Jane and the Ghosts of Netley Page 5

  “You wrong me, Martha. I do crave a bit of solitude and peace—a walled garden, perhaps, if not a cell—in which I might revolve the simple tales my mother pretends to praise.”

  For want of a kerchief, my parent pressed her napkin to her eyes. “You may be forced all too soon, Jane, to give up this cunning town and bury yourself in the country. Martha has told you of your brother’s letter?”

  “A freehold! Dear Edward! That he should think of us!”

  “Pity he did not choose to do so long since—that we might have been spared the pain of so many removals! First Bath—then Southampton—and now—God knows where.”

  “Chawton or Wye, Mamma. Edward is very plain.”

  “Well he should be! His generous impulse has been long enough in coming. But so it always is with your great men.” She glared at me darkly. “Edward may command more wealth than the rest of the family put together, Jane. Three years I have been a widow—and he only considers now of his family, when he is deprived of the chief delight of his life? Death has leveled his humours, you may depend upon it. He means to value such relations as he still claims, while life and breath remain to him.”

  “Perhaps you are right, Mamma.” I knew better than to challenge such caprices and whims. “Do you fancy Wye, or Chawton?”

  “It hardly matters,” she said doubtfully. “They are equally troublesome, in being such a great way off, and neither replete with acquaintance.”

  I raised my brow expressively at Martha; we both could expect considerable agitation from Mrs. Austen in the coming days. She should rather remain in an unhappy situation, and avoid the trouble necessitated by change, than to exert herself towards an improvement of her prospects.

  “I am a little acquainted with Wye,” Martha mused over her glass of orange wine. “It is pretty enough, and I should judge but two miles from Mr. Edward Austen’s estate. Chawton, however, has all the advantage of being in northern Hampshire, where so many of our old friends are established—and the accommodation appears excellent.”

  “‘A bailiff’s cottage,’” I recited from my brother’s letter, “‘in the Great House village.’” We had all been conducted on a visit through Chawton Great House, Edward’s secondary estate, the previous summer when dear Elizabeth was yet alive. It had lately been quitted by its tenants, and was in a period of refurbishment; silent, echoing, august, and chill. Young Fanny had delighted in losing herself among the numerous twisting passages, the hidden doors and secret chambers; the little children had run like puppies through the extensive park. But I could not recall the bailiff, or his habitation.

  “Edward writes that the cottage has no less than six bedrooms—several garrets for storage—a garden—and a few outhouses,” my mother lamented.

  “Such riches!” Martha exclaimed. “And in a country village, we might have a pony cart, by and by!”

  At that moment, the peace of the dinner hour was riven by the clangourous tolling of St. Michael’s bells, not a quarter mile distant from Castle Square. The tumult of sound—for each of the great bells in the tower must have loosed its tongue—shattered the night air in rolling waves, so that the very walls of the house commenced to shake.

  “Good God!” my mother cried, and rose with her hand at her heart. “Are we invaded? Has the Monster crossed the Channel?”

  I sped from the table to the front hall, followed by Martha. We threw open the door and saw a crowd of common folk—sailors, carters, tradesmen—at a run through Castle Square. They were bound, to a man, for Samuel Street, and thence, down Bugle in the direction of the wharves. Most were shouting unintelligibly. As I stared at them in consternation, I glimpsed a familiar figure slipping through the crowd like a hound on its scent: Orlando, the green-cloaked sprite. Had he taken his suite of rooms at the Dolphin, in expectation of his master’s return? I nearly called out his name, but was forestalled by Martha.

  “What has happened?” she cried to a passing lad.

  “Fire! The wharves are alight!”

  “Lord, Jane—that part of town is not far off. Should we consider of the house? Ought we to begin packing?”

  I shook my head. “Where can such a blaze go, between the Water and the walls? They are not eight feet thick for nothing. Let us return to my mother, however. She will be in need of smelling salts.”

  In this I misjudged the good lady; she was, in fact, on tenterhooks to learn the news—and was only prevented from gaining the street by the condition of her dressing gown. “What if sparks are blown by the wind?” she demanded. “What if the roof catches alight? I do not place my confidence in your walls, Jane. Recollect the affair in Lyme, when your father was yet alive. We were very nearly burnt in our beds.”

  “But in the event, were saved by means of numerous buckets of water, briskly applied,” I observed, “which are bound to be employed in the present case. Fires are common enough in port towns, Mamma. We cannot escape them, with so much tar and wood about.”

  She was determined to sit up in the parlour, however, in expectation of flight; and spent the next several hours established over her needlework in a rigid attitude, with frequent ejaculations of fright. At last I could bear it no longer, and put on my cloak.

  “You are never going out into that crowd, Jane!” my mother cried indignantly. “You shall be crushed. I am sure of it.”

  “I shall not sleep until I know the worst,” I informed her firmly, and stepped into the night.

  I STOOD IN SAMUEL STREET, GAZING THE LENGTH OF Bugle. The lurid glow of flames threw the wharves in sharp relief, as though they were stages erected for this sole performance, and the darting black figures that bent and swung over their water casks, a representation of the Inferno. I had not progressed much past West Gate Street when the heat struck my face like a blow. The smells of charred timbers and acrid resin tingled in my nostrils. And then, with a sound akin to cannon, some part of the wharf exploded.

  I cowered involuntarily, my hands pressed against my bonnet. Splinters of wood rocketed into the air. Men screamed aloud. The flames shot skywards in a hellish arc, under a roiling cloud of smoke black against the vivid scene; a vat of tar, perhaps, had flared in the heat, or a cask of gunpowder.

  “Out of the way, damn ‘ee!”

  I turned—gazed full into the eyes of a pair of frightened dray horses—and stumbled backwards onto the paving. I had been standing open-mouthed in the very middle of Bugle Street, directly in the path of a waggoneer intent upon hauling water to the wharves. He sawed at the reins, glared at me in contempt, and clattered onwards over the stones.

  As I recovered myself, the rapid pulse at my throat receding, a distant boom! brought my head around. A second explosion—and a third—but from a completely different direction than the wharves. I hastened to my right, down West Gate Street, and mounted the steps to the town walls.

  I was not alone. A crowd of onlookers, most of them women, stood with their silent faces turned towards the dockyard on the River Itchen. A flare of red blazed on the horizon; it branched and twined and climbed like a monstrous spider over the skeletal form that rested there.

  “It’s the seventy-four,” I breathed, remembering the lovely ship of the line, half-built in the Itchen yard. I had walked through its ribs with Edward and George but two days ago. “The seventy-four is burning.”

  “They’ll never save her,” a woman beside me declared. “Not with the wharves aflame, and most of the men hard at work here in town. Two fires in one night—and that after a bit of rain? It’s Devil’s work, I’ll be bound.”

  “Devil’s work,” I said thoughtfully. “Or the Monster’s?”

  Chapter 6

  Beauty’s Face

  Thursday, 27 October 1808

  I AM NO HORSEWOMAN, BUT LAST NIGHT’S FIRE demanded expediency; and so I walked this morning before breakfast to Colridge’s hack stable, where for the price of a few shillings I was swiftly accommodated with a skittish dun mare. Her name was Duchess, and she turned her nose willingly enou
gh in the direction of Porter’s Mead, the broad gallop east of the town. As she trotted through the green meadow, I attempted to recall the few riding lessons I had endured at Edward’s Kentish estate. My seat was indifferent, I wore an outmoded riding habit of Elizabeth’s, made over for my use, and the reins felt awkward in my grasp; but Duchess must have been served with far worse mistresses in her life of hire, and offered no snort of contempt.

  From Porter’s Mead it required but a few moments to achieve Nightingale Lane and proceed thence along the strand to the Itchen Dockyard. We had nosed up the yard’s river channel only three days before, with Mr. Hawkins; but being land-bound this morning I sawed hesitantly at the reins, turning the mare’s nose to the north. She tossed her head, drawn by the sharp scent of the sea, and would have contested the point—but that I forced her around and skirted the dockyard at its rear. From the slight promontory above, I could rest a bit in the saddle and survey the scene of devastation below.

  The dockyard’s wooden enclosure was scarred by fire and broken in places, so that I might gaze through what had once been a solid perimeter. In an effort to combat the fire, the lock gates had been opened to permit the surging river to douse the flames. Now a welter of mud and charred wood lay stinking in the watery sun. The seventy-four’s ribs had fallen in a heap of refuse all about the scaffolding, which was similarly burnt to nondescription. A dense odour hung heavy in the air; I knew its acrid weight should cling to my garments for days to come. I held a gloved hand over my nose, eyes narrowed against the smoke that still spiralled from the wreck. Three years Mr. Dixon’s pride had been a-building in his yard—a thing of beauty and promise; the blasting of hope felt as brutal as the ruin of iron and oak.

  A party of men, some wearing the canvas trousers of shipyard tars and others the rough nankeen of labourers, heaved purposefully at the spars. I discerned Jeremiah the Lascar, his face grim and his air morose, but of the genial Mr. Dixon there was no sign. I touched my heels to the mare’s sides, and obediently, she rocked her way down the grassy slope.

  The sound of hooves ringing on gravel brought the men’s heads up to stare at me in surprise. One spat derisively in the ashes and returned immediately to his labours; the others studied my countenance warily. After an instant, recognition lit the Lascar’s face. He stepped forward, his hand raised to his dark brow.

  “Good morning, Mem-Sahib. Where be the young masters today?”

  “Safely returned to school. My condolences, Jeremiah—I saw the flames last night from the town’s walls. You have a deal of work before you.”

  He laid his hand on the mare’s bridle and ran long fingers over her soft nose. Duchess snorted and thrust her head into his chest.

  “That lovely ship,” I mourned. “Was it an accident? An oil lamp overturned in a pile of sailcloth?”

  The Lascar bowed his head. “Do not believe it, Mem-Sahib. There was evil at work in this yard last night.”

  “The smell of tar is very strong. You think the fire deliberately set?”

  “Pitch was spread over the ship before the fire was lit. Pitch is still hot on the spars. We have shifted them with our hands, and we know.”

  I touched my heels to Duchess’s flanks, as if to approach the smoking embers, but the Lascar stood firm, his hand at the mare’s head.

  “You go now. It is not safe.”

  “I heard no alarum last night, before the explosion. How came Mr. Dixon to desert his post?”

  Jeremiah’s countenance hardened. “Do not say such things, I beg. Dixon Sahib has gone to his rest.”

  “Poor man, I can well believe it. He loved that ship so, he must be ill with exhaustion and despair.”

  The Lascar stepped backwards and glanced significantly towards the ruined timber walls, and the vestige of what had been the shipwright’s offices. I followed his gaze, and saw a pallet lying on the ground, with a loose covering of dirty canvas. Under it lay something that must—that could only—be the shape of a man.

  “Mr. Dixon?” I whispered in horror. “How dreadful! Was he overcome by the heat of the flames?”

  “Fire did not kill him.” The Lascar’s voice was sombre. “We found him there last night when the smoke first rose into the sky, and the men came running to open the lock. Dixon Sahib’s throat was cut from ear to ear. Murder, Mem-Sahib! And when I find the one who did it—”

  His fists clenched on the mare’s reins.

  I CROSSED AT THE ITCHEN FERRY AND RODE ON, through the gentle fields and coppices of Weston, the ground rising and falling as if formed by the Channel tides. Duchess stretched out her nose in the sharp October morning and seemed ready to gallop, but I could not trust myself so far in the saddle, and held in her head. It was as much as I could do to manage the horse, for my mind was full of the bitter intelligence lately imparted. Mr. Dixon, murdered! His throat cut and the seventy-four destroyed! No mere vandals, then, had torched the ship—but an enemy who moved with deadly purpose. The fires on Southampton’s wharves must have served as diversion, intended to draw the townsfolk away from the River Itchen. With the men already fighting the flames near the quay, response to the second fire must be slow; too slow to save the seventy-four, as the event indeed had proved. It was a calculated evil—a plot well-sprung. A marshal in the field could not have done better.

  And all this, but a few days after Mrs. Challoner opened Netley Lodge.

  I could not like the coincidence. What had Lord Harold called her? The Peninsula’s most potent weapon. I longed for him suddenly: the steady look, the careless strength. For suddenly, I was afraid.

  The day was yet young, the hour being not much past ten and most of the world still at breakfast. My sketchbook and paints were secured in a saddlebag, and I had every intention of o’erlooking Netley Lodge for much of the morning. I could not stomach a third full day among the ruins, nor did I believe my outraged parent would condone such a scheme, did she know of it. The word murder would run through Southampton swift as fire along a ropewalk, and my days of rambling the country alone were at an end. I must make the most of the hours remaining to me.

  My road was the same as Mr. Ord’s had been the previous day. There are advantages in approaching the Abbey by land, as one reaches the ruins from the west. In arriving by sea as I had twice done, I approached from the east—passing Netley Lodge on my way. Today I might establish myself high in the Abbey walls without exciting the notice of anybody at the house, and gaze down upon its activity for the whole of the morning.

  But I was forestalled—routed—and thoroughly undone before I had even so much as dismounted at the Abbey’s wicket gate. As I emerged from West Woods, I discerned the rattle of a tidy equipage, and in another instant it appeared: a phaeton and pair, driven by a lady at breakneck pace. The grey geldings were perfectly matched, and their action admirable. I must have started in the saddle, or perhaps the prospect of a race was too much for the mettlesome Duchess, for she stretched out her neck, seized the bit in her teeth, and careened down the road at a gallop.

  Never had I been subjected to such a pace! I abandoned the reins and clung desperately to Duchess’s neck, all but unseated in the wretched sidesaddle. Too terrified to emit a syllable, I divided my attention between the heaving ground and the approaching phaeton, certain that one of us must give way or endure a fatal crash.

  The lady’s gaze never faltered. She neither pulled up nor slowed her reckless course; she merely shifted her equipage with deft hands to the far side of the road, and scarcely glanced at my figure as I hurtled past. Duchess, intent upon a race, made a sharp turn in the phaeton’s wake, and redoubled her gait to catch up to the pair.

  This final maneuver was too much for me. As the dun mare came around and gathered herself to spring, my grasp on her neck faltered. With a cry of dismay, I was flung wide and landed hard on the verge of the road, knocking the breath from my body and the sense from my head. I was aware of a great pain, and of the sound of the mare’s hoofbeats receding; and then I knew nothing more
.

  “WOULD YOU LOOK AT THE RENT IN THIS BONNET? It’s a wonder she wasn’t killed.” A gentleman’s voice, with something odd in its tone … something familiar …

  “The little fool has not the least notion of how to manage a horse. Such poor creatures ought to be strangled in their cradles, before they ruin a perfectly good mount from ignorance and caprice.” His companion spoke briskly, as though she would save her pity for the wretched Duchess.

  “Pshaw! You don’t mean it!”

  “I never mean anything I say. I merely love to hear myself speak. You ought to know that, thus far in our acquaintance. Pass me the basin, pray.”

  A cool square of cloth was pressed delicately against my brow. Light as the pressure was, it caused me pain, and I groaned and turned my head into the cushion.

  “There’s no card in her reticule—nothing to betray her name or direction. A sketching book and paints in the saddlebag.”

  “She probably aspired to Genius among the ruins,” the lady observed caustically. “I am surprised, however, that a gentlewoman—even one so shabbily dressed—should go jaunting about the countryside alone. Has she affixed her signature to her work?” Again, the cool cloth bathed my forehead; the odour of vinegar assailed my nostrils. I winced, but did not open my eyes; I felt sure the light should split my head in twain.

  “No. From the quality of these, she hesitated to claim maternity.”

  A rich chuckle. “You are too bad. What about the horse?”

  “Hired of a livery stable. Name’s on the saddlecloth.”

  “—a private mount being rather above her touch. Then if she does not rouse by nightfall, we must send José Luis to enquire at the stables. They must be wanting their mare.”

  Nightfall? What hour of the day could it be? And where in God’s name was I?

  I opened my eyes and attempted to rise.

  “Steady,” the lady advised, and her firm hands thrust me gently back. I was lying on a broad bed in a room with a peaked ceiling and dormer windows; my spencer and bonnet were set on a chair. She was seated nearby: masses of auburn curls, a gown of garnet silk, and the basin of vinegar in her lap. Her dark eyes, heavily-lashed, gazed at me coolly. It was quite the most elegant countenance I had seen in years.