Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Canterbury Tale

“And the jewels?” I enquired.

“Proved to be nothing more than a lady’s collection of valueless baubles,” Sir Davie concluded sadly. “At which discovery, I tossed them over my shoulder for the next benighted fool to covet, and did my best to drag Fiske out of the melee. It seemed the least I could do for a fellow Englishman. By the time he came to himself, we were beyond the fortress walls and I was able to apologise most civilly for the trouble I had caused. In return, he generously invited me to join him on an expedition to Ceylon—in which legitimate business he had been engaged by the Company, before the regrettable affair at Bangalore had diverted him.”

“But I thought you said he saved your life,” my brother interjected, bewildered.

“And so he did! —A good two years since, perhaps less, when malaria swept through the lowlands, he saw me carried, by mule-drawn pallet, into the more salubrious air of the tea plantations. These are found amidst the Ceylonese hills, you know, and at that altitude, the mortal humours are dispersed, and the fever’s hold gradually abates. There is a hill-station there, frequented by Portuguese monks, who are adept at treating the illness; they offer a sort of tonic, steeped from bark, that is most effective. Certainly, my dear Mr. Knight, I should have died in the lowlands but for Fiske’s intervention.”

“Two years, perhaps less,” Edward mused. “Fiske’s people received word of his death not long after—by an epidemic fever in Ceylon. How came that error to be made?”

The baronet shrugged. “Having some little knowledge of Fiske’s character—his secretive mind, his deft manipulation of apparent facts—I should imagine he wished to be dead. A very little effort might serve. The dropping of some papers, of a private nature, on a suitable-looking corpse—and the thing is done, my dear sir! Particularly in so harum-scarum a locale as Ceylon.”

“But why?” Edward demanded, in some perplexity.

“I gather that the name of Fiske had become a burden to him. Some little difficulty, over the borrowing of Company funds—lamentably impossible to repay …”

“And yet, he saw fit to return to England?”

“His plans were not then fixed, his chief object being to depart Ceylon without further detection—or pursuit. As he had so kindly deferred his flight to see me carried into the Highlands, I felt it incumbent upon me to demonstrate an equal measure of civility—and begged to accompany him when he should eventually quit the place. A month later, when I was fully recovered, we made by sea for Goa, a Portuguese canton on the western coast of the Subcontinent. The monks very kindly pressed upon us letters of introduction and safe-passage. Ah! The ladies of Goa! Such sublimity of eye, such softness of skin! And such an art in their fingers! —Begging your pardon, Miss Austen.”

“Not at all,” I said politely.

“None of this gets us any nearer Chilham Castle,” Edward observed, with a jaundiced eye for Mr. Burbage.

“Sir Davie,” the solicitor prodded, “the hour is advancing. If you would be so good—”

“Yes, yes,” the baronet said with an irritable flutter of his hand. “We spent a delightful interval in Goa, Fiske and I. It is an entrepot of trading, you know, and Fiske contrived to exchange a quantity of rubies he had collected somewhere—Burma, I believe, but the expedition was before my acquaintance with him—for a considerable sum of gold, which he had sewn into his coat. It was thus he carried his fortune back to England, and one presumes—to Canterbury itself.”

“His coat,” Edward repeated, in a tone of stupefaction. “But—”

“You did not consider of the lining of his coat?” Sir Davie enquired with an air of melancholy. “It is ever the same, among those who spend a lifetime without venturing beyond the shores of England; I daresay you expected his funds to sit in Hoare’s bank, and have buried the poor fellow with his fortune! Once word has got out—through no agency of mine , I need hardly state—you will be forced to post sentries around the grave in St. Mary’s churchyard. That is where poor Fiske was interred, I believe?”

“It was.”

“I should think you will have every fortune-seeker in three counties bent upon exhuming his remains,” the baronet said idly.

“Good God!” Edward rose precipitately from his chair and began to turn about the small confines of the cell. “Impossible! The corpse was disrobed, and washed, before burial. Some one of the goodwives who performed the service must undoubtedly have felt the weight of such a fortune, in taking charge of the clothing!”

“Perhaps the wench robbed him, then,” the baronet returned. “Who can say?”

“Sir Davie.” My brother confronted the baronet. “I can no longer waste precious time in canvassing your reminiscence. Pray have the goodness to explain when you landed in England with Fiske, and how you came to have that pouch of tamarind seeds in your possession.”

“The tamarind exerted a powerful fascination upon Fiske’s mind,” Sir Davie murmured dreamily. “He found the fruit to be only tolerable—there are any number of exotic plants native to the Indies that produce a more pleasing commestible—but the tamarind figured as a potent symbol in Fiske’s philosophy. The seed, you know, may lie dormant for years in the absence of rain; and yet, when once refreshed by the sweet elixir of water, will send out green shoots with a vigour and a will. Fiske saw in this the constant renewal of hope, the resurgence of life … and the enduring nature of love , regardless of neglect or the appearance of ruin.”

“Adelaide,” I said. Of course.

“Precisely. She seems to have been no mere Anne or Mary. Having fled Ceylon without detection—having secured a fortune in gold within his coat—having in the person of myself, a friend whose loyalty sprang from the obligations of gratitude, and who should never betray him—Fiske determined to take ship for England’s shores, and try what felicity the renewal of his attentions to his estranged wife might bring.”

“When was this?” Edward demanded harshly.

“Some three months ago. The voyage home from India is a tedious trial, even without the occasional alarums of shipboard struggle, our Indiaman being subject to the intermittent French salvo. More than once I was myself obliged to man the twelve-pounders in the bow, your merchant seamen being nothing so adept as the hearties of the Royal Navy. But, however, we were fortunate to arrive unscathed; and in London, parted company for an interval, so that Fiske might discover his wife’s present whereabouts, and send her a line to prepare her for the unexpected joy of his arrival.”

“He wrote to Adelaide?” I broke in.

“Should not you have done the same, after an interval of three years?”

I exchanged a swift glance with my brother. Here was another instance of Adelaide’s prevarication; she had insisted she believed Fiske to be dead . She had prepared for her wedding, however, in the apparent knowledge that it was bigamous. My heart sank.

“But are you certain such a letter reached her? How did Mr. Fiske divine where she was?” I pressed.

“I am afraid that is owing to me,” Mr. Burbage supplied. “Mr. Fiske called upon me some five weeks ago, at the advice of Sir Davie, whose solicitor I have been for a period of years, tho’ heretofore our acquaintance has been largely conducted through a protracted correspondence, much interrupted by the vagaries of distance and occasional disaster. Having acquainted me with the particulars of his history, Mr. Fiske retired to a respectable inn not far from the Thames riverfront, while I endeavoured to learn what I could of his wife and her family, the Thanes. Mr. Fiske was able to supply me with the direction of their country seat, whence I repaired; and through circumspect enquiries in the villages surrounding Wold Hall, swiftly learnt that Mrs. Fiske, having been informed of her husband’s death and having undergone a lengthy period of mourning, was upon the point of a highly-advantageous marriage. I returned to London, and imparted these particulars to Mr. Fiske.”