Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

“I apprehend. No mere cutting-out expedition, no shot across the bows, what? Don’t wish the birds to fly before we’ve clipped their feathers?”

My gaze fell from the Dolphin’s front to its side yard, where a group of ostlers loitered. They were the usual Southampton sort: roughly-dressed and fractured in their speech; sailors, some of them, turned onto land by dint of wounds. One of them lacked an arm; another had lost his leg below the knee, and supplied the want of a limb with an elegantly-carved peg. My brother no longer noticed such injuries; he witnessed them too often, once his deck was cleared for battle. The men of a ship of the line were torn asunder with a careless rapidity that defied belief in any God.

An oddity among the familiar grouping claimed my attention: the figure of a girl in a Prussian-blue cloak, a simple poke bonnet tied beneath her chin. She stood as though in suspense, being unwilling to venture the roughness of the stable yard’s men, but determined to gain admittance. Her gaze was trained on the windows of the inn above, and it was clear at a glance that she sought someone within. The slightness of her frame suggested extreme youth; and when she darted a furtive look over her shoulder, as though fearful of being watched, I gasped aloud.

“Flora Bastable! The maid dismissed from Netley Lodge! I should know those eyes anywhere — the exact colour of gentians, Frank, on a summer morn. But what can have brought her a full three miles from her home in Hound?”

“What the Devil do you care for a maidservant’s business, Jane?” he demanded impatiently.

At that moment, a chaise turned into the yard, blocking the girl from my view. When the way had cleared, she had vanished. Was it I who had driven her to flight? Had she sped deeper into the yard — or beyond it, to the alleyways and passages that led to the town’s walls?

And whom had she sought within? Her late mistress’s enemy — Lord Harold ?

“She certainly did not come here idly,” I mused, “and I read fear in her looks. Frank — say that you will help me! If the theatre is your object, persuade Mary that she is well enough to sit in French Street tonight; and insist upon my going to Netley Lodge tomorrow evening, despite Mamma’s protestations.”

My brother placed his hands upon my shoulders.

“I dislike the notion of you walking into such a den of vipers, Jane.”

“I dislike it myself. But I dislike the murder of good men — and the burning of ships — even more.”

“When you put it thus, my dear — I have no choice.” He drew my arm through his, and led me towards the Water.

Wednesday, 2 November 1808

At six o’clock this evening, my brother walked to Roger’s Coachyard to secure a hack chaise for my journey to Netley Lodge. Mary settled on my bed to watch me dress for Sophia Challoner’s party. I had laid my new black gown over a chair, and spread the paisley shawl across its folds.

“It is a lovely gown, Jane.” She fingered it wistfully. “And the hat is too cunning for words! Mrs. Challoner must hold you in excessive regard, to send you such a gift!”

“Possibly,” I returned, “but I believe it is the power of giving that she most truly enjoys. She informed me that she had not two groats to rub together when she married her late husband; and that spending her fortune is now the chief pleasure of her life.”

“Then you do her a kindness in accepting of her generosity. Has she no children?”

“None at all.”

“Poor creature! A fortune should be nothing, if one were all alone in the world.”

As I was unlikely ever to have a child myself, I found I could not agree with Mary; the spending of a fortune, in the absence of more demanding preoccupations, might be engaging in the extreme. “Mrs. Challoner should disagree with you. She places the virtues of solitude — or freedom, as she prefers to call it — above all else.”

“She sounds an odd sort of lady. Do you admire her?”

I hesitated. What did I feel for Sophia Challoner, beyond a persistent doubt as to her motives?

“I admire her bravery, certainly. She fears neither man nor woman; handles her mettlesome horses herself; presides over an elegant establishment alone, with utter disregard for the opinions of others; and went so far as to view the battle of Vimeiro at close hand. She snaps her fingers at propriety and cuts a considerable dash. She is the sort of woman that may never enter a room without a dozen heads turning; indeed, she seems to thrive upon notice as others must upon air. But I do not think she possesses an easy soul, Mary. She is in search of something — sensation, the regard of others, a purpose to her restless life. I do not begin to understand her; but admire her?

Yes — if you would mean the sort of admiration one reserves for a wild thing of great beauty.”

“I have never heard you speak thus about anyone,” Mary said in a small voice. “You are so... so relentless, Jane, in the expression of your opinions. You may reduce a paragon to shivering shreds, with the well-placed application of a word.”

I turned and stared at her. “Do I seem to you so vicious, Mary? So wantonly careless of the feelings of others?”

She coloured immediately. “Not vicious, Jane. Not exactly . But I am always thankful that the regard of a sister prevents you from speaking so frankly as you might, your opinion of me .”

My whole heart went out to her: the soft, round face under the cloud of curls; the wondering eyes of a child. Great strength of mind and purpose was concealed beneath her china-doll looks; and her goodness was unshakeable. But it was true I had disparaged Mary Gibson greatly when Frank first lost his heart to her: a mere girl of Ramsgate, with no more wit than fortune or influence. It was easy to dismiss Mary in her girlhood — but I could never regard the Captain’s wife so lightly now.

“Will you oblige me, my dear — though I hesitate to ask it: will you help me to do up my hair as it should be done, to grace this remarkable hat?”

She jumped down from the bed with her face alight. She had left several younger sisters, some of them barely out in Society, when she quitted Kent a few years ago; and I knew she missed the joys of preparing for Assemblies and balls — all the chatter of a ladies’ dressing room.

She held the Equestrian Hat aloft, her narrowed gaze surveying me in the mirror.

“You must let down the front section of your hair, Jane, for it is far too severe, and part it in the middle, I think. We shall curl the wings in bunches at the temple, and the brim of the hat shall dip just so . Have you, by any chance, a set of hair tongs?”

As she wove the heated iron through my hair, I gripped the gold crucifix tightly in my palm. There would be time enough to clasp it about my throat, once I had crossed the River Itchen.

It seemed that Mrs. Challoner had found an hour to commission her gown — and then had commanded several days and nights of Madame Clarisse’s time. She was breathtaking in her evening dress, of rich white Italian sarcenet; it was embroidered in gold thread with grapevines and leaves that ran across the low bodice and the edge of the cap sleeves. Scrollwork in gold ornamented the hem, which was a full foot shorter than the under-petticoat and train; gold buttons fastened the dress behind. Her hair was combed sleekly back along the right side of her head, and blossomed in curls over her left ear; a circlet of gold and diamonds ornamented her neck, and another the upper part of her arm. With her brilliant complexion and liquid dark eyes, she appeared a triumphant goddess — a victorious archangel, who might equally reward a youth for excellence at sport, or watch him broken under the wheels of a chariot. She was charmingly grouped as I entered the room, in a low chair by the fire, with Mr. Ord standing above her and a little girl of nine or ten on a hassock at her feet. The child wore a simple white gown of muslin, tied with a pale green sash; she was turning over the beads of a bracelet, and talking amiably of the afternoon’s delights. I should mention that the drawing-room of Netley Lodge provided a perfect backdrop to this elegant domestic scene: it was filled with curious treasures, brought from Oporto by Mrs. Challoner, and displayed about the room with artless taste. A brilliant bird, quite dead and stuffed, was posed in a gilt cage in one corner; Spanish scimitars hung from the walls; a drapery of embroidered stuff, in the Portuguese manner, was flung across a sopha; and heavy paintings in oils — dark as the Inquisition — stared down from the walls.