Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

“I was several weeks with friends,” she said vaguely, “who are situated not far from London. Now — should you like to hear a little of this book?”

“I should rather hear of your experiences in Oporto — if you are not unwilling to share them.”

“But of course!” she cried, her eyes alight, and commenced to regale me with tales of the English colony.

She was an excellent narrator, and could bring to vivid life the smallest detail of an Oporto morning: the plumage of an exotic bird, glimpsed through an open window; the rattle of carriage wheels in a stone courtyard; the clash of steel as two partis duelled in the moonlight for the hand of a ravishing maiden. I walked with her beneath scented trees, and ate blood-red oranges fresh off the boats from Tangier; I smelled the musky odour of sherry casks drying in the dim light of warehouses, and sipped the velvet Port on my tongue. I listened with aching heart to the siren sound of a guitar, and swirled in mantilla’d company for several nights in succession — only to rise in the early sunlight, and tear like the wind along the cliffs above the sea.

“How much of the world you have seen,” I murmured, “while I have lived out my span in a series of cold English towns! We know a good deal of rain, and the occasional blooming rose in England; but nothing like your healing sun. You must feel a great longing for all that you have left!”

“There is a word in Portuguese that exactly suits my sentiments,” Sophia Challoner said slowly. “It is saudades . I have saudades for Oporto — nostalgia, homesickness, a mournful feeling of loss. No single word in English may encompass it. But even saudades may pass in time.”

“You do not intend to return?”

She glanced away from me through the leaded

window to the sea. It lay like a silver belt between the Dibden shore and Netley Cliff. “I do not think the Peninsula will be habitable for years. This battle at Vimeiro was but the first toss of English dice.” She turned back from the window, her eyes smoldering.

“Have you ever witnessed the killing of men, Miss Austen?”

What a penetrating question! I had seen enough of the dead, to be sure; but I doubted that it was this she intended. “If you would mean, am I intimate with war — then I must confess that I am not. My two dear brothers are daily thrust into the worst kind of danger, in serving His Majesty’s Navy; and for them, I feel an active anxiety. But it cannot be akin to viewing the effects of battle at close hand. I collect that you have done so, Mrs. Challoner?”

“I drove out in my carriage at the height of the French advance,” she said dreamily. “I was in the company of a friend — a Frenchman long resident in Oporto — and thus able to pass through Marshal Junot’s lines. A cannonball exploded not five feet from the carriage wheels, startling the horses, and had there not been a mass of waggons directly in front of us, and a brave coachman at the reins, I am sure we should have bolted. As it was, I observed a young lieutenant of hussars decapitated where he sat his horse. The head fell almost at my feet.”

I shuddered. That she could speak of such things with such dispassion—

“I hate this war,” she muttered viciously. “The flower of youth — sons of noble families, or of humble ones; Portuguese, French, Spanish grandees — their horses, their bright folly of uniform dress — their glittering swords as violent in the downward arc as a guillotine — all blasted to ruin, dismembered and left in torn shreds upon the ground, and the dark birds circling. To look upon such a scene as Vimeiro, Miss Austen, is to look for a while at the face of Hell.”

We were silent an instant, I from deepest sensibility, she from the horror of her recollections. Her hand gripped the spine of her book so tautly that all color drained from the skin, and the great stone on her finger glowed like blood in the candlelight.

“But what is one to do?” I asked quietly. “Men like the Monster will go to war, in a tilt at power beyond imagining; and men like my brothers will swear to prevent it. You cannot stop them coming to blows.”

“But I may at least try .” She sat erect in her chair, her gaze fixed implacably on my own. “War is vainglory and ruin, Miss Austen. It brings waste upon the countryside and desolation into the bosom of every family. I shall do all within my power to thwart this folly, and the men who would further it. No other course is open to those of us who are fated to live in such times.”

“On the contrary, madam. War is hateful, as is all wanton loss of life — but when the battle is thrust upon us, we have one course at least: to meet it honourably, and defend what we love. I should not like to see England in the hands of Buonaparte; and I am certain my brothers would say the same.”

“You think the Emperor so different from your King, then?”

“ Our King, Mrs. Challoner.”

She smiled at me then. “I forget. So easily I forget! I was but five years old when I left my home in England, and have spent all my life since in the Peninsula. It is hard to feel allegiance to much beyond the few friends I have long known and loved. But I have wearied you with stories and harangues long enough. Rest now, and perhaps you will be well enough to descend for dinner.”

She touched my hand lightly, rose in a swirl of scented silk, and was gone: leaving me in some bewilderment of sensation regarding her. Did I understand what she was, that first night I saw her? a voice whispered in my ear. Did I recognise the cunning behind Beauty’s mask?

Had Lord Harold judged this woman wrongly?

Was she a lady of subtle purpose — or one of deep feeling? Did she intend that I should be taken in by her tale of dead soldiers? Or had she loved a man who died at Vimeiro? What possible motive could she find for deceiving me — who was but a stranger?

She is guilty of treason, Jane. I could not begin to judge Sophia Challoner. I only knew that I honoured her fierce conviction — and could not find it in my heart, yet, to condemn her.

Perhaps an hour later, I awoke from a light sleep. The house was utterly silent and my mouth was dry. I rang the bell for the housemaid, then rose and walked unsteadily to the leaded windows. The bedchamber was set into the corner of the house, with views looking both south and west. From one window, I might survey the traffic of Southampton Water: a few fishing boats bobbing at anchor, and an Indiaman making its heavy way towards the quay. From the other, I could just glimpse the brow of the hill that led to Netley Abbey, half a mile distant. Two figures were toiling up the footpath: a man with yellow hair and a lady in garnet-coloured silk. She was a little ahead of the gentleman, as though she were familiar with the direction, and intent upon leading the way. I could not conceive of Sophia Challoner following in any man’s footsteps.

“Are you quite well, miss?” enquired the maid from the doorway.

I whirled around. Flora, the granddaughter of Mr. Hawkins’s crony, Ned Bastable. She could not be much above fifteen. “I am merely thirsty,” I replied.

“Could I have a jug of water?”

She bobbed a curtsey, and went off to the kitchen. I glanced once more out the window, and saw that in the interval required for conversation, a third figure had appeared on the Abbey path: hooded and cloaked in black, and standing as though in wait for the two who approached. I narrowed my eyes, the better to study the scene: the motionless form, august and slightly sinister, and the toiling pair below. What could it mean?

I followed the walkers’ course until they breasted the hill, and stood an instant in greeting; I observed Sophia Challoner bow her head and curtsey low. Then all three began the descent into the ruins and vanished from view. I wished, in that instant, that I might be a bird on the wing: hovering over the ramparts of the walls in observation of the party. Did they pick their way to the south transept, and mount the chancel steps? Was it mere idleness that drew them hence — the love of a good walk, and a picturesque landscape — or did they flee the house to talk of deadly policy?