Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House (41 page)

W
EEKS PASSED, AND THE MOVE TO
C
ASTLE
S
QUARE WAS
accomplished. We are established in this comfortable house exactly a fortnight, and know the pleasure of watching spring roll in off the Solent from the broad expanse of our very own garden. Martha and I—for Mary is grown too large for gambolling, particularly on a stone parapet that may permit of only three or four walking abreast—will stroll for hours together along the high old walls of the fortified city, staring out at the faint green of the New Forest. My mother no longer keeps to her bed, but digs at the raspberry canes that are setting out in the fresh earth; she is constantly on the watch for the Marchioness, our neighbour, so that she might have the pleasure of the lady's faerie horses, and find consolation in a fallen woman installed so conveniently to hand. Now that Mr. Hill is gone off to Greenwich, as resident surgeon for the naval hospital there, consolation must be necessary.

Cassandra is expected at home next week, and I have purchased figured muslin for a new gown.

I have been so busy throughout March, indeed, that I have almost forgot the events that opened it—or I had succeeded, perhaps, in diverting my mind from so much that was troubling, and must remain forever unresolved. But the matter was brought forcibly to my attention today, with the arrival of the morning post.

One shilling, eight pence, was demanded of me, for the receipt of a packet in an altogether unfamiliar hand. I duly paid the charge—slit open the seal—and commenced to read with a smile at my lips.

5 March 1807

On board the Dartmouth,
in the Downs

Ma chère mademoiselle
Austen:

I write swiftly, as a mail boat has just called without warning, and we are to have our missives sent within the hour; but I know that you are familiar enough with naval life to forgive this small
bêtise.
I have been fortunate enough to obtain a position— with the help and collusion of your Admiralty, than which no institution of subterfuge and statecraft could be more honourable—as ship's surgeon aboard an American vessel bound for Boston. I am very well satisfied with the outcome of my late adventure, and may think with satisfaction that no small part of my happiness is due to having made your acquaintance. The Admiralty is now in possession of what personal property I carried out of France; and I trust that they shall continue to evidence a pleasing concern for my welfare.

Accept my deepest thanks and undying devotion for yourself,
mademoiselle—without whom I should never have remained—

Etienne, Comte de la Forge

The man's become a spy,” said Frank shortly, after perusing this missive. “He's been despatched to inform upon the Americans. I shouldn't wonder that he will prove as wretched at the business as he did at avoiding the Emperor.”

I must forgive my brother the slight bitterness of that speech; Frank is only just made aware, by the very same post, of his latest appointment. He is not to have a fast frigate—those are very dear in the Navy at present— but is to command the
St. Albans,
on convoy duty to the East Indies. In this, I suspect, we see the malice of Sir Francis Farnham, who cannot excuse my brother for Seagrave's acquittal.

“A bride-ship,” Frank muttered as he read the official letter from the Admiralty. “There is certain to be a bride-ship in the convoy, Mary, awash with tittering females who cannot stand the heat of the sun. A long, desperate slog of it we shall make, with no hope of prizes, neither.”

“My poor lamb,” soothed the stalwart bride; and said nothing of the fact that he should be absent for the birth of his first child.

T
HOMAS
S
EAGRAVE IS TO REMAIN THE CAPTAIN OF THE
Stella Maris.
We learned of his acquittal on all charges considered by the court-martial a few days after his wife's burial; and even Admiral Bertie is disposed, now, to make much of him when the two chance to meet. Young Charles and his brother Edward are to be despatched to Uncle Walter and Luxford House in Kent once their father is again at sea. Seagrave has handsomely allowed little Charles to take the name of Carteret—without repining or rancour at his millions of pounds. The new Viscount accedes to all the honours and fortune of his grandpapa's estate, with Sir Walter for trustee; and I am sure that the Baronet will greatly enjoy his second childhood in Charles's keeping, once his wretched wife is no more.

The baby girl, Eliza, is to take up residence with her august relations; but Edward is destined for the sea, and when he has achieved a full ten years, is to join his father in whatever fast frigate the Captain then commands. I cannot help but wonder if the lad is not the happiest party in all of Southampton—who had least to do with the shocking events at Wool House.

About the Author

Stephanie Barron, a lifelong admirer of Jane Austen's work, is the author of five previous Jane Austen mysteries. She lives in Colorado, where she is at work on the eighth Jane Austen mystery,
Jane and the Barque of Frailty.
As Francine Mathews, she is the author of
The Cutout
and
The Secret Agent.
Learn more about both Stephanie Barron and Francine Mathews at
www.francinemathews.com.

If you enjoyed Stephanie Barron's/am
and the
Prisoner of Wool House,
you won't want to miss any
of the wonderful mysteries in this superb series.

Look for them at your favorite bookseller's.

And turn the page for an exciting preview of
Jane
and the Ghosts of Netley,
available from Bantam Books.

JANE AND THE GHOSTS Of NETLEY

~Being the Seventh Jane Austen Mystery-

by Stephanie Barron

Chapter 1
Bare Ruined Choirs

Castle Square,

Southampton

Tuesday, 25 October 1808

~

THERE ARE FEW PROSPECTS SO REPLETE WITH ROMANTIC possibility—so entirely suited to a soul trembling in morbid awe—as the ruins of an English abbey. Picture, if you will, the tumbled stones where once a tonsured friar muttered matins; the echoing coruscation of the cloister, now opened to the sky; the soaring architraves of Gothick stone that oppress one's soul as with the weight of tombs. Vanished incense curling at the nostril—the haunting memory of chanted prayer, sonorous and unintelligible to an ear untrained in Latin—the ghostly tolling of a bell whose clapper is muted now forever! Oh, to walk in such a place under the chill of moonlight, of a summer evening, when the air off the Solent might stir the dead to speak! In such an hour I could imagine myself a heroine straight from Mrs. Radcliffe's pen: the white train of my gown sweeping over the ancient stones, my shadow but a wraith before me, and all the world suspended in silence between the storied past and prosaic present.

Engaging as such visions must be, I have never ventured to Netley Abbey—for it is of Netley I would speak, it being the closest object to a romantic ruin we possess in Southampton—in anything but the broadest day. I am far too sensible a lady to linger in such a deserted place, with the darkling wood at my back and the sea to the fore, when the comfort of a home fire beckons. Thus we find the abyss that falls between the fancies of horrid novels, and the habits of those who read them.

“Aunt Jane!”

“Yes, George?” I glanced towards the bow, where my two nephews, George and Edward, surveyed the massive face of Netley Castle as it rose on the port side of the small skiff.

“Why do they call that place a castle, Aunt? It looks nothing like.”

“ 'Tis a Solent fort, you young nubbins,” grunted Mr. Hawkins, our seafaring guide. “Built in King Henry's time, when the Abbey lands were taken. In a prime position for defending the Water, it is; they ought never to have spiked those guns.”

“But we have Portsmouth at the Solent mouth, Mr. Hawkins,” Edward observed, “and must trust to the entire force of the Navy to preserve us against the threat from France.” The elder of the two boys—fourteen to George's thirteen—Edward prided himself on his cool intelligence. As my brother's heir, he was wont to assume the attitudes of a young man of fortune.

My nephews had come to me lately from Steventon, after a brief visit to my brother James—a visit that I am certain will live forever in their youthful memories as the most mournful of their experience. I say this without intending a slight upon the benevolence of my eldest brother, nor of his insipid and cheeseparing wife; for the tragedy that overtook our Edward and George was entirely due to Providence.

Nearly a fortnight has passed since a messenger out of Kent conveyed the dreadful intelligence: how Elizabeth Austen, the boys mother and mistress of my brother Edward's fine estate at Godmersham, had retired after dinner only to fall dead of a sudden fit. Elizabeth! So elegant and charming, despite her numerous progeny; Elizabeth, unbowed as it seemed by the birth of her eleventh child in the last days of September. The surgeon could make nothing of the case; he declared it to be improbable; but dead our Lizzy was, despite the surgeon's protestations, and buried she has been a week since, in the small Norman church of St. Lawrence's where I attended her so often to Sunday service.

I suspect that too much breeding is at the heart of the trouble—but too much breeding is the lot of all women who marry young, particularly when they are so fortunate as to make a love-match. Elizabeth Bridges, third daughter of a baronet, was but eighteen when she wed, and only five-and-thirty when she passed from this life. With her strength of character, she ought to have lived to be eighty.

It remains, now, for the rest of us to comfort her bereaved family as best we may. My sister Cassandra, who went into Kent for Elizabeth's lying-in, shall remain at Godmersham throughout the winter. Dear Neddie bears the affliction with a mixture of Christian resignation and wild despair. My niece Fanny, who at fifteen is grown so much in form and substance as to seem almost another sister, must shoulder the burden of managing the younger children, for the household is without a governess. There is some talk of sending the little girls away to school, that they might not brood upon the loss of their mamma—but I cannot like the scheme, having nearly died when banished as a child to a young ladies' seminary. The elder boys, Edward and George, endured their visit to brother James at Steventon and appeared—chilled to the bone with riding next to Mr. Wise, the coachman—on Saturday. They are bound for their school in Winchester on the morrow.

Their happiness has been entirely in my keeping during this short sojourn in Southampton. I have embraced the duty with a will, for they are such taking lads, and the blight of grief sits heavily upon them. They forget their cares for a time in playing at spillikins, or fashioning paper boats to bombard with horse chestnuts. The evening hours, when dark descends and memory returns, are harder to sustain. George has proved a restless sleeper, crying aloud in a manner more suited to a child half his age. He will be roundly abused for weakness upon his return to school, if he does not take care.

My mother, I own, finds the boys' spirits to have a shattering effect upon her nerves, which invariably fail her in moments of family crisis. No matter how diligently Edward might twist himself about in our reading chairs, engrossed in
The Lake of Killarney,
or George lose a morning in attempting to sketch a ship of the line, their exuberance will drive my mother to her bedchamber well before the dinner hour, to take her evening meal upon a tray.

Yesterday, I carried the boys up the River Itchen in Mr. Hawkins's skiff, and stopped to examine a seventy-four that is presently building in the dockyard there.
¹
The place was a bustle of activity—scaffolding and labourers vied for place in a chaos of scrap wood and iron tools— and left to myself, I should not have dreamt of disturbing them. But under the chaperonage of Mr. Hawkins, a notorious tar known to all in Southampton as the Bosun's Mate, we received a ready welcome from the shipwright Mr. Dixon is a hearty fellow of mature years and bright blue eyes who takes great pride in his work.