Jane and the Ghosts of Netley Read online

  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.”

  “I am afraid her mishap must be laid to my charge, Mrs. Austen,” Sophia Challoner said evenly. “Had I not breasted Netley hill in my phaeton when I did, the mare should not have started, and Miss Austen must have been spared an ugly ordeal.”

  “Every sentiment revolts! When I consider my daughter, rambling among the hedgerows like a gipsy, and falling off of horses she has no business riding—when I consider of you lying insensible, Jane, in the road—I am thankful you were not murdered before Mrs. Challoner discovered you!”

  “You exaggerate, Mamma. What has murder to do with it?”

  “Everything, miss! You cannot be aware of the horrors we have endured in your absence; but it is in my power to inform you that the shipwright of Itchen, one Mr. Dixon, was done away with two nights ago—his throat cut, if you will credit it—and the magistrates none the wiser!”

  “The shipwright?” Mrs. Challoner enquired. “Why should anyone serve such a fellow with violence?”

  “In order to reach his seventy-four,” I replied. “A handsome ship, and nearly complete when it was destroyed by fire Wednesday evening.”

  “But I saw the flames! I could not help but observe them, from the Lodge—the blaze illumined the entire waterfront! How very extraordinary! Is it the work of vandals? Or a rival shipyard?”

  “Very likely both,” my mother asserted, “for every sort of miscreant will wash ashore in Southampton. It is always so with your port towns.”

  “I wish I had known as much when I determined to remove here.” Mrs. Challoner preserved an admirable command of countenance for one whom, I must suspect, knew more than was healthy of the Itchen fire.

  “We are vastly obliged to you for doing so. Only think what might have befallen Jane else! Her head should never have been put to rights.” My mother threw me a quelling look. “Pray sit down, Mrs. Challoner, and let us supply you with coffee and muffin—for you cannot have breakfasted properly, in quitting the house so early.”

  The lady inclined her head, but professed herself bound for her dressmaker on an errand that could not wait; and with many wishes for my continued good health, and promises of future visits, she gracefully mounted the steps of her perch phaeton and took up the reins.

  “What a very daring young woman,” my mother observed from the parlour window, a note of awe in her voice. “Driving herself, with only a manservant behind! That is what comes of living in foreign parts!”

  The manservant was the very José Luis—or, as Mrs. Challoner preferred to call him, Zé—and he had proved a taciturn, powerfully built Portuguese fellow. He was as careful of Sophia Challoner as a hawk should be of its young, but he had spared me hardly a glance as we rolled briskly down the road from Netley this morning.

  “Her Hindu coat, I vow and declare, is beyond anything I have seen this twelvemonth,” my parent continued. She was correct in this; for the dove-grey sarcenet was trimmed with tassels and silver fox. “What can she find to discuss with a milliner? She must hardly want for a pin.”

  “Except, perhaps, gowns of a suitable weight for the English winter. She has surely never required them before, being almost a native of the Peninsula—and will dress in silk, though complaining all the while of the cold. I supplied her with Madame Clarisse’s direction.”

  Madame Clarisse, though born Louisa Gibbon, maintained a modiste’s establishment of the first stare in Bugle Street. All the ladies of fashion waited upon her there, in the pretty pink and white dressing room, and were supplied with finery at breathless expence.

  “Very proper, I am sure. Mrs. Challoner looks the great lady.”

  By this imprecation, my mother meant to imply that her new acquaintance appeared to be in easy circumstances—far easier than our own.

  “She is a widow, and her fortune acquired by the Port wine trade,” I said distantly.

  “Trade! I should not have detected it in her vowels, Jane. But then I recollect—the Challoners of Hampshire have long been Recusants, and one is never certain what Papists will get up to.1 They must earn their living as best they can, poor things.”

  “The Challoners, disciples of Rome?” I could not imagine the mistress of Netley Lodge educated by nuns in a French cloister. “But Mrs. Challoner merely took that name at her marriage. It is possible that her husband alone was a Recusant—and that she does not adhere to the faith.”

  “Possible,” my mother admitted doubtfully, “but I cannot think it at all probable, Jane. The Papists are very careful whom they marry—and recollect: Mrs. Challoner has spent nearly the whole of her life in Portugal. With such a husband, and priests and churches at every side, who should blame her if she fell into disreputable habits? Indeed, I must say that she acquits herself very well, considering. I should not object to your knowing more of her.”

  With which gesture of magnanimity, my mother left me to nurse myself in peace.

  “THE PAPERS SPEAK OF NOTHING BUT THE peninsula,” Martha Lloyd noted with a sigh some hours later, “and the tone of comment is unrelieved by optimism. Poor General Sir Arthur is covered in disgrace—I am certain his career is at an end.”

  Martha being of the opinion that I should remain quietly at home so soon after an injury to the head, we had settled down by the parlour fire and given ourselves over to perusing the recent numbers of the London papers. We had been forced to forgo them of late, in deference to my nephews’ amusement and my sudden passion for watercolours.

  “Do not pity Sir Arthur,” I advised. “He is a Wellesley, and as a family they have a genius for self-preservation. He has been routed for the nonce, but shall regroup and advance the stronger for it.”

  “I did not know you were a student of military strategy,” said a voice from the hallway, “much less of politics. I ought to have guessed it. Pray continue, Miss Austen.”

  I glanced up from my paper to find our maidservant, Phebe, hovering in the doorway; at her back was a gentleman, an expression of languid amusement on his countenance.2

  “Lord Harold Trowbridge!” I observed. “I had not looked for you in Castle Square today—but you are very welcome.”

  Martha thrust herself hurriedly to her feet, her countenance flaming, as the Rogue strode into our parlour. She had learned enough of Lord Harold—from my mother’s veiled hints and my own obscure remarks—to comprehend that no meeting with such a man could ever be easy.

  “May I present my friend, Miss Lloyd, to your acquaintance? Lord Harold Trowbridge.”

  “A pleasure,” he said, bowing correctly in Martha’s direction.

  “Pray accept my sincere condolences on the loss of the Dowager Duchess.”

  “You are exceedingly good, Miss Lloyd. I attended Her Grace’s funeral rites only yesterday, and I may say they were exactly as she might have wished. Mr. John Kemble, the tragedian, broke off his London engagement in order to declaim the death scene of Ophelia; and very prettily he spoke it, too. It was my mother’s greatest ambition to play at tragedy, you know, but she had a fatal talent for the comic.”

  “Indeed, sir?” Martha’s countenance struggled to suppress the outraged sentiments of Christian virtue, as well as the indecision battling in her soul. Ought she to support me in the presence of my dangerous acquaintance? Or did true friendship dictate a flight from the room as swiftly as possible?

  I pitied her, but could not hesitate.

  “Martha, be so good as to consult with Cook on the preparation of the pullet. No one has your genius for receipts—and I should hate to see a good bird spoilt.” Her lips twitched, from mirth and relief; she no
dded once to Lord Harold, and sailed out of the room like a black ship of the line.

  “I did not know you were entertaining guests,” he observed, as the door closed behind Martha. “Forgive me, Jane, for having lately commanded so much of your time, when others had far more vital claims upon it.”

  “Miss Lloyd forms a part of our household, my lord. She has been in the nature of a sister to me since childhood; and being now quite alone in the world, she elected to throw in her lot with ours.”

  “Ah.” In that single syllable, I detected a world of understanding. A household of four women: one elderly, and the others, spinsters long since left upon the shelf. A cattery, we should be called in the fashionable world of gentlemen’s clubs; or worse yet, a party of ape-leaders. I had never surprised an expression of pity in Lord Harold’s eyes, and I hoped I should not discover one now.

  “How does your head, my dear?” he asked abruptly.

  “It is repairing apace. You knew of my injury?”

  He took up a position by the fire, his hand gripping the mantel. “I was informed of it last night by Orlando. Though he was forbidden to shadow Mrs. Challoner, he was expressly charged with observing you, and was ravaged with suspense when he saw you taken up in the dragon’s equipage. Nothing would do but he must despatch an express, urging me to make all possible haste south, as you were clearly subject to torture in the fiend’s clutches.”

  He spoke lightly, but the words were in earnest. Of a sudden, I recalled the green-cloaked sprite slipping through the crowd of townsfolk on the night of the fires. Had Orlando been lurking in Castle Square, in closest watch of my door, when the alarum first went up?

  “Your solicitude—and Orlando’s care—is a considerable comfort. I collect that you have heard of Wednesday night’s conflagration?”

  “Arson, throat-cutting, and the destruction of a sweetly-built vessel,” he replied. “The report was intriguing enough to be taken up by the London papers.”

  “I looked into the ship with my nephews on Monday, at the invitation of Mr. Dixon, the shipwright.”

  “Who lost his life but two days later! Did he appear uneasy, Jane? As though he feared disaster?”

  “He seemed as complacent as any man who took pride in his work, and believed the world to do the same. Now the Itchen yard is a veritable ruin, my lord, and Dixon’s men amazed.”

  “You have seen the place since the blaze?” he demanded.

  “But yesterday morning. It stank of the pitch that was spread over the ship’s timbers.”

  “Such work might be intended to suggest mischief among the lower orders—but Whitehall is not so sanguine. The Admiralty is afraid, Jane, that Wednesday’s murder is but the first assault in a wider campaign.”

  I raised my brows. “The Peninsula’s most potent weapon?”

  “I doubt that Sophia torched the seventy-four.”

  “She has courage enough,” I mused, “but might abhor the blood and pitch such work should leave upon her clothes.”

  Lord Harold’s eyes gleamed. “Jane, what is your opinion of the lady?”

  “I quite liked her. She is all that is charming,” I replied frankly. “In Mrs. Challoner we may see the union of beauty, understanding, and good breeding; a creature of captivating manners, wide experience, and unfailing taste. Had you said nothing in her dispraise, I should have taken her straight to my heart. When she spoke so passionately of her beliefs—when she declared that this war must be stopped at any cost—I felt myself prey to a dangerous sympathy. She should find it easy to win hearts to her cause: she might persuade the Lord Himself against consigning her to Hell.”

  “Well put. Having heard so much, I am thankful you spent no more than twenty-four hours in the lady’s company. But I should never suggest that Sophia was turned a murderer. I have an idea of her in the role of Cleopatra.”

  “Reclined upon a couch, and toying flagrantly with the fate of nations?”

  “You demonstrate a head for strategy, Jane—if you commanded the direction of Enemy forces, and could regard the affair at Itchen as but a trial of your strength, where next should you aim your Satanic imps?”

  “At Portsmouth,” I told him steadily. It was the greatest naval dockyard along the Solent: the first port of call for every ship returning from the Channel station and our blockade of the French. Opposite Portsmouth Harbour lay Spithead, the deep-water anchorage where any number of His Majesty’s vessels awaited the Admiralty’s orders. Both should be an open invitation to the marauding French.

  “But of course,” Lord Harold agreed. “You should aspire to ruin Portsmouth, and Deptford, and Woolwich and Chatham and Plymouth—His Majesty’s most trafficked yards. You might even strike at private shipwrights, such as Mr. Dixon, did you possess time and agents enough.”

  “Is the English coast so riddled with traitors?”

  “Possibly.” He regarded me intently. “In September, we carried off our victorious troops and some French prisoners from Vimeiro, as you know. By disposing our ships in convoys, we offered a tantalising form of safe passage through our own Channel blockade. It is possible, Jane, that we ferried enemy agents home in our own vessels: men who crept aboard under cover of night, and now await their orders in every Channel port.”

  I rose and took a pensive turn about the room. “And you believe it is Mrs. Challoner’s duty to despatch these agents on errands of mayhem?”

  “I confess I do not know. How does she conduct herself?”

  “Quietly. In the six days she has been in residence, she has devoted more time to her wardrobe than to affairs of state.”

  “Have you observed her to communicate with anyone?”

  I glanced at him then. “An American. He arrived by the London mail on Wednesday morning, and is putting up at the Vine. He rides a splendid black hack, and spends the better part of each day at Netley Lodge.”

  “An American!” he repeated, in tones of astonishment. “Now that is an alliance I should not have anticipated. And yet—why not? Americans have long enjoyed the confidence of the French. They bear England little affection. Any attempt to wrest control of the seas from the Royal Navy should meet with American approval, as providing greater scope for their own vessels and commerce. By Jove, Jane—what you say must interest me greatly. An American!”

  “He is very young, my lord—not above twenty. He is exceedingly handsome—”

  “He would be,” muttered Lord Harold.

  “—possesses good manners, appears to be of good family, and goes by the name of James Ord. The housemaid informed me that he was totally unknown to her mistress before Wednesday, when he appeared with a letter of introduction in hand.”

  Lord Harold snapped his fingers, as though bidding Sophia Challoner to the Devil. “I must learn what I can of the fellow. The Admiralty may know something—”

  I saw Mr. Ord now in memory, as he had appeared only last evening: the correct black coat, neither behind nor before the fashion; the delicate cut of feature in the laughing countenance; the warmth of the blue eyes as he gazed at Mrs. Challoner. He looked to be little more than a boy as he sat in her dining parlour, exclaiming over the excellence of his capon. And have you lived the whole of your life in England, Miss Austen? Then you are indeed fortunate. It is a comfort to know that not all of us are born to be wanderers.

  Lord Harold broke in upon my thoughts. “Have you any notion what part of the Colonies—I beg your pardon, the United States—Mr. Ord hails from?”

  “Baltimore. He has been making the grand tour, and arrived in London last week from a period at Liège.”

  “Liège? Not Paris?”

  “He may have travelled through the capital, my lord.”

  “Liège is a town of unfrocked Jesuits and perpetual scholars—there can be little to interest a youth in such a place.”

  “Mr. Ord is a student of philosophy.”

  “Is he, by God?” Lord Harold’s eyes had narrowed; he commenced to pace feverishly about the room. “Philos
ophy—or revolution? What does he find to do at Netley Lodge?”

  “During the brief period in which I observed him, he read a great deal—played at whist—composed a letter to home—sang Italian airs with Mrs. Challoner—accompanied the lady in her exercise—”

  “They walk out together?” Lord Harold interrupted.

  “I was in the house but a day, my lord. You cannot expect me to speak with authority.”

  “But on the occasion you observed her?”

  “—She walked with Mr. Ord to Netley Abbey.” Of a sudden a black-cloaked figure rose in my mind: motionless, vaguely forbidding, impossible to dismiss. “They encountered a third person among the ruins—it seemed as though by design. I surveyed them from too great a distance to make much of the figure.”

  “Did they, by Jove?” His lordship seemed much struck. “Pray describe the fellow.”

  “He was cloaked and cowled in black—a monk returned from old.”

  “The Cistercians wore white, my dear,” he corrected absently. “Still—what you say intrigues me. The man made an effort at disguise, and that must always be suspicious. You saw him meet Mrs. Challoner?”

  “She curtseyed to him.”

  “The Abbey ruins. Though excessively public in certain seasons, they must be quite deserted as autumn advances, and offer certain advantages as well: from that elevated position, one might observe the whole of the Solent. As the good monks divined so many years ago.”

  “One might observe the Solent from nearly every window in Mrs. Challoner’s house,” I objected drily.

  “But if one intends to signal a confederate on the opposite shore—or perhaps a ship—Are there ramparts among the ruins?”

  “The walls are achieved by a turret stair. Orlando and I espied the Windlass from that height.”

  “Excellent Jane! You have done better than I might have dreamt. Come, fetch your cloak.”

  “Why, sir? Am I going out?”

  “We have much to do, and little time in which to effect it. Pray do not stumble over your mother in the passage,” he added as I made for the door. “She has been listening at the keyhole this quarter-hour at least.”