Jane and the Ghosts of Netley Page 9

  “And?”

  Lord Harold offered me his arm, and turned towards the carriage. His excellent black coat of superfine bore a distinct odour of charcoal.

  “Jeremiah lodges off the Rope Walk, with several of his kind—Able Seamen who take ship for a year or two, then spend their earnings in a single week ashore. The Lascar had taken his dinner and turned his attention to his favourite pastime—the carving of a model ship—when a cry arose in the street outside. One or two of his fellows had been sitting on the lodging-house roof, drinking rum together and wagering as to the names of ships presently anchored in Southampton Water, when the flames first lit the Itchen yard. Jeremiah climbed immediately to the rooftop, astounded at what he saw. From that height it was clear the blaze had already reached the third-rate’s masts. The speed of the conflagration seemed at the time remarkable, but we apprehend now that pitch, in being liberally spread upon the timbers, effected it. Unlike his mates, however, who were agog at the fire, Jeremiah searched with his gaze among the surrounding streets. From his lofty perch he hoped to espy Mr. Dixon raising the alarum. The Lascar, you must understand, has spent years at sea and is accustomed to standing watch in the crow’s nest. His eyes are very keen, even in the falling dusk.”

  We reached the blazoned chaise, Orlando standing at attention. He swept open the carriage door and bowed low, managing the air of the loyal retainer so well that he might have affected it on the stage. Play-acting, I decided, must be the valet’s true calling: he ought to be put in the way of an introduction to his lordship’s old friend, the tragedian John Kemble. Then he might spend his days in adopting strange masks, and throwing his voice—child’s play for one of his experience.

  “Tho’ a crowd of folk commenced to run towards the yard,” Lord Harold continued as we paused by the open carriage door, “Jeremiah espied a single figure running away from it. The man was cloaked in black from neck to boots, and wore a hood over his head. He carried no lanthorn, though the streets were growing dark; and to the Lascar’s mind, he seemed at pains to avoid the most trafficked road. Jeremiah watched him course through the alleys that join the yard with the Rope Walk, and disappear from view somewhere in the vicinity of Orchard Lane—at which point the crisis at the yard could no longer be ignored. The Lascar recognised the utility of opening the sea wall in order to douse the flames, and summoning his mates, raced to accomplish the purpose. It was then he discovered the body of Mr. Dixon.”

  “The cloaked figure he espied was responsible for firing the ship?” I enquired as Orlando handed me within.

  “And possibly for slitting the shipwright’s throat.” Lord Harold pulled closed the door. “The man may have worked alone, or in the company of another whom the Lascar could not see.”

  “Mrs. Challoner?”

  “Recollect, Jane, the evidence of your own eyes. You saw her curtsey to a cloaked figure in the Abbey ruins only yesterday. Perhaps she intended to thank the fellow for a job well-done.”

  Chapter 10

  The Secret Passage

  28 October 1808, cont.

  THREE-QUARTERS OF AN HOUR LATER, I HUDDLED IN the middle of Jeb Hawkins’s skiff with my cloak wrapped tightly around me, convinced that I had quitted the living world entirely. A curtain of fog drifted towards Southampton from the mouth of the Channel, and hung dully over the landscape. My fingers were knotted in my lap against the chill off the sea, which penetrated the thin kid of my gloves; the airing, I decided dispiritedly, would certainly redden my nose.

  From the Itchen yard, his lordship had turned to the Water Gate Quay, and there discovered the Bosun’s Mate engaged in mending nets. The hale old fellow was seated on the eastern side of the Quay, his gnarled hands twisting and unfurling his sea-worn rope; but he readily agreed to take us out to Netley Cliff. If he wondered what fascination the place must hold, he forbore to enquire; it was enough for Jeb Hawkins that a duke’s son had need of his services.

  The duke’s son was poised now in the bow, his gaze roaming the dim outline of Netley Cliff. Mr. Hawkins, his scowl in abeyance, bent and strained at the oars; at his lordship’s insistence, the locks were muffled with strips of leather. Silent and barely visible, we moved as wraiths over the surface of the Water.

  Suddenly, Lord Harold raised one hand in a gesture for silence, and pointed with the other towards the cliff.

  “There,” he whispered. “Perhaps four feet above the shingle, to the left of the barnacled rock. Observe.”

  I narrowed my weak eyes to search the looming cliff face, half-obscured by the hanging mist. I could discern nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Cor!” muttered Jeb Hawkins. “Fifty year an’ more I been sailing this coast, and never did I discover the same. A cut in the cliff, broad enough for a man, with an iron grill to close it. It’ll have been hidden by seagrass, maybe, as is presently disarranged.”

  “Well done,” Lord Harold said softly. “That is the mouth of a drain once employed by the monks of Netley Abbey. Some five hundred yards it runs, straight through the hillside from the Abbey kitchen to Southampton Water. Tales have it that the Cistercians disposed of their refuse by such means; others, that the passage was a swift escape to the boats, when the monks were under attack. A second branch of the passage is more prosaic: it runs to the fish ponds, and served the monks with supper.”1

  “Did you merely suspect the existence of such a passage, from a general knowledge of the ways of monks?” I demanded. “I should have thought that everything to do with a cloister must be foreign to your experience.”

  “You neglect to mention, Miss Austen, that among my other sins I may count a country boyhood,” he rejoined. “One of the lesser Wilborough estates—in Cornwall, I confess—is built on the ruin of just such an abbey. I explored its cunning features thoroughly in my youth, particularly when I desired a spot of fishing, or to escape the wrath of an outraged tutor. The Cistercians were masters of the hidden back door: they lived in mortal fear of plunderers, particularly when they settled along the coast. Do you recall, Jane, that Mr… . Smythe … seemed to materialise from the very stones at your feet, when you met him in the Abbey on Tuesday?”

  I had thought Orlando a ghost; and had remarked, moreover, that he had left no boat near the cliff landing.

  “Were you perhaps in the vicinity of the Abbey kitchens at the time?” Lord Harold persisted.

  “I believe I was in the refectory. Are you suggesting that Orlan—that Mr. Smythe—employed this self-same passage?”

  Lord Harold smiled. “Let us say that it appealed to his habits of stealth.”

  “Have your agents bolt-holes all over England?”

  “In every seaport accessible to the Channel, at least. Mr. Hawkins—I should like to land.”

  “Land it is, guv’nor.”

  The Bosun’s Mate thrust hard to port with his oar, and found purchase on the shallow bottom; in another instant the skiff scraped over gravel. Through the wisps of fog I could discern, now, the iron grill set into the limestone cliff, at about the height of a man’s waist; a narrow strip of shingle ten feet wide divided it from the sea.

  Lord Harold stepped into the water, careless of top boots and pantaloons; but I had no wish to soil my fresh new bombazine. I began to gather my skirts about my knees, in an effort to spare as much of the cloth as possible. He turned back as though I had summoned him, and without a word of deference lifted me easily into his arms.

  “Good God,” I gasped. “Put me down, sir!”

  “In two feet of water? None of your missish airs, Jane, I beg.” He strode implacably towards the shore, and set me on my feet. “Mr. Hawkins, have you a lanthorn in that boat?”

  “I have, my lord.”

  “We require it.”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  The Bosun’s Mate was fairly falling over himself to do the gentleman’s bidding, I thought sourly. Was it the courtesy title that inspired such alacrity? Or the weight of his lordship’s purse? I ran my hands over my skirts,
as though fearful of some permanent injury, but the performance was wasted on Lord Harold, who was already working at the drain’s mouth.

  “Mr. Smythe, as usual, may be trusted to admiration. The stonework is free of dirt, and the grill has been recently oiled.”

  Mr. Hawkins appeared with a glowing lanthorn. Lord Harold swung open the tunnel’s grate, and gestured inwards with infinite politesse. “Après-vous, mademoiselle.”

  I peered into the passage. Beyond the narrow opening, it widened considerably. Mindful of my gown, I collected myself into as small a figure as possible, and found Lord Harold’s hand at my elbow. He hoisted me upwards to the tunnel’s sill. The glow of the lanthorn followed.

  “There is room to walk abreast,” he observed in a whisper. “Thank heaven you are not a weighty woman, Jane.”

  “In wit alone, my lord.”

  “Hah.”

  The pool of light eddied at my feet; I could feel him near me in the dark. The tunnel was utterly silent and somehow oppressive, as though we stood in a sealed chamber that no time or hope could ever liberate. Here was an adventure worthy of an abbey—or the romantic heroine of Susan! She should have detected immediately a fluttering ghost, receding down the passage, and must have followed with pounding heart and fainting sensibilities!

  My pulse throbbed loudly in my ears; I shared a little of my heroine’s trepidation. Had I been able to reach for Lord Harold’s hand—but I refused to exhibit weakness. Instead I stepped forward into the passage. It was lined in smooth, rounded cobblestones—the sort that served as ballast in seafaring ships—with sand in the crevices between.

  The lowness of the ceiling forced us to walk as aged crones, our backs bent. The lanthorn light and my companion’s self-possession soon relieved me of uneasiness, but I could find no purpose in his researches: had he made this journey merely to exhibit the method by which his henchman had discovered me on Tuesday?

  He stopped short and held the lanthorn close to the passage floor. “Footprints. You observe them? There, and there, in the sand.”

  “Orlando’s?”

  He shook his head. “A man’s boot, certainly, but too large for his. Someone else has been here.”

  I felt a chill along my spine. What if the creature awaited us even now, hidden by the unplumbed dark? I recollected the cloaked figure that had attended Mrs. Challoner and her American yesterday, at the head of the Abbey footpath. Then, I had thought his air sinister; in the isolation of the underground passage, the memory inspired mortal fear.

  “Jane,” Lord Harold whispered, “lift your eyes from the ground and tell me what you see ahead.”

  The shadows welled like living things, dancing away from my sight. I strained to pierce them. “Nothing but a division in the tunnel, my lord—a secondary passage, descending to the left.”

  “The way to the fish ponds, I suspect. We shall continue to the right, until we achieve the passage mouth. There should be stairs debouching in the kitchen.”

  “You are unfamiliar with this passage?”

  “Entirely—but I apprehend its utility.” He laid a finger to my lips—a touch as glancing as a feather. “Silence, Jane. We must endeavour not to disturb the Abbey’s ghosts.”

  He stepped forward, and though I wished I might turn and flee back along the way we had come, I forced myself to put one foot before the other. My breathing was overly loud in my ears; the rustle of bombazine as clattering as grapeshot. Every movement must reverberate among the stones. Of a sudden the toe of my half-boot struck the edge of a cobble, and I stumbled forward, throwing out my hands to ward off a fall. I landed heavily on the passage floor.

  Lord Harold turned at the noise, his lanthorn making a wide arc; and as the light flared in the passage ahead of him, I glimpsed something—a spark of gold. I reached out and grasped it: an object the size of a door key, fashioned of metal.

  “A cross,” I said as I held it to the light. “It looks to be made of gold.”

  “A crucifix,” Lord Harold corrected. He assisted me to rise and took the thing when I offered it—turning the gold under the lanthorn. “You found this even now, on the passage floor?”

  “Perhaps a long-dead monk let it fall, centuries ago.”

  “It is too well-polished, too delicately chased. Curious.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “Will you keep it, Jane?”

  “Should I not leave it here, in expectation that the owner might return?”

  “It could prove useful. Place it in your reticule for safekeeping.”

  I did as he bade me, feeling like a thief.

  “You are not injured, I hope?” his lordship enquired.

  “My gown will be soiled, if it is not already torn; but I am entirely out of temper with women’s apparel, and cannot lament the cost. You will be leaving me at home in future, and placing your trust in the stealthy Orlando.”

  He grasped my hand by way of answer, and led me forward.

  “IT BREAKS MY HEART TO SEE THE OLD STONES THUS, despoiled of their marble. Only think what this place once was, in the days before King Henry worked his change on the land!”

  The words filtered down through the rotting wood of the tunnel hatch, set into the stone a mere foot above our heads. We stood poised in the middle of the ascending stairs that led from passage to kitchen, and in another moment I am sure that Lord Harold should have thrust open the hatch-door, and we must have been discovered, but for the woman’s voice starting up in the midst of conversation.

  Heat and chill washed over me in waves, from a suspense at our situation; for the voice, I readily discerned, was Sophia Challoner’s.

  “The mantelpiece, I imagine, now forms the center of some gentleman’s household?”

  It could only be Mr. Ord who spoke; but the American’s tone was far more serious than the one he had adopted at his lady’s dining table.

  “Everything that could be scavenged has been stripped from the place. The same is true throughout England—for Henry was accustomed to highway robbery, and liked to call it politics.”

  The heels of her half-boots rang on the paving above my left shoulder; involuntarily, I ducked, and felt Lord Harold’s hand in warning at my waist.

  “That accounts, I suppose, for the air of sadness,” Ord said. “It is far more oppressive within the Abbey than in standing upon the walls. There one might have an idea of the old days, when the abbot commanded one of the finest views of the Solent, and welcomed visitors from every part of the world.”

  “Oh, why does mon seigneur not come?” Sophia Challoner demanded tautly, as though she had heard nothing of his wistful speech. “We have been waiting here full half an hour—and still he does not appear.”

  “There might be a thousand causes for delay. Do not make yourself anxious, I beg.”

  “I am always anxious,” she muttered, low. “I eat and sleep and breathe anxiety. It has become my habit, since Raoul was killed.”

  Lord Harold’s hand tightened on my waist.

  “You merely take the grief from these old stones,” Mr. Ord replied gently. “Let us go out and look for mon seigneur on the path. I am persuaded you will benefit from the air.”

  She said nothing by way of reply; but the rapping heels made their way across the room, and faded out of earshot. With stealthy grace, Lord Harold drew me back down the stone passage. Although we moved with haste, I did not stumble, and neither of us spoke until we stood once more at the tunnel’s mouth. Then Lord Harold smiled faintly.

  “How close we came to discovery, Jane! And what, then, should I have said to Sophia?”

  “That you share her opinion of King Henry as a thief and a vandal, and should be charmed to make her companion’s acquaintance.”

  “He speaks with a pronounced American accent. Mr. Ord, I presume?”

  “But who is this mon seigneur they expected? A man in a long black cloak, perhaps?”

  “Mon seigneur,” Lord Harold repeated. “My lord, in the French. A nobleman of the present regime—one of the
Monster’s able minions? And does he serve as Sophia’s agent—or her master? I pity the fellow. Tho’ he command the greatest of temporal powers, he will yet shudder to encounter Sophia’s wrath. She is more terrible even than Napoleon when she suffers a disappointment.”

  “You are very hard upon the lady, sir.”

  “It is my habit, Jane, with regard to all the fair sex—excepting yourself.”

  “She betrays a marked preference for lost Papist glory.”

  “In this, as in everything, she is squarely at odds with England. I believe I shall position the long-suffering Orlando in this tunnel, for the nonce, and charge him with listening well at trapdoors. We might learn much of the Enemy’s plans, from a pair of ears well-placed.”

  I recollected the footprints on the tunnel floor—the prints not of Orlando’s making-—and my heart misgave me. “What if the French lord uses this passage as his method of approach? The evidence of Mr. Hawkins’s boat on the strand may have warned him of our presence today, and turned him back from his appointment—but what if he were to happen upon Orlando?”

  Lord Harold thrust open the grilled door. “So much the better,” he answered grimly. “Orlando might slit the villain’s throat, and save us all a world of pain.”

  Chapter 11

  Stowaway

  Saturday, 29 October 1808

  … Mamma is hourly torn between raptures over the pretty little village of Wye, and the contemplation of what it should mean to possess full six bedchambers without the necessity of filling them all. For my own part, I should like to see us settled in Hampshire—near enough to our friends and relations for the sake of society, but without feeling too great a dependence, as we might in such proximity to Godmersham as Wye offers. Kentish folk in general are so very rich, and we are so very poor, that I fear the temptation to comparison would improve the opinions of neither.

  I raised my pen and stared in dissatisfaction at the letter to my sister. I had come to a full stop from an inability to convey what was chiefly in my mind: Lord Harold Trowbridge, and the business that had brought him to Southampton; Lord Harold, and the veil that had been torn from my eyes in the confines of his carriage. I could say nothing to Cassandra of the interesting Mrs. Challoner, or her assignations among ruined stones—nothing of the young American on his lathered black mount, or of cloaked and sinister strangers. I ought not even to mention his lordship’s name, in fact; Cassandra feared his influence over my heart.