Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Canterbury Tale

“Shouldn’t have, in the usual way—lady’s maids being not quite in my line,” Jupiter replied. “Known my mother’s Dresser for donkey’s years, of course—devilish high in the instep, and jealous as a cat. Been with her la’ship longer than I’ve been alive. But that’s neither here nor there. Noticed this Martha because Thane was forever cornering the girl in passages and side-rooms. Sort of thing he does—daresay you’ve noticed it yourself. Fellow comes the rake over anything in skirts.”

“Really, Mr. Finch-Hatton,” I replied mildly. “You strike terror in a maiden’s heart.”

Jupiter looked discomfited. “Don’t hold with it myself. Daresay Thane only does it from boredom. I mean to say—fellow must be blue as megrim up at the Castle! Sister taken up for murder! Nobody to speak with except that mother of his, who’d freeze the blood of the hottest hellborn babe—and nothing much to entertain in poor James’s sisters. But all the same—doesn’t do to meddle with the servants. Not good ton .”

“Should you have called the affair a persecution on Thane’s part,” I asked thoughtfully, “or a mutual dalliance?”

Jupiter rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “The two tended to part company whenever I hove into view, so I’ve no way of judging. What went on when the whole house was abed, I shouldn’t like to conjecture. Shabby thing if I did—no real proof Thane’s a bad’un—and besides, girl’s dead. De mortuis , and all that.”

“Was Captain MacCallister aware of Thane’s interest in that quarter?”

“The Captain doesn’t chuse to meddle with Thane,” Jupiter said succinctly. “Ask me, he meant to get his fair lady away from the household as soon as possible, and leave the dirty dishes behind. Trouble is, plan went awry. Fair lady’s in gaol. Captain’s up to his neck in dirty dishes.”

I sighed and glanced at Fanny. “Is Julian Thane truly a dirty dish?”

Jupiter smiled crookedly, his countenance suffused with a shrewd self-knowledge. “Don’t like the fellow above half, ma’am. Too dashing for his own good, and cuts me out with your niece whenever he sees the chance. So take anything I chuse to say with a grain of salt. Must wonder, all the same, why we came up with him this morning near that coppice.”

“The girl had been killed hours before,” I reminded him, gently.

“Know it. What I mean to say is: Looks like he’d been intending to meet her there.”

I thought of the young man on the plunging black horse, halted on the path by the coppice, and the dog yapping at his feet. When we came up with him, he had been eager to turn us back—and ready with his tale of a visit to Fanny. I had wondered how Thane could contemplate such an errand—however charming he found my niece—when it was Fanny’s people who had placed his sister in gaol.

“Reckon the coppice was a habit of theirs,” Jupiter said wisely. “Stands to reason somebody besides Thane and Martha knew of it, too—and made use of the place for his own ends.”

I stared at him, my mind working. Jupiter might actually have seized on the truth. “You mean—”

He nodded. “Girl went happily enough to her death. Thought it was Thane she was going to meet.”

Thursday, 28 October 1813

As predicted, I passed a wretched night, the cold in my head coming on with force. By Wednesday morning, I was discovered by the housemaid in so feverish a state that Fanny was roused, and was made anxious enough to summon Susannah Sackree, the Knight family’s ancient nurse. Sackree hovered by my bedside in awful silence—awful for a loquacious old woman who stands not an inch over four feet, and is easily as wide—and pronounced me at death’s door.

“That Mr. Scudamore did ought to be sent for, miss,” she told Fanny, “but it’s doubtful as he’ll be able to do much for our Miss Jane, but ease the end.”

I might have burst out in laughter had my head ached less, and had I been less mindful (even on the verge of delirium) of Fanny’s history. A girl who has witnessed her own mother pass inexplicably from hearty good health to the coldness of a shroud, in the interval between dinner and bed, is never again to be remiss in summoning the apothecary. Indeed, the unfortunate Mr. Scudamore—reconciled or not to his scandalous wife—was rejected immediately in favour of a true physician, and a groom despatched with Miss Knight’s compliments, to summon Dr. Bredloe from his breakfast-parlour at Farnham.

By noon that much-tried man had pulled up in his gig and mounted the grand staircase at Godmersham, to be received by me in all the splendour of yellow walls and damask hangings, sneezing pitifully beneath my best lace cap.

“Foolish,” he said succinctly. “Very foolish, Miss Austen. You ought to have left that wretched girl to the manservant and been snug at home hours before you were. I shall be obliged to cup you, ma’am.”

“After all the blood-letting we have witnessed?” I protested feebly. But Bredloe would not be gainsaid—a basin and razor were produced, his frock coat discarded, and my vein opened.

I detest being bled.

To divert my mind from the distasteful business, I studied the view from my window—indifferent, it being another day of rain—and interrogated Bredloe.

“You succeeded in carrying Martha to Chilham?”

“She lies even now in the publick house in the village.”

“And the inquest is to be held—?”

“Tomorrow at noon, in the same place.”

“Must Fanny attend? It was she who discovered the body.”

“I cannot like to see Miss Knight in such a place,” Bredloe objected brusquely. “A distressful scene, for a young lady. And you are far too ill to give evidence, Miss Austen. Your statement will suffice. I have required Mr. Julian Thane to attend, however, as he was in some wise the girl’s master—and present at the body’s discovery.”

Her master. Such a curious word .

“I could wish your brother were here, Miss Austen—but to delay the business is inadvisable, given the state of the corpse, and the fact that it must still travel some miles to Wold Hall for interment.”

The faint smell of blood dripping into the basin at my bedside, coupled with fever, conjured a fiendish image of the dead girl in my mind; I closed my eyes tightly and shuddered.

“Do not excite yourself with conjecture, Miss Austen. It can do you no good. Your pulse is tumultuous.”

“You intend to bring in a verdict of murder, I suppose?”

“—By Persons Unknown. There is nothing else to be done. The naming of the culprit I shall leave to Mr. Knight.”

At length, when I lay slack upon my pillows and attempted only with difficulty to keep my eyes open, the doctor pronounced himself satisfied, and ordered Sackree to set about composing a paregoric draught, which disgusting mixture I was required to drink down under Bredloe’s eye.

“You will sleep now,” he said confidently, “and provided there is no putrid sore throat, or inflammation of the lung, I think you will go on very well.”

Sackree snorted, her hands on her hips. The doctor cast her a jaundiced eye. “A little white wine whey in an hour, Nurse, and perhaps some restorative mutton broth.”