Jane and the Ghosts of Netley Read online

  “Aunt Jane!”

  The voice was deep and fluting by turns, the voice of a boy on the verge of manhood. I turned towards the doorway, and discovered Edward standing there—his taper, lit from the lamp left burning in the hall, trembling in the draughts. He looked ghostly and forlorn in his long striped nightshirt, his grey eyes shadowed. Edward, whom I had considered too stoic for nightmares.

  “What is it, my love? You should not be awake.”

  “Might I have a drink of water? The pitcher in our room is bone dry.”

  I laid down my pen and reached for the earthen jug that sat on the dressing table. “Then pray avail yourself of mine. You do not suffer from fever, I hope, as a result of your drenching at the Abbey?”

  He shook his head, and took the proffered cup.

  “Was that you I heard, calling out in your sleep?”

  “The wind howls so—it woke me, Aunt. I hear voices crying.”

  I searched his countenance. He was not a youth to bare his soul. Even when his father’s letter from Godmersham arrived, with an account of his mother’s funeral service, Edward had read over the whole without flinching. It was George who had sobbed aloud.

  “There are voices in the wind, I tell you.” The grey eyes slid up to my own. “I heard a woman cry. And the wail of a baby. Aunt Jane—is my brother well? My youngest brother?”

  The child whose birth had somehow killed his mother.

  I brushed back the tumble of hair at his forehead. His skin was clammy with nightmare. “Your Aunt Cassandra wrote that Brook-John is thriving. It was not his voice you heard, Edward, nor was it your mother who wailed. You must imagine her free of all care and pain, my dearest. You must imagine her—happy.”

  He drained the last of my water and silently returned the cup. I could not believe my words had convinced him. His mother’s first joy had always been her family. How now, divided from all she held dear, could Lizzy find solace in the Lord?

  “It seems a chilly sort of faith,” Edward said.

  Chapter 4

  Cat and Mouse

  Wednesday, 26 October 1808

  LORD HAROLD’S FEAR—THE SPUR THAT HAD DRIVEN him to Southampton despite the claims of family duty—urged the most serious consideration. I had meant to be up at dawn, in preparation for a morning’s work of sketching among the ruins—though what argument I should offer my mother on behalf of such a scheme, I could not think. I was prevented this essay in prevarication, however, by the combined application of Fate and Habit: the former being the tendency of public conveyances to break down, and the latter, my excellent parent’s inclination to fancy herself ill.

  She kept to her room before breakfast, but as there was nothing surprising in this, I saw no cause for alarm. It was Martha’s office to disabuse me.

  “Your mother, Jane, believes she has taken an inflammation of the lungs,” she said as we settled ourselves at the table. “She ascribes it to the quantity of moisture introduced into the atmosphere of the house last evening, and her exposure to Mr. Hawkins. The Bosun’s Mate, I am persuaded, resides in a most unhealthful part of town.”

  “He never does!” George cried in outrage. “He is a famous fellow, and cleaner than Grandmamma by a mile!”

  “That will do,” I told him sternly. “Apply yourself to your toast. I should judge your Grandmamma to be merely tired.” Privately, I recognised a tendency to believe herself ill-used, and a determination to cause as much trouble as possible for everybody, but saw no occasion to abuse the lady before her relations.

  “She has a decided cold in the head,” Martha supplied, “and I have begged Cook to provide her with a hot lemon cordial—though where we are to find lemons in such a season, I am sure I do not know. You might carry the boys to the docks this morning, Jane, and discover whether there is an Indiaman at anchor; they are sure to have preserved lemons aboard, against the scurvy.”

  The boys whooped; my heart sank. Much as I loved them, I felt a more pressing claim upon my attentions this morning. I had meant to ask Martha to take them in charge—but could hardly do so now. Martha was always my mother’s favourite nurse; she had learned the art at the bedside of her own dying parent, and would be much in demand for the rest of the day.

  We had settled it among ourselves that the boys should be sent back to school after an early dinner, so as to enjoy to the full their final hours of liberty. But as we carried the teacups into the scullery, amidst much scolding from Cook, a messenger arrived from Roger’s Coachyard requiring us to present our charges early, as the conveyance intended for the four o’clock stage had suffered a split in its axle-tree.

  “Places for the noon stage are sure to be hotly contested,” I observed as I herded my nephews up the stairs. “We must set about packing.”

  A quantity of goods flew into the boys’ trunks—mourning clothes fresh from the tailor, academic robes, stray books and spillikins, horse chestnuts and toy boats, along with a tidy box of confections prepared by Martha’s hands in the Castle Square kitchen, against the scanty commons likely to be afforded them hereafter. Half-past eleven found us hurrying through town to Roger’s, hallooing for Mr. Wise to secure the young gentlemen’s seats beside him on the box. It is George’s greatest ambition to someday win admittance to the Whip Club, and he is zealous in observing what masters of the art fall in his way—though Mr. Wise is quite elderly, and must disappoint with his care and steadiness.1

  We were in good time to witness the arrival of the London mail, and with it, a quantity of disembarking strangers. It was unlikely I should discover any acquaintance among their ranks—the mail being the lowest, and least preferred, form of transport available—but my eye wandered over them all the same. A few women I judged to be superior domestics, or the wives of shopkeepers; a middle-aged clerk; a common seaman returned from leave; and a young man—a young man so extraordinarily handsome, and genteel in his looks, that I all but gasped aloud to see him emerge from such a conveyance.

  He was fair-haired and blue-eyed, his countenance fresh and open; and there was an air of easy competence in his figure as he gazed about the bustling coachyard. His clothes were good, though hardly fashionable. I judged him not much above twenty, and country-bred—the younger son of a gentleman, perhaps, intended for the Church.

  “Is it rooms yer wanting, sir?” enquired Mr. Roger in his brisk and friendly way, as the gentleman’s trunks were let down from the coach. “Or perhaps a hack?”

  “An inn, I guess.”

  The drawling voice fell strangely on my ears; the elegant young man was an American. They washed ashore in Southampton on occasion, but such as I had observed were merchant seamen who haunted the quayside. This man was gently-bred, accustomed to ease, and nice in his manners. Distinctly an oddity; and all my assumptions regarding him must be false. Being an American, he might be anything—it was impossible to judge.

  “There’s the George,” Mr. Roger ticked off rapidly, “the Star, the Vine, the Dolphin, and the Coach & Horses. Shouldn’t think you’d be comfortable at the last, but any of the others’d do. The Dolphin’s a bit dear,” he added doubtfully.

  “Let’s say the Vine, then,” returned the stranger.

  “What name shall I give the trunk-boy?”

  “Mr. Ord.”

  At that moment, the horn blew for the Winchester stage. I had just time enough to press my nephews to my breast, button Edward’s cloak more firmly under his chin, adjust the angle of George’s hat, and give them each a gold guinea forwarded by their father—when they scrambled up to the box.

  “Farewell, Aunt!” Edward cried, “and a thousand thanks for your kindness!”

  Something of last evening’s nightmare trembled for a moment in his youthful voice. Then the coachman cracked his whip; the horses surged forward; and the stage bore north, towards the toll road.

  I watched them out of sight. George grinned and waved to the last.

  When I looked about the yard once more, the American was gone.

&n
bsp; LORD HAROLD MIGHT AIRILY SUGGEST THAT I KEEP Mrs. Challoner under my eye, but he can have known little of the surrounding landscape, or the distance to be bridged between Castle Square and Netley Lodge. Several choices were presented me: to walk the three miles to the Abbey—a fine course in good weather, and of an early morning, but not at the hour of one o’clock, with the resumption of last night’s rain ever threatening; to hire a hackney chaise, and arrive at the Abbey in style; or to avail myself once more of Mr. Hawkins. My purse being, as always, quite slim, I chose the Bosun’s Mate rather than the more costly hired chaise. Approaching the Abbey by water had an added advantage: I should land below the ruins, and walk directly past Netley Lodge on my way up the hill.

  “Miss Lloyd did ought to boil these lemons in a quantity of gin, and dose the old lady—your honoured mother, beggin’ yer pardon, miss—every second hour,” Hawkins declared as he heaved at his oars. He had procured the fruit from a moored Indiaman as readily as I might pluck daisies from the back garden. “‘Tis a remedy no seaman would be without, when the catarrh and the megrims strike. If the lemons don’t do for her, the gin surely will; there’s nothing equal to Blue Lightning for clearing the head.”

  The tide was with us today, and carried us swiftly down the Water. As we neared the landing thrust out into the shingle, I stole a glance at Netley Lodge, where it rose like a snug bastion from the cliff above. The leaded windowpanes, staring south, gleamed in the watery sunlight. I had an idea of flurried housemaids unleashed upon a suite of rooms.

  “And so the Lodge is opened up,” Mr. Hawkins observed, “after more’n ten year of dust and desolation. My crony in Hound told me the whole of it yesterday. The gentleman as owned it made a fortune in the Peninsula, and died before he saw his home again. Merchant, he was, in the Port trade, and his lady were carried out of Oporto after the siege. Right thankful she is to be back on English soil.”

  “Indeed? Is she a comfortable matron, with a hopeful family?”

  “Neither chick nor child, and her a Diamond o’ the First Water. So Ned Bastable says—he being rated Able thirty years or more, and a rare one for intelligence now he’s turned on shore.2 His granddaughter Flora is parlour maid at the Lodge. She were snapped up ten days ago by Mrs. Challoner’s steward, a great chuckle-headed lump with a black beard and a name Flora can’t pronounce. The lady’s maid is French, Flora says, and speaks not a word of the King’s English; but quite superior, and knows how to keep her place. Three large trunks it took, to stow Mrs. Challoner’s gowns; the maid spent the better part of two days putting ‘em to rights. They’re a queer lot at the Lodge, and no mistake.”

  “And is Mrs. Challoner quite alone in that great house?”

  “She wishes to live retired, after all the crush and noise of the Oporto colony. She’s a widow, after all—though she don’t dress in black.”

  THE GATES TO THE SWEEP WERE THROWN OPEN, AND the gravel newly raked; lights were kindled within the rooms; and a pair of under-gardeners toiled at scything the withered lawn. I dared not linger before the prospect of Netley Lodge, however intriguing, for I could not tell how many pairs of eyes might be directed at the Abbey path. I grasped my easel in gloved fingers and strolled steadily past, the poke of my bonnet eclipsing any view of the rooms. Where should I position myself? At the breast of the hill, so that I might observe both the Abbey ruins and the house below? I should be unlikely to overlook the sweep and carriage court from that vantage, but no other should serve—

  The sound of hoofbeats, thudding dully on the damp turf under my feet: a horse was galloping from the direction of West Wood, the dense growth of trees at the Abbey’s back. In another moment the rider came into view, bent over the reins with an expression of wild elation on his countenance. The hair under his black top hat was fair as the sun, his body was taut and controlled in the saddle; every feature proclaimed nobility. He must have come from the Itchen ferry, along the path I should have walked, had time and the weather permitted.

  He swept towards me, a figure of surprising power. In the grip of the horse’s punishing stride, he was as different from the modest young man I had seen in Roger’s Coachyard as man could be—but it was the American stranger, just the same: the gentleman called Ord.

  He slowed as he passed, and raised his hat with civil grace; but I heard the breath tearing in his lungs. His countenance was flushed, his blue eyes alight. He had ridden hard for the sheer joy of freedom after the cramped journey in the London mail, I thought; he had hired a mount at the Vine Inn and coursed out towards the Abbey, it being the principal beauty in these parts.

  Or was his direction spurred by more than a young man’s high spirits? Was he driven by fear and peril—by the wicked goad of statecraft? As I watched, he pulled up before the gates of Netley Lodge and jumped down from the saddle. Without a backwards glance, he led his mount up Mrs. Challoner’s new-raked sweep.

  Curious, indeed, that within an hour of alighting in Southampton, the fresh-faced stranger had sought first to meet with one woman: Lord Harold’s dangerous spy.

  Chapter 5

  Flames in the Night

  26 October 1808, cont.

  “THERE IS A LETTER FROM GODMERSHAM,” MARTHA informed me in a lowered voice as I entered the house this evening, “that has your mother in an uproar. Only think: Your brother Edward has offered her a freehold—a cottage, to be sure, but a freehold all the same—on one of his estates. She has merely to name her choice. Wye, in Kent, or Chawton Cottage, near Chawton Great House. It is something to think upon, is it not?”

  “A freehold!” The easel and paintbox slipped from my hands onto the Pembroke table. It was nearly four o’clock, and my mother should be awaiting her dinner; I had found it necessary to appear in good time this evening, as recompense for past sins. But my thoughts were all of Netley, and the interesting meeting I had witnessed there; Martha’s present communication came to me as from the moon.

  “Rents in Southampton are only increasing, and now that Frank and Mary have settled on the Isle of Wight—”

  “Indeed.” My brother Fly and his young family had quitted the Castle Square house nearly a month before, to establish an independence in rented lodgings on the Island, as naval officers will refer to the turtle-shaped bit of land opposite Portsmouth Harbour. My mother was ill reconciled to the change; and though Frank professed himself determined to meet his portion of the Castle Square rent, as well as that of his new home, we would not hear of burdening him. I knew, however, that we should be hard-pressed to scrape together the yearly rent.

  “But another removal of the household!” I sighed. “Shall we ever be at peace, Martha?”

  “If you accept your excellent brother’s offer—perhaps.” She looked at me seriously. “And, Jane: if either establishment proves too cramped for the addition of a fourth, pray do not hesitate on my account. I shall shift for myself. I am quite equal to it.”

  “Out of the question, my dear. We cannot do without you.”

  Martha smiled—though tremblingly—and went in search of Edward’s letter while I divested myself of spencer and bonnet. To leave Southampton, a mere eighteen months after achieving Castle Square! But a freehold—what that should mean to my mother, and to our general comfort! I might live once more in a country village, and watch the seasons change without the glare and tumult of a city. Either position would prove to our advantage, for Wye has all the charm of proximity to Godmersham, and Edward’s dear little children; while Chawton Cottage should be close to our steady acquaintance in Hampshire. And Henry, my beloved elder brother, had lately opened a branch of his bank in the town of Alton, but a mile from Chawton Great House—

  “Poor Edward!” I mused as I rewound a bit of black ribbon through my hair, “to think of us, in the depth of all your misery. Amiable soul, to work for our welfare when your own is so thoroughly destroyed!”

  “MARTHA TELLS ME THAT YOU HAVE BEEN SKETCHING, Jane, at Netley Abbey! That is a queer start for one of your age,” my moth
er exclaimed. She had thrown off the threat of pulmonary inflammation on the strength of Edward’s communication, and had consented to rise for dinner. “You are missing Cassandra, perhaps, and intend to conjure her in memory!”

  “I am quite accustomed to missing Cassandra—she is more often in other people’s houses than her own. I merely observed, in walking through the ruins yesterday, a picturesque that cried out to be seized on paper.”

  “Your love for that old Abbey certainly increases! Or was it the hope of meeting a certain Lieutenant, and captivating him with your skill in paint, that drew you there?”

  “Are you much improved in health, Mamma?” I enquired.

  “Let me see what you have done, my girl. Fetch your work!”

  Surprised, I rose to retrieve my sketchbook from the hall table. I had managed to establish myself on the promontory above the footpath, and had remained there nearly two hours, despite a chilling wind. I was anxious to learn whether Mr. Ord should remain at Netley Lodge but a half-hour—as befitted a slight acquaintance—or an entire afternoon. His great black horse had not yet reappeared when the lateness of the hour urged me to collect my paints and summon Mr. Hawkins.

  “There is only a very little … I merely attempted to capture a likeness …” I faltered, as she turned over the two poor watercolours I had achieved.

  “You will never exhibit Cassandra’s talent, I fear—but we cannot all be everything, Jane. Cassandra is a beauty, and you are a wit; she paints, as Beauty must, while you sharpen your pen and commit the world to paper.” She patted my cheek with sudden fondness. “I hope you are not entertaining morbid thoughts of conversion to Rome—of walling yourself up in the living grave of a French convent!”

  “Indeed I am not, ma’am.”

  “Jane?” Martha gasped in incredulity. “The good sisters should all revolt within a twelvemonth!”