Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

“Let’s say the Vine, then,” returned the stranger.

“What name shall I give the trunk-boy?”

“Mr. Ord.”

At that moment, the horn blew for the Winchester stage. I had just time enough to press my nephews to my breast, button Edward’s cloak more firmly under his chin, adjust the angle of George’s hat, and give them each a gold guinea forwarded by their father — when they scrambled up to the box.

“Farewell, Aunt!” Edward cried, “and a thousand thanks for your kindness!”

Something of last evening’s nightmare trembled for a moment in his youthful voice. Then the coachman cracked his whip; the horses surged forward; and the stage bore north, towards the toll road. I watched them out of sight. George grinned and waved to the last.

When I looked about the yard once more, the American was gone.

Lord Harold might airily suggest that I keep Mrs. Challoner under my eye, but he can have known little of the surrounding landscape, or the distance to be bridged between Castle Square and Netley Lodge. Several choices were presented me: to walk the three miles to the Abbey — a fine course in good weather, and of an early morning, but not at the hour of one o’clock, with the resumption of last night’s rain ever threatening; to hire a hackney chaise, and arrive at the Abbey in style; or to avail myself once more of Mr. Hawkins. My purse being, as always, quite slim, I chose the Bosun’s Mate rather than the more costly hired chaise. Approaching the Abbey by water had an added advantage: I should land below the ruins, and walk directly past Netley Lodge on my way up the hill.

“Miss Lloyd did ought to boil these lemons in a quantity of gin, and dose the old lady — your honoured mother, beggin’ yer pardon, miss — every second hour,” Hawkins declared as he heaved at his oars. He had procured the fruit from a moored Indiaman as readily as I might pluck daisies from the back garden. “ ’Tis a remedy no seaman would be without, when the catarrh and the megrims strike. If the lemons don’t do for her, the gin surely will; there’s nothing equal to Blue Lightning for clearing the head.”

The tide was with us today, and carried us swiftly down the Water. As we neared the landing thrust out into the shingle, I stole a glance at Netley Lodge, where it rose like a snug bastion from the cliff above. The leaded windowpanes, staring south, gleamed in the watery sunlight. I had an idea of flurried housemaids unleashed upon a suite of rooms.

“And so the Lodge is opened up,” Mr. Hawkins observed, “after more’n ten year of dust and desolation. My crony in Hound told me the whole of it yesterday. The gentleman as owned it made a fortune in the Peninsula, and died before he saw his home again. Merchant, he was, in the Port trade, and his lady were carried out of Oporto after the siege. Right thankful she is to be back on English soil.”

“Indeed? Is she a comfortable matron, with a hopeful family?”

“Neither chick nor child, and her a Diamond o’the First Water. So Ned Bastable says — he being rated Able thirty years or more, and a rare one for intelligence now he’s turned on shore. [9] Seamen in the Royal Navy were designated Ordinary or Able, depending upon their level of skill and experience. Able Seamen were paid slightly more than Ordinary. — Editor’s note. His granddaughter Flora is parlour maid at the Lodge. She were snapped up ten days ago by Mrs. Challoner’s steward, a great chuckle-headed lump with a black beard and a name Flora can’t pronounce. The lady’s maid is French, Flora says, and speaks not a word of the King’s English; but quite superior, and knows how to keep her place. Three large trunks it took, to stow Mrs. Challoner’s gowns; the maid spent the better part of two days putting ’em to rights. They’re a queer lot at the Lodge, and no mistake.”

“And is Mrs. Challoner quite alone in that great house?”

“She wishes to live retired, after all the crush and noise of the Oporto colony. She’s a widow, after all — though she don’t dress in black.”

The gates to the sweep were thrown open, and the gravel newly raked; lights were kindled within the rooms; and a pair of under-gardeners toiled at scything the withered lawn. I dared not linger before the prospect of Netley Lodge, however intriguing, for I could not tell how many pairs of eyes might be directed at the Abbey path. I grasped my easel in gloved fingers and strolled steadily past, the poke of my bonnet eclipsing any view of the rooms. Where should I position myself? At the breast of the hill, so that I might observe both the Abbey ruins and the house below? I should be unlikely to overlook the sweep and carriage court from that vantage, but no other should serve—

The sound of hoofbeats, thudding dully on the damp turf under my feet: a horse was galloping from the direction of West Wood, the dense growth of trees at the Abbey’s back. In another moment the rider came into view, bent over the reins with an expression of wild elation on his countenance. The hair under his black top hat was fair as the sun, his body was taut and controlled in the saddle; every feature proclaimed nobility. He must have come from the Itchen ferry, along the path I should have walked, had time and the weather permitted.

He swept towards me, a figure of surprising power. In the grip of the horse’s punishing stride, he was as different from the modest young man I had seen in Roger’s Coachyard as man could be — but it was the American stranger, just the same: the gentleman called Ord. He slowed as he passed, and raised his hat with civil grace; but I heard the breath tearing in his lungs. His countenance was flushed, his blue eyes alight. He had ridden hard for the sheer joy of freedom after the cramped journey in the London mail, I thought; he had hired a mount at the Vine Inn and coursed out towards the Abbey, it being the principal beauty in these parts.

Or was his direction spurred by more than a young man’s high spirits? Was he driven by fear and peril — by the wicked goad of statecraft? As I watched, he pulled up before the gates of Netley Lodge and jumped down from the saddle. Without a backwards glance, he led his mount up Mrs. Challoner’s newraked sweep. Curious, indeed, that within an hour of alighting in Southampton, the fresh-faced stranger had sought first to meet with one woman: Lord Harold’s dangerous spy.

26 October 1808, cont.

“There is a letter from Godmersham,” Martha informed me in a lowered voice as I entered the house this evening, “that has your mother in an uproar. Only think: Your brother Edward has offered her a freehold — a cottage, to be sure, but a freehold all the same — on one of his estates. She has merely to name her choice. Wye, in Kent, or Chawton Cottage, near Chawton Great House. It is something to think upon, is it not?”

“A freehold!” The easel and paintbox slipped from my hands onto the Pembroke table. It was nearly four o’clock, and my mother should be awaiting her dinner; I had found it necessary to appear in good time this evening, as recompense for past sins. But my thoughts were all of Netley, and the interesting meeting I had witnessed there; Martha’s present communication came to me as from the moon.

“Rents in Southampton are only increasing, and now that Frank and Mary have settled on the Isle of Wight—”

“Indeed.” My brother Fly and his young family had quitted the Castle Square house nearly a month before, to establish an independence in rented lodgings on the Island, as naval officers will refer to the turtle-shaped bit of land opposite Portsmouth Harbour. My mother was ill reconciled to the change; and though Frank professed himself determined to meet his portion of the Castle Square rent, as well as that of his new home, we would not hear of burdening him. I knew, however, that we should be hardpressed to scrape together the yearly rent.