Adventures with Jane and her Legacy 01 Jane Austen Ruined My Life (7 page)

"I know, but I can see her father's church." I couldn't let him know that a page from the parish register, on display in the
church, was the main reason for my journey. I couldn't complete the task I'd been given without it. "Besides, it would be great just to see the countryside. I've never been out of London when I've been here before."

Adam gave me a lazy smile. "I think I can play chauffeur. When do you want to go?"

"Tomorrow?" I said, trying to keep my enthusiasm under wraps. As far as Adam knew, it was a casual day trip, not a matter of life and death. Well, my career's life and death, anyway.

"Okay. But let's wait until after morning rush hour."

I would have agreed to just about anything he suggested, as long as it meant reaching my destination.

It wasn't until later, after we'd walked back to Anne-Elise's house and retreated to our separate rooms for the night, that I began to wonder why Adam, after years of estrangement, was being so agreeable. Why he was so willing to drive me to Hampshire. Why had he been in South Kensington that morning or, indeed, what kind of research he was doing in London to begin with? I wasn't the only one being vague.

No, I thought, shaking my head where it lay on the pillow. Edward's infidelity had made me suspicious, made me see ulterior motives where there weren't any. I was boxing with shadows. I refused to let Edward's betrayal make me paranoid. If I did that, then I would lose far more than my marriage.

W
e left for Hampshire the next morning a little after nine o'clock.

Thankfully, Adam filled the car with gas, and we set out in my cousin's tiny Ford Fiesta without my having to confess my dire financial straits. Adam had printed off directions from the Internet, so I sank into the passenger seat, at least as much as one can sink into a car that small, and let him direct our journey.

It seemed to take forever to make our way out of Greater London, but finally we were on the motorway and headed southwest.

"How long will it take?" I asked.

"About an hour and a half, if we don't hit any traffic."

How he could drive on the wrong side of the road was beyond me. I was content to watch the scenery as it passed, and Adam was intent enough on his driving not to mind the lack
of conversation. I felt like I'd been dropped into a scene from Masterpiece Theatre, everything was so green and pastoral. At length, we exited the motorway and made our way through the thriving town of Basingstoke.

"Lots of corporations are setting up shop here," Adam told me when I commented on the high-rise office buildings springing up like weeds after a rain. "London's so congested, they're trying to get big companies to locate outside the city."

I could guess what Jane Austen would have thought of multinational corporations invading her territory. I was pretty sure she'd have had a thing or two to say about that.

We passed through Basingstoke and turned off a major road onto a little country lane. "Not far now," Adam said. Two wrong turns later, we finally found what we were looking for. At a junction near an open field, Adam made a left and pulled to the side of the road.

"There you go."

"There I go what?" An open field, grassy and green and trimmed with hedges, lay to my right. It sloped upward until it met a woodsy area. An ancient lime tree was the field's only occupant.

"According to the map, that's where the Steventon rectory stood." He swiveled in the seat and pointed up the hill behind us. "And that's where it is now."

"I remember that later occupants finally figured out that building a house at the bottom of a hill might have had something to do with all that rising damp Austen mentioned in her
letters," I said, but my attention was on the scene before me. It looked so empty, that field. Pretty, but empty.

"Isn't there a plaque or something? Some kind of marker?" Adam asked.

I shook my head. "Just the tree. According to what I read, her brother planted it when he was the rector here after her father." My chest ached with disappointment. How could the birthplace of one of the greatest English novelists be so completely ignored? "If she'd been a man, there'd be a ten-foot statue," I said between clenched teeth. "Not to mention a pub named after her."

Adam nodded. "Probably. But I kind of like it like this. Only the true believers like you know the importance of the site."

I wasn't convinced. "Would you say the same thing if it were your hero, Sir Walter Scott? Or Shakespeare? Or, God forbid, Milton?"

Adam laughed at my allusion to Edward. Well, at least my sense of humor hadn't totally forsaken me.

"C'mon," Adam said, starting the engine and slipping the car into gear. "Maybe the church is a bit more impressive."

St. Nicholas Church, Steventon, was a surprisingly far distance up the road--more than half a mile, I surmised. The narrow lane obviously didn't see much traffic. Overhead, tree branches met in a thick tangle. I couldn't imagine a tourist coach lumbering up the lane without damaging its roof. A minute or two later down the country lane, and suddenly there it was. My
view of the church was partially blocked by a giant yew tree. But then Adam pulled into the small parking area, and I had my first full look at my assigned destination.

"It's charming," I breathed, afraid to speak too loudly lest it disappear like a mirage.

The thirteenth-century building was constructed along simple lines, a basic stone rectangle rising in a Norman arch to a small, square turret topped by a steeple. The yew tree grew close to the left front corner, as if it needed to lend the building its support. A small fence, built to keep tourists' cars at bay, stood between the empty parking area and the gravel walk that wound its way to the front door.

"What if it's not open?" The terrible thought struck me as I scrambled from the car. Stupid, stupid, I scolded myself. Why hadn't I thought of that before?

"Don't panic yet," Adam said.

Easy for him to say. His entire future didn't depend on getting inside that church.

I tried not to run around the fence and up the walk, but I still moved pretty fast. I beat Adam to the door by several yards. With a trembling hand, I reached out, grabbed the handle, and pulled. It was locked.

"No," I wailed. I wanted to beat against the door with my hands, but somehow I restrained myself. I turned to face Adam, my shoulders sinking. "I can't believe it's not open." One way or another, I had to get inside that church. "What do we do now?"

He remained unperturbed, much to my annoyance. "The sign over there said we could contact the rector. Looks like he divides his time among several parishes."

I slumped against the door. "No, it has to be today."

Adam glanced down at my feet. "Too bad there's no mat with a key under it."

His offhand comment sparked a memory. I looked toward the yew tree. "I wonder ..." I moved toward it. The ancient branches grew almost to the ground. I pushed aside some leafy obstacles and disappeared into the tree's shadow.

"Emma? What are you doing?" I heard Adam call after me.

Underneath the branches, the air was cool and dim, a sanctuary in its own right. I moved closer to the tree's enormous trunk. It was close to four feet across and had split wide open with age. I'd read somewhere that once a yew tree gets that old, it didn't actually need the trunk to survive, and so the trunk decays and becomes hollow. I could certainly identify.

"I wonder if they still hide it here," I said, half to myself and half to Adam who had followed me into the shadowy shelter of the yew. I reached my hand inside the trunk and felt around. A moment later, I found what I was searching for. "Bingo," I breathed and lifted it from its hook.

It was a church key, but far bigger than any key I'd ever seen, nearly a foot long. I let my fingers trace the curves at the top. "It must weigh a ton," Adam said.

"Pretty much." I had remembered, of course, that in Jane Austen's day, the key to the church had been kept in the yew
tree so that any parishioner needing to enter the building might do so.

"Do you think it will work?" I asked Adam.

"I doubt they'd still keep it here if they didn't actually use it. How did you know it was here?"

"I read about it somewhere along the way."

He grinned. "So only true Austen devotees would know where to look. Garden variety vandals wouldn't have a clue."

"Yep." I returned his smile, pleased with my success. We made our way back to the church door. I held my breath as I tried to figure out how to work the key. With a little help from Adam, I managed to get it in the lock and turn it.

"Voila!" I said as the door opened. My heart was pounding. We stepped inside the vestibule, and I got my first glimpse of the interior.

I'd spent the past ten years learning everything there was to know about Jane Austen, but nothing I had read in a book or scholarly journal could have prepared me for the wave of emotion that threatened to carry me away as I moved farther into the church. My chest tightened, and I stepped forward to grip the back of the last pew for support.

"Emma?" Adam moved to stand beside me, and his hand cupped my elbow.

I was supposed to be a seasoned academic, an impartial observer and analyst of the object of my study. But short of the home she'd grown up in, here was the place where Austen had spent the most time in the first half of her life. I could
envision her there, on one of the front pews, sandwiched between Cassandra and one or the other of her numerous brothers while they fidgeted through their father's sermon. I'd experienced that myself, trading jabs with my older brother on Sunday mornings while my father delivered his message and my mother bribed us with lemon drops to behave.

"The Anglicans loved their whitewash, didn't they?" Adam said. I followed his gaze, over the plain white walls to the wide beams of the ceiling and the gentle rise of the arches that framed the altar. Matching arches formed alcoves on either side. On the front of the wall that divided the nave from the altar, someone had removed the wash, and I could see the faded colors of the decorative painting that had once covered the interior of the church.

"Most people generally do," I quipped, a desperate attempt at humor. Anything to strengthen my knees and help me draw breath.

Cautiously I stepped forward, the stone floor echoing beneath my feet. Halfway down the aisle, a carpet runner began to dampen the sound. I trailed my hand along the pew backs as I went, desperate to touch something, to make it all real.

When I reached the front, I moved to my right. A table, about the size of a small buffet, held a few mementos, chief among them a copy of a page from the parish register, the record book of the church. It was this page, actually, that I'd come to see, per Mrs. Parrot's instructions. It was actually the sample page from
the front of the parish register, the record book of baptisms and marriages and funerals kept by the rector, and Jane Austen had filled this page out as a joke when she was a teenager.

Adam appeared at my side and looked over my shoulder at the facsimile of the document.

"What's that?" He studied it for a moment. "Henry Frederick Howard Fitzwilliam of London," he read. "To Jane Austen. An impressive choice for her first marriage. He must have been a baronet at least."

He was kidding, of course. Jane had filled in her own name as the bride, as she'd done with all of the entries she'd made.

"Arthur William Mortimer of Liverpool." I read the second out loud. "A banker, maybe?" I said to Adam with a smile. "He sounds like someone with pots of money."

"I wonder how she got away with it. Isn't this an official record in England?"

"Her father kept the parish register at home," I said absently. "And it was just the sample page. Not an actual entry."

My eyes traced the printed form, which left blank spaces for the names of the bride, the groom, and the witnesses. The youthful Jane had filled these in, but what had been her motivation? Were these names of real men? Or were they merely figments of her imagination, precursors of the heroes she would someday write about?

"There were fewer than three hundred parishioners in her father's day," I continued. "I can't imagine he performed all
that many weddings, not to mention baptisms or funerals. I doubt he pulled the register out very often."

"How old was she when she did this?"

"Fifteen or sixteen."

I knew the information like the back of my hand, but seeing her actual writing, even a copy, sent a chill down my spine. Once upon a time, Jane Austen had been a typical teenage girl, and from her mock entry in the parish register, I could tell two things. One, that she'd had her own dreams of love and marriage. The first two entries told me that. And, two, it told me that she'd always had her sense of humor. Her last choice of husband was proof enough of that, for the third entry merely read,

Jack Smith to Jane Smith, late Austen
.

It wasn't a very impressive name for a husband, and it didn't hint at wealth or privilege as the two previous ones had.

"The last one must have been for love," Adam said, echoing my thoughts.