Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Man of the Cloth

The other man audibly swallowed, and to my horror, began to sob — a terrible sound in a grown man, however unnerved by drink and fear. My own spirits were little better — for Dick's words were too open to a painful construction, and their import had the power to sink my very heart — but I longed to hear them debate their dubious fate the longer, in the hope of learning more.

“Now, now, Eb — ain't I allus looked after ye?” Dick said, in an effort to comfort his fellow. “We're snug coves, like you says, and we'll work oursels out o’ this pickle. Let's get on back to the beach afore daylight, and take the boat round to Pegweli Bay. It's a hop-skip from there to the London road, and we're out o’ the Reverend's ken. You just buck up there, laddie, and trust in ol’ Dick.”

“’Alfatick—”

“Eh, what's ‘at?”

“I'm not leavin’ all this ‘ere, you ninny. Us'll live a year in London, for the price o’ these.”

“Put ‘em back, Eb,” Dick said, with a certain menace. “I'll not ‘ave the law on our ‘ides, and the Reverend, too. Free Trade is one thing. Stealin's another. I've always kept the difference careful-like. A man'd ‘ang for what you've got.”

“But it ain't stealin’! This is contraband—”

“It ain't our'n.”

“Aw, Dick—”

The sound of a blow, and a whimper, and some goods let fall, and Eb was brought to heel.

So absorbed was I in all that passed, that I barely attended to the approach of heavy feet, until with a click the door began to swing inwards. I flattened myself along the tunnel wall, and endeavoured not to breathe, though my heart was pounding painfully within my chest; and in another instant, the door was thrust hard against my person and the two men stumbled through. The heavy musk of liquor enveloped their passage. They were too lost in thought and spirits to notice that the door abutted something other than the tunnel wall; and indeed, in the welling shadows beyond their lanthorn's reach, little could be discerned. As Ebenezer went safely past, I gave a gentle push to the door, which swung closed behind the two men, to the satisfaction of a single glance from Dick over his left shoulder; and since I stood in the blackness just behind his right, I managed to remain undetected. What a fever of anxiety gripped my senses, however, while the three of us retained the same bit of tunnel! That the others could not feel the presence of a third, by some buried animal instinct, had the power to astonish me — so certain was I that my very breath cried out my betrayal.

But they discovered nothing, and were down the enshrouded flight of steps, and on into the tunnel's depths, before very many instants had passed — taking with them, perforce, their comforting beam of light. In a little while all was utterly dark. A decision was now before me: should I attempt to find the door's hidden mechanism, or turn back the way I had come — and face the dawn on Charmouth beach? That way, assuredly, lay the easier path of least resistance; but I had come thus far, and would gladly return to Lyme possessed of the knowledge of whose storeroom the men had invaded.

I ran my hands the length of the door's face, and pressed its wood determinedly; but the portal remained unmoved. Perplexed, I paused for consideration. Neither Dick nor Eb had appeared to expend any remarkable energy, in forcing the way; and neither was possessed of inordinate cunning, as a puzzle lock might require. Abandoning the wood, therefore, I felt along the jamb's length, and was rewarded by a small knob, of very little protrusion, and roughly the size of a shilling. I pressed it, and was unsatisfied; pulled it, and was confronted with an open door.

All was darkness beyond the sill, and discernible within it, the huddled shapes of a quantity of goods, spilled about in hasty confusion. The men had not troubled to restore order where they had bestowed their chaos; and as I stepped into the room, my boots met splintered wood. After so many hours in utter gloom, my eyes could see nearly as well as by day; and I took a moment to look about me curiously, content from the example of the two men's easy search, that the room was safe from surprise.

The room had no windows; it must, therefore, be a cellar — beneath the Grange's barn, perhaps? Or a greater excavation still, a floor below what passed for cellars in the farmhouse itself? I must trouble to move with caution, until I learned better whose manor I invaded. But what riches this storeroom held!

I strained in the darkness to put names to the huddled objects, and was rewarded with a king's ransom of goods. There were brandy kegs by the dozen, and deep casks of fragrant tea — the best China leaf, too dear for the humble Austens’ housekeeping — and rough sacks of coffee beans, and pounds of chocolate; exotic spices, from Malabar and the Canaries; the finest Spanish lace; a snorting wealth of sneezing snuff; coal, coffin-nails, hair-powder, and sealing wax; and in one extraordinary chest, all disordered at the tunnel's very entrance, a quantity of newly-strung pearls. Cool and silken to the touch they were, and I understood now Eb's unwillingness to let them slip, and felt a strange respect for the stalwart Dick's refusal. The morality of the Gentlemen of the Night was indeed passing strange.

I stood up, and let the pearls drop back in their chest, a frown of puzzlement creasing my brow. Something was missing. What could it be? What had the two besotted fellows sought and failed to find?

Silk.

But of course. Silk, so necessary for clothing a beautiful woman as vanity and fashion dictated; silk, that draped the costliest windows on the most breathless streets of the country's principal towns — most precious of tissues, its sheen unrivalled, its colours brilliant, its sinuous length wrapping the kingdom from north to south — silk. Spun principally on the Continent, and in the south of France, and taxed within a hair's breadth of everyone's life, and thus a smuggler's fortune. I had owned only one silk gown in my entire life; but I had not yet learned to despise its glorious folds.

And so the Reverend was a silk trader — a Man of the Cloth. The sobriquet's sly pun bespoke a certain cleverness — a tendency to flout convention, and turn the comprehensible on its head; both qualities quite native to Mr. Sidmouth's character. And my very own Eliza had declared Sidmouth a frequent traveller to France, where his cousin Seraphine must provide a valued service, in speaking the language fluently. I little doubted that whatever her professed distaste for Buonaparte, or the depth of her wounds from the revolutionary past, that with a brother well-placed in the Imperial army, she was not disinclined to cross the Channel on behalf of Sidmouth's interests. From Roy Cavendish I had it that the Reverend employed agents — and who better to employ, than Seraphine? Was this the source of the enmity between Captain Fielding and High Down Grange? Had he discovered that Mademoiselle LeFevre was but a pawn in her cousin's game, and endeavoured to separate them, for the preservation of her liberty?

I sat down on a keg and put my head in my hands. The night's burden of knowledge was all too heavy, and my store of sleep too small. There was nothing more to be done, than to discover my whereabouts, and effect a return home — by the road, if all within the Grange were yet abed, or the tunnel, if need be.

There was a staircase at the room's far side, and I quickly sought it, and in the greatest stealth and trepidation, turned the doorknob at its head, expecting at every instant to be set upon by Sidmouth's dogs. But all was quiet; and a delicate light streamed over the threshold as I swung wide the door — dawn had come to the cliffs above the sea. I waited an instant, listening for some sound in the stillness, and then stepped into sunshine and looked about me, blinking in disbelief.