Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

I begged off, having formed a prior engagement; and looked forward to hearing an account of Catherine’s interesting evening from her own lips — but she did not appear in the Castle’s writing room at one o’clock.

I could not wonder at her absence; she must have been abroad very late, and no doubt slept until noon. I had crossed full two sheets to Cassandra with a report of our dinner in Marine Parade, and the hour was advanced, when my brother Henry burst into the panelled chamber. His looks were agitated and his face dreadfully pale.

“Henry!” I cried, starting up. “Are you unwell?”

He glanced around him wildly; I was not the sole occupant of the writing room, and whatever his news might be, it was not intended for a stranger’s ears. I collected my papers swiftly and joined him in the doorway.

“You have not heard,” he murmured, grasping me by the elbow and propelling me towards the Castle’s front door.

“You bear some dreadful news?”

“Catherine Twining. Your acquaintance. It is all over Raggett’s.”

“What scrape has the foolish girl fallen into now? She did not keep her appointment this afternoon.”

“Nor shall she keep any in future, Jane.”

I stopped short and studied his face. “She has quitted Brighton?”

“For good and all.” He drew me inexorably out into the fresh air of the Steyne, where I saw that a crowd had gathered near the old publick house called the King’s Arms — the place so roundly patronised by the officers of Brighton Camp and their devoted followers. But Henry avoided the publick house, and turned hurriedly into the Promenade Grove. He led me to a seat in a neat square of shrubbery.

“You must prepare yourself, Jane.” His grey eyes were flat with despair.

“Tell me what you must, Henry — I beg of you.”

“Miss Twining’s body was discovered in Lord Byron’s bed at the King’s Arms this morning.”

“No!” I cried.

Catherine as I had last seen her — the agitation in all her looks, her dread of that man — sprang vividly to mind.

She had been right to fear him .

He had killed her .

In a fit of passion — whether rage, love, madness, who could say? — Lord Byron had torn out the life of that delicate flower. But how had he lured her from the General’s side? What possible mischance had delivered the girl into Byron’s hands?

And what profound indifference to his own security had led him to murder her in his very bedchamber?

“Was she … had he …”

Of course he had; but the word rape was one I found difficult to utter.

But Henry was hardly attending, his gaze fixed on his gloved hands.

“It is the oddest thing, Jane,” he said. “She was wrapped in a sailor’s hammock, sewn tight; and when the thing was slit open, it was discovered that she had drowned. ”

TUESDAY, 11 MAY 1813

BRIGHTON, CONT.

HENRY’S SMALL FUND OF INTELLIGENCE WAS IMPARTED IN a matter of moments as we sat in the sheltered privacy of the Promenade Grove.

“It was the chambermaid who found her. The girl thought it odd that Lord Byron’s door should be slightly ajar, and yet no sound of movement be audible within,” he said. “The maid hesitated to disturb his lordship, because of course it is well known the man is a poet, and has been engaged in writing out cantos of his latest work — ”

“He is writing here in Brighton?” I said numbly.

“Apparently so. At all events, neither Byron nor his traps were to be found in the bedchamber; but the unfortunate Miss Twining — ”

It was whispered at Raggett’s that the girl was still clothed in the white muslin gown she had worn at the Assembly. There were marks of brutality at her throat, as tho’ she had been forcibly held under water — and she had died in the sea, for the dried stains of salt water were everywhere upon her person.

“The chambermaid put it about that her eyes were wide open,” Henry said in a subdued tone, “and that such a look of terror as lingered in them, she hoped never to witness again.”

“But the hammock, Henry?” I knew of such things from my Naval brothers; when a sailor died, his sleeping hammock served as shroud — sewn up around him, before burial at sea. “Was Miss Twining forced into it alive — trapped inside?”

The image of the girl, fighting like a blind kitten tossed with its brethren into the mill pond at birth, was too hideous to contemplate. How terrified she must have been — the darkness of the night, and the blacker dark of the water as it flooded around her —

“No,” my brother said. “The marks on her neck suggest otherwise. The hammock may have been intended to hide the deed — or dispose of the body — but somehow or other it ended in Byron’s rooms. Miss Twining was probably already dead when she was placed into it, and carried to Byron’s bedchamber by her murderer.”

“Can its owner be identified?”

“The word Giaour is embroidered on its edge.”

“Giaour?” I repeated blankly. “What sort of word is that, Henry?”

“I have no idea. But presumably Miss Twining’s murderer knows; it will perhaps be the name of his boat — or one readily to hand, at the moment he …”

“Forced her head under the waves.” I stared at my brother, a scene from two days previous recurring to mind: the crimson-hulled yacht, surging out to sea, and the dark-haired sailor at her helm, ignoring the foundering woman in his wake. “Why must you persist in referring to her murderer , Henry, as tho’ we had not an idea who it was? Are we both not certain in our minds? It will be Lord Byron’s boat that is found to be called Giaour. ”

And in the most intense irritation at the entire race of men, I swung away from him abruptly, striding down the Marine Parade in the direction of Black Rock.

I COULD NOT BE EASY IN MY CONSCIENCE. I WAS BESET with the demons of regret. Nothing could be clearer than that the poet, spurned, had exacted a hideous revenge upon young Catherine Twining — and we had been the agents of her release from his chaise. But how had she died? What fateful events had determined the hours after I parted from poor Catherine at the door of the Assembly Rooms — and why, oh why, had I refused to stay ? It seemed, in retrospect, so little that the girl had asked; and I had prated about propriety . But for me, Catherine Twining might yet be alive.

When Henry caught up with me, far down the Marine Parade, I was more mistress of myself. But he paced beside me wordlessly, both of us buffeted by the wind. The rain of the previous day had given way to a cloudless sky, the sun brilliant and hard-cut as a diamond; sea wrack lay everywhere strewn about the shingle.

“Have they arrested the poet?” I demanded at last.

“They cannot find him, Jane.”

I looked swiftly round.

“The publican at the King’s Arms would have it his lordship settled his accounts and quitted his rooms late last night after the Assembly — having encountered Lady Caroline Lamb at the ball, to his apparent rage.”

“Lady Caroline! Good God, I had forgot — so Lady Swithin told me this morning. Your intelligence had put such trivialities entirely out of my head,” I exclaimed.

“Directly Byron espied her ladyship — she appeared about midnight, so they said in Raggett’s, and you must know that Byron’s good friend Scrope Davies is a member whose word may be relied upon — his lordship left the Assembly, packed up his traps at the King’s Arms, and repaired to Davies’s lodgings for the night.”

“And Miss Twining remained, as yet,” I said slowly, “if Lady Swithin is to be believed. The Countess saw Miss Twining in conversation with Caro Lamb, of all people — we laughed about it this morning. The lady obsessed with Lord Byron — and the lady with whom Lord Byron is obsessed — trading pleasantries before the eyes of all Brighton.”