Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

Had Sophia or her gallant Mr. Ord signalled the attack from the ruined heights?

“Hundreds of the French, still at large,” I murmured, and thought of the black-cloaked figure who had fled the Abbey passage not an hour ago.

“That is what Frank meant,” Mary added, “when he declared the theft of Mr. Hawkins’s boat to be worrisome in the extreme.”

“The skiff was stolen, no doubt, by a freed prisoner, who lurked along the shingle, and observed all that you did,” my brother declared. “He thanked God and the Emperor when you appeared in his view, Jane, complete with vessel and nuncheon!”

“—Which is halfway across the Channel now, and may he drown before he ever sees Calais!” Hawkins spat once more into the bilge, drew his pipe from his nankeen pocket — and saw that the tobacco was wet with seawater. He subsided into morose silence. I endured my mother’s strictures regarding

the idiotishness of girls left too long upon the shelf; promised her I should never again quit the house of an early morning without informing her of my direction; and refused to pen a note to Mrs. Challoner denying myself the honour of attending her evening party.

“What can it be to you, Jane, to give up this small pleasure?” my mother demanded in exasperation. “It is not as though you bear the woman any great affection; and now your brother is come, you might plead the necessity of a family engagement. Frank thinks of taking Mary to the theatre in French Street while he is ashore — for, you know, his time is not his own, and he may be ordered back to sea at any moment. Cannot you remain quietly at home with the baby and Martha Lloyd tomorrow, and allow your brother to enjoy an evening with his wife?”

It was a simple enough request. I apprehended how selfish I must seem — how lost to everything but my own petty concerns. Being prevented from sharing so much as a word of the truth — that the attack on Portsmouth required me to exert vigilance in the only quarter I might suspect — I was left with but the appearance of disappointed hopes, and a mulish insistence that I could not fail Mrs. Challoner.

“Cannot Frank and Mary be persuaded to the theatre this evening instead? For I should gladly look after little Mary Jane tonight. But tomorrow, Mamma, is quite out of the question—”

“Mary is resting at present, and cannot say whether she shall summon even enough strength to descend for dinner. You know that she is a very poor sailor, particularly in so small a vessel as the hoy. And with Martha not yet able to set her foot to the floor—”

“Frank,” I called to my brother as he appeared at the foot of the stairs, “would you care to take a turn along the Water Gate Quay? We might learn what news there is of Portsmouth on the wharves, and stop at the butcher’s in our way, for the procuring of Cook’s joint.”

“That is a capital idea!” my brother cried. “Do not trouble yourself, Mamma, with fetching your purse — for I shall supply the joint this evening, in gratitude for all your kindness to my poor Mary.”

• • •

I formed a desperate resolution as we walked through Butcher’s Row, and came out along the High, and turned our faces towards the sea. My brother is a fellow of considerable understanding, when dealing with matters nautical; but his notions of chivalry and the proper station of women are charmingly Gothick. He might ignore the vital nature of what I should tell him, and fix instead upon the impropriety of Lord Harold’s every action.

“Should you not like to see the theatre this evening, Fly? For who knows when you shall be called back to the St. Alban’s . Never put off until tomorrow the chance that might be seized today.”

“Very true,” he said with a look of humour in his eye; “and you might serve me admirably this evening, without the slightest disarrangement of your plans for tomorrow. What is this Mrs. Challoner, Jane, that she commands such attention? I will allow her to be a very dashing young woman — but I should not have thought her quite in your style.”

“Frank,” I said abruptly, “I must take you into my confidence on a matter of gravest import — but first, you must assure me that no word of what I tell you will pass to Mary, or, God forbid — to Mamma.”

His sandy brows came down at this. “I know that you should never fall into error, Jane, by your own inclination — and so must assume that no wrongdoing is involved in your tale.”

“None on my part. You are aware of my acquaintance with a gentleman by the name of Lord Harold Trowbridge?”

“Cass mentioned something of him, once,” he said in an altered tone. “The fellow is a blackguard, I collect, who treated you most shabbily. Has he descended upon Southampton?”

“He is one of the Government’s most trusted advisors, Frank, and privy to the councils of war. He has spent the better part of the past year on the Peninsula, communicating the movements of the French. Indeed, I believe your Admiralty consigns a principal part of its Secret Funds to Lord Harold.”

“What do you know of the Secret Funds?” he demanded testily. And so, as we strolled the length of the High with a leg of mutton tied up in waxed paper, I related the baffling particulars of the past week: the sudden meeting aboard the Windlass, Lord Harold’s suspicions of Sophia Challoner, the oddities of Mr. Ord, and the cloaked figure I had encountered this morning in the depths of the subterranean passage. When I had done, Frank gazed at me with no little awe.

“You are a dark horse, Jane! But if your Lord Harold has had the use of a naval vessel — and no less a brig than Windlass —then his currency is good as gold. I know Captain Strong, and though he is but a Master and Commander, and young at that, I am certain he should never engage in any havey-cavey business along the privateering line. I may add that no less a Tory than Castlereagh professes to hold his lordship in high regard — and Castlereagh, in my books, can never err.” [22] Frank Austen refers to Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822), secretary for war in the Percival government. Castlereagh reorganized the army, creating a disposable force of 30,000 for use at short notice, with dedicated sea transport. He was one of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s oldest friends, and valued Wellesley’s advice on matters military. He is famed for having fought a duel with his fellow minister, Foreign Secretary Robert Canning; he committed suicide in 1822, a year after succeeding his father to the title of Marquess of Londonderry. — Editor’s note.

I murmured assent to the wisdom of Tory ministers.

“But I should not have suspected you, Jane, of skullduggery by night or day — though I have always said that you possess the Devil’s own pluck! And the stories you have fobbed off on Mamma — all with a view to making her believe his lordship is smitten with you—!”

“I did not have to work very hard at that, ” I retorted, somewhat nettled. “Mamma is ready to find evidence of love in the slightest male attention.”

Frank disregarded this aside; his moment of levity had passed. “Lord Harold truly believes Mrs. Challoner to have ordered the murder of old Dixon — the firing of the seventy-four — and the liberation of the prison hulks? I should be terrified to enter her drawing-room tomorrow; and I wonder at his lordship securing the services of a gentlewoman in pursuit of his spy, when he might have had a brigade of marines secured around Netley Lodge, merely for the asking!”

We had come up with the Dolphin Inn as he spoke, and almost without thinking, my feet slowed. I gazed towards the bow-fronted windows of the Assembly Room, and wondered which of the many glinting panes above disguised Lord Harold’s bedchamber. Had he returned from London? “A brigade of marines should never serve, Frank. Mrs. Challoner demands subtlety and care.”