by Paul Butler
Her first look, her first expression, showed only confusion, and of a rather mild — perhaps even amused — kind, as though this were some prank, a party trick of some sort. Her gaze then became timid, apologetic, as she took in the nakedness of our arms and shoulders, the sense that she had, after all, trespassed. Her scattering notice seemed also to take in our clothes — Oliver’s nightshirt on the floor near the mantelpiece where he had thrown it, my breeches and jacket folded over a chair near the foot of the bed. I sensed that Anne supposed the unseemliness, the breach in propriety, was her own mistake in witnessing us. She had not yet considered the significance or meaning of the event itself. Confirming this, I caught a quick, nervous smile and then a glance down the stairs towards Jenny. A mistake has been made, her actions seemed to say.
Oliver stirred now, lodging himself upon his elbows.
“Hello again, Miss Elliot,” he said.
This time — I knew immediately — Anne would understand what she was seeing.
Her gaze was drawn to Oliver’s smile, and her features lost their form and composure, her pale lips trembling. It was the look I had seen at the climax to a hunt; hers was the blank yet terrified stare of an animal caught in a predator’s jaws. She was afraid to think because thinking would bring about a certainty she could not face.
She looked at me too, but not in recognition. I may as well have been a stump of wood or a brick. With slow, disconnected movements she turned and began walking down the stairs. Through the still-open door I watched the landing darken as the candlelight descended.
“Is everything well, Miss Elliot?” It was Jenny’s voice. There was an obvious sincerity and a sense of disappointment in the words. I realized that there was only one architect of this disaster, and that I was lying in bed with him.
23. PLATO
I HADN’T EVEN CONSIDERED the question of what we should expect when we arrived at Harville’s lodgings. The night was in such a deep slumber with soft hail pattering on our shoulders and around our feet, it seemed that our mission — two vagabonds accusing a respected naval captain of murder — would receive some measure of sanctuary from the waking world. Henry would not speak, so we moved through the night like members of a silent order. I had made every decision unopposed since leaving the river but none of it seemed real. Henry and I, and Lucy moving restlessly against the frozen dampness of my back, were surely the products of some brothel-keeper’s intoxicated nightmare: When sunrise came, pink and orange hues tingeing Bath’s rooftops, the sleeper would awake. No matter what mischief we caused before that time, the three of us would escape by vanishing like dream spirits into the limestone.
Emerging onto Gay Street from George, I realized we had overshot Harville’s address. I examined the house fronts as we moved southwards; they showed like dark teeth in the falsest of smiles. But then the flutter of a candle appeared, spreading its golden halo. This, I realized, was Harville’s own doorstep. I slowed and so did Henry.
Two figures, small and feminine, stood for a second before one — she without the candle — turned and left the house walking in our direction. The other, a maid by her dress, watched after her, shielding her candle flame from the hail.
The approaching woman, I saw now, was none other than Anne Elliot. I made to tug at the front curls of my hair, but her face, when I saw it at close quarters, was as unseeing of us as one of the paintings hanging in the corridors of the Assembly Rooms; only the seeds of hail landing upon her bonnet gave proof to her corporeal form.
I turned as she passed then watched her figure steadily getting smaller as she made her way up hill, I presumed, to Camden Place. Looking back to the house, I saw the maid disappearing through the doorway with her candle. Another light on the ground floor was burning now. These signs of life urged me on when complete darkness might have dissuaded me. Lucy gave a short cry of protest, so I pulled her close. Henry shuffled obediently alongside.
Something had happened in that house already, it was certain. Only the direst of emergencies would have brought a lady of Miss Elliot’s rank into the streets alone at night. A funerary flavour had hung about her as she passed. But who had died? And why was she travelling home carriage-less and unaccompanied?
It felt like a night of endings already — Henry’s barge, Henry’s horse, both of these things going the way of my association with Mrs. Smith, and now Miss Anne Elliot, her face set in marble, leaving the home of her betrothed with no carriage, no one but a servant to see her off. I faced the knocker now and wondered how many converging endings it would take to create the apocalypse.
I raised the brass and let it fall. Before my mind had formed the words I should use, the door opened. The same maid, red hair bonneted and tied tightly behind her neck, appeared. Her candle flame ducked sideways in response to the movement of the door. She looked from me to Henry in — perhaps understandable — surprise. Then she looked beyond my shoulder as though I might be concealing the one who had just left.
“We need to speak to Captain Harville,” I said. “It is quite urgent.”
“What is it now, Jenny?” came a voice from behind her. “Has Miss Elliot returned?” The voice’s owner pulled the door further ajar. Captain Harville’s wife appeared, huddled in a dressing gown, strands of hair escaping from her silken mob-cap.
“What is this?” she said, looking not at her maid or Henry, but at me, her pupils contracted.
Before the maid could answer, I took advantage of a gap between the doorframe and the women and stepped inside. Henry followed using the wake left by the women’s sudden retreat.
“We mean to speak to your husband, Mrs. Harville. We have urgent business with him.”
The curious thing about assertion, I suspect, is its simplicity. By any law or custom of this land, I had no right to be in this house past midnight in the presence of so formidably respectable a person as Mrs. Harville. If one were to believe in justice as a material thing which exists to sustain and restore order regardless of our individual power to impose these things, then Henry and I, if not the child, would have withered and expired like parched mandrakes the moment we crossed the threshold. But this did not happen. The immediate consequence of our actions saw Mrs. Harville gaze up at me with something like respect. Her hand dithered protectively around her neck but she met my steady gaze and did not, as I supposed might have been possible, threaten to scream and rouse the household which she knew to contain several high-ranking naval officers. And then, even more improbably, her features seemed to soften into a kind of appeasement, her pupils returning to normal size.
“The child,” she whispered.
Only now did I see that the alteration of her expression had come about because she was looking just past my head at Lucy whose face had wearily lifted from my back.
“You should lay her down,” she added softly. “Follow me into the drawing room. Jenny, put some fresh wood upon the fire.”
Mistress and maid disappeared through a doorway with the candle and we were bid again to follow. Once inside, Lucy, as though conjured awake by Mrs. Harville’s interest, began to babble. Mrs. Harville hovered behind me as I unstrapped the child and to my surprise took her weight and carried her closer to the hearth where the first spots of fresh flame began to show among the embers and rising sparks. Mrs. Harville’s tenderness towards Lucy robbed me temporarily of speech. This was the enemy’s lair, I had to remind myself, no matter how softly Mrs. Harville cooed at my niece, nor how carefully she arranged cushions upon the floor to make up her bed. Henry, close by my side, gave me a strange, bewildered look as though he had just awoken into another world.
“Mrs. Harville,” I said, “may I know where your husband is?”
“Well … Plato, isn’t it?” she said, gently pinching Lucy’s cheek, making the child squeal with delight. “I am not sure. I imagine he has gone to his dear sister’s grave.” She pressed Lucy’s nose. Lucy laughed and gra
bbed her finger. Mrs. Harville made a show of trying and failing to wrestle it away. “My! You are such a strong, healthy child!”
“Mrs. Harville.” I tried to keep impatience from my voice. “We need to…”
“Talk to my husband urgently, yes, I know, you told me.” She spoke as though addressing Lucy, pinching her other cheek with her free hand. “Perhaps you could tell me what you want from him and we can see what we can do.”
The maid finished lighting the second of two candles on the hearth mantle. She stood before her mistress, and curtsied. “What should I do now, Ma’am?”
Mrs. Harville seemed to think for a moment. “Could you watch out for Miss Elliot in case she returns, Jenny, and listen for any movement from Captain Wentworth’s quarters. Let me know if you have any more information about what has occurred.”
The maid left and, for the first time since taking Lucy, Mrs. Harville turned to me.
I glanced at Henry. The crime against him would have to wait for the moment. “Mrs. Harville … your former maid, Elsie…” Mrs. Harville looked up at me and blinked. “The mother of this child?”
Her eyes softened in the same curious way as before. The hint of a smile played about her lips. “The mother of this child,” she murmured.
“How did she die?” I asked.
“Ha,” she said without surprise, then turned back to Lucy and put her palm on the child’s small belly. “This is why you’ve come.” She took her hand away. Lucy squealed and waggled her legs, and a new game started. Mrs. Harville’s hand came down again.
“We believe … we have a very strong indication, Mrs. Harville, that Captain Harville killed her.” My ears burned at the sound of the accusation. I braced myself for an onslaught.
Mrs. Harville’s hand lay still for a moment, but then the game resumed. Lucy grabbed her fingers as she withdrew and Mrs. Harville brandished her captured hand above Lucy’s head. “Oh you are a quick girl,” she said. She looked up at me and glanced also at Henry for the first time. “You are entirely wrong, Plato. No one killed Elsie. She died by accident, falling down the stairs.” She looked at Henry again and smiled.
“With respect, Mrs. Harville,” I said, my skin burning, “what kind of accident requires no doctor, no coroner, and no inquest?” I turned to Henry and made sure she caught my nod in his direction.
“The kind of accident, dear sir, the scrutinizing of which would do harm to many but good to no one.” Mrs. Harville’s face had come down low towards Lucy, and the child had caught hold of one of the ribbons from her mob-cap. She encouraged this now, twirling another of the ties above Lucy’s small, clutching hands, speaking in the same soft, lullaby voice. “You know already we were dealing with an impossible situation. The girl had no relatives living, few friends. If we opened the situation up to the courts and the scandal sheets, all manner of things might have been revealed and exploited.”
“Such as, Mrs. Harville? Tell us. This man’s life was put in danger through your husband’s actions tonight.” Henry shuffled on his feet now, embarrassed to be the subject of conversation. “Captain Harville bound him and then set fire to his barge.”
Mrs. Harville looked up and watched Henry for a moment. A furrow had appeared on her brow. At last, I thought. “There has to be something more,” I said. “Something he’s desperate for people not to know. How exactly did this girl meet her death?”
Mrs. Harville straightened her knees, gave Lucy’s belly one more playful prod. “Elsie died, young man, when she was about to steal this beautiful child back from you. I tried to stop her, to prevent her from going. We struggled, and she fell.”
I watched her face for signs of mendacity, but her eyes met mine steadily enough. Still it made no sense. I thought back in the alley and the night Elsie brought me the child. I heard again the palpable disinterest in her voice as she told me how Captain Harville believed it was the best thing. Even the statement of regret for bringing shame upon her master’s home had seemed forced, as though she had learned it by heart: “I’ve brought disgrace to my master’s house. And they have so much to deal with already with poor Miss Fanny’s sickness.” And then there had been the way she’d handled the squirming baby, as though she were afraid it would bite her. This revulsion of hers seemed commonplace and practical. It was not the volatile loathing that is supposed to come to some women after birthing. It seemed quite inconsistent with a change of heart that would have made her want to sneak the child back.
“Why did she change her mind?” I asked simply.
“My sister-in-law, Fanny, persuaded her.”
The answer was so unexpected, and so sparse in its detail, I had to pause to gather my momentum again. Mrs. Harville’s gaze now rested on Lucy’s features and her face was etched into a sad smile.
“But how, Mrs. Harville, how when Elsie’s own emotions and instincts had come to terms with parting from the child … how had her mistress persuaded her to reconsider?”
She paused again. I saw the tip of her tongue touch her lip. A lone flame rose high behind her. “Elsie was very fond of her mistress, quite fond enough to defy us for Fanny’s sake.” She looked up from Lucy now and met my eye directly. “But the emotions and instincts, as you call them, were Fanny’s.”
It took a moment to take it in. They liked to do this, people of a certain rank or refinement. They liked to weave their real meaning beneath riddles: A lady in the house confined in bed for an illness never named; a child born, apparently, to the maid; the lady persuading the maid to “rescue” the child.
I had reached the end of a quest, it seemed, and the answer had changed the question. I should not have been searching for the mother’s whereabouts, after all; I should have been searching for her identity.
“Miss Fanny Harville,” I said, simply to weigh the sound of the words.
“We did not know it until the final weeks.” Mrs. Harville smiled more broadly at the baby. “And then, of course, we assumed the child must be Captain Benwick’s. We could have dealt with that, of course. We could have sent Fanny away. They could have married privately and returned after a year or two when we might have subtly adjusted the child’s age. But…” she ducked from the memory and turned to the fire, “then the child was born.”
I stared beyond Mrs. Harville’s bowed head and into the flames. Twin tongues leapt high in the centre and a litter of younger siblings lapped happily around the edges. Lucy laughed, trying to draw Mrs. Harville back into the game. She obliged, dangling a long finger for Lucy to clutch. Socrates and Miss Fanny. I tried to imagine it, not my brother walking arm and arm with a lady of refinement among the pleasant glades inland from Lyme, nor along the pebble beach, nor along the Cobb — such things could never have happened — but rather the secret meetings in corridors, bedrooms, and broom cupboards; the whisperings, the sighs.
They had been deeply in love: Never could a certainty about others have come so swiftly, but the circumstances were as sure as evidence. The danger would have been so real and so terrifying for them both, and yet they had acted upon their desires. The levels of planning and complicity required to avoid detection could have come only from the most undeniable of needs.
“My brother?” I muttered. “Socrates?” A mountain of recriminations groaned within me and yielded words like loosened rocks before a landfall.
She looked up at me. “What did he expect? My husband, of course, was quite out of his mind with anger and grief. But I could have protected Socrates if he had agreed to keep away.”
“Did he steal from you?”
“Oh, yes,” she pulled away a finger, let Lucy pull it back. “At least,” she added less certainly, “after he was dismissed, my husband discovered some of our possessions were missing.”
Frozen patches in my clothes were melting and rivulets of water dripped down my legs. “Socrates, Elsie, Henry here…” I glanced at him, saw tears standing, orange
glints in the firelight — I knew he was thinking of Rosita — “all of them sacrificed.”
“All of them had a choice,” she said, suddenly quite vehement, her finger still wrapped in Lucy’s fist. “Your brother was asked to stay away but wouldn’t. He was even offered money. Elsie went against us and I had to restrain her.”
“You offered him money and he refused? This doesn’t sound like the actions of a thief, Mrs. Harville.”
She scrutinized me for a moment. “You are like him, Plato, but I feel your late master has done you both a disservice.”
A wave of my own anger mingled with the heat from the fire. “If you don’t mind me saying so, Mrs. Harville, that is an outdated sentiment.” I wanted her to hear the grit in the words, but she merely gave a soft laugh.
“Not by freeing you, no. By failing to prepare you for the world as it is. By filling your heads with notions of nobility and virtue that no one lives up to.” She dangled one of her mob-cap ribbons above Lucy. “All of them struggled and the noose came tighter. We would rather they had saved themselves.”
The heat of the room seemed to increase, and the dripping beneath my clothes made me nauseous. Something had occurred to me, a notion that might jolt Mrs. Harville out of her complacency. One other person should be added to their list of victims. “And what of Miss Fanny?” I asked. “How did she die?”
Mrs. Harville looked up as though struck. She seemed to struggle, and when she spoke, her voice was hoarse. “Confinement and grief together. These things can be too hard for a sensitive soul. Her brother’s judgement came down upon her hard, and then there was…” In lieu of answer, her hand came down slowly and cupped Lucy’s cheek. She looked up at me again, a kind of pleading in her eyes. “Well, isn’t it the curse of man and woman alike? We crave for most what we can never have. It kills us all in the end.”
I tried to root my feet to the spot, tried to summon all my defiance. “I could tell a magistrate about Socrates and Elsie. I could report it all.”
