The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen (20 page)

“Was that a gun?” Mrs. Austen sat bolt upright, her eyes wide with fright and her toothless mouth gaping. The others fussed around her, glad, I suppose, of the distraction.

“Should I go after Fanny, do you think?” I whispered to Jane.

“She’s better left alone,” she replied. “The problem is that she wants to marry, but she’s terrified of having children. She’ll go up to the nursery now and climb into bed with little Brook-John or Cassandra Jane and cry herself to sleep.”

***

There was no chance to talk to Jane alone that evening, but the next night, when Cassandra had gone away, we sat before the fire in Jane’s bedroom, discussing the occupants of the Great House. We talked mostly about Fanny, whose outburst had greatly disturbed me. “She’s so grown-up in some ways, isn’t she,” I said, “but I suppose it’s a terrible strain for her, having always to be an example to the others.”

Jane leaned forward in her chair and poked the fire. A tongue of orange light shot up the chimney. “You know that she actually saw her mother drop down dead at the dinner table?”

“No, I did not.”
Little
wonder
then
, I thought
, that the girl has such a morbid fear of giving birth: how awful to see your own mother collapse and die while you, a helpless child, stood watching it happen.
“It must have been very hard for her,” I said, “stepping into her mother’s shoes at such a young age. I’m sure it would be a terrible wrench for her to have to leave the family before they are all grown. But Louisa seems very keen to marry her off.”

“I know what you’re thinking.” Jane stretched out her hands to the flickering coals. “But I don’t believe Louisa has designs on Edward. I think Fanny’s observation was quite astute, actually; Louisa has never struck me as the type who would marry. I think she has the perfect situation at Godmersham—all the trappings of married life with none of the encumbrances.”

“It would not be very seemly, anyway, would it, for him to marry his dead wife’s sister?”

“I’m sure James would not approve: I’ve heard him give at least one sermon about the immorality of such things, although I don’t see the harm in it myself: who better to take on the care of motherless children than their own aunt? And why should that aunt be forbidden from marrying her brother-in-law because of some arcane verse in the Old Testament? It’s not as if it was enshrined in something weighty, like the Ten Commandments.”

I nodded agreement. “It leads to so much pretense, and there is enough of that in the world already,” I said. “I suppose that if Louisa is happy with things as they are, she has a vested interest in keeping Edward from marrying anybody else.” I leaned closer to the fire, my outstretched hands casting shadows that swallowed the ones she made. “Was Louisa playing a game with Fanny?” I asked. “Championing Sir Edward Knatchbull because she knew her enthusiasm would have the opposite effect?”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” Jane replied. “Louisa is much deeper than she looks. Ten years ago she was a poor, shy little thing, a pale imitation of Elizabeth. But look at her now: she has everything that once belonged to her sister.”

“Yes, I suppose she does,” I frowned. “What about Charlotte, though? Is she interested in your brother, do you think?”

“Not that one.” She turned onto her side, propping her head on one hand. I couldn’t see her eyes, for they were cast in pools of shadow. “She has had a lucky escape, I think. Elizabeth’s brother died before he managed to get her with child. Otherwise she might have become another poor animal.”

“Is that the way she sees it, do you think?

“She has never said that, exactly, but when I watch her in company, I see someone who shies away from men as if they carried some dangerous disease. Edward is the exception: with him she feels safe, because of his loyalty to Fanny. And in that respect, she and Louisa are exactly alike.” She moved her hand to her chest and coughed a little. Then she bent over and rubbed her legs. “I don’t know why it feels so cold in here. It would be warmer, I think, if we got into bed.”

I hung back as she eased herself out of the chair. I watched her untie the dimity ribbons that held back the drapes, uncertain what she wanted me to do. I saw her reach under the pillow for her nightgown. “Will you undo my buttons?” she said, turning her back to me. “Cass usually does them for me, but…” She trailed off, standing there, patiently waiting.
Like
a
child.
The thought intensified the guilt I felt in wanting her beside me. I fixed my eyes on the ceiling as the dress slid from her body, turned away as she stepped out of her underclothes. I heard her shiver as she pulled on her nightgown. I took a step toward Cassandra’s bed. Then I felt her hand on my arm. “Hurry up and get undressed,” she whispered. “I need you to warm me up.”

I could have refused, I suppose, made some excuse about being too tired to stay awake. But I didn’t
want
to exile myself to that other bed—even if the agony of her closeness kept me awake all night.

“My legs are like icicles,” she said, as I slid under the covers. “Will you rub them for me?” She winced as I touched her. Her skin was very cold; unnaturally cold, I thought, for one who had spent the evening next to a fire. She lay on her back as I worked away. “What wonderful hands you have,” she sighed, “so strong and warm!” She could not see the wry expression her words provoked. Nor could she have guessed what torture it was to rub her limbs like a butcher salting meat when what I wanted was to caress them.

After a few more minutes, she said she felt better and I settled down onto the pillow, forcing myself to turn away from her. I felt her hand go around my waist as I tucked my back into the curve of her body. She was quite unaware of the powerful sensation this caused. As I lay there, stock still, the image of that other hand, encased in its white glove, swam before me in the darkness. It stayed with me as I drifted in and out of consciousness, twisting and stretching and melting into a face. It was a woman’s face, and she was trying to tell me something. I remember nothing more, for sleep took me to a place where there was no one but Jane and me, a place where we could lie like this for all eternity.

The next day Jane and I were out in the garden after breakfast. The rain and low clouds had gone and the sun felt warmer than it had all summer. Mrs. Austen was in her customary garb of laborer’s smock and stout boots, digging up potatoes and onions.

“She’s marvelous for her age, isn’t she?” Jane said with a wry smile.

“How old is she, exactly?” I whispered.

“Seventy-six, I think, although she will only ever admit to being over sixty. She won’t let anybody else help with the garden, you know. I think she prefers vegetables to people nowadays—certainly she stays awake longer in their company than she does in ours.”

Martha came out to us then. She was carrying large bunches of dried flowers, which she had unhooked from a rack suspended over the range in the kitchen. She told us the names, but I can only remember one or two. There were feverfew and marigold, the one for headaches and the other for stopping infection in a cut, she said. And I think she mentioned pennyroyal, which is, I believe, principally used for what they call “procuring the menses”: in other words, you take it if you think you are with child and do not wish to be.

“Will you come for a walk with us?” Jane asked her. “We’re going up to the Great House to see the park.”

“I will if I can,” she replied. “I have to put these to steep, though; the weather has been so damp they’ve taken longer than usual to dry. Don’t wait for me—I’ll come and find you.”

The meadow was full of sheep that morning. They scattered as we approached, their feet rumbling like thunder. Chickens were pecking about outside the barns and a sudden rustling in the hedgerow heralded a pheasant, which came scuttling across the path in front of us. The sound of a shot made us both start. The bird had had a lucky escape, for a few moments later Edward emerged from a thicket above the dovecote, his gun slung over his arm and a brown pointer bitch at his heels.

“I’m not going to kiss you in case you kill me by accident,” Jane gave him a little shove as we drew level with him. “Have you slaughtered very many yet? I suppose we should take cover: no doubt Henry will come charging out of the bushes any minute with both barrels blazing.”

“He’s not here,” Edward replied, rubbing a splash of mud off the barrel of his gun with the sleeve of his coat. “He went off with Mary to Steventon last night, said he had some business to sort out with James before he goes back to London.”

“I thought James was ill.” Jane frowned. “Was Henry planning to drag him from his bed at midnight to talk about money? I hope he wasn’t after a loan: he’d get short shrift from James if he was.”

“Who knows what goes on in that mind of his?” Edward shrugged and shook his head. “I was surprised, I must say, for no one loves a day’s shooting like Henry. It must be something weighty, to take him away from these beauties. Excuse me, ladies!” He wheeled around and took aim, felling a bird which had taken the same route across open ground as the one we had seen earlier. “Stupid thing! They really don’t deserve to live, do they?” He whistled to his pointer, who went bounding off to collect it.

Jane shuddered at the sight of the dog returning, blood dripping from the limp creature held in its jaws. “Come on,” she said, “I love to eat them, but I can’t bear to see them killed. They look so pathetic, somehow, in all their finery.”

As we came in view of the house she stumbled a little. I caught hold of her arm and held it as we squeezed through the gap in the laurel bushes. “Are you sure your legs are better?” I asked her. In bed that morning she had told me that the numbness had gone, that she was feeling like her old self again. Now I wondered if she was telling me the truth.

“I’m fine, really,” she replied. “It was a stone or a wet leaf or something; my foot just slipped.” To show me my fears were misplaced, she strode out ahead of me, past the east porch and around the side of the house to the terrace. “I want to show you the Wilderness,” she called over her shoulder. “I used it in
Mansfield
Park
.”

Martha waved to us across the lawn as we emerged from the dark, silent copse with its hidden pathways cut through groves of ancient ash and beech. “Fanny is waiting for you at the Great House,” she said when she caught up with us. “She thought you might like some lunch after your walk.” She was looking at Jane with an expression of undisguised concern, reinforcing my suspicion that Jane was underplaying the seriousness of whatever it was that ailed her.

“Is it that time already?” Jane pulled out her gold watch and consulted it. “We were going to see the deer park and the kitchen garden.”

“There’ll be plenty of time for those another day.” Martha took her by the arm and steered her toward the house with an apologetic glance at me. I got the impression that she and Cassandra had a sort of pact between them; Martha, it seemed, took on the role of mothering Jane in Cass’s absence. There was no word of protest at this treatment. Once again, Jane silently complied, surrendering her body to the will of others like a bird with a broken wing.

Fanny was all smiles when she came to greet us, hardly recognizable as the girl who had flounced out of the ladies’ withdrawing room the night before last. “Would you like to see the children?” she asked me. “They’re with Caky in the nursery. Marianne has been asking after you. I didn’t think she would remember—she was only about five when you left, wasn’t she? But she said: ‘Was Miss Sharp the one with the big hands, who used to hide hazelnuts behind her back and make us guess which one they were in?’”

I laughed at this.
Yes
, I thought,
my
hands
really
are
the
only
remarkable
things
about
me
. But I felt unaccountably nervous as I climbed the stairs in Fanny’s wake. Marianne would be fourteen now and baby Louisa a girl of twelve; Cassandra Jane would be nine and Brook-John on the brink of his sixth birthday. As the nursery door opened the source of my unease hit me: I feared seeing Henry in their faces.

The person I saw first, though, was not one of the children. It was Sackree, bent over some mending, sitting by the window to catch the light. Well into her fifties now, she had hardly changed at all. Still in mourning black for the husband she had lost twenty years since, and still with that hawkish look in her eyes, even though it was a piece of muslin she was attacking.

“Oh, you’ve come then,” she said, without looking up. She might as well have said:
Good
day
to
you, Lady Muck: I suppose you think you’ve grown too fine for the likes of us?

Fanny’s face fell. Then she saw that I was smiling. I marched across the room and planted a kiss on Sackree’s forehead. “There, you old battle-ax,” I said. “Am I forgiven now?”

Sackree rolled her eyes. “Pull that up,” she said, gesturing to a child’s stool standing near the fireplace. “Make yourself comfortable, why don’t you?”

“Where are the children?” Fanny was puzzled by our performance, never having been party to the banter we exchanged in my Godmersham days.

“Gone to the kitchen garden to pick flowers for madam here,” Sackree replied. “A nice little bunch of Deadly Nightshade and Old Man’s Beard.”

With a little gasp of exasperation Fanny turned on her heel. “I’ll go and find them. Try to be civil to each other while I’m away.”

Sackree gave me a sly look when the door closed. “Well, Sharp, I see that your nose hasn’t gotten any smaller and your bosom hasn’t gotten any bigger.”

“And I notice that you are as fat as ever, my dear Sackree.” I leaned forward to pinch her arm and fell off the stool, landing in a heap on the carpet. She was shaking with laughter by the time I picked myself up. We both took deep breaths then in a bid to subdue the hysterics that overtook us each time one of us tried to say something.

“I’m glad to see you looking happy,” she managed at last. “I always thought you seemed so lost in that great big house.”

“I was,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I’m quite content in my new situation although I miss the company of children.”

She nodded and her face clouded. I asked her if she still missed her husband.

“Not really.” She tugged at the black collar of her gown. “I wear this for her, not him.” Catching my blank look she said: “It’s for the mistress. I loved her like she was my own child.” I had never seen such a look as she gave then; I swear her eyes changed color, from pale blue to gray-green, like the sea on a showery summer day. “She was only two years old when I first had the care of her: I was thirteen and come to Lady Bridges as under nursery maid. I remember the first time I ever set eyes on her: such a beauty she was, like a little fairy, that’s what I thought.”

“She
was
very beautiful.” This I could say honestly, knowing I could not bring myself to utter any other compliment.

“When she married and young Fanny was born, she begged Lady Bridges to let me come to her.” She let out a deep sigh and a single tear escaped her left eye, trickling down the side of her nose to land with a splash on the black bombazine bodice. “I never thought to lose her at six-and-thirty. She might have looked like a fairy princess, but she was as strong as an ox in her confinements; I never saw such a brave one as she.”

I was framing some response about the awfulness of Elizabeth’s death when the door flew open and a little boy marched into the room with a huge bunch of chrysanthemums held out in front of him like a shield. I could not see much of his face, for the flowers obscured it.

“Go on, Brook-John, give them to Miss Sharp!” A pretty blond-haired child, the very image of Elizabeth Austen, stepped around the door behind her little brother. She looked about eleven or twelve and I guessed that this must be Louisa. Following behind her was another, older girl, whom I recognized from her dark curls as Marianne, and an impish little redhead who could only be Cassandra Jane. Louisa, I noticed, had the distinctive Austen mouth—small and rosebud-like—and an aquiline nose. The other girls had wider lips and smaller noses. Brook-John, when he lowered the flowers, revealed a chubby face with eyes just like Jane’s.
When
he
loses
that
little-boy softness
, I thought,
he
will
be
another
Henry
.

“These are for you, miss,” he said and with a little bow he handed the chrysanthemums to me. The others stood awkwardly in the doorway until Fanny shooed them forward. I reached for my reticule and, to my relief, saw that there was a shilling amongst the coppers that weighed it down.

“Are you big enough to walk all the way to Alton, yet?” I asked him.

“Oh yes, miss.” The hazel eyes widened. “I went to the fair last week with Aunt Cass and Aunt Jane.”

“Then you can buy some sweets for your sisters, can’t you?” I pressed the silver coin into his hand and was rewarded with a smile that made my heart lurch in my chest.

***

We left the Great House in high spirits, for the children had Fanny and me racing each other around the courtyard with hoops and sticks. I was quite touched to hear them cheering so loudly as I took the lead, until I realized that the racket was made on purpose to provoke Sackree into tipping a jug of water from the nursery window.

“Is your gown very wet?” Jane was trying not to smile as we walked down the drive. “I should have warned you about them; they’re little devils. Edward’s decided to take them off to Paris tomorrow. He says he’s tired of all the rain and the mud.” She reached for my arm and linked hers through it. “I don’t know why he thinks Paris will be any better; Madame Bigeon says the weather there is hardly any different to London.”

As we reached the end of the drive I saw someone waving over a garden wall. It was a man who looked about Edward’s age, but much thinner and longer in the face. He didn’t call out or come any closer but carried on doing whatever he was engaged in, which, from the way his mouth opened and closed, appeared to be talking to his laurel bushes.

“That’s Reverend Papillon,” Jane hissed as we passed by. “He likes to rehearse his sermons in the garden. I am to marry him, you know.” I turned to her, horrified. Seeing my face she snorted into her handkerchief. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. It’s been a joke in the family ever since we moved to Chawton. He lives with his maiden sister and I don’t think he would marry me if I was the last woman on earth.” She winked at me over the white lace of the handkerchief. “I shouldn’t be mean about him: he actually went out and bought his own copy of
Sense
and
Sensibility
. After church the other day, he asked me if he was the inspiration for Edward Ferrars. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wrote it fifteen years before we came to live here.”

The cottage was just a few yards away now and I could see Mrs. Austen walking up the path with a basket of carrots. I couldn’t help imagining how happy she would have been to see her daughter married to a parson, however laughable Jane made it sound. And to my shame I realized that I was jealous of the Reverend Papillon, for no other reason than that he was a man and I was not.