Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas: Being a Jane Austen Mystery

by Stephanie Barron

  The groom offered the stirrup; the Lieutenant mounted with grace, and took the reins. He raised his hand and with one earnest, parting look for the lady standing on the stairs, he laid his heels to the horse’s flanks and was away.

  “Nice lad,” William Chute said, as his butler, Roark, swung closed the great front door. “We shall hope those fellows are satisfied with his intelligence, and give him leave, eh? There might be a hunt in the offing, by the time he is returned to us!”

  WE SETTLED ONCE MORE at the breakfast-parlour—a room Eliza called the Strawberry Parlour, for Horace Walpole’s having slept in it some fifty years since—in groups of two and three. Lieutenant Gage’s departure had brought us all to our feet, and now we were treated to cooling tea and cold toast. The chafing dishes of eggs and pheasant and ham, however, were still warm. The servants had resumed their labours on Eliza’s behalf, so no crisis was too great for her resolving.

  “Take away all these cold plates,” she ordered, “and bring us fresh tea and coffee. The snow may be done, but I declare the temperature is frigid! The poor Lieutenant, to be abroad so early on such a brisk morning!”

  “I am sure he is accustomed to it,” James’s Mary said indifferently. “For he must often have walked an icy deck at sea. But I am so delicate, you know, that the least chill might carry me off. James was for returning to Steventon this morning, but I protested most violently. I cannot risk my health in venturing forth in such weather, no matter how sound your carriage and coachman might be, Mrs. Chute.”

  Particularly, I thought, when such interesting guests should be left behind at The Vyne.

  “James, however,” his wife persisted, “should rather see me in my grave than endure another hour of frivolity!”

  “How Gothick your mind does turn, Mary,” Eliza said equably, “when it has nothing better to do. Cassandra, I am thinking of getting up a Children’s Ball for Twelfth Night. I wonder if I might consult you about the various courses for the dinner—and whether Jane would be willing to create some Character Cards for the masquerade?”

  “I shall help you!” Thomas-Vere cried with a note of ecstasy in his voice. He was arrayed this morning in a shocking waistcoat of puce silk, figured with gold butterflies, and his wig was powdered silver. “I adore masquerades!”

  “Popishness,” James muttered into his newspaper.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Austen?” Eliza enquired, startled.

  “Popishness.” He snapped his pages closed. “Paganism. Twelfth Night revels devolve from the Roman Saturnalia, my dear Mrs. Chute, as I am sure you are aware.”

  “Nonsense,” my mother said comfortably. “Do not be a spoilsport and a prig, James. Your father was very fond of presenting a sprig of mistletoe to every young lady of his acquaintance on Twelfth Night, as I recall.”

  “Then I confess I must regard his Christian doctrine—not to mention his taste—as questionable,” James retorted. “The Roman Saturnalia is a feast of Inversion, when the natural order is turned topsy-turvy. Nobles go as servants, and servants as noblemen. All distinctions of birth are ignored. Anarchy is thus the order of the day, ma’am, and a defiance of God’s Plan. It is an excuse for every kind of debauch in the name of liberty. Nothing less than the late revolution in France, to be exact.”

  “But what have guillotines to do with my masquerade?” Eliza demanded, bewildered.

  James hunched a shoulder. “I daresay a Children’s Ball may be innocent enough. But the rituals of Twelfth Night were bred in evil, and no good can come of perpetuating them. They ought to be consigned to the ash-heap of history, as Rome has been.”

  “I take it you abhor the Classical world, Mr. Austen?” Raphael West enquired. His eyes were half-shuttered by indolent lids, but I detected a satiric glint.

  “I flatter myself I appreciate the beauties of Classical form and Classical thought,” my brother said grudgingly. “No man who has been privileged to study at Oxford can fail to acknowledge our debt to vanished times. But I must plead the propriety of present improvements upon ancient ways. We in England have amended what Rome gave us, for the better.”

  “Exactly so,” Mary agreed, “which is why there cannot be the slightest objection to Mrs. Chute’s masquerade. I am sure it will be the most English party imaginable. But Cassandra cannot possibly be of use to you, Eliza, in planning your dishes,” she continued, “for she is not a married woman, and has never studied domestic economy! I should be very happy to consult with you. It does not do to go to spinsters, you know, for the elegance of one’s entertainments.”

  Unless, I thought, one was in the habit of lying on a sopha in a chilly winter room. Spinsters were infinitely useful for fetching firewood and ham, whilst one lay in contemplation of the Abyss.

  “Mary,” James said warningly. “You cannot mean to attend this Saturnalia. For one in the throes of spiritual battle, the temptations of frivolity—of giving oneself over entirely to pleasure—”

  “It is a Children’s Ball, James.” She leaned close to him and said in an audible whisper, “I am sure it is meant to honour our Caroline and James-Edward. Miss Wiggett is only an adopted child, after all.”

  “Thank you,” Eliza said crisply. “We shall gather our plans in the morning room—shall we?”

  IT IS CUSTOMARY TO call the Twelfth Night fête a Children’s Ball, because dressing-up and faerie tales are the order of the evening; but persons of all ages must enjoy the entertainment. Never mind that it is the children who play at King and Queen; we others form their Court, in cunning guises chosen at random from Character Cards. I should have expected Eliza to have purchased her set in London; I was pleased to discover that we should be set to devising them ourselves. There is such scope for wit in a set of Characters, as I have cause to know.

  The morning room was a pretty little chamber off the Staircase Hall, given over entirely to Eliza’s pursuits. Here she conducted her correspondence after breakfast, drew up her orders for the housekeeper, Mrs. Roark, and wrote lists of provisions to be ordered from London. The room was one of the few at The Vyne that felt fresh; instead of heavy oak panelling, its walls were painted a cheerful yellow. One wall had been decorated with scenes cut from prints and carefully pasted onto the plaster; it was a scheme Eliza had undertaken for Miss Wiggett’s amusement, after the pair had glimpsed a similar Print Room in London.

  “The winters are so dreary, you know,” Eliza said wisely, “that it helps to pass the time. My Caroline is so industrious! She enjoys looking among the print collection—William’s ancestors were forever collecting them—and chusing which complement others, and deciding the arrangement on the wall.”

  “She has a good deal of natural taste,” I said.

  “Yes. It is priceless in a young lady—and cannot be taught.” She glanced at James’s Mary as she said this, and pressed her lips firmly together. As a hostess, Eliza Chute was a saint—and far more forbearing than I should have been.

  She set my mother at her own pretty little writing desk, to make out innumerable cards of invitation in her perfect copperplate hand; some sixty or seventy persons, I suppose, were to be invited—not counting their children! Cassandra and Mary were arranged on one settee, while Thomas-Vere and I secured another. We were supplied with paper and pen, and endeavoured to ignore such phrases as Twelfth Night cake and Claret Cup in the effort to form our own plans. Thomas-Vere was all that was enthusiastic and amiable in an assistant.

  “We must prevail upon West to sketch a figure for each of our cards,” he burbled, “for he is a master of caricature.”

  “And if only he may be prevailed upon to sign them,” I observed, “we might frame the cards afterwards.”

  “Miss Jane!” Thomas-Vere tapped my hand with his quizzing-glass and attempted to look arch. “Profiting from the charity of genius?”

  “But perhaps Mr. West does not mean to remain in the country so long,” I added. “It is over a week until the ball, and I daresay he will wish to return to his family by and b
y.”

  “I do not think he possesses any,” Thomas-Vere replied. “Other than his redoubtable father, of course. The brother is estranged, and West’s wife has been dead these three years. His daughter is lately married.”

  Eliza’s intelligence, therefore, was correct. Three years a widower! And no glowing young girl had captured West’s heart? I might have pursued the interesting conversation, but Thomas-Vere jumped to his feet. “I do not know why I did not think of it before,” he said. “West must assist us. With his hand and our wit, Miss Jane, the Characters shall be all that is fanciful and engaging. You do not object?”

  I did not, and he exited the room with alacrity. In his absence I scribbled a few names on my paper—Lady Lavish, Miss Candour, Guy Gallant, Frederick Fop. The latter would be suited to Thomas-Vere. I had once played Miss Candour myself, at a vanished revel. The rôle consisted of telling every other guest exactly what one thought of him. I had enjoyed the masquerade enormously.

  Mary, now … if I could contrive it, she should figure as Signora Topnote, the Italian soprano. That should delight her vanity; and discourage her from talking throughout the evening.

  The door to the morning room burst open. Thomas-Vere stood with his hand on the knob, his breath coming in gasps. “Eliza, do you know where William is gone?”

  “I thought to see about the dogs,” she replied, a small frown between her eyes. “What is it, Tom?”

  “Lieutenant Gage’s horse has returned,” he said. “Without its rider.”

  9

  THE BROKEN TRAIL

  Tuesday, 27th December 1814

  The Vyne, cont’d.

  We four ladies rose as one and followed Thomas-Vere to the Staircase Hall.

  The butler, Roark, stood in the open front door. Beyond, beneath the portico, was the groom who had saddled John Gage’s horse. His cap was in his hand. He looked discomfited and scared—less at the tidings he had brought, than at being kept waiting in the cold to repeat them.

  “What is it, Tibbin?” Eliza asked.

  “The messenger’s gelding, ma’am. Made his way back to the stables. I thought maybe the gentleman was come back to the house, and the horse’d got away from him.”

  “Thank you, Tibbin. Have you seen your master?”

  “He’s at the kennels about the dogs,” the groom said.

  “Pray fetch him at once.”

  Tibbin pulled his forelock and turned without a word. As Roark swung closed the door, I observed the groom making for the stableyard at a run; the gardeners had swept the carriageway from yard to portico clear of snow. They were progressing further down the carriageway in the direction of the road, but had not yet swept above fifty yards beyond the front door. It seemed probable, however, that we should be able to return to Steventon on the morrow. Pale sunlight turned the white landscape to flashing brilliance; the persistent drip of melting snow sounded from each of The Vyne’s many eaves. A thaw was setting in.

  “The Gambiers ought to be told,” I said. We ladies and Thomas-Vere still stood in the Staircase Hall, our backs to the cheerful Yule log. “If he has been thrown—and unable to make his way back …”

  “A broken leg,” Thomas-Vere said firmly.

  “Or neck,” Mary observed.

  At that moment, William Chute’s heavy boots could be heard tramping down the east passage; he had come up from the kennels through a rear door and the servants’ wing.

  “My love,” Eliza said as the green baize door behind the staircase was thrust open. “You met Tibbin?”

  “Aye,” William replied, “and I have told him to collect a search party of stable lads. I returned only to inform our guests—some of the gentlemen may wish to join me. I shall find L’Anglois in my book room, but do you know, Tom, where are West and Gambier?”

  “Gambier is in the billiard room. I searched for West earlier,” Thomas-Vere replied, “and could not find him.”

  “Has anyone seen Miss Gambier this morning?” Eliza enquired.

  “I did,” Cassandra said. “When the rest of us returned to the breakfast-parlour after Lieutenant Gage’s departure, she went another way.”

  “To her bedchamber?”

  Cassandra shook her head. “I suspect that she is in prayer, Eliza. She was making for the Chapel.”

  THE CHAPEL AT THE Vyne is justly famous. Indeed, there can be few places so magnificent outside the royal Tudor palaces. It is very ancient, the foundations being lost in Norman times; tho’ the present arrangement of antechapel, chapel, and Tomb-chamber date from Henry VIII’s time. They were later embellished with the fanciful decorations of the Strawberry Hill aesthete, John Chute. I am told that two closet galleries once existed, overlooking the nave above the heads of simple worshipers, so that the Tudor Master and Mistress of The Vyne (a notable family by the name of de Vere, long since extinguished) might worship in private piety. There are choir stalls of dark wood lining the walls that equal nothing, I believe, except those in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. The vaulted ceiling is webbed with moulded plaster veins, picked out in gold. Paintings in the Italian stile are ranged above the north and south walls—they charm the eye into believing that a Gothick cloister lies just beyond one’s reach. The Four Evangelists and angels soar in their architraves. Glorious stained glass, dating from the sixteenth century, winks like scattered jewels above the altar. The floor is partly of marble and—what is far more engaging—partly of glazed Flemish tiles, commissioned in Antwerp. Their faces are covered in a riot of pictures: animals and birds, fruit and leaves, heads in profile and full face; even a Harlequin fool. The tiles beguile one to look down, the windows to gaze up—and so one may practise both humility and ecstasy, in the pursuit of one’s God.

  Mary Gambier was on her knees before the altar, which stood on a raised wooden platform. It held no other decoration than a simple gilt cross. At the rustle of our approaching skirts, she lifted her head. But she did not move. Her hands remained clasped, her countenance expressionless.

  “My dear,” Eliza Chute said, coming to a halt before the raised dais.

  “What is it?” Miss Gambier said. “What news have you come to tell?” Her voice was strained.

  “No news. But we are uneasy. Your friend the Lieutenant—”

  She rose from her knees. “What about him?”

  “His horse has returned riderless. The men have organised a search party.”

  Miss Gambier closed her eyes an instant. A wealth of emotions passed over her face—fear, pain, resignation, anger.

  “Then I must go with them,” she said. Her eyes opened once more, dry of both emotion and tears. “Will any of you join me?”

  Tho’ I could not ride, I might search on foot. “I will,” I said.

  IN THE EVENT, WE had not even time to don our pelisses, much less our boots. We had achieved the upper landing and would have turned down the passage to our bedchambers when I happened to glance out the tall windows giving on to the lake. A sad little grouping of figures, dark against the snow, toiled through the unbroken drifts of the north front. They bore another among them.

  I put a hand on Miss Gambier’s shoulder.

  She turned, her gaze following mine. “They have found him,” she said. And in her voice there was something like relief.

  We sped down the staircase and made for the east passage. As we achieved the green baize door to the kitchens, however, it swung open—and revealed Edward Gambier. He was undoubtedly come in search of his sister.

  He stepped into the hall, the door closing behind him. His open countenance was white and drawn. “Mary,” he said, and drew her into his arms.

  “Tell me,” she choked. “I cannot bear the suspense.”

  “He is gone, Mary. He is gone.”

  “How?” I demanded.

  Gambier looked at me over Miss Gambier’s head. “His neck is broken.”

  For once, it seemed, James’s wife was correct.

  ELIZA CHUTE, FOR ALL her Fashion and charm, is an excellent wom
an; and she proved her goodness in the care and sensibility bestowed upon Mary Gambier in the ensuing hours. She first broke the news of John Gage’s death to Lady Gambier—who had been laid down on the couch in her bedchamber, recruiting her strength. Lady Gambier went at once to her niece, and I hope had words of comfort for her. Eliza then gave orders in the servants’ hall—the Lieutenant’s clothes were to be dried and pressed, and his corpse properly laid out, and a bier placed in the Chapel with candles burning all around. Impossible, of course, to make funeral arrangements, until someone could be sent to the Admiralty and Gage’s people found. Even a poor lieutenant may have a widowed mother, or a spinster aunt, who must wish to know the circumstances of his death.

  “I shall write to Gambier,” the Admiral’s lady said stoutly, with the first resolution I had yet seen in her. “He felt for Gage as tho’ he were his own child. It is a sad waste. He ought to have died for King and Country!”

  “What makes you think he did not?” I murmured.

  But no one in all The Vyne appeared to regard the Lieutenant’s death as anything but an accident. I waited for some expressions of unease to overcome at least one of my companions—and waited in vain.

  Eliza set out a cold collation in the dining parlour, and those who retained an appetite sat down to eat their fill. I pled a headache. When my companions had left me, I hurriedly put on the pelisse and boots that had not been wanted an hour before, and slipped quietly through the door to the south porch.

  The gardeners’ clearance of the carriageway drifts had been abandoned due to the necessity of the search party, but the way was easy for some hundred yards. After that, I halted before a wall of white some four feet high. Where Lieutenant Gage’s horse had broken through was obvious; the trail was further trampled and mauled by the search party that had followed it. I gathered my skirts—I was wearing a round gown of grey cambric beneath my pelisse—and began to trudge forward through the packed and tumbled drifts.

  A quarter of an hour later, I had almost reached the end of the carriageway and gained the Sherborne St. John road. The distance, impressively long and winding when viewed from the comfort of a closed carriage, is tediously protracted when attempted on foot; and had the exercise not warmed me to the core, I am sure my teeth should have been chattering with cold. My hands were stiffening in their gloves and I could no longer feel my toes inside my boots. But my labour was about to end: beyond a turn in the carriageway I glimpsed the snow-covered roof of a small outbuilding—an ice house, by its design, snugged into a slope that descended gently to the road. A few bare trees framed the landscape. The horse’s trail came to a sudden halt here, in a whirl of displaced white.