Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

I shook my head. “Where can such a blaze go, between the Water and the walls? They are not eight feet thick for nothing. Let us return to my mother, however. She will be in need of smelling salts.”

In this I misjudged the good lady; she was, in fact, on tenterhooks to learn the news — and was only prevented from gaining the street by the condition of her dressing gown. “What if sparks are blown by the wind?” she demanded. “What if the roof catches alight? I do not place my confidence in your walls, Jane. Recollect the affair in Lyme, when your father was yet alive. We were very nearly burnt in our beds.”

“But in the event, were saved by means of numerous buckets of water, briskly applied,” I observed, “which are bound to be employed in the present case. Fires are common enough in port towns, Mamma. We cannot escape them, with so much tar and wood about.”

She was determined to sit up in the parlour, however, in expectation of flight; and spent the next several hours established over her needlework in a rigid attitude, with frequent ejaculations of fright. At last I could bear it no longer, and put on my cloak.

“You are never going out into that crowd, Jane!” my mother cried indignantly. “You shall be crushed. I am sure of it.”

“I shall not sleep until I know the worst,” I informed her firmly, and stepped into the night. I stood in Samuel Street, gazing the length of Bugle. The lurid glow of flames threw the wharves in sharp relief, as though they were stages erected for this sole performance, and the darting black figures that bent and swung over their water casks, a representation of the Inferno. I had not progressed much past West Gate Street when the heat struck my face like a blow. The smells of charred timbers and acrid resin tingled in my nostrils. And then, with a sound akin to cannon, some part of the wharf exploded. I cowered involuntarily, my hands pressed against my bonnet. Splinters of wood rocketed into the air. Men screamed aloud. The flames shot skywards in a hellish arc, under a roiling cloud of smoke black against the vivid scene; a vat of tar, perhaps, had flared in the heat, or a cask of gunpowder.

“Out of the way, damn ’ee!”

I turned — gazed full into the eyes of a pair of frightened dray horses — and stumbled backwards onto the paving. I had been standing open-mouthed in the very middle of Bugle Street, directly in the path of a waggoneer intent upon hauling water to the wharves. He sawed at the reins, glared at me in contempt, and clattered onwards over the stones. As I recovered myself, the rapid pulse at my throat receding, a distant boom! brought my head around. A second explosion — and a third — but from a completely different direction than the wharves. I hastened to my right, down West Gate Street, and mounted the steps to the town walls.

I was not alone. A crowd of onlookers, most of them women, stood with their silent faces turned towards the dockyard on the River Itchen. A flare of red blazed on the horizon; it branched and twined and climbed like a monstrous spider over the skeletal form that rested there.

“It’s the seventy-four,” I breathed, remembering the lovely ship of the line, half-built in the Itchen yard. I had walked through its ribs with Edward and George but two days ago. “The seventy-four is burning.”

“They’ll never save her,” a woman beside me declared. “Not with the wharves aflame, and most of the men hard at work here in town. Two fires in one night — and that after a bit of rain? It’s Devil’s work, I’ll be bound.”

“Devil’s work,” I said thoughtfully. “Or the Monster’s?”

Thursday, 27 October 1808

I am no horsewoman, but last night’s fire demanded expediency; and so I walked this morning before breakfast to Colridge’s hack stable, where for the price of a few shillings I was swiftly accommodated with a skittish dun mare. Her name was Duchess, and she turned her nose willingly enough in the direction of Porter’s Mead, the broad gallop east of the town. As she trotted through the green meadow, I attempted to recall the few riding lessons I had endured at Edward’s Kentish estate. My seat was indifferent, I wore an outmoded riding habit of Elizabeth’s, made over for my use, and the reins felt awkward in my grasp; but Duchess must have been served with far worse mistresses in her life of hire, and offered no snort of contempt. From Porter’s Mead it required but a few moments to achieve Nightingale Lane and proceed thence along the strand to the Itchen Dockyard. We had nosed up the yard’s river channel only three days before, with Mr. Hawkins; but being land-bound this morning I sawed hesitantly at the reins, turning the mare’s nose to the north. She tossed her head, drawn by the sharp scent of the sea, and would have contested the point — but that I forced her around and skirted the dockyard at its rear. From the slight promontory above, I could rest a bit in the saddle and survey the scene of devastation below.

The dockyard’s wooden enclosure was scarred by fire and broken in places, so that I might gaze through what had once been a solid perimeter. In an effort to combat the fire, the lock gates had been opened to permit the surging river to douse the flames. Now a welter of mud and charred wood lay stinking in the watery sun. The seventy-four’s ribs had fallen in a heap of refuse all about the scaffolding, which was similarly burnt to non-description. A dense odour hung heavy in the air; I knew its acrid weight should cling to my garments for days to come. I held a gloved hand over my nose, eyes narrowed against the smoke that still spiralled from the wreck. Three years Mr. Dixon’s pride had been a-building in his yard — a thing of beauty and promise; the blasting of hope felt as brutal as the ruin of iron and oak. A party of men, some wearing the canvas trousers of shipyard tars and others the rough nankeen of labourers, heaved purposefully at the spars. I discerned Jeremiah the Lascar, his face grim and his air morose, but of the genial Mr. Dixon there was no sign. I touched my heels to the mare’s sides, and obediently, she rocked her way down the grassy slope. The sound of hooves ringing on gravel brought the men’s heads up to stare at me in surprise. One spat derisively in the ashes and returned immediately to his labours; the others studied my countenance warily. After an instant, recognition lit the Lascar’s face. He stepped forward, his hand raised to his dark brow.

“Good morning, Mem-Sahib. Where be the young masters today?”

“Safely returned to school. My condolences, Jeremiah — I saw the flames last night from the town’s walls. You have a deal of work before you.”

He laid his hand on the mare’s bridle and ran long fingers over her soft nose. Duchess snorted and thrust her head into his chest.

“That lovely ship,” I mourned. “Was it an accident? An oil lamp overturned in a pile of sailcloth?”

The Lascar bowed his head. “Do not believe it, Mem-Sahib. There was evil at work in this yard last night.”

“The smell of tar is very strong. You think the fire deliberately set?”

“Pitch was spread over the ship before the fire was lit. Pitch is still hot on the spars. We have shifted them with our hands, and we know.”

I touched my heels to Duchess’s flanks, as if to approach the smoking embers, but the Lascar stood firm, his hand at the mare’s head.

“You go now. It is not safe.”

“I heard no alarum last night, before the explosion. How came Mr. Dixon to desert his post?”

Jeremiah’s countenance hardened. “Do not say such things, I beg. Dixon Sahib has gone to his rest.”