Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House jam-6 Page 2

  “How diminished is civilisation and comfort, how false the air of security, of a town viewed from such a vantage,” I observed. “What might be taken, on dry land, for the power of commerce and Kingdom, appears the merest foothold at this distance. How greater still the diminishment, when all the wide waters of the ocean are at one's back!”

  “I have always believed,” Frank added, “that could kings and emperors reign solely from the seas, and suffer the overruling might of Nature to humble and command them with every gale of wind, they might then regard themselves in the proper light The vastness of the world is an acute corrective, Jane, for over-weening vanity! As it is for many land-borne ills.”

  I studied him soberly. “You miss a ship, Frank. Confess as much. You long to put to sea, however near Mary's time and however comfortable your present circumstances.”

  “You forget the inadequacy of Mrs. Davies's fire, Jane,” he returned with brusque humour. “There is little of comfort in that.”

  “We shall be gone from hired lodgings in a fortnight,” I said dismissively, “but your malaise shall prove as strong. The lease in Castle Square — that fringe you are so busily knotting for the parlour curtains — the bedsteads you turn, and the conveniences you fashion in your restless, tidy, sailor's way — they are nothing more than make-work, a sop to fill your time. You are unhappy, Frank. I am more convinced of it now, having seen you once again in your element, than I have been for many weeks. Though I have long suspected the cause.”

  He offered no reply — only stared across the heaving water, his eyes narrowed. Salt spray had dried in a haphazard pattern of white droplets on his collar, his auburn hair was ruffled into curls by the force of the approaching rain. It is hard for such a man — trained from boyhood in every nerve and sinew to pursue the Enemy, to engage and subdue him — to subdue, rather, his own ardent spirit to the necessities of fortune. Frank is become like a powerful horse, honed for the Oaks or the Derby, that is put to plough the same featureless length of turnip patch day after day. Having won a little prize money, he saw fit to marry at last the lady who had waited so many patient months for his return from sea; and being a gallant son, he required his mother and unwed sisters to take up their abode in his company. Southampton was chosen, the treaty struck for a house in Castle Square; that house entirely refurbished; and our prospects of happiness in our situation, very great — but a plan for domestic happiness must prove inadequate to one of Frank's temperament.

  He is a man accustomed to commanding three hundred tars, at least, in the midst of the greatest fleet on earth. He has chased the Enemy across every ocean on the globe, and seen the colours of French ships struck at his desiring. Now he turns and turns without employment, surrounded by too many muslin skirts, and the tiresome frivolities of a watering-place, with its Assemblies and circulating libraries and occasional theatrical play. He slips away to Portsmouth whenever convention will allow, and haunts the naval yard, where constant intelligence of the better fortunes of his brother officers — who possessed the luck to distinguish themselves with Nelson at Trafalgar — must poison his heart like gall. He bears so constant an aspect of forced cheer — such unfailing interest in the tedium of domestic life — that my heart aches for him, as must any heart of discernment and feeling.

  “It is only that …” He faltered, and glanced down at his reddened fingers where they gripped the bow. “That is — you must be aware, Jane, from the intelligence of my letters in the year '05, how ardently I pursued the French Admiral, Villeneuve — across the Atlantic to the West Indies, and back again; how many months I spent vigilant, on blockade, before his Fleet even broke out of Brest. After having been in a state of constant and unremitting fag, to be at last cut out by a parcel of folk just come to join Lord Nelson from home, where some of them were sitting at their ease for months—”

  “It is lamentable,” I said quietly. “We all feel your misfortune acutely, Frank.”

  He shifted in the bow, unable to tear his eyes from the Solent. “I do not profess to like fighting for its own sake — and Mary is thankful to Heaven that I avoided the danger of that battle — but I shall ever consider the day on which I sailed from Nelson's squadron as the most inauspicious of my life.”[2]

  There had recently been a rumour, I knew, that the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Grenville, had confidentially assured our acquaintance Lord Moira that the first fast frigate available should be given to Captain Austen. But as several fast frigates had subsequently gone to others, I placed no confidence in rumour. Like Patronage and Connexion, those twin hounds of a naval career, Rumour will forever abandon one prospect to bay after another more likely.

  “Have you no word of a ship?” I enquired.

  Frank's eyes slid towards mine and were as quickly averted. More than any gentleman in my circle, Frank is incapable of deceit. He must look conscious when he should prefer to be inscrutable.

  “You have heard something!” I seized his arm. “It is intelligence of a ship that takes you to Portsmouth, and not 'concern for an old friend' as you would have Mary believe. Why have you said nothing of your prospects at home?”

  “Because I cannot be easy in the subject,” he replied. “You know very well, Jane, that dear Mary is as solicitous for my credit as any woman — but she cannot like the idea of my putting to sea when she is so near her time. Indeed, I cannot like it myself.”

  It was true — the birth of Frank's child was barely two months off; and as it was Mary's first lying-in, and the young woman's apprehension of childbed exceedingly great, he should have been a monster to wish for a ship at such a time. Yet he did wish it. A man's heart may yearn for what his sensibility would disdain.

  “Mary talks of nothing but fast frigates,” I observed. “She is as zealous on your behalf — as buoyed by hope at the slightest portent of Admiralty favour — as any midshipman preparing to pass for lieutenant But I shall undertake to conceal your prospects from her, if only you would impart a tenth of the whole to me.”

  “Mary is an angel,” Frank returned with fervour, “but had I suspected, Jane, how much my affections for my wife would anchor me to shore — how little I should like my duty when it must come — how torn in my soul I should feel at the prospect of embarking — I declare I should have remained single to the end of my days, and suffered less in regret than I do presently in indecision.”

  “Naturally you must feel it so,” I observed. “Any man would say the same — though I speak only of such men as have hearts. But consider, my dear, how little service you should do your wife by remaining fixed at her side. Such a position cannot advance your career or the prospects for your family. You must return to active service. Mary will agree. Was it not just such an eventuality that urged you to secure your sisters as companions for your wife? You have done the utmost to ensure her comfort, and must be satisfied. Now tell me of this ship you believe may offer.”

  The hoy surged over the crest of a precipitous wave and flung itself into the gulley beyond; I clutched inadvertently at the bow, salt spume in my face, and felt my brother's shoulder brush close against my own. Gosport was now hard off the larboard side, and the white-painted houses of the Isle of Wight, clearly discernible. We should be anchoring in Portsmouth harbour soon.

  “She is a fifth-rate,” Frank said low in my ear, “forty-eight guns, and new-built but six years ago: the frigate Stella Marts. I have seen her some once or twice, coming out of the Rock, or putting in at Malta. Perfect lines! Built for speed. So maneuverable and sure at coming about, that she has taken French prizes that ought to have out-gunned her. The better part of her seamen are rated Able, and she boasts some first-class gunnery.”.

  A frigate. The very thing for Fly. Having served so long in a ship of the line, as Flag-Captain under an admiral, my brother, I thought, deserved to cut a dash. Every young buck of spirit craved a fast frigate. They were the eyes of the fleet — they fought the majority of single-vessel actions — they were despatched at a mome
nt's notice to every corner of the globe. Frigate captains were the pirates of the Royal Navy: seizing enemy ships, flying into guarded ports on midnight raids, convoying merchantmen at the behest of the Honourable Company, and culling a share of Bombay profits as a result.

  “On which station does she sail?” I enquired.

  “The Channel. I should never be farther than a few days from home, should I be wanted.”

  I raised my hands as though in applause — or prayer. I could no more suppress my delight than I could stifle hope. “The very thing! How could we wish for anything better! You shall make your fortune, Fly, as many a worse fellow has done before you!”

  The sun shone briefly in my brother's countenance; then a shadow crossed his face once more, and all light was extinguished. “I have not told you the worst, Jane,” he informed me heavily. “There is the matter of Tom Seagrave.”

  “Tom Seagrave?” I furled my brows with effort. “I do not recollect the name.”

  “He is a post captain like myself,” Frank replied, “but well before our elevation, we shared a berth as Volunteers on the Perseverance. By the time I was made midshipman, Tom had already passed for lieutenant; I served under him on the Minerva. There is no one like the fellow for dash, and bravery — he has always been called 'Lucky Tom Seagrave' in the Navy for the number of prizes he has taken. But luck, Jane, has very little to do with Tom's career. He has more pluck at the bone than most squadrons put together, a fighting captain for whom the men would die.”

  Frank had never been a man to flatter or praise where praise was not due; I must take it, then, that Captain Seagrave was a paragon of naval virtue. And yet I read trouble in my brother's looks.

  “And what has your old friend to do with the Stella Marts, Fly?”

  “He is her captain.”

  “Her captain? But I thought the ship was to be given to you”

  Frank's grey eyes were bleak. “And so it may. Tom Seagrave is presently in Portsmouth awaiting court-martial, Jane. He is charged under Article Nine of the Articles of War.”

  I waited mutely for explanation.

  “Article Nine states that no enemy officer or seaman is to be stripped of his possessions or abused in any way, when an enemy ship is taken,” Frank said carefully. “Some few weeks since, Seagrave fell in with the Manon, a French thirty-two-gun frigate, just off Corunna. He engaged her; the Manon returned his fire gallantly; but the sum of it is, her mainmast was carried away and she struck her colours after a matter of an hour.”

  “Well, then!” I cried. “There can be nothing shameful in such a victory, surely!”

  My brother's countenance remained set “The French captain suffered a mortal wound, Jane—after the Manon had struck and the fellow had surrendered his sword. Seagrave is charged with murder.”

  “But why?” I gasped. “The Admiralty cannot believe he would kill a defenceless officer in cold blood! What reason could he find?”

  The master of the hoy called harshly to his mate, and Frank's eyes shifted immediately to the sails. The canvas had slackened; the vessel had slowed. A massive three-decker, a first-rate by its gun-ports, was anchored to starboard with an admiral's white flag at the mizzen; we had achieved Portsmouth harbour.

  “You see my dilemma, Jane.” Frank's voice was barely audible over the cries of sailors skimming across the water from ship to ship. “You see why I make no mention of my prospects at home. It is a damnable bargain! I may have my frigate with the Admiralty's blessing—”

  “—provided your old friend hangs,” I concluded.

  Chapter 2

  Dr. Wharton's Comfort

  23 February 1807, cont.

  PORTSMOUTH IS A SAD PLACE IN THE ESTIMATION OF those who look only for beauty in a landscape; it offers no grandeur in its edifices, no promenades worth speaking of, no sweep of land that might draw the approving eye. It is a town of tight and jogging lanes quite crammed into the east side of a horseshoe, whose western leg is Gosport; a small ell of a place enclosing a secure harbour, with the deep-water anchorage of Spit-head immediately across the Solent. The landward side of town is girdled with drawbridges and moats, the fortifications deemed vital to the preservation of the Kingdom's naval stores; but the effect must suggest a medieval fortress, it confirms the desperate activity of war and frowns upon frivolity. The commercial streets do nothing to soften so martial an aspect — Portsmouth's shops are schooled to the business of ships, the men who command them and the men who build them.

  There are chandlers, and tailors adept at the fashioning of uniforms, and purveyors of all such items as are necessary to a sailor's trunk — cocked hats, round hats for everyday wear, preserved meat and portable soup, Epsom salts and James's powders, nankeen and kerseymere waistcoats, black silk handkerchiefs, combs and clothes-brushes, tooth-powder, quadrants, day-glasses, log-books, Robinson's Elements of Navigation and The Requisite Tables and Nautical Almanac. Portsmouth may boast a few butchers and grocers, but they cannot look very high in their custom, the pay of the naval set running only to modest joints, and such comestibles as are cheaply in season.

  Four coaching inns serve the well-heeled traveller come south for embarkation: the Crown, the Navy Tavern, the Fountain, and, of course, the George. I do not believe there is a town in England that cannot claim a George. It was to this latter that my brother intended to repair, to procure us both a light nuncheon before seeking the home of Captain Thomas Seagrave. I thought it likely that Frank did not wish to put the Captain — or his wife, did Seagrave possess one — to the trouble of feeding those who came to condole.

  “There is the Stella Maris” Frank said quietly as we were rowed into the quay. “Cast your eyes upon that, Jane. Everything prime about her.”

  I gazed in silent absorption at the single-decker's closed gun ports, her soaring triple masts. I knew nothing of the subtleties of ship design; I should have to accept Frank's assurances regarding this one. But the ship was certainly an article of spirit, rocking gently at her moorings like a swan come to rest: sails close-furled in the shrouds, quarterdeck bereft of life. Only a handful of men moved purposefully about her. The rest of her crew would be on shore leave.

  “You can see where the foremast has been shipped and repaired,” Frank observed. “Splinters dashed from the poop railing and tops, as well — it is a French habit, you know, to train their guns on the masts and rigging, rather than the hull as we should do. I should like to see the damage the Manon took! She must be moored somewhere near about; the Stella will have towed her into port — but such trifles as this trim little frigate sustained, would never leave Seagrave dead in the water.”

  He halted abruptly in this speech, as though his words risked an ominous construction; and we spoke no more of the unlucky action, nor of the trim little frigate, until the George was gained and our nuncheon consumed.

  AS THIS WAS MY FIRST VISIT TO PORTSMOUTH, FRANK was all enthusiasm in conducting me through the streets once we quitted the George. He had first come to the town as a boy of twelve, a hopeful scholar at the Royal Naval Academy; he had returned some part of every year thereafter, and must regard it as almost a home. He was longing, I knew, to gain the naval dockyard in order to observe the ships presently building in the stocks; to meet with old acquaintances and learn the latest intelligence of war; to finger lengths of cordage and brass carronades and talk with spirit of his views on gunnery. I had heard Frank's opinions on the subject before, and might have engaged in such a conversation, with a remarkable air of possessing knowledge well beyond my grasp — Three broadsides every five minutes, and better by G-d if we can manage it — but Frank was inured this morning to the lures of his profession. He led me unswervingly from the broader main street, into a crooked little lane halfway down its extent, lined with steep and leaning houses shoddily-built. In one of these, we thought to find Captain Seagrave.

  “I should mention,” Frank informed me as we stood upon the steps, “that Seagrave possesses a wife — a lady of birth and i
ndependent fortune. I believe she married to disoblige her family, however, and was cut off.”

  I nodded once in comprehension. The door swung open to reveal the harassed visage of a girl in apron and cap, several strands of blond hair trailing down her reddened face. Remarkably, she bore a black patch over one eye.

  “Missus says as how she's not at home,” this apparition supplied without preamble. “You may leave yer cards if you've a mind.”

  “It is Captain Seagrave we seek, Frank said firmly. “Pray tell him that Captain Austen has called.”

  “Yer can tell 'im yerself,” the slattern retorted.

  “That will be all, Nancy.”

  The maid skittered aside as though she had been prodded with a fire iron, to reveal an upright figure barely discernible among the shadows of the foyer. From his bearing alone — correct, unfussy, and economical in its containment — I should have known him instantly for an officer of the Royal Navy; but the smile that lit my brother's countenance was assurance enough.

  Frank stepped forward and seized Captain Seagrave about the shoulders. “Tom! It does my heart good to see you!”

  The man before us broke into a grin; he returned the pressure of Frank's hands with a clap of his own. “Austen! You rogue! I thought you well out of Portsmouth this age — on convoy duty to the Indies, some said, though I had heard you were relieved of the Canopus. Is Charles Yardley in command of her, then? She'll not be well served. Yardley's a craven fool.”

  “You'll not hear me say you nay, Tom,” my brother replied with a laugh. “I might almost suspect the Admiralty of wishing the old Canopus at the bottom of the sea, in placing her in such hands. But it has been an age since we met!”