Jane and the Canterbury Tale Read online

  Mr. Moore stared coldly before him, unmoved by his wife’s raillery. “Your penchant for levity betrays you, my dear.”

  Throughout this interesting exchange, Fanny might have been deaf and mute. An odd little smile still hovered at the corners of her mouth, but she was not attending to the Moores’ debate; she had learnt long ago to ignore her Aunt Harriot’s tedious partner in life, and quite often her aunt as well. Fanny is enough of an Austen to refuse to suffer fools gladly; but in the present instance, I suspected her thoughts were more pleasurably engaged.

  So, too, did my brother Edward.

  “Jackanapes,” he muttered—a reference that must be for Mr. Thane and his town bronze—and subsided against the carriage’s squabs.

  I LINGERED IN MY BED UNTIL TEN O’CLOCK, WHEN A SCRATCHING at the door proclaimed my coffee was arrived. The fire had been lit several hours before, but I had slept on regardless, being aware that Fanny would certainly not be stirring. One rarely appeared downstairs before noon, the morning after a ball.

  Yesterday’s rain was in abeyance, but the skies remained persistently grey, and a renewal of showers could not be far off. It would be a day for sitting close to the library fire, in one of Edward’s comfortable armchairs, and attempting yet again to absorb the interesting narrative of Self-Control, by Mary Brunton. I say, yet again, because try as I might I cannot like the novel. It is an excellently-meant, elegantly-written work, without anything of nature or probability in it. However, it shall serve very well for my purpose—which is to hide my own little scrapbook of jottings, as I doze by the fire.

  The gentlemen would already be gone out with the beaters—a scheme for shooting had been renewed last evening at the ball, between the Chilham party and my nephews, young Edward and George, who were wild for sport. If only, I thought with gloom, Mr. Moore could be prevailed upon to join them. But there was no one less inclined to manly pursuits than that taciturn individual; he preferred to invade the library, and glower over a massive tome, entirely cutting up my enjoyment of the place.

  I glanced again through the window, and considered of the cool perfection of Edward’s Doric Temple; of the damp earth and autumnal flutterings in meadow and grove; of the scent of smoke and leaf-mould on the air. There had been so few days without rain since our coming into Kent, so few solitary rambles suited to contemplation. I set down my cup and threw back the bedclothes. If I were to enjoy any kind of exercise out-of-doors this morning, it was imperative that I bestir myself.

  I HAD BEEN RAMBLING FOR SOME BLISSFUL THREE-QUARTERS of an hour, and was just considering a return to the house and the recruitment of breakfast, when a breathless voice called my name.

  “Aunt Jane! Aunt Jane!”

  Wonder of wonders, it was Fanny who approached, pelting at a girlish lope through the wet grasses from the direction of Bentigh, and the old stone bridge over the Stour.1 I was astonished to find my niece awake, much less abroad, and concluded that she had spent a wretched night—there was that in her looks that warned of disquiet.

  “My dearest girl,” I said as I perceived her disheveled aspect and flushed countenance, “your petticoat is six inches deep in mud!” And it was hardly her second-best petticoat, as one might expect for a wet morning’s exercise; she had obviously dressed with care, in another of the elegant gowns and the green pelisse ordered in London a few weeks since. And she had put on her new bonnet, with the sprig of cherries drooping rakishly over one eye. I suspected an attempt to Fascinate an Unknown. Could she have consented to meet Julian Thane clandestinely in the Park at the crack of dawn?

  “Never mind my petticoat,” she said impatiently. “I do not regard a little mud. I have been out following Edward and George—they are shooting this morning, you know, and all the gentlemen from Chilham have joined them. Mr. Plumptre and Mr. Wildman and the rest, with their dogs. But oh, Aunt—”

  “Does Mr. Thane shoot as well?” I asked, with an eye to that bonnet.

  Fanny made a dismissive movement with one gloved hand. “Worse luck, he does not. And I particularly wished to see—But, Aunt Jane, you must attend! There has been a man found in our meadow.”

  “A man?”

  She grasped my elbow as tho’ I might require support.

  “He is lying on the old Pilgrim’s Way. Quite dead.”

  The Pilgrim’s Way ran, as it had since Chaucer’s time, along the Downs to the north of Godmersham, and divided Edward’s land from that of his neighbour, the same Mr. Wildman of Chilham Castle; indeed, it ran straight towards St. Mary’s Church in the little village of Chilham, where Mr. Tylden had united the MacCallisters only last evening. In other words—it ran behind Edward’s house, whereas Fanny had come from the direction of the lane in front, which ran just beyond the river—quite the opposite end of Edward’s acres.

  “I do not understand you,” I protested. “The Pilgrim’s Way is on high ground to the north!”

  “Yes, yes,” she said hurriedly, “but you must know there is a side-path, often used by those who know of our church, that runs from the Downs, skirts the house, and comes out into the lane. I do not think it is above a mile from the true Pilgrim’s Way; and Papa does not mind those who employ the bridge for the purpose of visiting St. Lawrence’s, for Mamma’s grave is there, and he likes to think of more than just ourselves visiting the church. When I was little, Mamma used to say that grass never grew on the Pilgrim’s side-path, because so many pious feet had trod it.”

  I suspected grass never grew there from a dearth of sunlight, but forebore to utter so acid a remark. “I see. And now there is a man lying there?”

  “Indeed,” my niece hurried on, “and I suppose he might be a pilgrim in earnest, from the look of him.”

  “Not one of our neighbours, then, thank Heaven?”

  She shook her head. “A tradesman, I should judge, in a stout travelling cloak, with a leather satchel lying a little off the path, beside a walking stick. He must have dropped them as he fell.”

  I turned resolutely towards the river and the ancient Pilgrim’s Way. “How did he die, Fanny?”

  “Shot through the heart, John Plumptre says.”

  I stopped short and stared at her in dismay. I will confess that I had been perfectly content to think nothing of corpses and death during my visit to Kent; it was not the sort of country for melancholy. Weddings suited the general animation of the neighbourhood far better.

  “Bessy, Mr. Plumptre’s spaniel, set up a baying over the body—”

  Fanny’s voice wavered as she offered this inconsequential information; in all her haste to report the news she had forgot, for a little, to be tender-hearted. “Oh Aunt—I think Mr. Plumptre is afraid that one of us killed him! Quite by mistake, of course—having aimed for a pheasant.”

  Fanny, I could see, feared this, too: That one of her brothers or friends had taken an innocent pilgrim’s life as carelessly as he might a bird’s.

  “I must go in search of my father,” she said more steadily. “You will forgive me, Aunt—he must be informed.”

  “Of course.”

  Among his various duties and honours as a man of consequence in Canterbury, Edward counted the office of First Magistrate. A surgeon being now useless, my brother was the next person who ought to be summoned.

  Fanny was off again at a run for the house, her hand pressed against her stays, which must be cruelly impeding her lungs. Edward would still be closeted with his valet, unaware of the signal burden about to befall him. There would be the coroner to rouse, the jury to empanel. An inquest held in some publick house in Canterbury. An attempt to ascertain the unfortunate man’s identity, and convey the dreadful news to his relicts—

  And one of our own young men to console, for having murdered a man all unwittingly. I sent up a hurried prayer that which fowling piece had fired the fatal shot, should never be ascertained—and kicked savagely at a pebble as I mounted the old stone bridge.

  The River Stour chuckled below, but the happy dream that had been
my sojourn in Kent was suddenly all to pieces.

  1 Bentigh was an avenue of limes and yews. It led toward the old Norman church of St. Lawrence, where the Knight family worshipped. —Editor’s note.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Unexpected Hessians

  … Fortune had once

  Been his friend, for a time, and then his foe.

  No man can ever expect her favor to last.…

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER, “THE MONK’S TALE”

  21 OCTOBER 1813, CONT.

  THE GENTLEMEN LOUNGED IN AN UNEASY GROUP, RESTRAINING their dogs, near the publick footpath. The beaters—two fellows employed by Edward’s gamekeeper—sat cross-legged in the dirt near a pair of canvas bags whose humped shapes suggested the hunting had already been well advanced when the fatal accident occurred. The spaniels’ tongues were lolling cheerfully from their mouths, as tho’ a human corpse were not so very different, after all, from one with feathers; they leaned happily against the legs of their masters, who were unwontedly silent when they ought to have been chaffing each other.

  The corpse itself was sprawled across the Pilgrim’s Way, an inert figure clad in browns and greens that must have been indistinguishable from the autumnal verdure; small wonder neither beater nor hunter had noticed the fellow. The man’s utter stillness, coupled with the blood-stained earth all around him, had thrown a pall over the shooting-party.

  The scene might have been an engraving by Cruikshank: Mishap of a Sporting Nature, Or, the Wrong Bird Bagged.

  There was John Plumptre, his serious dark eyes holding an expression of trouble and a faint line of apprehension on his brow; glorious Jupiter Finch-Hatton, whose posture as he leaned against an oak suggested a fashionable malaise I suspected he was far from feeling; James Wildman, who started forward upon perceiving me, as tho’ determined to offer a lady every civility regardless of chaotic circumstance; and my own nephews George and Edward. Their frank looks of dread recalled countless episodes of schoolboy mischief gone terribly awry: arms broken whilst tree-climbing, window panes smashed with cricket balls poorly batted, and dolls’ heads severed by makeshift guillotines. They were blenching at the prospect of their father’s inevitable lecture, on the thoughtlessness of young men wild for sport.

  “Aunt Jane,” Edward said nervously—he is but nineteen, tho’ he affects an attitude of someone far more up to snuff, as must be expected of The Heir—“You have met with Fanny, I conclude.”

  “Yes, Edward, I have. She is gone for your father. May I see the poor fellow?”

  “Do you truly wish—that is to say, I should have thought—a spectacle not for the frailer sex—” This, from Mr. Wildman, who being the eldest at five-and-twenty, appeared to regard himself as the minder of his fellows.

  I smiled at him rather as one of his old governesses might. “Pray do not make yourself anxious, Mr. Wildman. I am quite accustomed to death. My father was a clergyman, you know.”

  “Ah,” he said, and looked slightly mortified.

  I walked resolutely towards the corpse, the gentlemen heeling their dogs a discreet distance from my skirts, and made as if to kneel down beside the Deceased. I was forestalled by John Plumptre, who flung his shooting coat—a high-collared affair of drab that just brushed his ankles as he strode through the fields—down upon the ground. “The blood,” he said briefly. “It has soaked into the earth.”

  I nodded my thanks, and knelt carefully on the coat.

  My heart was pounding, however much courage I may have affected for the reassurance of the young gentlemen—for tho’ I have looked on Death before, I never meet Him without the profoundest sensibility. I closed my eyes an instant, drew a steadying breath, and forced myself to study the unfortunate creature whose mortal remains lay before me. I owed the dead man that much—to note what I could of the way he had died—for the five sporting fellows ranged about were so discomfited and mortified by the terrible event, they seemed determined to take no notice of the corpse at all. Perhaps then it might be swallowed up by the forgiving turf, and all should be right as rain in their world. But no—this was no apparition conjured by an excessive indulgence in claret the previous night; this was real, and the bucks of the neighbourhood should be forced to grapple with it, if I had my way. Death should never be so incidental as the bagging of a pheasant. I leaned over the man, consumed by an immense feeling of pity.

  He lay on his back with arms flung wide and one leg bent beneath the other, hazel eyes staring sightlessly at the canopy of bare tree branches overhead. The wound in his chest had oozed a good deal, but was darkened and quiet now. He was in his middle forties, I should judge, and had apparently lived a life much out-of-doors, from the weathered condition of his skin, which was quite tanned for October. Not much of this could be seen, however, for he was bearded—a factor that must suggest the labouring class; a gentleman might sport a moustache, but rarely whiskers. The fellow’s clothes bore out the assumption, for they were of worsteds and nankeen, nothing out of the ordinary way. The boots, however, raised a question in my mind. For tho’ they were caked with mud and had seen hard use, they appeared to have been cut by an excellent cobbler from an expensive hide, in a stile I should only describe as Hessians.

  I frowned. What business had a labourer wearing a gentleman’s boots? Even admitting that they might be purchased at second-or third-hand, what folly urged their display on a wearisome journey by foot? Our man gave every appearance of having walked to the place of his death—a satchel and stout stick rested nearby.

  A pilgrim, Fanny had said. One token alone suggested the activity: a large silver cross hung round the corpse’s neck on a solid silver chain. Something about its shape, or perhaps the irregularity of its design, brought to mind the amber cross my brother Charles had purchased for me in Malta—and the thought rose unbidden that our corpse had travelled in distant lands, perhaps by sea. This was foolishness, of course—anything might be purchased in London, after all, regardless of which village the man claimed as home. Perhaps his satchel would tell us something of his identity—

  I had half-risen from my knees in order to rifle the corpse’s belongings, when the canter of hooves announced my brother’s approach. Of course Edward would saddle a horse—he might even have been on the point of riding out for pleasure, as was his custom each morning, when Fanny burst upon his scene big with news.

  He dismounted rather heavily, and tossed the reins of his hack to young Edward without a word. He was frowning as he observed my crouching position by the body.

  “Are you on the point of swooning, Jane? Have none of these blockheads supported you?”

  “Indeed I am not!” I retorted indignantly. “Only puzzled exceedingly by what I find. Or rather—not puzzled, exactly, for the matter is clear enough.”

  He raised his brows quizzically as he dropped down beside me, his fingers feeling for an absent pulse in the corpse’s neck. “Quite cold,” he observed grimly.

  “That is not all,” I murmured in an undertone. “I must tell you, Edward, that for several reasons I am most uneasy in my mind.”

  “Were you to be otherwise in the presence of a dead man, Jane, I should be severely shocked.” He tossed one cutting phrase over his shoulder at the knot of sporting men standing respectfully behind: “Which of you young fools cut off this man’s life?”

  There was a painful silence.

  My nephew George cleared his throat noisily, a sure sign of panic.

  “To be frank, sir,” began James Wildman—

  “—We haven’t the slightest notion,” interrupted Jupiter Finch-Hatton. He thrust himself away from his languid pose against the oak and dusted his gloved fingers with an air of distaste. “We’d just flushed the nicest little covey of pheasant a man could wish to find. All our guns were raised; most of ’em fired. Impossible to know which dropped the feller. Oughtn’t to have been there. Trespass on a private manor. Preserves. Damned impudence, my opinion. Got his just desserts.”

  “Thank you, Finch-Hatto
n. When I want your opinion I shall certainly ask for it,” my brother rejoined brusquely. “James, what was your party’s position when the last shots were fired?”

  Mr. Wildman appeared relieved; this was a question he could answer. He whirled around and pointed in the direction from which I had come, but well to the right of the Lime Walk. “Quite a way off—thirty yards, I should think.”

  “Forty,” corrected John Plumptre. “And the beaters were driving towards us, of course, when the pheasant went up. As Finch-Hatton says—a beautiful little covey, and we got most of them, sir. We’d no notion that any of the shot went awry until the dogs—”

  “Quite,” Edward said abruptly. “And when you came up with him, was he already expired? Did he speak?”

  “Not a word, sir. I knew as soon as I glimpsed his face that life was extinct.”

  My brother was hardly attending to Plumptre, I thought, his gaze being fixed on the corpse and his countenance teeming with speculation. Edward had seen all that I had, and formed what I should guess were similar conclusions; but it would be best to discuss such matters in private.

  “Observe the satchel,” I murmured. “How it sits off the path, near the walking stick. As tho’ both were placed, not fallen, there.”

  “Have you searched his things?”

  “Not yet.”

  Edward assisted me to rise, then lifted Plumptre’s coat and tossed it in a careless bundle towards the young man. “Thank’ee. You’ll find, I believe, that it’s not much stained.”

  Edward glanced coolly at the reddened ground, nodded once, and strode to the spot where the satchel lay.

  The strap that had secured it was torn open and some of the contents had spilled out onto the ground. Edward collected these, examined them briefly, and then slipped them back into the leather sack. “A knife in a sheath,” he said, “a crudely drawn plan of the Pilgrim’s Way from Boughton Lees to Canterbury, showing our side-path to St. Lawrence Church; a flask of Blue Ruin against the rain; a heel of brown bread; and a Bible. Perhaps he was a pilgrim, after all.”