Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Barque of Frailty

The journal I sought was a slim one bound in bottle-green calf, the chronicle of the Rogue’s final year — begun in January of 1808 and ending abruptly with the first few days of November. I skimmed rapidly through several passages; his lordship had been writing from Oporto. The relevant entries spanned several months.

… unfortunate that Gustavus IV should be quite mad, as he is the sole ally on which His Majesty may depend in the region of the Baltic… my man writes from St. Petersburg of the Tsar’s threats to our Swedish King, to suggest that if Gustavus prefers to keep Finland, he had much better join with Russia and drive Britain out of these waters …

… seems clear that our intelligence of the Tsar’s intentions is wide of the mark. I cannot make out why the reports I obtain are so transparent on the matter, and those that Castlereagh reads directly contradict them … Thornton signs his treaty in Stockholm, and two weeks later Russian troops cross the Finnish border … there is duplicity in all this.

Castlereagh’s ten thousand men are sailing north to Gothenburg, with no clear orders and no one but Sir John Moore to save them … he is to defer to a mad king, who wishes to use British troops to seize Zealand from the Danes …

… I am sick at heart that when we most need troops here in Portugal and Spain, they are sent on a fool’s errand instead, to bait the Baltic tiger … I cannot make my voice heard in Canning’s ministry … he is all for helping the Spaniards to help themselves, but ordnance and funds are lacking … here, where we most require troops to face Marshal Junot, our attention is divided. Do we fight Napoleon, or the Tsar?

… Moira tells me of disputes between Canning and Castlereagh, and fears it will end badly… Canning is everywhere known to be less of a gentleman than Robert, and it is not to be wondered at, his father dead in his infancy and his mother upon the stage, the kept mistress of a dozen men — but one would have thought he would learn loyalty during his days at Oxford …

… this abortive campaign shall be adjudged a failure of Castlereagh’s, and a discomfiture to Portland’s government …

I could make little of all this; the web of policy, again, too entangled to comprehend. Certainly the abortive defence of Sweden had been followed by the even more ignominious expedition to Walcheren, an island in the Scheldt, which Lord Harold had not lived to see — forty thousand troops, thirty-five ships of the line, more than two hundred smaller vessels, and very little to show for it, while behind our backs, the French arrogantly installed Buonaparte’s brother on the throne of Spain. Again, the pressing need to crush the Enemy in the Peninsula had given way to a fool’s errand in the northern seas. Lord Harold was clearly disturbed by a discrepancy in intelligence— but he wrote to himself in these pages, as a man does when he ruminates upon anxieties in his mind: elliptical and reflective, without the need for explanation. Not for the first time, I wished acutely for his living presence.

One name, however, had leapt out at me from the journal’s pages: Moira. Lord Harold had known Henry’s intimate friend, the debt-ridden Earl. I should have expected it; both men had been bred up as Whigs from infancy.

The plaintive sounding of a clock somewhere in chambers alerted me to the fact that the day was much advanced; Eliza would be wondering if I were lost. I slipped the bottle-green volume into my reticule and locked Lord Harold’s chest.

ELIZA WAS, INDEED, ANXIOUSLY AWAITING MY return — but it was Madame Bigeon who informed me of the fact. Manon’s aging mother answered my pull of the front doorbell. When I would have stepped into the hall, she urged in a rapid undertone, “Pray, mademoiselle, do not for the love of Heaven delay, but go for Monsieur Henri at once!”

“Is it Eliza? She is — unwell?” I managed.

Madame shook her head. “It is the Runners. Bow Street is in the house!”

Thursday, 25 April 1811, cont.

“FETCH ME INK AND PAPER, AND I SHALL REQUIRE the hackney to carry a note to Henry,” I told madame — but before she could hasten on her errand, a barrel-chested fellow in a dull grey coat and a squat, unlovely hat had barred the passage behind her.

“What’s all this?” he demanded, surveying me with a pair of eyes both sharp and small in a pudding face. “Are you the mort what’s visiting from the country?” 1 Stephanie Barron Jane and the Barque of Frailty Being the Ninth Jane Austen Mystery This book is dedicated to the memory of Georgette Heyer, in thanks for all the hours of pleasure her books have given me.

“I am Miss Austen. This is my brother’s house. And who, my good sir, are you?”

The question appeared to surprise him. Perhaps the better part of his interlocutors were too stunned at the awful sight of a Runner — the terrible gravity of the Law, and Newgate’s dire bulk rising before their eyes — to enquire of the man’s name.

“Clem Black,” he said. “Of Bow Street.”

“So I understand.” I took off my bonnet and set it carefully on the table in Eliza’s hall. “What is your business here?”

I spoke calmly, but in truth was prey to the most lively apprehension on the Henry Austens’ behalf. There could be only one explanation for the presence of a Clem Black in the house: my poor brother was even more embarrassed in his circumstances than his partner James Tilson could apprehend. Perhaps there had been a run on the bank. Perhaps Austen, Maunde & Tilson had discovered a discrepancy in the accounts. Perhaps Henry — so recently installed in this stylish new home, with its furniture made to order and its fittings very fine — had felt his purse to be pinched, and had dipped into the bank’s funds without the knowledge of his partners.

But at this thought my mind rebelled. Not even Henry — lighthearted and given over to pleasure as he so often was — would violate the most fundamental precept of his chosen profession. When it came to the management of another man’s money, Henry was wont to observe, a banker must be worthy of his trust.

“You’re a cool one, ain’t ye?” Clem Black said with grudging admiration. “The other gentry mort [10] Mort was a cant term for woman. — Editor's note . is indulging in spasms and such. If you’d be so good, ma’am, as to come with me—”

I bowed my head and preceded him into Eliza’s front drawing-room, where so recently the crowd of gentlemen and ladies had stood, in heat and self-importance, to listen to Miss Davis and her brood in the singing of their glees. Eliza was reclined upon a sopha, Manon engaged in waving a vinaigrette beneath her nose; but at my appearance my sister reared up, her countenance quite pink, and said, “Ah — not Henry. I had hoped— Still, it is probably for the best. We may delay the unhappy intelligence as long as possible. Jane, I have wronged you — and I cannot rest until I have assured you that the injury was unknowingly done.”

“Hush, Eliza,” I murmured, and joined her on the sopha. “What has occurred?”

“That man” — she inclined her head in the direction of a second Runner I now perceived to be nearly hidden by the drawing-room draperies, his gaze roaming Sloane Street as it darkened beyond the window — “that man has quite cut up my peace. Indeed, indeed, Jane, I should never have undertaken the errand had I suspected the slightest irregularity!”

“Eliza, pray calm yourself. Manon — leave off the vinaigrette and fetch some claret for la comtesse. You, sir — can you account for the extreme distress and misery you have occasioned in a most beloved sister?”