Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Man of the Cloth

“I am coming with you.”

“You cannot.”

“I must,” I insisted, and rose to my feet. “If you do not allow it, I shall scream at the full pitch of my lungs, and bring Crawford down upon you.”

We had parried closely before, but never in the presence of such mortal danger. Tonight Trowbridge was neither amused nor incensed at my insistence; he merely calculated a measure past it, and handed me his pistol. I had never held such a thing before, and had not the slightest notion of how to discharge it.

“It is loaded with ball,” Trowbridge said. “Keep it pointed in the air, and fire at will if the dragoons approach. In this you should be performing a dearer service, and prove less of an encumbrance, than if you dragged at my heels. Not another word!” he commanded; and was gone as swiftly as a star at sunrise.

I gave him a few moments; observed his lean form scuttle along the beach with bent back and arms akimbo, for all the world like a retreating crab; and then turned as noiselessly as I might, and began the slow ascent up the cliff's face.

I DID NOT EXPEND MUCH THOUGHT IN RESOLVING LORD HAROLD'S presence upon Charmouth beach, or his admission that he had had me followed. Sidmouth's support of the Royalists, as I had already divined, had as its object the destruction of Napoleon's reign; and that Harold Trowbridge, servant of the Crown, should be behind the Grange's projects, should hardly astonish. Tho “the Royal Navy stood vigilant against invasion, and the Sea Fencibles [78] This was a sort of coastal militia, of fishermen and small craft superintended by naval officers, arrayed against possible channel invasion from France. — Editor's note. were roused along the coasdine, how much more easy should all of Britain sleep, if the tyrant were torn from his throne, and France no longer in thrall! What lives should be saved, at the expense of this one life! Others, did they know of it, might speak with shock of statecraft so dishonourably conducted, behind the veil of proper diplomacy; and were the Royalists unmasked, and Lord Harold's part in their skulduggery exposed, he should bring down upon his head only the usual measure of disapprobation his activities generally enjoyed. But I may, perhaps, look more kindly on Sidmouth and his men, for having two brothers much exposed to the caprice of war; and count as nothing the cloak and the dagger deployed to secure their continued health and safety. In truth, I quite admired His Majesty for undertaking such a course. [79] What Jane suspected was in some part true. By 1804 the British government was actively supporting French Royalist plotters who found refuge on English shores by providing them with bank drafts in the millions of francs; and a certain Captain Wright allegedly carried three separate shiploads of Royalist insurgents to French shores throughout 1803 and early 1804. All were discovered, tried, and, in the main, executed. “I may fairly say,” Napoleon later re called, “that during the months from September, 1803, to January, 1804, I was sitting on a volcano.” The assassination attempts culminated in Napoleon's unwarranted seizure and execution of the Due D'Enghien, who was of Bourbon descent and falsely accused of aspiring to Napoleon's throne, in March 1804; but from Austen's account, it would seem that Royalist efforts continued well after ward. — Editor's note.

After perhaps ten minutes of struggle, I gained the cliff's head; and from there, it was but a short scramble to Captain Fielding's garden, and the wilderness temple. I glanced swiftly around me — at the still shadows cloaking the empty house, and the rank-upon-rank of dormant rose bushes, and the discerning eyes of the stone wood nymphs — and without a second thought, secure in such isolation, I plunged into the tool-shed and made for the tunnel's very mouth.

THE DARKNESS OF THE PASSAGE WAS AS ABSOLUTE AS I REMEMBERED; I felt my way down the initial flight of steps, and along the sloping ground, with as much haste as discretion allowed. I could not recall with certainty how many minutes were required for the completion of the distance; but that it should be far less than the ten demanded of a direct assault upon the cliff's face, I confidently assumed. And indeed, a little over half that time had elapsed, when I found myself confronted with the wooden door, and the faint line of light at its edges, that proclaimed me come to the cavern itself. I placed my ear against it, and stood as still as a mouse.

“At the very least, Crawford, allow Mademoiselle Le-Fevre to go free,” came a grim voice; I recognised Sidmouth, and knew that his every illusion regarding Crawford's purpose must be now o'erthrown. “She has done nothing to deserve arrest, and her brother is wounded, as you may plainly see. Send them out to the boat — at pistol point, if need be — and keep me hostage to their word. I may fully vouch that they shall depart without a backwards glance, if I so command it.”

“Do you think me a fool? Should I allow a boat to land, and armed men with it, before the dragoons are come? 1 have not spent a decade in flight of the law, to fall victim to another rogue. No, Sidmouth, you shall remain within, and the signal go unsent, and the boat remain offshore.”

There was a faint groan of suffering — from the injured Philippe, 1 supposed. It was because of the boy that I had assumed Sidmouth would seek hiding so near to the Grange, rather than in the wilds of the Pinny, or simply flying along the Crewkerne road. He was not the sort to leave his ailing cousin, and since any attempt at removal by waggon should delay them insupportably, they must go by boat, and be borne swiftly out of harm's way, or die in the attempt.

There was a rapid cursing in French from Seraphine, and the sound of a woman spitting.

“You may rest easy, Mademoiselle,” came Crawford's voice. “By my lights, we have not long to wait.”

Where, oh, where, was Lord Harold?

“What was that?” Crawford's voice held a note of apprehension. “A sound, like a rock falling.” A pause, during which I assume the Reverend peered cautiously from the cavern's mouth. “Not the dragoons — they should have no need for stealth,” he mused. “Some other, then. Sidmouth!”

Footsteps crossed the cavern swiftly, and I heard with a shudder a cry of pain from Seraphine and the cocking of a pistol. “Your beloved dies, unless you speak the truth. What manner of man is beyond the cavern mouth? Is it Dagliesh, your black dog? Or one of your lily-bearers, perhaps? Out with it!”

“You had better keep your ball for the defence of your prize,” Sidmouth drily rejoined, “than spend it in terrorizing my cousin. I have no notion who might be beyond.”

He spoke strongly, with much of bravado; but there was something like hope in his voice. A sudden in-drawing of breath, and an ill-suppressed whimper from Seraphine, was his only reward.

A gunshot rang out, and I jumped, in a fever of anxiety that Crawford had carried out his ruthless aim; but even as the thought occurred, I knew the ball to have been fired from some distance, the beach beyond, perhaps, and not from within the cavern. It must, it could only be, Lord Harold. There was the sound of a scuffle, and a dragging of a body across the floor of the cave, and then Crawford's voice was very nearly at my ear.

“The girl comes with me, Sidmouth, as proof against your aims. If I am pursued, she dies — even if I must die with her. But if your man outside makes no attempt to follow, you have my word that she shall live.”

I knew with sharp certainty that Crawford intended some retreat up the very tunnel whose doorway I commanded, with Seraphine as his hostage, and I felt my heart race. I pressed myself against the tunnel wall, my breath suspended, and raised Lord Harold's pistol high in both hands. 1 should have only one chance, or be overcome.