Jane and the Ghosts of Netley jam-7 Read online

  “You are at Netley Lodge,” she explained, “not far from where you were thrown. Can you perhaps recall your name?”

  “Jane Austen.” My voice was a whisper; I knew now what name I should put to Beauty’s face.

  “That gentleman is Mr. James Ord. And I am Sophia Challoner.”

  Chapter 7

  The Horrors of War

  27 October 1808, cont.

  Dr. Jarvey — a physician summoned from Southampton, and not a mere surgeon or apothecary of Hound — ran his fingers over my skull and shook his head gravely at a large lump that had swelled above my left ear. Upon learning that I had lost consciousness for the period of a half-hour, he looked dour and prescribed absolute quiet for the rest of the day.

  “She must not be moved, and she must be subject to the closest scrutiny. If nausea ensues, keep her awake at all cost, even if you play duets until dawn to effect it. There is danger of a fracture to the cranium, and in such cases, derangement of the senses is likely. To fall asleep in that eventuality should be fatal. However, if she is not retching by the dinner hour, give her this” — proffering a draught against the pain — “and send your servants to bed.”

  With which dubious advice, he quitted the room, leaving me in some suspense as to whether I should die or no.

  “We must send word to your people,” Mrs. Challoner observed after he had gone. “Where do they reside?”

  “Southampton. My mother is resident in Castle Square.”

  “The mare must be fixed to her stable in any case, and her hire discharged. I shall send my manservant José Luis” — she pronounced the name heavily: Show-zay Lew-eesh — “to town with the horse, and your note of explanation. Shall I pen it for you?”

  As my head distinctly ached, and Sophia Challoner appeared far better suited to decision, I agreed. What my mother’s anxieties should be, upon discovering that I had hired a horse — much less fallen from it — I could not think. But there was a cup of tea at my elbow and the prospect of an entire day’s tête-à-tête with the Peninsula’s most potent weapon. If I could but keep my composure, I might learn much. She fetched ink and paper, and settled herself once more in the chair by my bed. As she bent over her task, I studied her perfect countenance. A skin like alabaster, dusted with rose; the dark hair a brilliant counterpoint. A single thread of blue vein pulsed at her temple. She held her pen in elegant fingers. One of them sported a great jewel, polished and cut, that was the exact hue of her gown. Did she possess a similar ransom for every costume she owned?

  “Dear Mamma — that is how one always commences, I understand, though I lost my own maternal parent well before I could write,” she drawled. “Do not be alarmed at receiving this from a stranger’s hand, for I am quite well. One always lies to one’s mother, I believe?”

  “From about the age of six. Although in this, as in everything, I confess to a marked precocity.”

  She raised her eyes to mine, and I observed a look of vast humour in them. “Well done, Miss Austen! We shall deal famously with one another! I have suffered a fall from my horse, and am very kindly bid- den to remain at the home of a gentlewoman, Mrs. Challoner of Netley Lodge, who happened upon me as I lay unconscious in the road. That should terrify her suitably. She will pause at this juncture, and exclaim aloud, and one of your domestics shall be enjoined to fetch hartshorn and sal volatile.”

  As this was palpably true, I could not suppress a smile. “Pray include a sentence to the effect that the horse has been returned to Colridge’s, as she will be in some amazement at the idea of my riding, and must divide her anxiety between myself and the mare.”

  “I am shocked to hear it. Have you been very much mounted?”

  “Not above a few times in my life.”

  She frowned slightly. “What possessed you to take a gallop?”

  “The horse possessed me, I am afraid.”

  “How very unfortunate. Dr. Jarvey has been called, and declares that nothing is amiss, save a considerable bruise to my head. I shall expect to be returned to you tomor- row in Mrs. Challoner’s phaeton—”

  “Indeed, that is very kind of you, but hardly necessary. I am perfectly able to walk—”

  “— in Mrs. Challoner’s phaeton. Your loving daughter — should you like to affix your signature?”

  I scrawled my name at the foot of the billet, and lay back upon my pillows. The scene of such a note’s reception was one I was thankful to avoid.

  I never saw José Luis, but when the manservant and the mare had been despatched to Southampton, Mrs. Challoner ordered a tray of cold meat and bread to be sent up to my room. The young girl who brought it — with a fresh face and a diffident look that suggested she was little in the habit of service — I guessed to be Flora, granddaughter of Mr. Hawkins’s crony from Hound. When the maid had set the tray on a table and curtseyed in her mistress’s direction, Mrs. Challoner closed the door behind her and offered to read aloud, if it should amuse me. I had recovered strength enough to capitalize upon her willingness, though I suggested lassitude, and made a very poor picture of health.

  “What of your guest, Mr. Ord?” I enquired feebly.

  “I should not like to occupy all your attention.”

  “Oh — as to that, the gentleman may come and go as he pleases,” she replied indifferently. “He is not actually staying in the house, but merely called a few moments after we returned from the accident, and was immensely helpful in carrying you abovestairs.”

  “Was he?” The idea of myself, insensible in the arms of young Adonis, was riveting. “I am deeply grateful.”

  “He is probably immersed in a great volume of sermons, or some such, in the library. Mr. Ord is a student of theology, you will observe, though he is an American. My late husband possessed an admirable collection of books, but I have hardly had occasion to look into them since my arrival at Netley.”

  “My condolences, Mrs. Challoner. I should never have believed you a widow.”

  “Because I do not go in black?” She surveyed me satirically. “My husband was an excellent man, Miss Austen, but a good deal older than myself. He died three years since; and though I may yet regret him, I have learned to survive him. And only consider of the library he left me! Perhaps when the cold sets in, I may establish myself by the fire and read the whole winter long. There shall be no occasion for driving out in the phaeton then. I cannot abide the cold.”

  “Are you so recently come to this house?”

  “I am but five days in residence.” The novel she might have read to me lay unopened in her lap; her dark eyes assumed a thoughtful expression. “I fled the Peninsula in the first week of September, when the siege of Oporto was entirely lifted and the British troops were carried off from Vimeiro.”

  “Did you?” I exclaimed, as though the intelligence were news. “But that is extraordinary! My brother — Captain Frank Austen, of the St. Alban’s — was engaged in that very endeavour! Did you perhaps chance to meet him?”

  “I was denied the pleasure,” she replied with a faint smile. “My family in Oporto were so good as to secure me a cabin in the Dartmoor, a fourth-rate intended for the conveyance of French prisoners. I was of infinite use, in serving as interpreter for the Captain, and thus could flatter myself I proved less of a burden than he had anticipated.”

  “I am sure you were invaluable,” I told her earnestly. “French prisoners! How uncomfortable you must have found it — dealing with the Enemy!”

  “Not at all. Any number were quite handsome.”

  “And did you remain aboard the Dartmoor until the Lodge was ready to receive you?” I enquired innocently. A considerable period fell between the first week of September, and the last week of October. Did Lord Harold know of her whereabouts in the interval?

  “I was several weeks with friends,” she said vaguely, “who are situated not far from London. Now — should you like to hear a little of this book?”

  “I should rather hear of your experiences in Oporto — if you a
re not unwilling to share them.”

  “But of course!” she cried, her eyes alight, and commenced to regale me with tales of the English colony.

  She was an excellent narrator, and could bring to vivid life the smallest detail of an Oporto morning: the plumage of an exotic bird, glimpsed through an open window; the rattle of carriage wheels in a stone courtyard; the clash of steel as two partis duelled in the moonlight for the hand of a ravishing maiden. I walked with her beneath scented trees, and ate blood-red oranges fresh off the boats from Tangier; I smelled the musky odour of sherry casks drying in the dim light of warehouses, and sipped the velvet Port on my tongue. I listened with aching heart to the siren sound of a guitar, and swirled in mantilla’d company for several nights in succession — only to rise in the early sunlight, and tear like the wind along the cliffs above the sea.

  “How much of the world you have seen,” I murmured, “while I have lived out my span in a series of cold English towns! We know a good deal of rain, and the occasional blooming rose in England; but nothing like your healing sun. You must feel a great longing for all that you have left!”

  “There is a word in Portuguese that exactly suits my sentiments,” Sophia Challoner said slowly. “It is saudades. I have saudades for Oporto — nostalgia, homesickness, a mournful feeling of loss. No single word in English may encompass it. But even saudades may pass in time.”

  “You do not intend to return?”

  She glanced away from me through the leaded

  window to the sea. It lay like a silver belt between the Dibden shore and Netley Cliff. “I do not think the Peninsula will be habitable for years. This battle at Vimeiro was but the first toss of English dice.” She turned back from the window, her eyes smoldering.

  “Have you ever witnessed the killing of men, Miss Austen?”

  What a penetrating question! I had seen enough of the dead, to be sure; but I doubted that it was this she intended. “If you would mean, am I intimate with war — then I must confess that I am not. My two dear brothers are daily thrust into the worst kind of danger, in serving His Majesty’s Navy; and for them, I feel an active anxiety. But it cannot be akin to viewing the effects of battle at close hand. I collect that you have done so, Mrs. Challoner?”

  “I drove out in my carriage at the height of the French advance,” she said dreamily. “I was in the company of a friend — a Frenchman long resident in Oporto — and thus able to pass through Marshal Junot’s lines. A cannonball exploded not five feet from the carriage wheels, startling the horses, and had there not been a mass of waggons directly in front of us, and a brave coachman at the reins, I am sure we should have bolted. As it was, I observed a young lieutenant of hussars decapitated where he sat his horse. The head fell almost at my feet.”

  I shuddered. That she could speak of such things with such dispassion—

  “I hate this war,” she muttered viciously. “The flower of youth — sons of noble families, or of humble ones; Portuguese, French, Spanish grandees — their horses, their bright folly of uniform dress — their glittering swords as violent in the downward arc as a guillotine — all blasted to ruin, dismembered and left in torn shreds upon the ground, and the dark birds circling. To look upon such a scene as Vimeiro, Miss Austen, is to look for a while at the face of Hell.”

  We were silent an instant, I from deepest sensibility, she from the horror of her recollections. Her hand gripped the spine of her book so tautly that all color drained from the skin, and the great stone on her finger glowed like blood in the candlelight.

  “But what is one to do?” I asked quietly. “Men like the Monster will go to war, in a tilt at power beyond imagining; and men like my brothers will swear to prevent it. You cannot stop them coming to blows.”

  “But I may at least try.” She sat erect in her chair, her gaze fixed implacably on my own. “War is vainglory and ruin, Miss Austen. It brings waste upon the countryside and desolation into the bosom of every family. I shall do all within my power to thwart this folly, and the men who would further it. No other course is open to those of us who are fated to live in such times.”

  “On the contrary, madam. War is hateful, as is all wanton loss of life — but when the battle is thrust upon us, we have one course at least: to meet it honourably, and defend what we love. I should not like to see England in the hands of Buonaparte; and I am certain my brothers would say the same.”

  “You think the Emperor so different from your King, then?”

  “Our King, Mrs. Challoner.”

  She smiled at me then. “I forget. So easily I forget! I was but five years old when I left my home in England, and have spent all my life since in the Peninsula. It is hard to feel allegiance to much beyond the few friends I have long known and loved. But I have wearied you with stories and harangues long enough. Rest now, and perhaps you will be well enough to descend for dinner.”

  She touched my hand lightly, rose in a swirl of scented silk, and was gone: leaving me in some bewilderment of sensation regarding her. Did I understand what she was, that first night I saw her? a voice whispered in my ear. Did I recognise the cunning behind Beauty’s mask?

  Had Lord Harold judged this woman wrongly?

  Was she a lady of subtle purpose — or one of deep feeling? Did she intend that I should be taken in by her tale of dead soldiers? Or had she loved a man who died at Vimeiro? What possible motive could she find for deceiving me — who was but a stranger?

  She is guilty of treason, Jane. I could not begin to judge Sophia Challoner. I only knew that I honoured her fierce conviction — and could not find it in my heart, yet, to condemn her.

  Perhaps an hour later, I awoke from a light sleep. The house was utterly silent and my mouth was dry. I rang the bell for the housemaid, then rose and walked unsteadily to the leaded windows. The bedchamber was set into the corner of the house, with views looking both south and west. From one window, I might survey the traffic of Southampton Water: a few fishing boats bobbing at anchor, and an Indiaman making its heavy way towards the quay. From the other, I could just glimpse the brow of the hill that led to Netley Abbey, half a mile distant. Two figures were toiling up the footpath: a man with yellow hair and a lady in garnet-coloured silk. She was a little ahead of the gentleman, as though she were familiar with the direction, and intent upon leading the way. I could not conceive of Sophia Challoner following in any man’s footsteps.

  “Are you quite well, miss?” enquired the maid from the doorway.

  I whirled around. Flora, the granddaughter of Mr. Hawkins’s crony, Ned Bastable. She could not be much above fifteen. “I am merely thirsty,” I replied.

  “Could I have a jug of water?”

  She bobbed a curtsey, and went off to the kitchen. I glanced once more out the window, and saw that in the interval required for conversation, a third figure had appeared on the Abbey path: hooded and cloaked in black, and standing as though in wait for the two who approached. I narrowed my eyes, the better to study the scene: the motionless form, august and slightly sinister, and the toiling pair below. What could it mean?

  I followed the walkers’ course until they breasted the hill, and stood an instant in greeting; I observed Sophia Challoner bow her head and curtsey low. Then all three began the descent into the ruins and vanished from view. I wished, in that instant, that I might be a bird on the wing: hovering over the ramparts of the walls in observation of the party. Did they pick their way to the south transept, and mount the chancel steps? Was it mere idleness that drew them hence — the love of a good walk, and a picturesque landscape — or did they flee the house to talk of deadly policy?

  And who was the third, garbed in black?

  “Your water, miss.”

  Mouse-brown hair under a white cap; gentian-blue eyes. I accepted the glass. Flora was lacking in both age and experience, and might be encouraged to share her confidences. “Your mistress has gone out?”

  “She will have her exercise,” the maid said.

  “
And may command Mr. Ord to bear her company. Is he often useful in that way?”

  Flora smiled. “The young gentleman haunts the house, miss. He is but two days arrived in town, and has spent the whole of it with my mistress! Do you think that he is in love with her?”

  “Does he behave as though he were?”

  “I cannot rightly say,” Flora replied doubtfully,

  “him being an American, and one of the Quality. He keeps a room in Southampton, as is proper, but appears after breakfast and does not quit my mistress’s side until past supper!”

  “They must be very old acquaintances.”

  She shook her head. “He brought a letter of introduction, on his great black horse. It’s my belief they’d never laid eyes on one another before yesterday. And yet he behaves as though he were her cousin.”

  “That is indeed strange,” I said thoughtfully. “But perhaps, after all — he is. One might possess any number of colonial relations one has never met.”

  The maid curtseyed and left. I stood a while longer by the leaded windows, the glass of water in my hand, but the walkers did not reappear. It was vital that I gather my strength, for I had no intention of dining on a tray in my room this evening. If Mr. Ord hoped to stay for dinner, then I should break bread with him. Lord Harold would desire no less.

  Chapter 8

  The Recusant

  Friday, 28 October 1808

  “And so we may have an end to all schemes of watercolour painting, I devoutly hope!” my mother cried when I appeared like a prodigal in the breakfast parlour this morning. “Pray impress upon her, Mrs. Challoner, how very improper it must be for a young woman to wander about the countryside entirely alone! And on horseback, too — when you have never acquitted yourself well in the saddle, Jane.”