Jane and the Canterbury Tale Read online

  “How pleasant to animadvert on the gaieties of a few days ago,” he observed, “and how sad to think they were of such short duration! I am First Magistrate of Canterbury, Mrs. Thane, and cannot help but be charged with resolving Mr. Curzon Fiske’s murder. I have urgent business with Mr. Wildman and his son. Pray lead me to them.”

  It was an order, not a request; and Mrs. Thane’s head reared back, as tho’ she had been treated to an insult. “May I remind you, sir, that there is a servant present!” she hissed.

  Edward glanced satirically at Twitch. He stood as tho’ deaf, a little in advance of Mrs. Thane.

  “I am sure most of the servants were aware of the tragedy long before you learnt of it, ma’am, as the local beaters were in at the discovery of the body; and I should never stand on ceremony with James Wildman’s man,” my brother said in an accent of considerable amusement, “for I have known him these twenty years and more. Is your master in his book room, Twitch? You need not announce me.” With that, he bowed easily to Mrs. Thane, and strode off towards the rear of the house.

  Twitch made no move to impede Edward; rather, he gestured towards the opposite passage—which at Chilham is known as the Circular Gallery—and said, “If you will allow me, Miss Fanny, the ladies are sitting in the drawing-room. I’m sure Mrs. Wildman will be most happy to see you.”

  “I shall conduct them to her,” Mrs. Thane interjected. “And as you are now at leisure, Twitch—perhaps you may think on the proper deference becoming to a servant, and the ways in which impertinence is generally rewarded in better-regulated households.”

  With these quelling words, she strode down the passage towards the drawing-room; and after a single amazed look, Fanny and I followed her.

  “Miss Knight and Miss Austen,” the lady announced on the threshold; and Mrs. Wildman and her two daughters rose to greet us.

  Mrs. Wildman is a good deal younger than her husband, being not yet fifty, and her daughters are nearer in age to Fanny. She was born and bred in Jamaica, where Mr. Wildman married her, and remains so persistently opposed to the English climate that she goes about swathed in shawls even in the heat of August. Her daughters are less exotic and less indolent; but I do not think I indulge in phantasy when I say that all three ladies met Mrs. Thane’s appearance with an expression of dismay, one that swiftly changed to delight at discovering ourselves behind her.

  “My dearest Fanny!” Mrs. Wildman exclaimed, and kissed her on both cheeks. “We did not expect this pleasure. And Miss Jane, as well! We are so grateful to all at Godmersham for what you did yesterday—for young James, particularly, who was much distressed at the terrible events of the morning. To go out shooting, the weather fine and the company delightful, and to find oneself presented with a corpse! —And the early conviction, too, that one’s fowling piece might have been responsible! For a wonder, my son declares, with absolute certainty, that he never recognised Mr. Fiske at all! Tho’ he knew him so well in former days. Well!” The voluble Mrs. Wildman looked with finality from myself to Fanny. “It only goes to show how terrible is the change wrought by Death!”

  Or a growth of beard, a pilgrim’s clothes, and the weathering sun of Ceylon, I thought.

  While the others murmured pious nothings at Mrs. Wildman’s inescapable truth of Nature, I reflected that however difficult I might find an approach to Adelaide MacCallister, or however formidable a watchdog her mother should prove, there was little I could not learn of the history of both from a polite show of interest in Mrs. Wildman’s talk. She was a comfortably ample lady dressed in the first croak of fashion—as it is understood in Kent—with a lace cap to her dark hair, which was now streaked with silver; slightly protuberant brown eyes that widened expressively with her exclamations; and a pug dog she carried habitually on her arm, with all the appearance of having forgot it was there.

  “Do come and sit down, Miss Jane, and settle yourself over there, Miss Fanny, between Charlotte and Louisa—”

  We did as we were bade. It was obvious our hostess was bursting with ambition to talk over the whole affair, but Fanny hastened to say all that was proper, before the tide of speculation and outrage swept all before it.

  “We felt it most necessary, ma’am, to offer our deepest sympathy at Mr. Fiske’s loss, and also the sad disruption of Captain and Mrs. MacCallister’s plans,” she said. “We would not have dreamt of descending upon you so suddenly otherwise.”

  “Impertinence,” I heard Mrs. Thane mutter; only Louisa, the younger of the Wildman daughters, stole a glance at her—half frightened, half defiant.

  “Bless your heart, Miss Fanny, for saying straight out what everyone cannot help but think,” Mrs. Wildman returned impulsively. “I’m sure I never wished Curzon Fiske ill—and I’ve known him a good many years longer than Augusta there, having watched him grow from boy to man”—this, with a nod for Mrs. Thane—“but I don’t mind saying I wish he’d passed over in Malaysia or Tahiti or whichever of those dreadful Oriental parts he ran off to, instead of sticking his spoon in the wall, as the saying goes, not a mile from our front door on the very night of the ball! And I suppose your good father must undertake the business?”

  This was a bolt of shrewdness I had not expected.

  “I fear so, ma’am,” Fanny replied.

  “He is even now closeted with your husband,” Mrs. Thane hissed. “I ought to have been consulted. I am her mother.”

  Mrs. Wildman stared at her cousin in amazement. “And what has Adelaide to do with Mr. Knight the Magistrate?” she demanded. “You’re not thinking it’s Adelaide he wants to throw in gaol? Nonsense! Edward Knight has more wit than to believe a new-made bride would steal from her husband’s bed on her wedding night to do murder—or that a man like MacCallister would let her!” She laughed heartily. “There, I’ve made all the girls blush, and sweet they look with it! You leave off trying to rule the roost, Augusta, and let the gentlemen settle the unhappy tangle!”

  “Did young Mr. Wildman’s Express succeed in reaching the couple?” I enquired.

  “Caught up with them not far out of Maidstone,” Mrs. Wildman replied eagerly. “They’d not been travelling above two hours, you know, on account of having risen late and taken their good time in quitting us. Lord, how happy the Captain was to be whisking his bride away to London! To be sure, Town’s tolerably thin of company, with Parliament adjourned and all the ton folk rusticating among the pheasant and grouse, but I should guess the Little Theatre is open, and the good Captain’s friends at the Horse Guards would be ready enough to drink to his dear lady’s health!”

  “How unfortunate,” I murmured, “that all his plans were thrown into disarray. The Captain was in excellent spirits, I suppose, in setting out?”

  “Aye, but the look on his face when the pair of them came back again—!”

  At this, there was a marked disruption. Mrs. Thane rose so precipitately from her chair that she succeeded in knocking over one of the profusion of small tables the Wildman girls had strewn about their mother’s drawing-room, in an effort to make it appear more fashionable, and less like the drawing-room they had grown up in; such are the fruits of expensive educations at the finest establishments in Bath. The table fell against the harp that Charlotte was most assiduous in playing, whenever the opportunity to exhibit might present itself, and a selection of strings emitted a chance thrum!, not at all displeasing, which caused me to wonder how much instruction, indeed, was required to appear proficient on the harp.

  “Enough,” Mrs. Thane proclaimed in a voice that must chill the very marrow. “I will not have my daughter’s affairs talked over in this odious and despicable way. I must beg, Mrs. Wildman, that you say nothing further to these people. Indeed, I wonder that anyone so wholly unconnected with ourselves should regard the subject as one for common discussion.”

  “Why, Mamma?” said a voice low and distinct from the doorway. “Are you afraid of what they might say—or you might learn?”

  1 Jane refers here to Maria Bec
kford, originally of Basing Park in Hampshire, who helped rear her dead sister’s children at the request of Mr. John Middleton, her brother-in-law. The Middletons leased Chawton Great House from Edward Austen from 1808 to 1813, and Maria Beckford visited Jane when both chanced to be in London. —Editor’s note.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Bride’s Tale

  “I think I loved him best, because in fact

  His love was such a trembling high-wire act.”

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER, “THE WIFE OF BATH’S PROLOGUE”

  22 OCTOBER 1813, CONT.

  ADELAIDE FISKE MACCALLISTER, NÉE THANE, ENTERED the drawing-room with all the grace she had long claimed; but I should judge that her usual composure was lacking. She was beautifully arrayed in a morning dress of striped French twill, with a high, stiff collar and sleeves tightly buttoned at the wrist, a complex of stile and neatness not often achieved. Her countenance, however, was drawn and pale, and the expression in her eyes was bleak; her dark hair was simply arranged in a knot at the nape of her neck that in another woman should have appeared dowdy; on Adelaide, it achieved a Grecian purity.

  Striding into the room behind her was her brother, Julian Thane. He was dressed for riding—but so elegantly that I must have assumed his destination to be Hyde Park, rather than his cousin’s stables. A stray lock of dark hair curled romantickally over his forehead; his countenance was interestingly pale. He bowed carelessly to us all, but his eyes were fixed on his mother’s forbidding looks.

  “As we sow, dearest ma’am, so shall we reap,” he said by way of greeting. “Is that not the bit of wisdom you are forever whispering in my ear? How apt, in the present instance! Nothing would do for you but to cut Addie dead upon her marriage—thereby ensuring that her blackguard of a husband should find little profit in mending his ways. We are justly served! The fellow is never done plaguing her, even in death!”

  “Silence!” Mrs. Thane replied.

  Her son’s black brows snapped together and his eyes narrowed; but without another word, he dismissed the woman from his consideration and turned towards Fanny. “Miss Knight. It is truly a pleasure to meet with you again—the morning’s sun doing only greater justice to your charms.”

  Fanny coloured, and offered the hand he was clearly seeking. He bowed over it, then looked enquiringly at me. “I regret that I am unacquainted with your … sister?”

  Such a blatant essay at flattery! But when tempered with a raised brow and a quirk of the lips, could not fail of being charming.

  “My aunt, Miss Austen,” Fanny returned reprovingly. “May I present Mr. Thane?”

  “I am very glad to meet you, sir.” And so I was. For many reasons—romantic and violent—Mr. Thane could not help but be an object of interest with me. I judged him to be younger than Adelaide—perhaps only just of age.1 How well had he known Curzon Fiske, or the sad history of his sister’s marriage? Would not he have been away at school for much of it? The curious rebuke Thane had only now offered his mother suggested an intimacy with—and a repugnance for—his sister’s trials. What were Thane’s loyalties to Adelaide—or her new husband, Andrew MacCallister?

  And would not a gentleman who had been out some once or twice, as Fanny put it, be more likely to challenge Fiske to a duel rather than shoot him in cold blood? There were any number of spurs to such a meeting; Thane might have accused his late brother of desertion, for example, or of an insult to a lady, and been entirely within his rights in challenging Fiske. Murder outright, however … I did not think it suited the gentleman.

  Being too well aware of the danger of prejudice, however, I resolved to ignore the promptings of my better self, and rank Julian Thane high among my suspects.

  Fanny had risen from her place and moved towards Adelaide MacCallister; she was speaking in her firm, soft voice, and I must attend.

  “I hope, Mrs. MacCallister, that you do not think ill of us for descending upon Chilham Castle in this way—so hard upon the tragic discovery. The fact of my father’s being charged with a duty in respect of Mr. Fiske’s death, and his intention of paying a call upon Mr. Wildman, resolved my aunt and me in accompanying him; but indeed, we have outstayed our welcome, and ought to be taking leave.”

  “Pray, do not go on my account,” she returned calmly, and seated herself in one of Mrs. Wildman’s Louis XV chairs. “I know full well why your excellent father has come—and must speak with him in my turn, no doubt, whenever he commands it. Curzon was murdered; he was shot down like a dog in the night, and left to bleed out his heart; and I should be a very strange woman indeed if I did not feel the loss. I loved him to distraction once—and his was a terrible death. No matter how poor a husband, or how reprehensible a man, he did not deserve it.”

  “Adelaide!” Mrs. Thane was outraged. “Hold your tongue! Pray consider of the Captain!”

  A faint smile twisted Mrs. MacCallister’s lips. “I consider of little else, Mamma, as I am sure you know. But I do feel this death most acutely; and the fact that I am now united to another, with all the bonds of affection and duty that attend such a union, cannot entirely negate the love I once bore my first husband. I am happy to speak of him; indeed, I think I shall sooner lay his unhappy ghost to rest, if I do speak of Curzon. Were you at all acquainted with him, Miss Knight?”

  Fanny shook her head.

  “Nor you, Miss Austen? You were denied a singular pleasure, then.” She laughed a little to herself, as tho’ revolving a good joke, a smile teazing at the corners of her mouth. Had I not detected the signs of grief and worry in her countenance at her first appearance, I should have thought her free of all care. Something of this knowledge must have strayed across her mind, for she raised her eyes to mine with limpid clarity.

  “I know it is very bad in me not to betray more sensibility,” she confessed, “but had you only known Curzon—! He was the most high-spirited man I have ever met, the most charming … and the least scrupulous. I shock you—I know I shock you—but the openness with which he met each deception he practiced, and owned to his thorough vice, almost disarmed reproof! He was so honest in his misdealings, you see. Had I been a little older, and more aware of the cost of his folly, I should have avoided him like the Devil, tho’ it must have broke my heart; as it was, I was just young enough to cast reason to the winds—and I adored him. There was a time when I should have died for him, sold myself for him, stolen for him—and regarded all as a privilege.”

  “Adelaide!” her mother cried. “Consider where you are!”

  The lady glanced aside, as tho’ in contemplation of a distant scene, lost to memory. “Such frolics as we had, and such disasters! Such extremities of passion, such quarrels, and such reconciling! I shall never feel for any man in that way again; and I declare I am relieved to own it.”

  “Wretched girl!” her mother spluttered. “Only think if the poor Captain should hear you!”

  “Andrew?” Mrs. MacCallister laughed again; but this time, the gaiety was rueful. “Andrew understood the bad bargain he bought in me—for I told him all, myself—but I must pity him just the same. It is something, for a man to find himself foresworn on his very wedding night—I should have liked to have spared him that indignity, at least.”

  “Nonsense,” her brother said languidly. “Tylden tied the knot right and tight again between you this morning. Andrew’s a good’un; he’ll stand buff, don’t you fear it, Addie. The fellow’s not the sort to stumble over rough ground; there are few men I’d rather see beside you in such a fix as this.”

  “Let us hope, then, that he is not dragged off to Canterbury gaol,” Adelaide observed calmly.

  “Good Lord!” exclaimed Mrs. Wildman with a startled look. “The very idea! And the Captain such an honourable gentleman, too! I should think he’d seen enough of death under Wellington’s command without having to seek it in Kent. You mark my words, Addie—it’ll be a common footpad as did for poor Mr. Fiske, and long since gone from the neighbourhood if he has a particle of sense. Fearsom
e times we live in, with the Regent spending all our incomes and a different army to be paid for every week—It is no wonder the footpads have grown so troublesome; they must make a living somehow as well, poor fellows.”

  “A footpad will hardly have discarded James’s duelling pistol in St. Lawrence churchyard, Cousin Joanna,” said Julian Thane.

  His words, naturally, caused a sensation.

  “James’s pistol!” cried Charlotte Wildman incredulously. “The one Papa ordered specially in London a few years since?”

  “That’s the ticket—the pistol, or one of the pair, from Manton’s that James is forever showing off. He likes to clip the suits from playing cards at twenty paces, Miss Knight, when he’s a trifle bosky,” he confided to Fanny, “and the billiard-room wall is shot through with holes on the strength of it.”

  Almost despite herself, Fanny dimpled; Thane’s manner was irresistible.

  “I am sure Julian is mistaken,” Mrs. Wildman said comfortably as she patted Charlotte’s hand.

  “Nothing to do with me,” Julian drawled. “I had it from the Magistrate himself—when he sat me down to ask what I did the night of the ball. Told him I drank a brandy with James after the last of the guests had gone—it was that Tylden party, naturally; one can never be rid of the prosy parson. Twitch shut up the house, and we all went off to bed. Unfortunately, as I sleep alone”—this, with a telling gleam at my niece I could not approve—“I’ve nobody to support me in the assertion. No reward for the just, upon my honour! One has only to snore like a lamb until ten o’clock in the morning, to be met with an accusation of murder the next day!”