returned to Ponden Clough often that spring and summer, searching the horizons in the hope of seeing the boy rising out of the heather again. Once I climbed down to the Fairy Cave itself, sat by the entrance all afternoon watching the sun swing across the sky, but the boy didn’t appear. I’d intended to teach him a lesson, to retaliate in some unthought out way, though the cut on my cheek had long ago healed. I went home at dusk feeling empty and restless all at the same time, as if I’d lost the centre of myself out on the moors. I thought about asking Tabby if she knew anything of the boy but decided against it. I didn’t want her asking questions I couldn’t answer or speaking to Aunt.
Each time Charlotte came home for a holiday I looked closely at her for signs of suffering, but there were none. When her three terms came to an end, she chose not to come straight home but went to stay with Ellen Nussey in Birstall for a fortnight. The following month Ellen came to Haworth for a week. Aunt was delighted with such a ladylike and well-mannered guest, who was an example to us all, but Anne and I were shy, not being used to strangers in the house, especially one who wore expensive-looking dresses and had such pretty, soft ringlets. Ellen was easy and undemanding though and it was plain that she and Charlotte took great pleasure in one another’s company, though the two of them were quite different in character. Miss Nussey happily joined us on our daily walks, and Branwell, who was shy of no-one, chattered and laughed in his usual fashion, spilling over with questions about Ellen’s family and home, her time at Roe Head; with anecdotes and local gossip, lines of poetry, snatches of song. He pointed out the best views, gave a quick lesson in natural history, told her about his organ lessons and the boxing club he’d joined. When Ellen admired the picture of Bolton Abbey hanging in Papa’s study, Branwell became excited.
‘A day trip!’ he said. ‘We can hire a phaeton, stop for breakfast at the Devonshire Arms. Picnic by the Abbey. I’ll arrange everything!’
Sometimes I thought our brother had enough ideas and words for a whole family. There was almost no need for the rest of us.
As pleasant as Ellen was, I began to feel uncomfortable after she had been with us for a few days. I grew silent at mealtimes, felt the old urge to stretch out on the dining room floor and close my eyes. On her last full day with us, I took myself off to a corner of the graveyard where I could not be spotted from the house and spent a few happy hours working on a new idea for Gondal, the story of a young prince who’d been swapped at birth and grown up as a shepherd boy.