Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron jam-10

by Stephanie Barron

  I suppressed a smile. “Recollect that Lord Byron cannot publish an iota of your unfortunate encounter without bringing the whole world’s indignation on his own head. You may rest easy, Miss Twining — indeed you may. Do but remain by your father’s side, and all shall be well. You are certainly safe from dancing with his lordship.”

  “True, he never dances,” Catherine said despairingly. “Not even with Lady Caroline Lamb.”

  I gazed at her in astonishment. “You are acquainted with Lady Caroline?”

  “Not at all,” Catherine admitted. “All the world is aware of her connexion with Lord Byron. It is said that he forbade her to waltz at Almack’s, because he could not bear to see her in the arms of another; and that she submitted to the prohibition!”

  “We may assume Lady Caroline is waltzing again,” I said drily, “Lord Byron having formed a rival attachment.”

  Catherine flushed. “I think her a very dashing female,” she said wistfully. “Quite out of the common way. I should like to have a glimpse of her. Did you know that she is come to Brighton?”

  “I had heard as much, yes.”

  “But oh, Miss Austen — ” this was becoming a refrain with Miss Twining, rather as tho’ she had learnt it from a novel — “I am ready to sink! Papa shall retire to the card room as soon as the first dance is struck up; and I shall be consigned to the care of Mrs. Silchester. She is Papa’s chosen chaperon on every occasion, having been at school with dear Mamma; but she shrinks from offending the gentlemen. You saw how little her protection availed me with Colonel Hanger — and this is Byron! Could I not accompany you to your rooms, and sit with you for a little while?”

  I studied the hectic looks of my young friend — the wide, startled eyes — and saw that she had worked herself into a nervous passion. “You are looking far too pretty to give up an Assembly, Miss Twining, and should be wasted on the closed air of my rooms!”

  “Catherine!” the General’s voice called peremptorily from behind his daughter.

  “Could you not stay a little?” she pressed in an urgent whisper.

  “Even were I of a mind to sit down throughout, I am told that the Master of Ceremonies — Mr. Forth, is it not? — is very strict in observing the proprieties. I should not wish to excite his censure.”

  “No — that is, I quite understand — ”

  “Catherine!” the General barked. “You are not attending! Make your excuses to your friend — Mr. Smalls awaits your pleasure!”

  “Coming, Papa.” Catherine made her curtsey. “May I call upon you tomorrow, Miss Austen?”

  “ — And relate every detail of your Success. I shall be in the Castle’s writing room at one o’clock. I absolutely forbid you to be abroad any earlier — after the fatigues of the Assembly, you shall require a late morning.”

  “I shall depend upon finding you.” And with one last, speaking look, Catherine Twining hurried off to place her flower-like hand in the crabbed paw of Mr. Hendred Smalls.

  “WHY IS THE GENERAL DETERMINED TO THROW AWAY HIS daughter upon that aging cleric?” I demanded of my brother as we mounted the stairs to our rooms. “Were she a lady of my age — long since upon the shelf, and every prospect of romance blasted — I should understand his grasping at the most grotesque fellow who offered; but to thrust poor Catherine — who has everything to recommend her: youth, birth, and beauty — at a man who has none of these, is beyond my comprehension!”

  “Do not be offering her a place in our curricle, Jane,” Henry warned as he paused before my door.

  “I shall be as firm as you desire.”

  “Our journey home shall be sadly flat,” he sighed, “without the prospect of duels or abduction to lend it spice.”

  THE MUSIC AND BUSTLE THROUGHOUT THE CASTLE BEING likely to keep me awake some hours, I settled down to pen this account in my journal; and as my candle guttered low, and the cessation of the instruments suggested supper was being served, I stirred up Betsy’s excellent fire, replenished my candlestick, and got into bed to read by the dim light. The improving nature of the text — I had selected a volume of sermons in deference to Recent Events of a Melancholy Turn — was unequal to the fatigue of so advanced an hour; my mind was prone to wander. Laughter and hubbub drifted up from the Assembly Rooms, and I had an idea of the overheated girls, catching a chill as they moved from ballroom to supper, picking at their ices and smoked salmon. Catherine should yet be among them; I hoped for her sake that Lord Byron had quitted the rooms at an early hour, and that Mr. Smalls had retired, as the elderly must, to the card room — leaving the object of his fancy to more suitable partners. Poor Catherine! To be caught between the rage of the poet, and the simpering of the clergyman!

  What she required, I thought, was a simple, bracing sportsman like my brother Edward had been. Henry, indeed, was confident that just such a suitor must appear. But what if the Unknown came too late? Jane, Jane, I scolded myself as I snuffed out my candle near two o’clock, when at last the sounds of revelry had died from the rooms and streets below — You ought to have nothing to do with the child’s troubles. But Lord Byron had decided that; it was his abduction that had ensnared me.

  TUESDAY, 11 MAY 1813

  “SUCH A SCENE, MY DEAR MISS AUSTEN, YOU CAN NEVER have witnessed!”

  Lady Swithin threw back her head — which bore a pert little jockey bonnet this morning, worn with a spencer of French twill — and crowed with laughter. “Caro Lamb, with a circlet on her brow, a robe fit for a Greek chorus, sandals, and her toenails painted with gold leaf. She stopped all conversation dead when she appeared in the Assembly Rooms; and I am certain one of the violinists snapped a string, from the resounding twang! that greeted her arrival.”

  “But she was known to be a guest of the Regent’s,” I observed reasonably. “I suppose she may attend the local ball, if she chuses.”

  “It was not Caro, so much as her appearance! I do not think she could have aroused greater comment had she paraded through the Assembly naked. She was determined to figure as Lord Byron’s Attic Muse — the breathing heart of Childe Harold. When instead, as poor Swithin observed, she succeeded merely in suggesting a Cyprian Goddess.”

  By this, of course, Lady Swithin meant a harlot.

  “And Lord Byron?” I enquired.

  “ — Was a veritable picture of Persecuted Genius. His brow darkened stormily; he threw off all restraining hands; he muttered imprecations in Caro’s general direction; and departed without speaking so much as a word to her.”

  “Very ungentlemanly. He thus exposed Lady Caroline to the ridicule of her world; and I cannot admire him for it.”

  “No; but you shall be glad of one thing — Caro’s arrival freed your little friend, Miss Twining, from Byron’s pursuit at least! He was most determined last evening. She had only to quit the floor at the close of a dance, and loose the hand of her partner — who might be gone in search of lemonade, or pineapple ice — to be set upon by his lordship, blind to all else, and quoting impassioned words over her shrinking form. Poor goosecap, I quite pitied her; Swithin was just such an one, you know, when in the throes of passion for me.”

  I had seen Lord Swithin in disappointed Love; he had never approached the diabolical figure who struck terror in Catherine’s heart.

  “Then Miss Twining has cause to be grateful to Lady Caroline,” I observed.

  “Yes, indeed! And I observed the two ladies conversing, if you will credit it, later that evening — so perhaps your friend found occasion to convey her thanks, however awkward Lord Byron might regard such a conversation, did he know of it. And now I must be off — Swithin has a horse running in the race, you know, and I dare not stay away. I wish you would make another of our party!”

  I begged off, having formed a prior engagement; and looked forward to hearing an account of Catherine’s interesting evening from her own lips — but she did not appear in the Castle’s writing room at one o’clock.

  I could not wonder at her absence; she must have
been abroad very late, and no doubt slept until noon. I had crossed full two sheets to Cassandra with a report of our dinner in Marine Parade, and the hour was advanced, when my brother Henry burst into the panelled chamber. His looks were agitated and his face dreadfully pale.

  “Henry!” I cried, starting up. “Are you unwell?”

  He glanced around him wildly; I was not the sole occupant of the writing room, and whatever his news might be, it was not intended for a stranger’s ears. I collected my papers swiftly and joined him in the doorway.

  “You have not heard,” he murmured, grasping me by the elbow and propelling me towards the Castle’s front door.

  “You bear some dreadful news?”

  “Catherine Twining. Your acquaintance. It is all over Raggett’s.”

  “What scrape has the foolish girl fallen into now? She did not keep her appointment this afternoon.”

  “Nor shall she keep any in future, Jane.”

  I stopped short and studied his face. “She has quitted Brighton?”

  “For good and all.” He drew me inexorably out into the fresh air of the Steyne, where I saw that a crowd had gathered near the old publick house called the King’s Arms — the place so roundly patronised by the officers of Brighton Camp and their devoted followers. But Henry avoided the publick house, and turned hurriedly into the Promenade Grove. He led me to a seat in a neat square of shrubbery.

  “You must prepare yourself, Jane.” His grey eyes were flat with despair.

  “Tell me what you must, Henry — I beg of you.”

  “Miss Twining’s body was discovered in Lord Byron’s bed at the King’s Arms this morning.”

  “No!” I cried.

  Catherine as I had last seen her — the agitation in all her looks, her dread of that man — sprang vividly to mind.

  She had been right to fear him.

  He had killed her.

  In a fit of passion — whether rage, love, madness, who could say? — Lord Byron had torn out the life of that delicate flower. But how had he lured her from the General’s side? What possible mischance had delivered the girl into Byron’s hands?

  And what profound indifference to his own security had led him to murder her in his very bedchamber?

  “Was she … had he …”

  Of course he had; but the word rape was one I found difficult to utter.

  But Henry was hardly attending, his gaze fixed on his gloved hands.

  “It is the oddest thing, Jane,” he said. “She was wrapped in a sailor’s hammock, sewn tight; and when the thing was slit open, it was discovered that she had drowned.”

  Chapter 12 Canvassing a Murder

  TUESDAY, 11 MAY 1813

  BRIGHTON, CONT.

  HENRY’S SMALL FUND OF INTELLIGENCE WAS IMPARTED IN a matter of moments as we sat in the sheltered privacy of the Promenade Grove.

  “It was the chambermaid who found her. The girl thought it odd that Lord Byron’s door should be slightly ajar, and yet no sound of movement be audible within,” he said. “The maid hesitated to disturb his lordship, because of course it is well known the man is a poet, and has been engaged in writing out cantos of his latest work — ”

  “He is writing here in Brighton?” I said numbly.

  “Apparently so. At all events, neither Byron nor his traps were to be found in the bedchamber; but the unfortunate Miss Twining — ”

  It was whispered at Raggett’s that the girl was still clothed in the white muslin gown she had worn at the Assembly. There were marks of brutality at her throat, as tho’ she had been forcibly held under water — and she had died in the sea, for the dried stains of salt water were everywhere upon her person.

  “The chambermaid put it about that her eyes were wide open,” Henry said in a subdued tone, “and that such a look of terror as lingered in them, she hoped never to witness again.”

  “But the hammock, Henry?” I knew of such things from my Naval brothers; when a sailor died, his sleeping hammock served as shroud — sewn up around him, before burial at sea. “Was Miss Twining forced into it alive — trapped inside?”

  The image of the girl, fighting like a blind kitten tossed with its brethren into the mill pond at birth, was too hideous to contemplate. How terrified she must have been — the darkness of the night, and the blacker dark of the water as it flooded around her —

  “No,” my brother said. “The marks on her neck suggest otherwise. The hammock may have been intended to hide the deed — or dispose of the body — but somehow or other it ended in Byron’s rooms. Miss Twining was probably already dead when she was placed into it, and carried to Byron’s bedchamber by her murderer.”

  “Can its owner be identified?”

  “The word Giaour is embroidered on its edge.”

  “Giaour?” I repeated blankly. “What sort of word is that, Henry?”

  “I have no idea. But presumably Miss Twining’s murderer knows; it will perhaps be the name of his boat — or one readily to hand, at the moment he …”

  “Forced her head under the waves.” I stared at my brother, a scene from two days previous recurring to mind: the crimson-hulled yacht, surging out to sea, and the dark-haired sailor at her helm, ignoring the foundering woman in his wake. “Why must you persist in referring to her murderer, Henry, as tho’ we had not an idea who it was? Are we both not certain in our minds? It will be Lord Byron’s boat that is found to be called Giaour.”

  And in the most intense irritation at the entire race of men, I swung away from him abruptly, striding down the Marine Parade in the direction of Black Rock.

  I COULD NOT BE EASY IN MY CONSCIENCE. I WAS BESET with the demons of regret. Nothing could be clearer than that the poet, spurned, had exacted a hideous revenge upon young Catherine Twining — and we had been the agents of her release from his chaise. But how had she died? What fateful events had determined the hours after I parted from poor Catherine at the door of the Assembly Rooms — and why, oh why, had I refused to stay? It seemed, in retrospect, so little that the girl had asked; and I had prated about propriety. But for me, Catherine Twining might yet be alive.

  When Henry caught up with me, far down the Marine Parade, I was more mistress of myself. But he paced beside me wordlessly, both of us buffeted by the wind. The rain of the previous day had given way to a cloudless sky, the sun brilliant and hard-cut as a diamond; sea wrack lay everywhere strewn about the shingle.

  “Have they arrested the poet?” I demanded at last.

  “They cannot find him, Jane.”

  I looked swiftly round.

  “The publican at the King’s Arms would have it his lordship settled his accounts and quitted his rooms late last night after the Assembly — having encountered Lady Caroline Lamb at the ball, to his apparent rage.”

  “Lady Caroline! Good God, I had forgot — so Lady Swithin told me this morning. Your intelligence had put such trivialities entirely out of my head,” I exclaimed.

  “Directly Byron espied her ladyship — she appeared about midnight, so they said in Raggett’s, and you must know that Byron’s good friend Scrope Davies is a member whose word may be relied upon — his lordship left the Assembly, packed up his traps at the King’s Arms, and repaired to Davies’s lodgings for the night.”

  “And Miss Twining remained, as yet,” I said slowly, “if Lady Swithin is to be believed. The Countess saw Miss Twining in conversation with Caro Lamb, of all people — we laughed about it this morning. The lady obsessed with Lord Byron — and the lady with whom Lord Byron is obsessed — trading pleasantries before the eyes of all Brighton.”

  “Scrope Davies insists that Byron slept under his roof, and quitted Brighton on horseback at eight o’clock this morning — well before the … well before Miss Twining was discovered at the King’s Arms.”

  I frowned. “But then how did poor Catherine — ”

  “Exactly. Is Davies lying to protect his friend? Or did Byron slip out of Davies’s house and meet with Catherine elsewhere — drown
her on the shingle — pack her into the hammock — carry her to the King’s Arms, enter his old rooms to deposit her there … and then repair once more to Scrope Davies’s for an appearance at breakfast?”

  “It strains belief, Henry,” I muttered. “His lordship should have to be mad.”

  “Well, Jane …” my brother began dubiously.

  But I shook my head. “Why shroud the girl in a hammock at all? Why not leave her as she lay, drowned on the shingle, so that the tide might take her? No possible connexion could then be made between his lordship and Miss Twining.”

  “I had thought, Jane, that perhaps some other, with designs upon the girl’s life, might avail himself of Lord Byron’s empty rooms. None can say. I understand, however, that the local magistrate has sent his constables post-haste up the New Road towards London — in the hope of overtaking Byron on his way, or meeting with him at his lodgings in St. James’s. His lordship must appear at the inquest — for there will have to be an inquest, naturally.”

  We were now perhaps a mile and a half from the Promenade Grove; and the day being fine, we were treated to such scenes of quotidian Brighton life as must grace each fleeting May: the fishwives about their endless gutting; children, half-clad and barefoot, scampering upon the sands; and the bathing machines with their dippers, drawn down to the shoreline by a team of horses.[16]

  “I cannot accept what you are telling me, Henry,” I said, as my gaze drifted over the happy scene. “Miss Twining was in the company of her father last evening. She was escorted by that repugnant clergyman. How, then, did she go missing long enough to meet her end — and the General never sound the alarm?”

  “All excellent questions, to which I may return no answers.”

  I clasped my hands in frustration. “How I wish it might have been possible for us to attend that ball!”