Jane and the Stillroom Maid (19 page)

“Such contrivings shall hardly be necessary,” Mr. Cooper broke in. “You must refuse the invitation, Cousin. Express all that is proper to Lady Harriot—show yourself sensible of the very great honour you have been done—but refuse it in any case.”

“I could not deprive Cassandra of her silk—”

“Fiddle!” my mother cried. “You will never get Lord Harold, Jane, in a washed-out muslin! With Mr. Hemming fled in fear of his life, it cannot matter what Cassandra wears!”

“Fled?” I repeated. “Not truly?”

Mr. Cooper was approaching apoplexy in his looks. “If Jane were to dine at Chatsworth on Saturday, we should be incapable of quitting this miserable place until Monday at the earliest—for I
trust
you are not intending to subject me to Sunday travel.”

Sunday travel, the horror of every person who professed to keep the Sabbath—and an opportunity, did we force my cousin to it, for an unremitting martyrdom of hymn singing. “Certainly not,” I replied. “We might perfectly quit this place on Monday. Have you communicated your intentions, Cousin, to Sir James?”

Mr. Cooper slapped his wife’s missive down upon the table. “I have no opinion of Sir James Villiers. He does not deserve such attention. I am certain that he has led the people of this despicable hamlet to believe the very worst sort of nonsense. In moving through the streets today, Cousin, I felt as though an hundred eyes were upon me, and the most malicious falsehoods whispered in my train.”

“Indeed, Mr. Cooper, I am sure you take too much upon yourself. The unsettled nature of events has given rise to unnatural fears. You must endeavour to calm yourself, and consider where your duty lies.”

“My duty!
My
duty!” Mr. Cooper’s countenance was purple with rage. “Let us better consider of Sir James’s duty, Jane! Any person of sound understanding would counsel the Justice to lay that villain Charles Danforth directly by the heels! If Sir James does not effect it soon, the local folk will achieve justice in his stead!”

“Of what are you speaking, Mr. Cooper?” My entire body felt suddenly cold, although the heat had not yet faded from the day.

“Of that cursed and misbegotten soul,” my cousin retorted, “the maid’s employer! It was Danforth’s clothes she wore at the moment of her death; and he is everywhere acknowledged as a Freemason, and an excellent shot. Clearly he was sent to destroy the girl when she would have published the dark secrets of the Masons’ lodge!”

“Good Heaven, Edward, do you truly believe such rank nonsense? What would your noble patron, Sir George Mumps, say if he did hear you? He should reconsider his pressing invitation to join the Staffordshire lodge!”

My cousin faltered an instant, then summoned energy for a final retort. “Charles Danforth has the mark of the Devil upon him, Jane, and he shall be strung up on a tree before the night is out. There are the torches in evidence!”

I looked through the windowpane at Mr. Cooper’s direction. A grim band of local men was assembled at the head of Matlock Street. There were thirty of them at least, some mounted and some on foot, with burning staffs raised high. At their head was Michael Tivey, the coroner and surgeon; and it was clear from all aspects they meant nothing but mischief.

“Are they bound for Penfolds Hall?” I enquired in a breathless accent.

“As soon as darkness will descend.” Even my cousin had left off his bluster, at the sight of the milling men.

“Then someone,” I said with decision, “had better send word to Chatsworth. The Danforths are from home tonight, and would not wish their house burnt down in their absence.”

“But it is none of our affair!” my cousin cried. “We are strangers to Bakewell and everyone in it. If these vicious fellows would string one of their company from the nearest tree, then I for one shall not risk my neck to stop them.”

“And is this the issue of a day spent humbly on your knees, Cousin?” I enquired with scorn. “You had better have devoted the hours to your fishing rod. If you do not chuse to sound the alarm, when all of Bakewell must know what these ruffians are about, then I shall do so.”

“I beg you will not,” snapped Mr. Cooper, now white-faced. “You will bring the whole town in arms to the inn, and then who shall save us all? Charles Danforth is entirely unknown to us, and very likely a murderer. He can be nothing to
you
.”

“Nothing, sir, but a fellow creature and a gentleman,” I cried. “If Mr. Danforth
is
a murderer, let an English court pronounce him so! Come, come, Mr. Cooper! Do you think that rabble below has any notion of justice? They are moved solely by superstition and the most appalling ignorance. I despise that sort of public tyranny!”

My cousin had the grace to look somewhat ashamed. My sister Cassandra, who had overheard the whole, turned her gaze intently from one to the other of us, her troubled countenance betraying her dismay at family discord. I am always firm, however, when I know myself to be in the right. I reached for the inn’s supply
of paper and searched among my things for a well-trimmed pen.

“Rough justice made a mockery of peace in France,” I told Mr. Cooper. “I shall not stand idly by while it has its way with England, sir!”

28 August 1806, cont.
∼

S
ALLY, OUR PARLOUR-MAID, WAS DEEMED WORTHY OF
bearing secrets; and so she was summoned, and requested to despatch two missives, hastily penned and sealed up with wax. The first bore the name of Lord Harold Trowbridge; he should know better than anyone how to convey the news of a hanging party to the Danforth brothers, without alarming the Duke’s entire household. I did not feel secure in communicating directly with Charles Danforth—did the bearer read his name upon the letter, even one despatched to Chatsworth, Mr. Danforth might never receive it.

The second letter was directed to Sir James Villiers, at his ancestral home near Monyash. If violent men were abroad in Derbyshire at night, the local Justice was the most proper person to rout them; but I chafed at the delay necessitated by so indirect an approach. Could I have sent immediately to Penfolds Hall, and warned the steward, I should have done so; but the likelihood of a messenger’s being prevented from travelling the
same road as the men he hoped to forestall, argued against that course of action.

Sally solemnly assured us that she would see the letters into the hands of her male relations, who might be trusted to carry them safely through the dusk. I pressed three coins into her palm, and offered fervent thanks; and so, with a wide-eyed impression of her own importance, Sally ventured forth on an errand whose nature remained obscure to her. Those of us privileged to know the evil that men may do, were forced to wait in painful suspense, while the darkness gathered and the company of ruffians increased in the streets below.

“I fear there is a poisonous quantity of gin in circulation,” observed my mother resignedly. “They will all be wanting coddled eggs in the morning.”

T
HE TORCHES MADE THEIR WAY OUT OF
B
AKEWELL
along the road I had last travelled in Mr. George Hemming’s pony trap, towards Ashford-in-the-Water and Miller’s Dale and the small town of Tideswell just beyond, where Penfolds Hall was said to be situated. It was a considerable distance for such a party, a fact that Mr. Tivey the surgeon must have anticipated—for several drays and waggons were pressed into service, and those without mounts of their own obliged to crouch in the springless bottoms of their fellows’ equipages. I watched them quit Matlock Street in silence, for Mr. Cooper had abandoned his post by the window and was now established over his writing desk. My mother and Cassandra had gone to bed. I was considering of a sleepless night myself, when a small tap came at the parlour door, and Sally peered into the room.

“Please, miss, and I thought I did ought to tell Tha’ as me broother Jack is come home.”

“And what has he to say?”

Sally grinned. “He’s been nearly run off his legs, the past three hour. First he took the road to Chatsworth,
while Nate undertook the road to Monyash—Nate’s me cousin, and fair put out about his dinner he were, but I don’t pay no mind to that, he were happy enough to have the coin, and Sir James paying him handsome to boot—”

“Sir James was at home?”

“He were,” Sally said carefully, “and at his dinner, too, but Nate says as how he seemed fair flummoxed and called for his horse direckly. The whole country is wanting their nags tonight—it’s like an army moving, miss.”

“And your brother Jack?”

“He never laid eyes on the gentleman as Tha’ were wanting,” Sally said doubtfully, “but gave the note to the housekeeper and was asked to wait for a reply. He sat in the servants’ hall at Chatsworth, miss, and his eyes were fair round as cups when he did describe it, so grand as it were! Like a fairy castle, Jack says, and they’m gave him bread and cold chicken—”

“Did he carry a reply?”

“Tha’ll never guess!” Sally grinned, triumphant. “Sent out in a great carriage, he were, to the constables in Buxton, with a letter penned by the Duke himself! Jack’s not likely to get over it! He’s strutting like a gamecock, he is, down in me moother’s kitchen, and telling anyone who’ll listen about the Duke’s horses.”

“Thank you, Sally. You have prevented a very grievous harm, you and your family, and I am sure that the Duke himself would thank you. But I would urge young Jack not to crow too loudly. There are violent men abroad tonight, and some of them may resent your part in thwarting their plans. Tell your brother he has done a noble thing, and that it is a very great secret.
Important gentlemen rely upon his silence
. That should guard his safety.”

“Aye, miss,” said the girl, bobbing a curtsey. She pulled the door closed behind her.

I was relieved enough in my mind to seek my own bed, and lay there in fitful slumber nearly three hours. If Sir James Villiers and the Duke’s men could not deter the rabble of Bakewell from firing Penfolds Hall, then Jane Austen’s attempts should be hopeless. Yet sleep remained elusive, a haze of impressions half-dreamt and half-understood, in which the figures of Chatsworth moved with the grace of knights and queens, across a chessboard of mown lawn and gravel.

T
HE TOWN CLOCK HAD JUST TOLLED THE HOUR OF
two, when a clatter in the hallway and a stifled oath brought me bolt upright in the darkness. Someone was attempting to lift the latch on my bedroom door.

Heart pounding wildly, I reached for a taper, and then recollected that I had no embers in the summer grate by which to light it. Thoughts of the masked men in the square—of the quantity of gin they had consumed—of Sally’s brother Jack boasting of his errand behind the Duke’s horses—flitted rapidly through my brain. I weighed the merits of screaming for aid, or retreating into the clothes cupboard, where my four muslin gowns now hung limply; neither course, upon reflection, should do me credit. The person seeking entry might be none other than my sister, Cassandra. But she should have knocked first, and called out my name; and in over thirty years of living, I could not recall a time when she had emitted a drunken oath.

I threw back the bedclothes and stepped lightly on the floor. The boards, though fairly new in their construction, creaked beneath my feet. The man—for I had concluded the intruder
was
a man—did not falter, however, in his fumbling at my latch. To his misfortune, I had thrown a bolt before retiring for the evening, and the latch itself availed him nothing; my door remained obdurately closed. The intruder’s invective
flowed swift and furious, though it remained unintelligible; the speech was slurred and the sense fragmented. He must be completely disguised in drink.