Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Canterbury Tale

“You wish to interview my client, Mr. Knight?” the solicitor enquired pleasantly. “I must warn you that the conversation is sure to be protracted, and to span the globe, Sir Davie being little disposed to concision in his affairs. He is a raconteur of considerable power, and has long defied even his friends’ attempts to curtail his speech.”

“A wonder, then, that he has remained silent the better part of two days,” Edward returned.

Mr. Burbage smiled engagingly. “I said that Sir Davie dearly loved a good story; I did not say that he was a fool. Naturally, having been placed in a cell, he preferred to hold his counsel until his Counsel should have arrived.”

“Then let us waste no more of Sir Davie’s time.”

A nod for the chief warden, and a massive iron ring of keys appeared; with a grunt, Stoke made for the door and Edward followed. I trotted in his wake, while Mr. Burbage brought up the rear; we were led deeper into the Westgate premises, which, tho’ not vast, so nearly resembled a warren of tunnels that I might have fancied myself in the dungeons of the Tower. Heavy doors with metal gratings set into their centres at chest-height, and then again below, at the threshold—presumably for the delivery of meals—lined the passages; and occasionally a visage would loom at one of these, unshaven and clothed in shadow, only the glittering eyes throwing back the lanthorn-light. It was, I reflected, an experience such as heroines of horrid novels should relish; and with quickening heart I absorbed the wretched atmosphere, as another lady might the candlelit glow of Almack’s Assembly. What fodder for prose was this!

At length Stoke halted before a cell like any other, and fitted one of his numerous keys to the lock. “Prisoner, stand back from the door!” he bellowed, and I suppose the violence of his timbre was enough to cause most intimates of Westgate to quail. But when the portal swung inwards, we observed Sir Davie Myrrh reclining at his leisure upon a hard wooden shelf that served as a bed, his arms behind his head and his gaze fixed upon the ceiling.

“Appeared at last, have you, Burbage?” he demanded languidly—for all the world as tho’ he received the solicitor in the anteroom of White’s or Watier’s. Try as I might, I could not reconcile the baronet’s appearance—for he still sported the tar-stained breeches, the ragged beard, and the neckerchief of a navvy—with his cultivated speech.

“Get up, you dog,” Stoke snarled; and for the first time, Mr. Burbage turned his eye upon him.

“Have a care, Warden,” he said in an icy tone. “There is no call for insolence or ill-treatment of the baronet.”

Again, I suffered the conviction that I had met Burbage somewhere before; but upon what occasion?

“That will do, Stoke,” Edward said. “Leave young Jack to wait in the passage; we shall inform him when our conversation is done.”

“ Conversation , is it?” Stoke leered. “Seems to me as how a knave’s only got to ape the Quality to win the indulgence of the Law. But it’s not for me—”

“No. It is not for you to question the Magistrate,” Edward agreed firmly. “But you might bring several chairs—or even stools—to this cell, Stoke. Do you imagine that my sister wishes to stand for the length of the interview?”

The warden cast a jaundiced glance in my direction. I smiled upon him beatifically.

“Hie, you lummox!” he called into the passage.

Three chairs were brought, one at a time, by the struggling urchin Jack. The warden glared around at all of us, then inclined his head with grudging deference to Edward, and turned on his heel.

As the door was locked with a metallic groan, I experienced a positive thrill of apprehension. It was as tho’ I had become a character of Mrs. Radcliffe’s, and must expect to find a skeleton behind every veil.

25 October 1813, Cont.

“Well, this is a degree of comfort unlooked-for,” Sir Davie observed with an air of gratification as we took our seats. “Unfortunate that I haven’t any Port to send round, or ratafia for the lady. You are remiss, Burbage—quite remiss—you have made no introductions—but perhaps you are not in possession of the lady’s name, never having expected to be honoured by her presence this morning.”

“I am Miss Austen,” I told him, “Mr. Knight’s sister. We shared a bench at the inquest.”

It seemed to me that Mr. Burbage started a little at my words; but Sir Davie was already assessing my countenance shrewdly.

“That affair was not very edifying, alas—too much of the curious truth was, as I suspect, deliberately left out, Miss Austen. Forgive me for speaking frankly, Mr. Knight; I do not presume to infringe upon your province, or criticise one whose motives I suspect are pure. I may address you as Mr. Knight, I hope? ‘Your Honour’ seems unduly grave.”

“Murder is invariably so,” Edward observed. “If you are done with your pleasantries, Sir Davie, I have a few questions I should like to put to you.”

The seaman opened his eyes a little. “Ought one ever to be done with pleasantries, my dear sir? How else, pray, is the savage world to be civilised?”

“You are, I presume, Sir Davie Myrrh?”

The seaman’s eyes rolled towards his solicitor. “ Surely you have vouched for my identity, Burbage?”

“Mr. Knight asks purely as a matter of form, sir. I would suggest you answer the Magistrate’s question fully and frankly.”

“And, Mr. Burbage,” my brother added, “if you would be so good as to note down Sir Davie’s statement? I may supply you with pencil and paper for the purpose.”

These items being handed from one man to the other, with every appearance of mutual respect and understanding, Sir Davie Myrrh sighed. “Very well. I shall give it to you direct as the Baronetage would have it: Myrrh of Kildane Hall. Davie Ambrose Myrrh, born December 8, 1760, married May 15, 1784, Anne, daughter of Sylvester, Fifth Viscount Havisham of Pembroke, in the county of Warwickshire; by which lady (deceased 1785) he had issue, a stillborn son.”

He turned his satiric gaze upon myself. “I could entertain you, madam, with a further recitation of my family’s glorious history; its resistance under Cromwell, and exertions of loyalty towards Charles the Second; its elevation from mere knighthood to the baronetage; the demonstration, with each succeeding generation, of increasing attention to Duty and the Crown, ending—rather ignobly—with myself, the tenth baronet, who, tho’ achieving the venerable age of three-and-fifty with health and humour unimpaired, has nonetheless lost wife, child, fortune, and even Kildane Hall. Should you like to learn how I managed it?”

“Not at present,” Edward interposed firmly, before I could answer Yes, very much . “What we principally wish to know is how you came to be standing at the front entrance of Chilham Castle on the evening of the twentieth of October inst., presenting a silken pouch to one Adelaide Fiske MacCallister.”

“Ah,” Sir Davie murmured, “but to apprehend how I came to be there, Mr. Knight, you ought to know a little of my history. For no man springs newly-formed into a given day or moment—be it night or morning, October or April, Chilham or Timbuktu. If I am to explain how I came to have a gift for Mrs. Fiske—or did you call her something else?—you must first know how I fell under obligation to her husband. I do not refer, of course, to this person MacCallister. He has no place in the tale at all. I refer to Curzon Fiske, an excellent fellow now sadly laid into an early grave, who was so obliging as to save my life in Ceylon some eighteen months since.”