Stephanie Barron: Jane and the Canterbury Tale

Behind him, as tho’ animated by a spectral presence, the massive oak door swung slowly inward. A chill autumn draught, as from an opened window, swirled into the passage. I felt a finger of fear travel up my spine, and stepped impulsively forward.

“Augusta?” Old Wildman called out.

I halted in the doorway, the two men at my back.

Mrs. Thane was standing barefooted on the stone sill of the tower’s great window, the leaded casements flung wide to the elements. Her grey hair was unbound and fell nearly to her ankles; she wore a linen shift, which billowed and sank like a sail in the October wind. She did not turn her head to acknowledge her audience, tho’ it must have been she who admitted us, before mounting to her precarious perch.

“I am glad you are come, Mr. Magistrate ,” she spat with bitter contempt, “that you might witness the ruin of a once-great house! Your hand—your overweening arrogance, your meddling in what does not belong to you—has brought misery on me and mine! But I will have my vengeance! I curse you, Edward Knight! May all your family be haunted by the trouble you have caused, and end, every one , in an early grave!”

The colour drained from my brother’s face, and his lips parted as tho’ to protest. But it was I who stepped forward, however tentatively, into that wind-swept room, and halted with a word the woman who might have dashed herself to the carriage sweep three storeys below.

“Fiddle,” I said calmly.

Augusta Thane turned her basilisk stare upon me with an expression of hatred so profound I felt my heart quail within me. But I took another step forward. Neither Edward nor Old Wildman dared to move, it seemed.

“Every note of tragedy has been struck by yourself, has it not, Mrs. Thane?”

“What do you know of tragedy?” she retorted, her words as venomous as her aspect.

“Enough.” Another small step into the room, nearer to her position. “And I apprehend even more of the ways of murderers. How they may betray themselves by the smallest mistake. You do not possess a maid, I think, as you suggested yesterday when we met in the attic passage? —Or perhaps I should say, No maid living . For you cut Martha Kean’s throat in the coppice, did you not, having first lured her to the place with a note penned in your son’s hand?”

A groan fell from the lips of Old Wildman, but the woman who held all our gaze did not regard it; she smiled glitteringly at me, instead.

“Aye, I slit the wench’s throat—and was glad to do it! In that I preserved the reputation of my son, at least. That she should presume to bear his child!”

“His hand alone should secure the girl’s trust and her eager vigil in the coppice,” I mused. “I imagine it was your discovery of such a note—tossed in a corner of a room or mislaid upon a table, and establishing an assignation between Mr. Julian Thane and Martha Kean—that first apprised you of their clandestine entanglement. Did you keep the slip of paper by you to confront Julian with your knowledge?”

“I soon found a better use,” she retorted bitingly. “I never thought the idiot girl would keep the note in her pocket—I assumed she would toss it on the fire.”

“Unfortunate,” I agreed. “Indeed, when I consider of your every choice in the affair, you might almost have intended to hang your son.”

“Never!” she cried out. “Vicious jade—my son is all in all to me … a more princely being was never born …”

These last words trailed off in a keening sob, and she crouched low as tho’ in anguish, hugging her arms about her knees, grizzled locks trailing about her face. Her form rocked precariously on the sill. I felt rather than saw Edward start forward, as tho’ to intervene, but I held up one hand. She had not told us enough—and any approach now might send her flying into air.

“Really?” I said wonderingly. “Why, then, did you wear your son’s drab shooting coat when you murdered Martha, if not to see him hang?”

“So that the girl should take no alarum as I approached!” She spoke so rapidly, her words might almost have been gibberish. “Can you not have an idea of the beauty of it, clever Jane? I, tall as I am, striding towards the wench, the folds of the coat hiding the knife in my gloved hand—and she flung herself into my arms to die! Martha wanted Death. Oh, yes—she wanted Death as wantonly as a lover. Until, of course, the knife was at her throat—she turned to flee, but I had her in my grasp, I pulled back her hair and did the thing in seconds. Killing, you know, is a paltry business.”

Old Wildman had sunk down into a straight-backed chair that sat near the door; I risked a glance, and saw that his head was in his hands. He should be of little use; but Edward still stood beside me. I resumed my study of the raving figure in the window.

“But as Martha struggled,” I observed with as much calm as I could command, “her fingers tore at your coat, securing a loose button. And you never noticed. That was fatal to Julian, was it not? I imagine you felt some horror when you learned of your mistake. Taken in company with the incriminating note you failed to secure—it was in search of that you took the risk of visiting Martha’s bedchamber yesterday—you may congratulate yourself, Mrs. Thane, on having thoroughly botched the business. And secured a noose around your son’s neck.”

“You are a vile creature,” she whispered.

“It seems the only just return for your earlier efforts,” I added serenely, “to hang young James Wildman.”

“What?” Old Wildman sat up, his hands clenched upon his knees. “What do you say of my son, Miss Austen? What has Augusta done to James? I will be told!”

“—Only borrowed his duelling pistol to despatch Curzon Fiske.” It was my brother who spoke this time, in an aside to his neighbour. “Your James stood between Julian Thane and an inheritance Mrs. Thane was determined her son must have —your fortune , old friend.”

Spots of mottled colour stood out on Old Wildman’s cheeks. His eyes sparked dangerously. “Do you mean to say that you crept out by night and shot poor Curzon Fiske? Good God, ma’am! To what possible end?”

“I discovered Martha in her meeting with the seaman in the back garden,” Mrs. Thane said in that same rapid, maddened accent. “Adelaide had sent her. Martha was frightened. She was always afraid of me —and I made her divulge the whole—where Fiske meant to wait, and with what hopes. I saw how he might be used. I took James’s pistol from the gun room, and when the thing was done, I left it in the churchyard. One death, after all, might bring about another.”

“Or several,” Edward observed. “What unnatural mother, Mrs. Thane, should willingly send her daughter to gaol, for a murder she did not commit, and say not one word to preserve that child’s life and reputation?” He turned away in disgust.

“Adelaide is nothing to Julian!” Augusta Thane cried. “She proved as much when she disdained my counsel, and threw herself away on Curzon Fiske! Aye, might they both die and be damned, for the insult they served me! A thousand such should be ample sacrifice for my son!”

“And young James Wildman, as well?” I murmured.

“Good lord,” Old Wildman muttered. “Of course . I see it now. Would that I had cut my tongue out, before I said aught of my intentions! It was too vast a temptation for you, Augusta. I never dreamt, you know, that anything would ever happen to James, and make Julian my heir—simply meant it as a kindness to you, and a mark of my concern for all your family. What a fool I’ve been!”