Jane and the Man of the Cloth Page 30

  A flash of teeth that betokened a grim smile.

  “He had drawn her out to the road itself, with a falsely written message—a plea for help from one of our Royalists, hidden in the Pinny,” Sidmouth said. “A drawing of a white lily was sent with the note; and it arranged to meet in a lonely spot not far from the Grange, in the early hours of the morning, when the moon should have set.” He paused to draw breath.

  “You have seen that road at night; you know full well how little aid might be found, did one suffer a mishap. When Seraphine arrived, Fielding was waiting; and she knew him to be attempting her discovery. She fled from him, and was upon the point of escape, when his horse overtook her own—and he dealt her such a severe blow to the head with his whip handle, that she fell unconscious from her mount’s back. It is solely by the grace of God she avoided a more severe injury still.”

  “But what can have been his purpose?’” I cried.

  “We think it probable he wished to detain her some time, in an effort to win that intelligence from her, that should be so deadly to our cause.”

  “But why? What reason can Fielding have had, to so disturb your activity? He was an officer of the Royal Navy! Should not the downfall of Napoleon be in the interest of all who claim a part in that noble institution?”

  “All, who are not presendy dependent upon the Monster’s purse,’” Sidmouth replied grimly. “I have believed Captain Fielding a spy of the French for many years; but it was only in recent months that he allowed himself to show his hand, in his attempts to discover my methods. He styled himself an agent of the Revenue men, as he took care that all of Lyme should know; but his treachery had as its object far more than Free Trade. It has ended with his life.”

  Mr. Trimble could no longer be thwarted; and I made as if to go, my aching ankles almost numb from the conditions to which I had subjected them. I could not but think that I should never see Geoffrey Sidmouth again, and emotion would rise; but I hurriedly removed the bread and cheese and apples from the basket, and placed it over my arm, and was on the point of turning away, in despair of ever making an audible adieu; when Sidmouth’s hand closed over my own, as tightly as a vise.

  “To have you leave without a word will tear the very heart from my body,” he said harshly. “However little approbation you accord my actions—despicable, unjust as they may seem—do not deny me the gentleness of your pity! One word of farewell, for God’s sake, to a man whose fate is so uncertain!”

  I stared at him wordlessly, all but overcome; and in an instant, he had pulled me down beside him in a crushing embrace, made more awkward by the presence of his chains. I felt myself enmeshed in iron, and closed my eyes against the force of it, until I felt his lips move warmly over my own.

  “Must you surely die, then?” I said brokenly.

  “It seems I must,” he replied, in some bitterness of spirit, “—unless it be that chaos reign, and fire cover the earth, and these bonds be loosed by hands more powerful than my own. But do not cry, dear Jane! Perhaps we shall meet again—be it only beyond the grave!”

  I felt the sharp prick of tears to my eyelids, and thrust myself to my feet, unwilling and unable to linger more. At the gaol’s entry,? turned for one last glimpse of Geoffrey Sidmouth.

  “There may be men with a greater claim to unblemished reputation,’” I said, “but none to bravery. It is something, indeed, to know myself your friend. Adieu, Mr. Sidmouth—and courage! in that most mortal hour.”

  And so I knocked upon the portal, and emerged into daylight, and the curious eyes of Gordy Trimble—and let the little gaoler think what calumnies he might.

  AN INVOCATION OF FIRE, AND OF CIHAOS UNLEASHED. I HAD THOUGHT it a pretty speech, from a man in contemplation of his fate, and gave it no more consideration than I should a verse of Cowper’s—stirring words, to be sure, and well-phrased, but with little of prophecy about them. I made my slow way home, and endured a listless dinner, my thoughts unabashedly pensive; for the few moments I had spent in Sidmouth’s arms were calculated to send any woman’s principles to the winds (yes, even a clergyman’s daughter), and at the thought that I should never see him the more, I could not but be melancholy. My father observed me narrowly, but forbore from interrogation; and even James—though ignorant of the cause of my Ian-guor—had something of sympathy in his tone as he bade me good night.

  “You are returned, then, from your day of liberty?” I said, my hand on the stair-rail. My parents had preceded me to bed, leaving me to close up the house in the manservant’s company, with only a tallow taper between us to light the way. If there was the thinnest paring of a new moon, a bank of clouds had sufficed to hide its light, and the night beyond the windows was very black. “I hope it was not entirely a slave to my service.”

  “Not a’tall, miss—though I’d count it no hardship if ‘twere.”

  “I am deeply grateful for your energy and intelligence, James.”

  He blushed scarlet, and knew not where to look. A sudden recovery of his memory, however, gave him relief in providing a purpose. “BegghV yer pardon, miss, but there’s one thing as we forgot to talk of, with Matty Hurley this afternoon.”

  “Indeed?”

  “You were wonderin’ ‘bout his work on the gangs, if I recollect.”

  “I was.”

  “And whether he ever worked wit’ Bill Tibbit on a job for the Captain wot’s dead.” James threw home the frontdoor bolt with a satisfying thud.

  “You need not concern yourself with enquiring further of Mr. Hurley, James,” I began, “for I learned something to advantage this afternoon that makes all such questions of the Captain’s garden irrelevant.”

  James shrugged. “Don’t need to enquire further” he replied. “Me and Matty’s talked o’ it already. He never worked wit’ Bill at the Captain’s, him havin’ chose his own folk, on the quiet-like, and kept ‘em paid proper. Seems as if Bill spent three or four months up Charmouth way, when he warn’t drinkm’ in the Three Cups.”

  My interest was piqued despite myself, though the tunnel was no longer an object of mystery. “And did Captain Fielding engage only the one man?”

  James shook his head. “There was one or two others. Dick Trevors, and Martin Ciive maybe, and old Ebenezer Smoot, ‘im with the high voice and the soft ‘ead.”

  “Dick and—Ebenezer?” My voice, I confess, was tremulous.

  James nodded, and paused at the foot of the stairs, preparatory to leaving me for the evening. “Marty died o’ the fever last May, and I ‘aven’t seen Dick lately, come to think on it, nor Eb neither.”

  “I believe they are gone to London,” I said drily, remembering their fear of the Reverend and his vanished silk, “on rather pressing business. The result of having mislaid something of value to their current employer.”

  “They’ve never gone and filched from Mr. Crawford?” James exclaimed, in surprise.

  “Mr. Crawford?”

  “Aye. They’ve been a-workin’ them fossil pits, and his bit of a smithy, most o’ the summer now.” The manservant scratched his head in wonderment. “Dick and Eb, run off with Mr. Crawford’s property! There’s something like. Now what they want with them bits o “stone, then?”

  1 Throughout the Napoleonic Wars, Royal Navy officers—if they survived—frequendy made considerable fortunes from the taking of enemy ships and their cargoes. Austen’s naval brothers sent frequent news of such booty» and she describes this sort of swift advancement in Persuasion. Captain Wentworth begins his career in 1802 a man without fortune, and by 1814 is a wealthy one. —Editor’s note.

  25 September 1804

  ∼

  MR. CRAHFGRD, THE EMPLOYER OF DICK AND EBENEZER —MR. Crawford, whose passion for fossils allowed him unquestioned observation of the Charmouth coast, and a presence for labourers on each and every day, and a cavernous excavation where he might easily have constructed a hidden room, for the purpose of secreting contraband—Mr. Crawford, whose demeanour and reputation assured him an un
questioned propriety, the better for conducting his nefarious business. Mr. Crawford, who never lacked for tea, or the best of brandies, and whose sister went about clothed in a dressmaker’s dream of black silk; Mr. Crawford, whose fortune seemed so easy, despite his open hand to friends, and the liberality that too often placed others in his debt—a debt, perhaps, that might purchase goodwill and silence, did those friends think to question his activities.

  Mr. Crawford, who clearly knew of Sidmouth’s habit of marking his horses” shoes, and was quick to tell the entirety of his dinner guests the fact, only a day before Captain Fielding met his untimely end. Mr. Crawford, whose friendship with Sidmouth might make him privy to the man’s concerns, and cognizant of the import of a white lily left by the dead man’s feet; and whose sadness at discovering the very hoofprints that should betray his friend, must disarm the suspicions of ail—particularly Mr. Dobbin, the justice, who could not be expected to believe such a gendeman in any way involved in a crime of passion. Mr. Crawford, whose forge at the fossil site might readily have served to craft such a set of shoes, well before he undertook to murder the man whose relations with the Lyme Customs officer, Roy Cavendish, had quite disrupted his lucrative trade.

  Mr. Crawford the Reverend, and Percival Fielding’s murderer. It strained even my propensity for cynical calculation.

  I sat down upon the lowest step in an attitude of shock, the lighted taper dropping from my nerveless fingers. James could not suppress an exclamation of anxiety, and fell to his knees by my side.

  “Dear miss!” he cried. “Are you unwell? What can I have said?”

  I reached a shaking hand to ward off his concern. “It is nothing, James—nothing—a mere trifling indisposition. I shall be myself in a moment.”

  “A glass o’ water, mebbe?” He dashed into the scullery and rummaged about in a cupboard, reappearing instandy with a saucerless teacup filled to the brim. “You drink that down, now, miss, and you’ll be right as rain.”

  I brushed his hand aside and rose, my faculties all but routed. “I must be off at once,” I said. “I must speak with Mr. Dobbin!”

  “At such an hour?” James’s voice was doubtful, and I saw from his look that he thought my senses quite fled. “He’ll be a-bed, surely, or close to it.”

  “That is as nothing. The man must be stopped.”

  “What man, Miss?”

  I ascended the stairs as hastily as I knew how, in search of a bonnet and cloak, paying little heed to my father, who emerged from his bedroom in nightshirt and cap, his countenance overlaid with wonder.

  “Are you intending to pay a call, my dear? And in the middle of the night?”

  “It is not above ten o’clock,” I replied crossly, and turned from him in haste. “I do but go to Mr. Dobbin, and shall return direcdy.”

  Comprehension dawned on my father’s face. “But do you know the proper direction? Had not I better accompany you?”

  At this, I paused—for indeed, I had not the slightest idea of where the justice of the peace was to be found. “I shall have James to accompany me,” I said, with an air of decision that brooked no reply. “He will know the way, and may serve as greater protection in case of need. Do not alarm yourself, Father, and endeavour to disguise the truth to my mother. Inform her I have been called to the side of a sick friend—Mrs. Barnewall, if need be—at the lady’s request.”

  “Are you certain, Jane, that such activity is required of your benevolence?”

  “Justice demands it, Father. I shall not be long.” I gave him a swift kiss, and received his hand on my head in blessing, and turned from him in a swirl of my wool skirts.

  It was as James and I stepped out upon the threshold of Wings cottage, and turned up Broad towards the center of Lyme, that the glow upon the horizon—so incongruous in so dark a sky—astounded our senses. We stood aghast, our purpose forgotten at the sight of the blaze, and smelled the sharp odour of wood and tar upon the wind.

  “FIRE! FIRE!”

  All was chaos, with the old wooden buildings at the center of town aflame. Fire licked at the stone pavements, and found no purchase, and so turned to leap greedily from thatched roof to thatched roof, in a crackle and volley of sparks that suggested a riotous celebration, as though the Devil himself had determined to hold a party. Several of the principal buildings along Silver Street were ablaze, and a long line of men were engaged in swinging buckets from the town’s main cistern; but the water was as a drop to the throat of a dying man; it had no power to stem the course of events, except in that it allowed the onlookers to feel comfort in the activity of refusal.

  “How did it start?” James cried hoarsely to a passing man.

  “Dunno,” the fellow replied. “Does it matter?” and he handed my manservant a sack of burlap and a stout shovel. “Get you to the fireguard, there, and join in the diggin’. If the flames come near, beat at ‘em with the sack.”

  James did not hesitate; in an instant he had disappeared into the thick cloud of smoke and townspeople collected near the blaze; and I was alone at the periphery of Hell.

  I gazed in horror, remembering Sidmouth’s words of but a few hours ago—unless it be that chaos reign and fire cover the earth—and that swiftly, I felt I knew how the blaze had begun, and the object of so much general diversion. Did the townsfolk exert their energies in an hour of true crisis, they should be little likely to guard the gaol. The Royalists had done as their leader predicted. Fire rained down from the heavens, and chaos reigned;1 and in the midst of it all, I knew that Sidmouth was fled.

  I turned away from the prospect of Silver Street, and ducked down a narrow alley towards the whitewashed stone keep. The fire was at just enough distance from the gaol, and threatened so valuable a number of shops, as to ensure complete distraction. A very few moments sufficed to bring me to Gordy Trimble’s cubby; and to find it deserted, and the doorway beyond flung wide. I did not bother to look within; for I knew I should find the manacles burst, from the blow of an axe, and the prisoner gone into the dark.

  I turned—in the grip, at the moment, of indecision; and nearly collided with a gentleman at my back.

  “Miss Austen!” he cried, and despite the disorder of our surroundings, did not neglect to bow.

  “Mr. Crawford!” I replied, in a tremulous tone—and wished, of a sudden, for James by my side. “The blaze has brought you out, 1 see!”

  “How could it not? I observed the light of the flames from Darby’s high position; and waited only long enough for Miss Crawford to put up some bread and cheese, before mounting my horse and hastening to town. You cannot know, I realise, that we are very much prey to such blazes, here along the coast; a similar fire not a year ago quite nearly levelled the lower part of town; and every man’s aid must be necessary at such a time.”

  His earnest face was as good-natured as ever beneath the balding pate, and he betrayed not the slightest hint of his propensity for evil, nor the incongruity of us both, as we stood many streets away from the conflagration he had hastened so far to combat. I forbore from suggesting that he might find his way closer to the flames, from fear of arousing his suspicions; and endeavoured to appear as though my anxiety were active only on the crisis’s behalf.

  “But what do you here, Miss Austen—at such a remove from both your home and the blaze together?” he enquired, bending nearer. Did I imagine it—or did his tone bear a sharper construction?

  “I began by observing the activity in some proximity,” I attempted, “but found the heat from the flames and the noise of the townsfolk to be too great; and so sought relief in this removal. I hardly know where I have got to.”

  “Indeed,” Crawford said. “I think you have fetched up quite close to the Lyme gaol.” And at that, he peered over my shoulder into the yard beyond, and his eyes widened. “I see that Sidmouth’s friends—if, indeed, he retains any—have profited from the confusion, to effect his escape. Mr. Dobbin must be informed!”

  I turned about, and pretended to as grea
t a surprise as Mr. Crawford, though I imagine neither of us saw anything very unexpected; and delayed only a moment to speed the gentleman on his way to the justice of the peace.

  “Do you hasten, Mr. Crawford, sir, lest the villain be lost in the general alarm!” I cried, with as much fervour as my desire to be rid of the man allowed. “With such criminals about, I believe I shall make my way back to Wings cottage, and take refuge there with all my dear family, until a general order is restored. I declare, I had not an idea of such terrifying adventures—such utter disregard for propriety, or such a propensity for revolution—when I undertook to travel to Lyme. Our sojourn in this place has been one long trial of fortitude; I wonder that either you or your good sister can long sustain a residence in the place.”

  “It is possible,” he replied, “that we shall seek a removal in the near future—for I may admit that Miss Crawford’s views are very similar to your own, Miss Austen. But I hesitate to send you off so very alone—I fear that perhaps I should accompany you—for great are the misfortunes that might befall so gentle a nature as your own, in the general recklessness of these streets.”

  “I would not delay your errand for the world!” I cried, with energy. “Only consider the consequences!”

  “Indeed,” he said, in some hesitation; and I felt him to have anything but the justice’s house in view. His object, rather, should be to see me safely out of the way, before proceeding himself in pursuit of Sidmouth; for Crawford’s plans had been too carefully laid to be put so awry. Sidmouth must serve as scapegoat for Crawford’s crimes; and if the man were lost as a result of the fire, and never appeared again, so much the better. I knew, of a sudden, what Crawford intended. He would make his way to the beach below the Grange, there to search for Sidmouth as he awaited removal by boat; his friend had no reason to suspect Crawford’s motives, and did he appear in the guise of aid, should welcome him with open arms. It but remained to thrust a dagger through his heart, or turn him over to the justice, and complete his betrayal.