Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House Read online

  Charles, my particular little brother, has been Master and Commander of his sloop in the Adantic for nearly three years—but is not yet made Post Captain.1 When he will find occasion for an act of brazen daring, a risk to life and limb such as might draw the Admiralty’s approval, none can say. Charles may only hope for another American war. The Admiralty’s attention has heretofore been trained upon my elder brother Frank—who has been Post Captain these seven years. But of late, the Admiralty appears to have found even him wanting.

  Frank suffered the distinction of serving under the Great Man, Admiral Lord Nelson. His third-rate eighty gun ship, the Canopus, was destined to meet the combined French and Spanish fleets in 1805; but the Admiral, insensible that he should fall in with the Enemy off the headland of Trafalgar, and being desperately in need of water and stores, despatched my brother to Gibraltar in search of the same. Frank returned several days after the decisive action, to discover some twenty-four hundred British sailors wounded or dead, nineteen of the enemy’s vessels captured or destroyed, the remnant of the Combined Fleet under flight—and the Great Man, wounded mortally by a musket shot

  Frank’s failure to engage the Enemy in so glorious a battle—a day that shall live forever in English hearts— was a bitter blow. Not all his subsequent victory at Santo Domingo, his prize money and silver trophies, his marriage to little Mary Gibson, may supply the want of distinction—though the affectionate hearts of his sisters must rejoice in the intervention of Divine Providence.

  The skiff mounted a determined hillock of wave, slapped firmly into the trough beyond, and sent a shower of frigid green water into my lap. I could not suppress a slight exclamation of shock at the sudden wet and cold, and Frank’s head came round to stare at me. I smiled weakly in return, my hands still clenched on the rough wood of my seat, and hoped desperately that I should not disgrace myself.

  The hoy loomed—the oars were shipped—and Frank’s warm hand was reaching for my own. With a deep breath to hide my trepidation, I picked my way across the skiff’s slatted bottom—quite in want of caulk, and welling with water—and allowed myself to be hauled upwards by the hoy’s master.

  A weathered face, pinched and crimson with cold, the eyes two agates against the light of morning—if he was akin to most of the seamen plying the Solent from Southampton to Portsmouth, he would bear his female supercargo litde affection. But his boat, in comparison with the lighter craft I had just quitted, appeared ample and sturdy; I heaved a shuddering sigh of relief and sank against the side. Frank jumped across the widening gap of water between skiff and hoy, clapped the master about the shoulders, and said, “What do you make it, Finley? Two hours, in this wind?”

  “She’s bearing south-south-east, Captain,” the master replied, with a doubtful eye to his straining canvas. “We’re forced to beat and beat, I don’t reckon.”

  “The wind will shift in another quarter-hour,” my brother replied, “and then we shall see what your poor tub might do. Crack on, Finley!”

  With a grin in my direction, Frank swung himself into the bow, as though the frigid spray could not daunt him, nor the February wind cut through his good naval coat. It is a trifle worn, that coat—he is the sort of man who considers of refurbishing his dress only when it is in rags about him—but the gold epaulettes of his rank shone brighdy upon his shoulders. His face was thrust out into the gusts and swell, his whole countenance alight, and his aspect that of a hunting dog let off its lead. My heart leapt with pleasure at the sight of him. It has been many months since Frank was turned onshore, and the landsman’s lot does not sit well with him. But on this raw wintry morning he was once again the brave and reckless older brother I adored as a girl—the boy we named Fly for his trick of spurring his horses to breakneck speed—the boy who set off alone for Portsmouth at the age of twelve, and could never bear dry land thereafter. Frank has more courage at the bone and more good English common-sense than any other Austen; and though he spares less thought for weighty matters than my brother James, and wastes less on frivolous ones than brother Henry, he is quite the truest heart I have ever known.

  The mate hauled anchor, the sails rose up the mast; the canvas swelled with wind; and faster than I could have believed, Southampton slipped away behind us. My involuntary grip on the hoy’s gunwales eased; I breathed more steadily, and was capable once more of observation. Never had I been privileged to travel so swiftly, in such relative silence. No wheels rattled, no horses’ hooves rang like mallets on the paving-stones; we were sped by merest air, the fresh strong wind buffeting my bonnet. I grinned foolishly at the hoy’s master, as though he were an angel bent on conveying me to Paradise.

  “How do you like it, Jane?” Frank asked, crouching low as he made his way into the body of the hoy. “Are you warm enough?”

  “I shall never be warm enough while winter holds sway in Southampton.” I wrapped my arms more firmly in my cloak. “The south of England provides quite the most penetrating damp of any I have known, though the locals will protest so much. Southampton may be rated high in the esteem of the Fashionable for its bathing and medicinal waters, but the Fashionable, you will allow, are not prone to bathe in February.”

  “Not by design, certainly,” Frank returned, “although I recollect some few who have bathed by misadventure. More than one pleasure party has ended with your Fashionable beaux headfirst in the drink. But you are not indisposed? Not queasy in your workings? You do not feel the slightest threat of a fainting fit coming on?”

  Poor Fly. He has been closeted too long with his Mary; and as she is increasing, and much prone to swooning after a hearty meal, Frank is grown convinced that all women are prey to it

  “Not in the slightest,” I assured him. “I am admirably situated here; you may return to the bow with equanimity.”

  “Pray join me,” he urged. “The sensation of wind and movement is delightful. I shall keep one hand firmly on your arm, never fear, Jane; you shall not risk the slightest injury. ”

  I found courage enough to attempt it, and soon stood with my brother in the hoy’s farthest extent. Here, the views of the Solent and its encircling landscape were unimpeded. Frank’s eager hands made figures in the air: to the larboard side, the peaceful settlements of Netley, and Lee-on-Solent, and Gosport spilling down to the sea; to starboard, the last fringe of the New Forest; and ahead, the Isle of Wight looming like another country. Portsmouth commanded the headland directly opposite the island; and beyond them both, roiled the broader waters of the Channel, where Frank had mounted blockade against the French for so many tedious years.

  “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 i
n 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 litd 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 moment’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 mo
st 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.