Jane Austen Mysteries 08 Jane and His Lordship's Legacy (6 page)

The peace of this country morning was indescribable, a balm for jangled nerves. I stood in the silent kitchen, and lis-tened to the rustling of some small creature against the exterior boards, the lowing of cattle in the distance, and the crowing of a cock--then threw open the back door and stepped out into the yard. A tin pail hung on a hook nailed to the lintel; I took it up, and moved to the well to draw some water. This, I decided, as the pump moved easily on its oiled hinge and the clear water began to flow, should be the work I would claim within our new household: the drawing of water and the preparation of fires in the early morning, the making of a simple breakfast, when everyone else lay abed. The freedom and quiet of an undis-turbed hour should be a luxury beyond everything; indeed, it was all the luxury I desired.

Having escorted us from his dining parlour the previous evening, Mr. Prowting had helped us to lay a simple bed of coals in the kitchen hearth before departing for his own bed. The fire, properly banked, would serve to boil our tea this morning.

The cottage boasted no ingenious modern stove, nothing but a spit and a quantity of iron hooks for the arrangement of kettles, and even Martha might find the conditions less than desirable; but Mr. Prowting had pledged himself to the task of securing a few servants among that class of village folk as were accustomed to labour in genteel houses--had several prospects already in mind--should be happy to interview them so early as today, etc., etc.--and should send the likeliest recruits to my mother for final approval. I foresaw little difficulty, delay, or exertion for myself in the business, and was content this morning to set my mother's kettle on the fire.

The task done, I hesitated briefly in the small kitchen.

Ought I to dress and walk out into the street, in search of the woman Mrs. Prowting assured me was the best baker of fresh Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 41

bread in the village? Or could I trust to Providence and my mother's slumber a little longer, and steal a glimpse at the con-tents of Lord Harold's trunk?

After yesterday's discovery of the corpse, Mr. Prowting had carried my bequest to the henhouse for safekeeping, as I did not think it kind to require the gentleman to enter a stranger's bedchamber. The Rogue's lead key hung heavily in my dressing-gown pocket. I curled my fingers around its length and walked swiftly back out into the yard, in the direction of the outbuildings.

It is in the nature of treasure chests to yield their contents unwillingly. I expected a lengthy engagement with the lock that dangled from the hasp; expected to be reduced to stratagems and tears, blood flowing from my ravaged fingers--but in the event, the key turned in a well-behaved fashion and released the heavy iron pad easily from its bolt.

Barely breathing, I lifted the trunk lid with care.

From Lord Harold's last testament--his wish that I might bring order to his correspondence and somehow construct a narrative from a chaos of events--I had anticipated much con-fusion of parchment. But it seemed that this morning all my cherished notions were to be o'erthrown. Before my eyes was a compartmented cabinet, as neatly arranged as a solicitor's desk, and filled with all manner of letters bound up tidily in varicol-ored ribbons. In one area of the cabinet was a place reserved for leather-bound copybooks; in another was a grouping of ledgers. Several rolled documents, when unfolded, were re-vealed as ships' charts and battlefield maps--at a glance, I could discern the entrepots of the Indian Ocean, and a plan of the city of Paris.

One last despairing hope was finally laid to rest. I had not allowed myself to form an idea of a single piece of paper, hastily 42 ~ Stephanie Barron

scrawled with the word
Jane
and sealed in black wax. But the idea had formed itself even so. I longed for a parting gesture from the man--a bit of foolscap I might carry in my reticule like a relic of the True Cross. But there was nothing. How could there be? Lord Harold had written his will in anticipation of that duel; but never had he truly believed he would die.

I reached for a packet of letters at random and slid the first from beneath its bonds of faded blue silk.

It was dated January, 1770, Eton College--and bore the di-rection of Eugenie, Duchess of Wilborough.

My dearest Mamma--

I must thank you for the box of comfits you sent down with
Attenborough, for they have made me the toast of the form, as
you might expect. My brother would have denied me the whole,
but that I hid the parcel amidst the soiled linen until he was
safely away in his own house, and brought out the feast last
evening with a stub of candle that I had secured in my gown.

I received twelve lashes across the buttocks this morning when
the Crime was discovered, but care nothing for that; my
alienation from the Realm of College at present merely affords
me the occasion to compose a proper letter of thanks to my most
Beloved Mother . . .

Such assurance! In 1770, he had been all of ten years old--and I was not yet born. I held the childish scrawl between my fingers and tried to imagine him: thin, lanky, with a shock of blond Trowbridge hair. He had cultivated even then the talents of a spy.

I ran my fingers swiftly through the packet: there were more than twenty letters preserved from Eton days. Had the blue satin ribbon been Eugenie's? I folded the missive carefully and Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 43

returned it to its place, selecting as I did so another quantity of envelopes.

Calcutta

17 August 1784

My dear Fox--

I received your last, written nearly six months ago, only
yesterday; and must assume that the news of Whig politics it
contains is now irrelevant. I cannot read your strictures on
my respected employer, however, without offering this response.

You speak of crimes--of offences that stink in the eyes of the
Nation--with all the fervour of one unduly influenced by
Edmund Burke. And yet, of what can you honestly accuse
him? Mr. Hastings has engaged in all manner of peccadilloes:
a devious military campaign against the Afghans; a bit of
extortion in the matter of Benares; an injudicious killing of a
native ruler; a duel in which he failed to despatch his
principal enemy and thus ensured the man would poison his
Company's councils ever after. But against this accounting is
all the glory of Mr. Hastings himself: a cultivated mind that
has mastered both Urdu and Bengali; a commanding
knowledge of the historical, geographic, and commercial truths
of the Subcontinent; a subtlety of manner and appreciation
for the customs of the region that have won him numerous
friends, vital to our interest. Should this bill of Pitt's succeed
in wresting the Company's power to the side of Government, it
will ensure Mr. Hastings's quitting his post--a loss not only
for the East India Company, but for the Crown. I must urge
you to transcend the petty divisions of party and class. Far
more is at stake than a toss of the dice at Brooks's.

You will be happy to learn that I have succeeded in
winning to my side the Princess of Mysore, who proclaims
44 ~ Stephanie Barron

herself to have abandoned everything for love of me; or love of
my pocketbook, as the case may prove. I anticipate a scented
paradise in her tent these next three months as she follows me
to Madras.

Do not die of apoplexy, old fellow, before I glimpse the cliffs
of Dover again. My exile shall conclude in another year, at
which point I intend to cut up my father's peace most
dreadfully--

I reread this letter twice in some puzzlement. I knew Lord Harold to have been an intimate of the late Whig leader, Charles James Fox; yet never had he mentioned a period of em-ployment with Warren Hastings, the former Governor-General of Bengal. Indeed, I had not understood the Rogue to have lived in India at all. Mr. Hastings, on the other hand, was re-motely connected with my family, as the putative father of my cousin, Eliza de Feuillide; he was a man whose reputation we had been taught to both revere and suspect. And what was the exile to which Lord Harold referred? Had he fallen out with his father at the tender age of four-and-twenty? I could well believe it possible. A duel--an elopement--a significant loss at cards . . .

or simply the defection of his interest from the Tory party to the Whigs, might have achieved it.

Another letter, this time from 1788:

His Majesty's bilious attacks continue apace, with the
novel variation of insanity: this morning he cawed like a crow
and defecated in his bed, called the Queen a whore and a
poxmonger, while Her Majesty cried out and could not be
comforted, tho' her Ladies attempted to restrain her. His
madness certainly increases, and the moment for the Prince to
seize power is nearly ripe . . .

Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 45

And this, from a year earlier:

Mrs. Fitzherbert is brought to bed of a son, and how we
shall prevent a revolution when the truth is out, I know not--

The henhouse was growing hot. I was aware that a consider-able interval had passed, and that my mother would soon be ris-ing. I surveyed the wealth of packets with dismay. There was too much to be read, too much to digest in an ordered fashion, be-ginning with the earliest dates, to achieve much. I should have to devise a more orderly method--and I must secure a place of safety and solitude in which to work.

I replaced the correspondence and was about to close the chest's heavy lid, when of a sudden I reached for one of the leather-bound copybooks. Perhaps, in his journal, he might once have made mention of me . . .

Paris

8 September 1793

I walked out into the Rue de Sevigne this morning
convinced that I should be seized and thrown into the tumbrel
myself as a renegade and an Englishman, and caring little for
the outcome. If my head were to fall to the blade, what would
it matter, in the end? There are corpses piled beneath the trees
of the Luxembourg and the stink is unimaginable. What we
require is a cleansing fire--a fire that might rage like a storm
about the limestone walls of this city and burn its evils to ash,
as the souls of the dead in India are sent up in smoke on the
holy river of Benares. This is Liberty, then, that Burke was
wont to prattle of: The freedom to exact revenge for the
inequities of life; to tear down and trample beneath one's feet
all that is beautiful and forever denied; to cut and maim as
46 ~ Stephanie Barron

one has been maimed. Last night, as I stood beneath the
vaulted walk of the Palais de Justice, I saw the tumbrel go by:
and in it a young girl with her hair shorn for the blade, her
face as white as her cotton shift: Jouvel's daughter, with whom
I danced the quadrille two summers ago at the
chateau
near
Cluny. Her brother stood beside her: face stark and shadowed,
an expression of rage about the lips--quite useless. A smear of
shit on his brow where someone had insulted him. He was
perhaps fifteen. At that age I thought of nothing but riding to
hounds. They are both dead this morning--they were dead
even as I watched them roll past, and stepped backwards
against the archway's wall that they might not recognise me--

might not hope for a fleeting second in their own salvation.

The long brown hair is tossed like offal into the basket, her
terrified gaze fixed on God or Hell--one and the same, for
those who ride in the tumbrel. I could kill myself for failing to
save them. I could place a pistol against my head and pull the
trigger. All that stops me is my duty to the boy--

I slowly closed the book, my hands no longer steady.

He had given me much in this cavalier bequest: the key to a lifetime of agonies and dreams. I had believed that I under-stood his character--I had even thought that I loved him. But it was clear to me now that I had tasted only a draught of the deep waters that o'erwhelmed Lord Harold's life.

"Jane? Jane!"

My fingers clutched around the copybook, I gazed quickly through the henhouse door.

"Henry!" I cried. "Good God--where did you spring from?"

"Alton," my brother replied carelessly. "I keep a bank there, you know. What do you mean by sitting in the middle of a poul-try yard in your dressing gown at eight o'clock in the morning?"

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Chapter 6

Coincidence, or Pattern?

5 July 1809, cont.

~

It is impossible to describe my astonishment at this sudden apparition of my brother, in a place that--although not wholly alien to him--was nonetheless the very last in which I ex-pected to find him. I had understood our Henry to be fixed with his wife, the aforementioned Eliza de Feuillide, at God-mersham with all our Kentish party; and failing Kent, I should have expected to learn that he and Eliza were returned to Lon-don, where they intended a removal to a new home in Sloane Street. Henry's banking concerns had fared so well of late, and his affluence was so obvious, that the affairs of the Alton branch of Austen, Gray & Vincent might suitably have been left in the hands of his partners for the duration of the summer months; and yet, here was Henry: large as life and impatient for his breakfast.