Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

I laid my hand over his where it pulled at the oar. “Thank you, Mr. Hawkins,” I said.

WE ACHIEVED THE QUAY AS THE LAST FLAMES ABOARD the Marguerite flickered and went out. Torches had been mounted along the seawall, the better to illuminate the spectacle of the burning ship; and a crowd of children and gaping onlookers had gathered. Among the horde of figures lining the stone platform I discerned my brother, and the slight figure of Mr. Hill at his side. How much time had my adventure demanded? It was now full dark — perhaps six o'clock in the evening, well past our dinner hour. Surely my mother would be grown querulous, Mary should be consumed with worry, and Martha attempting to comfort them both.

“Fly!” I called out as Jeb Hawkins pulled alongside the Quay. “Captain Frank Austen — ahoy!”

My brother started, peered down at the water, and then dashed down the Quay steps. “Jane! In the name of all that's sacred—! You were not out at that ship!”

“We have LaForge,” I said tensely. “He requires assistance and care. Mr. Hill—”

My brother cupped his hands about his mouth and in the best sailor fashion, roared for the surgeon. The pack of onlookers, though far from weary of their public burning, divided their attention between prison hulk and skiff.

“It's a dead man! He's drownded!” cried one urchin with enthusiasm.

“There'll be more'n worse by dawn,” prophesied a woman darkly.

“That's the Bosun's Mate!” shouted a third. “Eh, Jeb, are you become a Fisher of Men like the Good Book says?”

Jeb Hawkins did not reply. Instead, he grabbed a mooring and made the skiff fast to the Quay. My brother jumped into the vessel and seized LaForge by the shoulders. Mr. Hill proffered his hand and helped me from the boat.

I had never been so thankful to find good, hard Hampshire stone beneath my feet.

“I made certain you had gone back home,” Frank muttered to me. “I merely stayed to see what became of the hulk — I never dreamed you were upon the Water.”

“Take him to Wool House,” I said tersely. “Mr. Hill will have the key.”

“Of course.” Hill hurried off before us, clearing a path through the curious crowd. Jeb Hawkins — who must, in truth, be exhausted — grasped LaForge's ankles and helped bear the insensible man the length of the Quay.

“How did you manage … to pry this fellow … from the depths of that barge?” Frank gasped, as we approached Winkle Street

“The Bosun's Mate,” I replied. “Mr. Hawkins is deserving of our deepest thanks and praise. He freed Monsieur LaForge and carried him to safety.”

“Safety? I begin to think this man shall never be safe until he has England at his back.”

Mr. Hill stood ready by the great oak portal of Wool House; he had found and lit a candle. We slipped through the door like wraiths or shadows, too swift to be clearly discerned in the pitch-black streets; the crowd's attention, in any case, had returned to the quayside where the longboats were approaching with their soggy burden of Southampton's own.

LaForge was laid on one of the old straw pallets and covered with a blanket. He moaned, and turned his head in restless dreaming; I thought perhaps his eyelids flickered, but it may have been only a chimera of the candle flame. Mr. Hill bent swiftly to feel for his pulse.

“Genevieve,” said a faint voice at our feet; and with a sharp intake of breath, I saw that LaForge was once more in his conscious mind.

I crouched near him and placed my hand on his brow.

“Ah, Genevieve.” He sighed. “Tu vives encore. “

“It is all right, monsieur — you are safe now, and we shall not let you come to harm. You may be assured of that. You are among friends.”

He frowned. “Cette voix — je la sais. Mais ce n 'est pas la voix de Genevieve.”

“It is I, Miss Austen. I am here with Mr. Hill and my brother and another man who saved you from the burning ship.”

Mr. Hill had been busy at the hearth to the rear of Wool House; he had tindered flame, and set a pot of water to boiling, and now appeared at my side with a hunk of day-old bread. “Soak it in water,” he commanded, “then try if you can to persuade him to swallow a morsel.”

I did as I was bid. After a little, LaForge was persuaded to eat; he appeared to recover somewhat of his strength with every sodden bite; but still he lay with his eyes closed, the symmetry of his features marred by a sharp crease between his eyebrows, as though he suffered considerable pain. He looked thinner and more drawn from his ordeal with poison and neglect than I could have imagined. Inwardly cursing Sir Francis Farnham, I bent myself to my task.

My brother had found a stool, and propped himself upon it. I slipped the last of the soggy bread into LaForge's mouth; he lay back on his pallet. Presently the surgeon and the Bosun's Mate joined us with steaming tea, which we accepted gratefully.

“I should like to know, Captain Austen,” said Mr. Hill over the rim of his cup, “exactly what has occurred. Whom do you suspect of murder, and how does our friend LaForge come into it?”

We told him, then, the worst of our fears of Sir Francis Farnham, and the collusion of Phoebe Carruthers, not excepting the gentleman's motive for defaming Tom Seagrave, the possible use of the Admiralty's telegraph to transmit spurious orders, and the accidental insertion of Nell Rivers in the affair.

Jeb Hawkins, in comprehending how tangled was the plot in which his girl found herself, muttered beneath his breath and flexed his broad hands, as though he should like to seize the Baronet himself.

“You have no proof of anything, of course,” said Mr. Hill pensively. “I should not like to attempt to arraign Sir Francis on so wild a charge. The equipage with the bloody gauntlet might be traced on Wednesday night — the coachman paid to disclose what he knows—”

“I have considered that,” I interrupted. “What if the coachman was Sir Francis himself, suitably disguised? He had only to lure poor Chessyre into the carriage, let Mrs. Carruthers down at a suitable spot, drive to a darkened alley, and employ his garrote.”

“No one should be the wiser,” Mr. Hill admitted. “The same is true of our suspected poison. It is impossible to show that Sir Francis introduced something noxious to a particular Wool House pasty; your men of the Navy should declare that the food was rotten, and be done.”

“Something might be learned of those sealed orders,” suggested Frank. “We might enquire at the Admiralty — as friends among friends, you understand — what purpose they thought to serve by sending Seagrave on a wild-goose chase. And if no one admits to taking our meaning—”

“Wild-goose chase?” interrupted Mr. Hill.

“Seagrave was ordered to stand off the coast of Corunna,” I explained, “to take off an agent of the Crown and bear him back to England. But no one answered his signal, and after three days he turned for home.”

“No one answered the good Seagrave's signal,” supplied Etienne LaForge weakly from his position on the floor, “because the agent of your Crown had already been seized by Captain Porthiault, and locked in a cabin of the Manon.”

We turned as one to stare at him. His shrewd brown eyes — replete once more with the humour I had always discerned in them — roved across our faces. “Did you not wonder why I demanded to remain on British shores? It is death to me to return to France!”

“You are that agent?” I gasped, finally comprehending. “But why did you not inform us earlier?”

“Because such an admission, from a prisoner of war, should sound fantastic; and because I did not know whom I could trust.” With effort, he propped himself weakly on one elbow. “May I beg you, mademoiselle, for a little of that tea? I have had nothing hot to drink in days.”