Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House (18 page)

“If your mistress is otherwise engaged this morning, I shall wait for her reply.”

An ejaculation from the parlour doorway must serve as answer enough.

“Miss Austen! You are come again to cheer my solitude!” Louisa Seagrave cried. “Pray do not give the slightest attention to that ill-bred slattern, but hasten to the fire. You must be perishing of cold. Do I understand the situation correctly? Are you only now disembarked from the Southampton hoy?”

I drew off my bonnet and gloves, handed them to Nancy—who crushed them under her arm with a snort of contempt—and crossed the hall. I am. My brother could not be absent from Portsmouth on such a day; and when I learned of his intention, I begged to join him. Do I disturb your peace unforgivably?”

“Not at all.” Her fingers, when she clasped my own, were chilled to the bone. The parlour fire could not be adequate. Her face was sallow, her breathing hectic, and her entire appearance one of the deepest suffering; but I could not judge her
mad.
“You know, then, where my husband is gone. You know that a few hours alone may decide it.”

“A few hours—and all the most active intelligence of his true friends, exercised upon his behalf,” I declared. “You must not sink, Mrs. Seagrave—you must not give way. Let us talk of books; let us dandle the baby—let us walk out into the cold, if we must! But I shall not allow you to sink!”

“You are very good,” she murmured, and swayed in the doorway. I caught her arm and helped her into the parlour beyond—it was a small room, rather dark, with a single round table placed in the center and two or three chairs arranged around it. I settled Mrs. Seagrave on the sopha crammed into the bow window, and turned to face the second lady standing silently near the hearth. The mistress of the magnificent carriage, I presumed.

“Pray forgive my weakness, Lady Templeton,” Louisa Seagrave murmured, “and allow me to introduce Miss Austen to your acquaintance.”

Her ladyship was an austere personage, thin and tall, with a magnificent carriage to her head and a pair of glowing dark eyes. I should judge her a quarter-century junior to her husband, and where the Baronet was all diffidence and kindly hesitation, she was all decision and contempt. Like Louisa Seagrave, Lady Templeton was dressed entirely in black, though of an elegance the Captain's wife should never achieve. She did not waste her smiles upon a woman only just disembarked from the Southampton hoy; it was unlikely we should meet again, and a baronet's wife must always be sparing in her notice. A stiff nod, which I returned with my usual courtesy, was all the acknowledgement I received.

“I suppose you are one of Mrs. Seagrave's naval connexions?” she enquired.

“I am fortunate enough to have two brothers presently serving His Majesty,” I replied.

“And their rank?”

“The elder is a post captain, the younger a master and commander.”

This intelligence effectively thwarted further attempts at conversation. Nothing less than an admiral, it seemed, would do for a Lady Templeton. But her business was hardly with me; I could be ignored as a flaw in the paintwork, or a bit of thread discarded upon a table.

Her ladyship pulled on her gloves and grasped her reticule. “I may not tarry any longer, Louisa. I have wasted for too much time as it is. You know what Luxford shall be in such an hour. I may only repeat that I am not in the habit of brooking refusal. I expect you to afford my arrangements the consideration they warrant, and to vouchsafe a reply to the inn by midnight. Sir Walter and I shall be forced to start for Kent no later than ten 'clock on the morrow. Pray attend to the hour. You were never a punctual child; I hope the years have effected some amendment.”

Mrs. Seagrave pressed her hand against her eyes. “Will you not stay, and take refreshment? I believe that Sir Walter intended some project for the boys' amusement—”

“Nonsense,” returned Lady Templeton briskly. “Sir Walter must attend me to the George at once. We have not the time for frivolity. We are not come upon a pleasure party, I would have you know.”

“Charles and Edward take such delight in Sir Walter—”

“I should prefer to see less of delight, and more of self-control! They could do with firmer management, Louisa. We shall procure a tutor post-haste, once they are removed to Luxford. I certainly cannot be expected to set up as nursemaid, however much Sir Walter may enjoy his second childhood!”

Louisa Seagrave's lips parted, as though she would muster some reply; but then her sallow face flushed an unbecoming red, and she fell back into silence.

“I shall not wait for that wretched girl you chuse to call a maidservant, but shall show myself out,” Lady Templeton concluded. “The horses cannot be expected to stand long in this damp weather. Gibbon will be exceedingly angry.”

Louisa Seagrave struggled to her feet. “We must not make poor Gibbon angry; he has suffered too long already in your service.”

If Lady Templeton caught the barb beneath the simple words, she did not chuse to evidence it.

“I thank you for your attention,” Mrs. Seagrave continued formally, “and wish you every conceivable comfort on your journey into Kent; but I cannot say whether it shall be in my power to accept your kind—”

“Do not be a fool again, Louisa.”

The abrupt warning, delivered without softening civilities or the slightest attempt to guard their subject from contempt, stopped Mrs. Seagrave's pleasantries in her mouth. She bowed her head, and made no effort to escort her visitor to the door.

My gaze followed the upright, formidable figure of her ladyship as she swept into the passage; and when the door had slammed with finality behind her, I could only look to the Captain's wife with silent pity.

“You have been honoured with a glimpse of my paternal aunt,” she told me with a shaky laugh. “I learned only yesterday of the passing of my father—Charles, Viscount Luxford—at Richmond three days since; he is to be buried Tuesday at Luxford House, in Kent.”

“You have my deepest sympathy,” I said. “The loss of a parent must always be felt. I hope that he did not suffer long?”

“He died of apoplexy, after too rich a dinner; and I am sure that no man died happier than Father. He was always the sort to relish a good meal.”

It was difficult to know how to greet this intelligence. I was uncertain whether Louisa Seagrave possessed a brother who might accede to the tide, or if the estate was entailed upon another—whether she had seen her father since her headlong marriage, much less this redoubtable aunt. She was breathing heavily, as though under the spur of considerable emotion. She certainly had not mether relation with composure; but whether love, remorse, or hatred ranked uppermost in her spirits, I could not determine.

“Lady Templeton wishes me to accompany her and Sir Walter into Kent. She thinks it necessary I pay my respects.”

“That must be natural.”

“There was never anything natural in the connexion between myself and my family, Miss Austen,” Mrs. Seagrave retorted with asperity. “To think that I must
now
make my appearance in Kent, with my little boys in tow—the heiress returned like a bad penny, with her questionable progeny behind her—and at such a time!”

“Heiress?”

“My father has no sons, and the estate is not entailed. Lady Templeton thinks it likely that Charles— But I cannot be tiring you with such tedious family business. I shall not speak of it. Tell me what you have been reading, Miss Austen! I hear that Mrs. Jordan was in the theatre at French Street; did you happen to see her play?”

There was in her whole manner a feverish inattention to word and air that suggested the gravest anxiety. I had no notion how long a period Lady Templeton had demanded for the presentation of her schemes, but surely little of constructive activity had been accomplished in the Seagrave household this morning. Scattered about the room were signs of occupation too swiftly abandoned: a novel face downwards against a seat cushion; a boy's stick and hoop thrust into a corner; needlework hastily set aside. Mrs. Seagrave had been working at something—a small gown of dimity, no doubt for the new baby. Such is the desperate occupation of a woman's hours, while men decide the fate of the beloved, and all of existence may be summed up in a single word—
guilty.
We women sew, as though the world entire must hang upon a thread.

“Should you like some refreshment? A glass of wine?” I enquired. “Let me fetch you one.”

“No—that is, perhaps a small draught of Dr. Wharton's Comfort. It is there, on the Pembroke table—” She gestured towards the center of the small room. I collected the blue bottle, uncorked it, and offered it to her. She did not wait for a glass of water, but tipped the flagon's neck between her lips.

Whatever Dr. Wharton had prescribed, it appeared to answer her affliction. Louisa Seagrave sighed and stopped up the bottle's mouth with a hand that trembled only a little. “That is better,” she whispered. “I shall do.”

I sank into a chair. She remained standing, her sharp profile turned towards the front windows, in the direction of the sea. “They will fire a gun,” she murmured, “if he is to hang. It is no distance at all, from Lombard Street to the quay. We shall hear it. Can it be that any in Portsmouth is deaf to the sound of guns today? But perhaps they shall take him across to Spithead, and hang him there.”

“Do not speak of it,” I urged her. “It shall not come to that.”

The restless eyes returned to mine. “You cannot believe him innocent! My dear Miss Austen, make no mistake. My husband
deserves
to hang.”

It was the one pronouncement I had least expected, and I could find not a single word to answer it. I stared at her, horror pricking at my spine. Perhaps she
was
mad.

“He killed that poor fellow as surely as though he fired the ball himself.”

She knew, then, of the wound to Porthiault's temple. And yet Seagrave himself had never mentioned it when he described the French captain's last moments. He had merely spoken of a blow to the head—some wound undiscerned, that had stunned the man or killed him outright. It was Etienne LaForge who had examined the skull, and located the hole from the ball. But if Louisa Seagrave could speak of it so readily …

“Your husband has told you this?” I whispered.

Her lips worked, and then her entire countenance crumpled with the fierce violence of grief. “He did not need to say a word. I know the love he bore that child. I witnessed it every day, in the diminished affection he gave to his own sons—in the flight of all love and honour from myself! I did not have to be told.”

“The child,” I repeated, as comprehension broke. “You would speak of the Young Gentleman! The boy who took a musket shot, while aloft in the shrouds, and was dashed to the decks with the roll of the ship. But why—”

“Master Simon Carruthers,” Louisa Seagrave said. “Nearly two years he was in my husband's keeping, and dearer to him than any child in the world. A bright, healthy lad with a courageous heart, a shock of blond hair, a ready grin. The boy's father—Captain Carruthers— was a great friend of Thomas's, and killed at Trafalgar. Simon's place on the
Stella
was meant to be a great favour, a mark of esteem. Do you know what they do to a lad of that age, when he dies in battle? Do you?” Her voice was shrill, as though she teetered on the brink of hysterics; it demanded of me some answer.

I shook my head.

“They toss him overboard without a word of farewell, without a prayer for his parting soul. He slips astern like a sprig of jetsam, and is lost to the fishes and the rocks. No mother may bathe his body for burial, or stand by his graveside with a posy for remembrance.” She covered her face with her hands and began to sob wretchedly. The sound was guttural and harsh. “Such dreams as I have had, Miss Austen! Such visions of decay—the nightmares that haunt my sleep!
Those are pearls that were his eyes
…'”

The high, piping voice of six-year-old Edward, raised in protest as his uncle Sir Walter was torn from all the delights of boat launchings at Sally Port, drifted through the ceiling from the nursery upstairs. I shuddered. It was horrible to think of such innocence blasted, and made food for fishes.

“But a French musket brought down the boy. Surely you cannot—”

“Seven years old. But seven years old! No stouter than one of my own boys should be.” She turned upon me as a wolf might avenge the baiting of her young. “Simon Carruthers should not have been at sea. I blame my husband! As who could not! He is guilty of the grossest folly—guilty of abuse and murder! It was Thomas who would have the boy torn from his mother at the tender age of five—Thomas, who being denied his own sons to parade about the quarterdeck, must borrow the heir of a hero, and throw the child into all the violence of a fighting ship in the midst of a brutal war. Madness, this crush of young lives in the gun's breech, like the maul of apple blossom beneath a booted heel! Can you bear to think of his mother, Miss Austen?”

His mother. The beautiful Phoebe Carruthers, in her gown of dark grey, her mass of golden hair. I had thought her a sort of Madonna when I glimpsed her in French Street last night, before I even knew of her mourning. Strange that a woman with every cause for grief should venture to a play.

“Are you at all acquainted with Mrs. Carruthers?”

“One cannot reside in Hampshire, and yet be ignorant of Phoebe Carruthers,' Louisa Seagrave replied. “She is reckoned the most beautiful woman of the naval set; certainly she has suffered the most. The entire Admiralty is at her feet, I understand, from respect for her courage. Even Thomas—”

She broke off, and stared at her hands. “You think me bitter, no doubt. You think me vengeful and cruel to urge my husband's sacrifice. There are some, I know, who do not hesitate to call me
mad.
But I cannot view the Navy's folly, Miss Austen, without I declare it criminal. I would not give my sons to Thomas when he longed to take them to sea. I refused him—and my refusal has long divided us. It is the rock upon which our marriage has broken. But I am justified in that poor child's death! And if God is yet in His Heaven, Tom will hang for what he did.”