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EPILOGUE—DECEMBER 1848

Blow, west-wind, by the lonely mound,

And murmur, summer streams—

There is no need of other sound

To soothe my lady’s dreams.

—Emily Brontë


After only a week away from it, Alcuin Curzon found that he already very much missed the Benedictine monastery at Rocamadour. The monastery stood among several centuries-old churches and shrines on a cliff terrace above the village of Rocamadour and the Alzou River, and beyond the river the green forests of the Causses du Quercy stretched to the limits of sight. Alcuin Curzon had spent these past twenty months working in the monastery as a lay brother of the Benedictine Order, and the two summers in the south of France had left him ill-prepared for a visit to northern England in December.

In the course of this last week he had taken a packet boat from Calais to Dover, then the new South Eastern Railway to London, where he had boarded the first of two carriages that took him to Keighley; and this morning he had hired a carriage to take him the last three miles to Haworth. The rooms he had rented in town in April of last year were no longer available, and he had taken a room at the Black Bull. Immediately after dropping off his luggage and sending a note to Anne Brontë at the parsonage, he had walked up the icy and snow-bordered Main Street to the old church.

The two big front doors had not been locked, and he had pulled one open and slowly walked up the center aisle between the rows of shadowed pews. He paused a few yards short of the raised altar floor.

Did you bring your knife? she had asked him, the last time he had stood here, more than two years ago. Are you here to kill me at last?

But the elevated pulpit where she had stood on that morning was empty now. Curzon looked down at his snow-crusted boots, which stood on a newly cut stone, with no ogham grooves in it.

He turned to look impatiently at the side door, through which Anne should appear . . . if she cared to reply to his note. Her letter to him had been sent in October, but the February Revolution in France, and the ensuing social disorder that had culminated in the establishment of the French Second Republic, had made postal delivery to the monastery even slower than usual. He had finally received her letter only a week ago.

Emily is dying, Anne had written. She won’t see anyone, but I think she would ask to see you, if she thought it were possible, and permitted herself.

After leaving Haworth last year, Curzon had employed a solicitor in London to keep him apprised of events in the Brontë family, and a month ago Curzon had learned that Branwell had died in September. The solicitor had, in fact, been very thorough.

The church’s side door creaked open, and when he turned away from the altar Curzon saw a figure in a hat and overcoat step in and pull the door closed against the gray daylight outside.

“Mr. Curzon,” said Anne Brontë, hurrying up the side aisle. “You arrive very near the end, I’m afraid.”

“Miss Anne,” said Curzon, bowing and stepping forward to meet her, “I set out as soon as I received your letter, but things are disorganized in France at present.”

“All over Europe.” In the glow from the stained glass window at his back, her face was still youthful, but thinner, and there were new lines at the corners of her eyes. “Branwell—”

He presumed to take her elbow and turn her back toward the side door. “I got news of it. I’m sorry.”

“It—went well, actually.” She shook her head as she hurried along beside him. “On his last day his delusions left him—he was calm and remorseful, and he prayed and repented his sins. My father was holding him when he died.” Curzon pushed the door open and she paused to look up at him. “You and Emily saved him from the devil that possessed him.” As they stepped out onto the snow-covered pavement in front of the churchyard, she added, “I know you didn’t do it for him, entirely.”

“Not entirely,” Curzon agreed.

“At the end, he and Charlotte even composed a bit of doggerel, and when he wrote the letter U at the end of it, she gave in and wrote a T after it.” When Curzon gave her a puzzled glance, she went on, “Sorry—that stands for ‘Us Two.’ ”

Curzon gathered that Branwell and Charlotte had not got along, which was hardly surprising. But his concern had never been with them. “Good, good,” he muttered.

As they hurried along beside the churchyard wall, he recalled Emily stopping him here, as he had stormed away from the parsonage on the day they had first met; he had told her that she presented an unwelcome inconvenience, but that to save her soul she should leave Haworth with him, and not return to “that house of doomed souls.” Her dog, Keeper, had been with her. He and I defend each other, she had said.

And in fact, he thought as the parsonage loomed closer and the steam of his breath and Anne’s whirled away on the wind, Emily Brontë has been an enormous inconvenience, over these past two years and nine months . . . and thank God for it.

He cast his mind back to their very first meeting, when he had lain wounded at the foot of Ponden Kirk. He had originally intended to kill himself that morning, and might still have done it, if Emily Brontë had not found him.

“She saved me too,” he said as they hurried up the steps to the front door of the parsonage. “Body and soul.”

Anne pulled open the door and closed it quickly after he had followed her into the hall, in which the air was nearly as cold as it was outside.

Anne whispered, “She’s in the parlor with Charlotte and our father.” She laid a restraining hand on the arm of his coat. “Wait—I think she’d want me to call them away. And you must understand that she is very weak, and—much changed.”

Anne walked around the corner into the parlor, and Curzon heard her speaking quietly. A few moments later Charlotte and their father shuffled out into the hall.

Patrick frowned at Curzon with perhaps no recognition, but Charlotte’s eyes widened in surprise.

“You!” she whispered. “Did Emily send for you?”

“I did,” Anne told her.

Charlotte stared at Curzon for several seconds, then nodded. “Good,” she whispered, and led her father away toward the kitchen.

Anne took several steps after them, then looked back. Seeing that Curzon stood without moving, she nodded toward the parlor doorway, then turned to follow her father and sister.

Curzon took off his hat and gloves and ran his fingers through his now-short hair, then made the sign of the cross and stepped into the parlor. Logs blazed in the fireplace and the air was warmer, but he caught the fresh-bread smell of starvation.

Emily was reclining on the green leather couch to his right, on the other side of the room from the windows, and Keeper lay beside it. Curzon didn’t let his expression change—but Emily’s face was pale and haggard, the bones of her skull prominent under her skin, her right hand dangling loose over the arm of the couch to touch Keeper’s head. She shifted slightly and turned toward him.

Her eyes widened, and in that moment he was able to recognize the young woman who had held a gun on him, pulled him up out of a deadly sinkhole, and twice accompanied him on visits to the temple of a pagan goddess.

“Alcuin,” she said, and her voice was faint but clear. “Anne,” she added with certainty, and he nodded. “Branwell died,” she went on, “did you know?”

“Yes.”

“The old debt,” she said, and had to catch her breath to go on, “is being paid off. The subtler ghosts.”

After a few seconds Curzon opened his mouth to speak, but she waved her fingers and he waited.

“Already,” she said, “this is dreadfully hard on Anne. Branwell—” She paused to cough.

Again Curzon waited her out; he was sweating, and took off his coat and laid it with his hat and gloves on a chair. “Branwell,” she went on at last, “died well—he renounced his—Northangerland—and on his last day . . .” She paused to take several shallow breaths. “In his last hour, in the final delirium”—she caught her breath and smiled—“he believed Maria appeared to him, at last—to lead his soul—to its reward.”

“That was merciful,” allowed Curzon. He added, “You managed to save him after all.”

“I was always my brother’s keeper.”

Curzon realized that it was a tiring effort for her to hold her head turned toward him, and he stepped farther into the room.

She laid her head back, watching him. “You still,” she said, “owe me a fact.”

He spread his hands.

She made a visible effort to inhale. “I didn’t lead you to Minerva.”

“No,” Curzon said. “I didn’t know your family was on such close terms with her. She was the adversary of my kind—of inbalance, perversion—long before the Romans came to England. I knew she would see what I was, but I hoped my eyepatch, and the fact that I came to her for help, would serve as . . .”

“An olive branch.”

“Yes—though it turned out not to matter, since you were with me.” He pulled out a chair from beside the table and sat down. “The second time, last year, was easier—by then I had cut out my eye, in penance.”

“Penance,” she whispered. “How have you reconciled”—she said, and went on after taking a shallow breath—“being a Catholic—a Christian of sorts . . .” She waved her hand impatiently, then said, “‘Thou shalt have no other gods before Me’?”

“I didn’t worship her!”

Again she managed to coax a smile to her wasted face. “You knelt.”

“To throw the bones! In any case, I’ve confessed it since.”

“I envy you,” she said, “two things.” Her pinched nostrils flared as she took a breath. “That sacrament of yours—Confession. The assurance that your . . . sins are indeed forgiven.”

Her wrinkled eyelids closed, and after nearly a minute he concluded that she had fallen asleep, and he began to get to his feet to go to the kitchen and talk to Anne.

But Emily opened her eyes, and she was clearly still alert.

“The second thing you envy me for?” Curzon asked.

“Your face-to-face look . . . at the goddess Minerva.”

“It nearly killed me.”

She flipped her fingers dismissively. “Of course. How could it not, if—genuine?” She rolled her eyes to look toward the window behind him. “Do you repent,” she whispered, “of having consulted her?”

Curzon stared at the pale, hollow-cheeked face in front of him, and thought of the tanned, vigorous young woman who had walked so many miles on the moors with him. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Do you?”

“It led to Branwell’s exorcism—redemption.” She started to lift her hand, then let it drop and just impatiently blinked away tears. “I don’t know either! Did we—declare allegiance? To her? Our eternal lot—serving a straw effigy—in a mundus loci?”

“No, Emily.” He reached out and took her cold, bony fingers in his hand. “You incinerated your blood promissory note in the fairy cave, and sacrificed your second novel. You completed the task she set you. Your connection with Minerva is concluded, with these in-effect ‘backward mutters of dissevering prayer.’ ”

“You quote Milton, a Protestant!” She closed her eyes again, then paraphrased the next line of Milton’s Comus: “To free the lady that sits here . . . in stony fetters . . . fixed and motionless.”

Curzon didn’t let go of her fingers.

“It cured the illness,” she went on, “in more lands than this—I think.”

“True. The Obliques in England, the Schrags in Germany, the Ferdes in Hungary—all impotent now and disbanded. Revolutions all over Europe, as the old powers are tumbling one after another.”

She pulled her hand free of his and raised one eyebrow. “My . . . second novel?”

Curzon felt his face reddening. “I, er, employed a solicitor to keep track of your family’s welfare. I hadn’t meant for him to intrude on . . . secrets and pseudonyms.”

“Ah?”

“But—I confess I’ve read Wuthering Heights, and found it as strong and unrelenting as its author. I saw Welsh in the character of Heathcliff. I hope there was nothing of me, as well, in that character.”

“Oh—perhaps appearance, and manner.” She began coughing, and it was nearly a minute before she gasped and was able to speak.“I didn’t like you much at first.”

She lifted her fingers from Keeper’s head for a moment. “Do you,” she asked, “still travel with . . . a dioscuri?”

He cocked his head. “Yes. It’s still useful against plain robbers.”

“New?”

“No. It’s the one you gave back to me, the one I used when we fought off the werewolves in the ravine.”

“Can I have it?”

He was puzzled, and wondered if she had fallen into delirium and imagined that there were still werewolves to defend against. But, “Of course,” he said, and stepped to the other chair to fumble in his coat pocket.

He straightened and returned to his chair, and after a moment’s hesitation laid the sheathed knife on the couch beside her.

She moved her hand to touch the leather-bound grip. “I want to be buried with it,” she said. “Show which side I’m on.”

The breath caught in his throat, but he said clearly, “There’ll be no doubt on that score.”

She closed her eyes. “Go now. I wouldn’t have you see me die.”

Curzon stood up and lifted his coat and hat and gloves from the table. “Goodbye, Emily. You’ve—”

When he could go no further, she managed a nod. “I know, Alcuin. You too. Go.”

Keeper stood up from beside the couch and walked over to Curzon, and lifted one big paw to touch the man’s hand. Curzon ruffled the dog’s head, and it walked back to lie down beside the couch. Curzon nodded and stepped out of the room into the cold hall.

Anne was standing by the kitchen doorway, and he walked to her. “I’m staying at the Black Bull,” he told her quietly. She nodded, and he turned to face the long hall and the front door, but he paused. “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” he said over his shoulder, “and Jane Eyre, are noble books.”

He walked to the front door without looking back, and opened it and stepped outside. Slowly he put on his coat and hat and gloves, then walked down the steps and away from the Brontë parsonage for the last time.


Emily insisted on climbing the stairs to her room without aid, though it took her nearly ten minutes, and Charlotte had to help her put on her nightgown and lift her thin legs into the bed. The next morning Emily made her slow, careful way downstairs, stopping at the landing for a while to catch her breath. At the kitchen table, while her father and Anne and Charlotte ate their oatmeal porridge, Emily managed to drink a cup of weak tea. She could see that they were already grieving at the imminent loss of her, and she especially pitied her father and Charlotte, for she knew Anne was soon to follow her.

Three deaths, as penalty payment.

Branwell had already paid.

For weeks Charlotte had been pleading with Emily to allow a doctor to see her, and Emily had been adamant in refusing it. Curzon had long ago explained it to Charlotte—Subtler ones attach to you, and take your breath and vitality by degrees. What a waste of everyone’s time, Emily thought, and what vainly raised hopes, to ask a doctor to diagnose that!

But Charlotte had never truly believed it. She had not, after all, left blood in the fairy cave.

Emily set down her cup, then braced one hand on Keeper’s shoulder to get up out of her chair.

She mustered her breath and said, “I believe I’ll . . . do some sewing in the . . . parlor.”

She was bleakly pleased to see that her father and sisters had learned not to offer to help her. She traversed the hall and rounded the parlor doorway, and after two stumbling steps slumped onto the couch, panting rapidly. Charlotte joined her a few minutes later and sat at the table; she busied herself with writing a letter, but often cast furtive, anxious glances at Emily.

Emily soon dropped her sewing and slept, fitfully. She dreamed that she was lost and dying among uncaring strangers, but when she awoke some hours later she found that Charlotte had ventured out into the wind and snow and found a sprig of heather to bring to her; it was now thawed after having been frozen, but its purple color was still visible. Emily thanked her sincerely and lay back on the couch, grateful to be dying in her own home, with her father and sisters close by.

“Say I may send for the doctor!” Charlotte pleaded.

Emily smiled at her. “Yes,” she whispered, for it was far, far too late now. “Only wait a few minutes.”

Even speaking that much had made her dizzy, and she wasn’t sure if she were lying down or sitting propped against the arm of the couch.

She reached down to touch Keeper’s head, and as she stroked his ears she felt a warm canine tongue lick her hand. Puzzled, she tilted her head to look down, and saw two bullmastiffs beside the couch—standing beside Keeper, entirely solid, she recognized the ghost Keeper.

She looked up and saw that a young woman was standing in the doorway—she was slim and dark-haired and smiling, wearing an unseasonably light linen dress. Though Emily had last seen the woman as an eleven-year-old girl, she recognized her.

Emily whispered, “Maria!” and stood up, her exhaustion and illness forgotten. She walked quickly to the doorway and took Maria’s warm outstretched hand. Beyond Maria the front door was open, and through it Emily saw green trees and grass bending in a breeze.

Branwell, Elizabeth? Their mother?

She took a step forward beside her eldest sister, but paused and looked back. Her father and Anne and Charlotte didn’t look toward her. The wasted body that had been her own was slumped on the couch, with Keeper standing alongside, pawing at the limply dangling hand.

“Keeper,” she whispered, and her dog turned his great head and looked directly at her. “Stay,” she said, “for now.”

Keeper’s mournful gaze shifted from her to Maria and their grandfather’s dog, and back, and for a moment his tail wagged hesitantly before he turned again to the body on the couch.

Still holding Maria’s hand, with the dog trotting alongside, Emily Brontë walked gladly forward through the open doorway.



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