Jane and the Stillroom Maid Read online

  Our driver was the selfsame Nate who had carried my urgent missive to Sir James Villiers two nights before, a strong young fellow of perhaps twenty, whose wall-eyed stare was roundly disconcerting. I wondered which eye he trained upon the road, and determined not to ask.

  He pushed his cap to the crown of his head as we settled ourselves within the trap, and scratched ruminatively at his thick reddish hair.

  “The Blue John Cave is what Tha’ ladies be wanting, ah’m thinkin’,” he observed ponderously, “wit’ all Tha’ talk o’ bankets underground, but it’s a good twenty mile fra’ here, an ah’ve never been, myself. The Plague Village’ll be Eyam, what lost so many a good bit ago, and that’s no more nor less than five mile. As fer they abysses”—in his mouth, the word was nearer abbesses, as though it were a nunnery we sought—“I reckon tha’ll find such along the Hucklow road, above Eyam. We might just do it, an’ Tha’ has time.”

  Cassandra sighed over the lost Blue John Cave, but upon hearing that Nate could produce a Stone Circle for her delectation—a scattering of monoliths, from an ancient burial ground, not far from Eyam—she learned to be happy.

  The sun was hot, and the wind stirred by the horse not worth mentioning; the pony trap wanted cushions for its hard wood seats. We swayed along the stony road at a drowsing pace, our sunshades propped against our shoulders, while the scents of drying grass and soiled sheep’s wool drifted across the fields to either side. I had tucked Tess Arnold’s stillroom book, wrapped in an embroidered shawl, under the mattress of my bed; and though my person was at leisure, my mind would often return to the closely-written pages. Not a glimpse of them should I have before tomorrow; but much might be elucidated at Chatsworth this evening. Various of the Devonshire family had known a good deal of the stillroom maid.

  We passed through the town of Baslow and the hamlet of Stoney Middleton. Cassandra’s eyes were bright and her colour fresh; I should never mistake her today for the younger image of my mother. She kept her sketchbook open upon her lap as we drove, and despite the swaying of the equipage and the necessity of keeping a firm hand-hold on the seat, managed a fair likeness of Nate, as viewed from the rear. In the Plague Village of Eyam, the horse was let to grass for an hour while we walked the narrow streets and exclaimed over the plaques on every side, that recounted the melancholy history of 1665, when two-thirds of the villagers succumbed to disease. A little girl with golden curls hanging down her back found us resting in the shade of an elm, and brought us spring water in a dipper made of tin.

  Two hours out of Bakewell, we found ourselves ascending the Hucklow road, where we intended to rest a while among the standing-stones. The country fell sheer away on either side of our cart-track, in much the fashion of Nate’s promised “abbesses.” Cassandra had given over her expressions of delight at every turning, and was now gripping the sides of the swaying trap as though her very life depended upon it. She had suffered one carriage overturning two years since, and the experience did not rest lightly with her; frequent headaches from a considerable knock on the head were the fruit of disaster, and a consequent anxiety each time she trusted herself to an unknown conveyance and driver.

  “You might as well get down, my dear, and walk,” I suggested. “I shall do the same. We should both benefit from the exercise, and the horse from the lightened load. You there! Driver! Pull up your horse!”

  Nate turned his head around and stared at me. “Tha’s niver askin’ to halt the beast when he’s strainin’ up sich a hill? Tha’s a woman, for ye. Bide bit, till tha’s at the top.”

  He had no sooner uttered the words, than the report of a gun set the horse to plunging in its harness. The frightened animal neighed wildly and attempted to bolt—Cassandra screamed, and clutched with both hands at my arm—Nate swore aloud, and dropped the reins to seize his antique blunderbuss—at which the horse, being given its head, plunged forward with a great lurch, spilling Cassandra and me backwards over the pony trap’s seat, along with a quantity of sunshades, novels, sketchbooks, and lap-robes.

  The hamper of food, mercifully enough, remained within the equipage.

  I tumbled down upon the stony roadbed, felt my head strike an inconvenient outcropping, and struggled to my feet. I looked for Cassandra—espied her bewildered countenance, and reached out my hand—when a shouted halloo from the road ahead drew both our heads around.

  A man on horseback, his face masked in a scarf of India cotton, his hat-brim pulled low, was fixed at the head of Nate’s horse with a pistol raised. Nate himself was braced in the pony trap’s seat, his unwieldy weapon levelled upon the highwayman; and the two appeared to have achieved an impasse. I considered whether the wisest course might not be to run—when Cassandra observed, in a voice only barely discomposed, “What sort of highwayman plies his trade in broad daylight, Jane? The fool might be discovered by anyone along the Hucklow road.”

  “True enough,” I murmured, and took a step forward.

  The highwayman’s eyes shifted slightly from our driver’s wall-eyed glare to my own flushed cheeks, my disarranged sunbonnet. I untied the strings of my leghorn straw and removed it. I took a moment to smooth my hair. And felt Cassandra approaching slowly behind me.

  I enquired: “What do you mean, sirrah, by incommoding us in this dreadful fashion?”

  “No incommoding meant, and I’m sure, only I did need so as to halt yer trap,” he promptly replied. “I’m under orders to fetch that there book as you carried away from Penfolds Hall yesterday, and I’m obliged to keep you here until you do give it up.”

  “The stillroom book? You must be mad! Who are you?” I took a step closer, thinking swiftly of the quarto volume secreted under my mattress.

  “Who I be makes no matter, miss,” the highwayman replied. “I’ll be taking that book now.”

  “I haven’t got it,” I retorted stoutly. “I gave it into the keeping of Sir James Villiers, the Bakewell Justice—but perhaps you are already acquainted with him.”

  “Not so’s to speak to,” the ruffian replied equably. “You wouldn’t be spinning me a falsehood, miss?”

  “My sister will tell you the same,” I replied, with what I thought was admirable evasion.

  Cassandra nodded vigorously.

  The highwayman relaxed his vigilance a trifle, in consideration of our veracity; and without a second’s hesitation, Nate fired his blunderbuss full at the fellow’s head.

  The shot went wide—the gun’s recoil knocked Nate backwards into the body of the trap—the highwayman’s horse reared, and tossed him neatly to the ground; and the man went skittering down the side of the Hucklow road, bouncing and cursing and tumbling with a fearful force until he fetched up against a large boulder some thirty feet below. He lay, inert, while Cassandra assisted the faithful Nate out of the body of the trap.

  “Held on’t the horse’s reins, any road,” he muttered proudly.

  “You did quite well, my dear sir. We were both quite thankful to have you at the fore,” Cassandra gasped.

  “I should recommend aiming for some other part of the anatomy than the head, however,” I counseled. “Even in the case of defence against highwaymen, a judge may not look kindly upon outright murder.”

  “’Tisn’t murder, when the gun fires wild,” Nate returned indignantly. “There was nivver a chance of it. But yon fellah’s done for hisself, by the look o’ things.”

  “He is certainly suffering from a nasty blow to the skull,” I observed, “if not a broken neck.”

  “I’d best fetch a bit rope and tie ’im into the trap. Justice’ll be wantin’ to see him.”

  “I suppose there’s no other course open to us”—Cassandra sighed—“but I had hoped for the standing-stones, Jane. And consider of that lovely hamper! I’m positively famished!”

  Poor Man’s Plaster

  ake one part beeswax, three parts tar, and three parts resin, and melt all together. Spread the plaster on paper or muslin, and cut into strips two inches wide. Tie the strips firml
y around a bruised or aching joint.

  —From the Stillroom Book

  of Tess Arnold,

  Penfolds Hall, Derbyshire,

  1802–1806

  Chapter 20

  The Fate of Chamber Pots

  30 August 1806, cont.

  ∼

  WITH A MISCREANT INSENSIBLE AT OUR FEET AND THE picnic hamper perched upon our laps, we achieved Bakewell in less than two-thirds of the period required for quitting it. Perhaps twenty minutes into our journey, a series of groans could be heard emanating from the pony trap’s floor; the highwayman was once more in the land of the living, and by the sound of his mournful tones, regretting the privilege. He was too securely bound to occasion alarm; I resisted the impulse to set my feet upon his head; but with such music in our ears, neither Cassandra nor I could summon the energy for conversation. The remainder of our pleasure drive was spent in the grimmest silence, while the beauties of Derbyshire passed away unnoticed.

  Nate drove straight through the town from the Baslow road and made directly for the constables’ watchhouse, where our burden was deposited amidst cries of wonder and consternation; the watchmen could no more recognise the fellow, when deprived of his India cotton scarf, than Nate had been able to do. Cassandra insisted at this juncture upon walking the last few hundred yards to the head of Matlock Street, where all the comfort and sustenance of The Rutland Arms awaited; we left the picnic hamper to Nate’s attention, and thanked him profusely that we had not come to greater harm.

  “And I shall send immediately for Sir James Villiers,” I informed the constable, “with the instruction that he must seek you out, and question narrowly this fellow in your keeping; do be certain to keep him close, and watch him well, for he seems to me the slipperiest of brigands.”

  The highwayman positively swelled with pride at this encomium, and the constables looked all their confidence; I left the whole party in rousing good spirits, and determined to enjoy themselves.

  “What did that ruffian mean,” Cassandra enquired at last, “when he spoke of a book you had taken from Penfolds Hall, Jane? I had not known that you found occasion to visit the place.”

  “I presume the fellow would mean the stillroom book belonging to the murdered maid,” I replied. “Her sister placed it in my keeping only yesterday.” Her sister. If the masked highwayman had known to follow me from Bakewell, as I must presume he had done, then Jennet Arnold must have set him on me. Whether she had done so with the intent to harm remained open to question. At the very least, she had been pressed for her knowledge; but who could wish to secure the stillroom book so desperately, that he should send out a man with a pistol in broad daylight? The highwayman himself—or one who employed him?

  One lesson, however, I had learned: The stillroom book must be secured against theft or injury, if I had to carry it myself to Chatsworth that evening in a reticule the size of a carter’s dray.

  “MY DEAR CASSANDRA!—JANE! THE OUTRAGE THAT has occurred in your absence!”

  My mother cried these words as we appeared on the parlour threshold, and immediately sank back into her chair, a square of lawn pressed to her eyes. Sally bent most anxiously over her, waving a vinaigrette, while Lord Harold Trowbridge himself appeared to be occupied chiefly in collecting shards of pottery from the parlour floor. My cousin Mr. Cooper was singing. The volume of sound in that small place was sufficient to drive out every other thought.

  Cassandra set down her sunshade—which alone she had retrieved from Nate’s trap, the rest of our things being intended to arrive with the driver—and untied her bonnet strings. “My dear mother, have you suffered on our account? Has some news of our mishap travelled already to your ears? But we are perfectly well, I assure you—neither Jane nor I regard the indignity as being in the least out of the ordinary way.”

  “Not out of the ordinary way?” my mother cried, with a wild look. “Such spasms in my side—such palpitations of my heart—when a respectable woman is robbed in her own rooms, in a decent inn managed by worthy people? I should call it very much out of the way!”

  “Robbed?” Cassandra pressed her fingers against her ears, as though to ward off the bellowing chorus from Mr. Cooper, and glanced anxiously at me.

  “Lord Harold,” I called out, “I had not looked for the honour of this visit. Would you be so good as to tell us who has been robbed?”

  “Michael Tivey,” he replied, “and of the better part of his reason.”

  “Michael Tivey! The surgeon?”

  “I fancy he appeared more in the role of blacksmith this morning. But yes. The same Michael Tivey.” Lord Harold stood up and carried the shards of crockery over to the parlour table. The devoted Sally—whom my mother had waved peremptorily away at the first sight of her daughters—set down the vinaigrette and commenced loading a kitchen tray with smashed earthenware.

  “It is the chamber pot, Jane,” Cassandra murmured with twitching lips. “We seem destined to destroy them all.”

  “Mrs. Austen has been troubled this morning by an unwelcome visitor,” Lord Harold explained. He crossed to the corner near the parlour window, where my cousin still stood, drawing breath for a fourth verse, and seized him by the arm. “My good fellow—if you do not leave off that dreadful noise at once, I shall be forced to call you out; and though it has been my habit, in affairs of honour, never to aim for the heart—in your case, my dear sir, I should be sorely tempted.”

  Mr. Cooper paused, his mouth agape; allowed an expression of mortification and sheer terror to fill his countenance; and then exited the parlour without another refrain.

  “I have affronted him,” Lord Harold observed. “That is very well. Nothing so becomes a man as a sensation of injured pride. He will set himself to drafting letters to my direction; he will consider the naming of seconds; and when Mr. Cooper comes to realise that the only possible second remaining to him is presently residing in Bakewell gaol, and thus beyond all power of a dawn meeting—he will drown his injury in a quantity of hock. A far preferable recourse than pistols for any self-respecting clergyman.” Lord Harold dusted a few fragments of pottery from his fingers and raised an eyebrow in Cassandra’s direction.

  My sister choked on what might have been a laugh.

  “Does no one spare a thought for me?” my mother exclaimed indignantly.

  “Most certainly, ma’am,” Lord Harold assured her. “My own thoughts at present are full of admiration for a lady of such advanced years, and indifferent health, who is yet capable of defending her honour with a chamber pot so soundly, that she lays a man of fifteen stone insensible at her feet.”

  “My lord,” I said, “pray enlighten us.”

  “Michael Tivey, being long familiar with The Rutland Arms, having assisted in its construction not two years ago through the manufacture of some iron implements and grillwork, engaged to enter the premises by the servants’ door, just off the stableyard, when the cook and the benighted Mr. Davies were otherwise diverted by the cares attendant upon the management of a posting inn. Tivey mounted to this corridor by the servants’ stair, and forced his way into the parlour—whose door, it must be admitted, was undoubtedly left on the latch. Your mother, being thoroughly wearied by the hurly-burly of trade, and the consumption of a rather heavy dinner, complete with iced cakes, had given way to the arms of Morpheus; when the stealthy footfall of Tivey in an adjoining room alerted all her senses. She called out, believing herself to have been joined by Mr. Cooper; and the footfall fell instantly silent. No answer did Mr. Tivey make. Alarm seizing the excellent lady—”

  “—I took up the chamber pot and made immediately for your bedroom, Jane, where the scoundrel had hidden himself. He thought to push past me—he thrust himself savagely out of the door, my dear, so that I very nearly fainted—and with all my strength, I threw the pot at him!”

  “You succeeded in striking him in the head?”

  “Not at all,” my mother cried. “But the pot, in tumbling at his feet, quite tripped up the rogu
e; and he dashed his head against the corner of that table. There was a quantity of blood; but as I fainted away myself at that moment, I had no cause to regard it.”

  “The blood fell to my lot,” Lord Harold observed, “or rather, to the excellent Sally’s; for the girl had just been conveying me to this room along the front passage while Tivey commanded the rear. She found the door already thrown open, and two bodies lying as if dead within; but happily, all such mortal fears were laid to rest with Mrs. Austen’s regaining her senses. I restrained the blacksmith, while Sally cried out for Mr. Davies, who was instantly in attendance—Davies summoned another man—and in a matter of minutes, the offending Tivey was removed to the kitchens below. Sir James Villiers is already summoned.”

  “And have you enquired what the blackguard meant by invading our rooms in such a manner?” Cassandra demanded indignantly.

  “I have not, because I rather fancy I know. He wanted the book your sister saw fit to carry away from Penfolds Hall; and he meant to have it.”

  “Tivey!” I cried. “Then it must have been he who placed that highwayman in our way!”

  “Highwayman?” gasped my mother, turning pale. “Whatever is to become of us? Whooping cough is nothing to it!”

  I dashed towards my bedchamber, but stopped short on the threshold. The mattress had been tumbled from the bedframe. The quarto volume I had wrapped in a shawl was nowhere in evidence.

  “But what possible use could the Coroner make of such a thing?” I asked despairingly.

  Lord Harold touched my shoulder in a gesture of comfort. “Perhaps he regarded it in the light of evidence, Jane.”

  “But against whom?”

  “For that, we must peruse its pages.”

  I turned—and saw the very volume resting in his hands.