Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

He knew her name, her business, and something of her character — all in the space of a few moments’ conversation. I remembered, of a sudden, Sophia Challoner’s description of the sprite: The valet is a thief and an intriguer; a man as familiar with picklocks as he is with blackmail. Could such an elf be so malign?

He swept off his hat — a black tricorn with a single white feather — and bowed low. “Miss Austen. I hope I find you in good health?”

“Thank you. I am very well.”

“That is excellent news — because your walking companion, alas, is not. She has stumbled upon my bolt-hole in the refectory floor — and stumbled, I fear, to her injury. Her right foot will not bear weight; and in attempting to walk in search of you, she fell into a swoon.”

“Oh, Lord,” I breathed. “ Martha! And I have been nattering with a housemaid, when she was every moment in agony—”

“Not agony,” corrected Orlando as I hurried past him towards the refectory. “One is never in much pain, you know, when one is insensible. It was when I heard her fall so heavily to the stone floor that I deemed it safe to emerge from the tunnel hatch. I first made certain the lady was in no danger, and then went in search of her companions. Imagine my surprise in discovering her companion to be you, Miss Austen!”

I paid scant heed to this chatter as he followed me through refectory, buttery, and kitchen itself, to find Martha propped with her back against a block of tumbled stone, and a blank expression of pain on her countenance.

“My dear!” I cried, and sank down beside her. “I owe you an apology! I cannot think how we came to be separated. And you have turned an ankle!”

“The right one,” she feebly replied. “I cannot stand, Jane. I do not know how we are to return to Southampton on foot. I have been sitting here considering of the problem — and I have decided that you shall have to fetch assistance. Much as I blush to require it—”

“Orlando,” I said with decision, “pray go in search of your master. I must beg his indulgence for the use of his chaise — and his coachman, of course.”

“His lordship himself being of not the slightest use in the world,” Orlando observed. “But I must observe, Miss Austen, that my appearance at Netley Lodge will cause considerable talk. I did not arrive with his lordship in the chaise.”

Out of deference for Martha’s ignorance, he said nothing further; but I readily took the point. Orlando had been deputed to spend the morning — or the latest of several mornings — in attendance upon the tunnel hatch, in the vain hope that the cloaked mon seigneur might mutter sedition above it, and encompass Mrs. Challoner in his ruin. If Orlando were to petition at the Lodge for Lord Harold’s aid — or that of his coach — at Netley Abbey, Mrs. Challoner should immediately understand that his lordship’s valet had been despatched to the ruins while his master idled in her drawing-room. Our secrecy should be at an end. Martha’s injury, and my pressing need for assistance, should succeed in placing the French spies on the watch.

“I comprehend, Orlando. Would you be so good, then, to go in search of a fellow named”—what was the name of Flora’s grandfather, Jeb Hawkins’s old friend? — “Ned Bastable, a retired seaman of Hound, and enquire whether he should be able to assist us?

He might have a cart, or even a boat that should succeed in conveying us with a minimum of discomfort to Southampton.”

“An admirable suggestion, madam,” Orlando returned gravely. “I possess a boat myself, however, lying at this moment on the shingle below the passage. Allow me to assist your companion below stairs, and thence to the Solent. Between us both, we might have her home in a trice.”

I stared at him, for what he proposed argued the inclusion of Martha in our company’s narrow confidence. But a glance at the injured ankle — already swelling beyond the strictures of my friend’s boot — argued the swiftest accommodation available.

“Martha,” I said firmly as I placed an arm under her shoulders, “you must forget entirely what you are about to see. No word of its existence must ever pass your lips.”

“Do you know, Jane,” she murmured faintly, “I think I may promise you that—”

And as, with my help, Orlando lifted her — she fainted dead away.

Monday, 31 October 1808

We succeeded in getting Martha home between us, although I confess that the weight of an insensible, middle-aged woman, clothed in voluminous black silk and a wool pelisse, nearly staggered the goodwill of myself and Orlando both. We halfsupported, half-dragged her the length of the subterranean passage, and had the good luck to see her revived in the brisk air of the shingle. As we attempted to shift her into the valet’s small dory, however, she very nearly had us over by screaming aloud that she could not swim, and clutching at the gunwales in a manner I found hard to bear, being up to my knees in cold saltwater at that very moment. I knew for a certainty that Martha had never set foot in a boat before; she was much given to reading lurid stories aloud from the newspapers, in which bright young ladies with limitless prospects were dashed to their deaths in one water-party or another. But once settled amidships she clung to her seat like a limpet, jaw clenched, and failed to utter so much as a syllable. Orlando gamely bent his weight to the oars, and had us returned to Southampton in little more than twenty minutes; and on the Water Gate Quay he secured a party of midshipmen to escort the mortified Martha to a hack chaise, which conveyed us expeditiously to Castle Square. The valet refused so much as a groat in recompense for his labours; and I thought, as I watched his slight figure turn back to his dory, and once more ship the oars, that he had managed our rescue quite as efficiently as his master should have done.

We were received with such a clamour of exclamation and lament that my friend might as well have been set upon by thieves at Netley Abbey; and my mother grimly pronounced the belief that no good ever came of walking about the countryside like a pair of gipsies.

The opinion of a surgeon was sought, and the limb determined to be sound, though badly sprained. Our apothecary, Mr. Green, supplied a sleeping draught, and Cook a hot poultice — and by nine o’clock last evening the poor sufferer had taken a bit of broth in her bedchamber and consigned the worst of ill-fated Sunday jaunts to oblivion. I wondered, as I doused my light, whether

Orlando had reported the whole to Lord Harold — and what that worthy’s strictures might have been, on the fate of heedless women left to fend for themselves in the wild. But perhaps his lordship had been too pressed by business — or the preoccupation of his heart — to attend very much to his servant’s adventures.

“Jane!” my mother called up the stairs early this morning, “only look what has come for you by special messenger! Make haste, my love! Make haste!”

I was barely dressed, but hurried downstairs with one slipper in my hand and my hair quite undone.

“What is it, Mamma?”

“Two parcels,” she said, “and a letter. I do not recognise the seal.”

The missive could hardly be from Lord Harold, for that gentleman’s crest should never escape my mother’s eagle eye. I crossed to the parlour table, where the parcels sat wrapped in brown paper and tied with quantities of string. I reached for the letter, and broke the dark green wax.

“It is from Sophia Challoner,” I said. “She writes that she expects a large party of guests arrived this morning at Netley Lodge, and intends to hold an evening reception for them — coffee and cards, with music and refreshment — at the Lodge on Wednesday. She invites my attendance, and begs me to wear ... this .”