Jane and the Stillroom Maid

by Stephanie Barron

  At this, the admirable Mr. Hemming produced a silver flask from among his fishing tackle and administered a modest draught. I spluttered, choked, and raised a hand to my mouth.

  “That’s better,” he said approvingly. “The colour has returned to your cheeks.”

  I very much doubted that it had ever been absent—a complexion such as mine does not show to advantage under the twin forces of exertion and summer weather—but I forbore to dispute his gallantry.

  “The corpse of a man, you say.” His eyes were fixed upon my countenance with an expression of trouble and anxiety. “A shepherd, perhaps? Or a jagger who lost his way?”

  “Jagger?” I was momentarily diverted by the strangeness of the word.

  “The packhorse pedlars who roam the Peaks,” Hemming replied. “They bring all manner of goods to more remote villages of Derbyshire, and a fair measure of gossip as well. The jaggers are to be found everywhere among these hills in the summer months.”

  “This man was not a pedlar,” I told him, “but a gentleman by his appearance. I should judge his clothes and shoes to be of the first quality, and fairly new.”

  Mr. Hemming’s expression changed. From one of interest in myself, it turned to disquiet for another. I saw that he should have preferred to dismiss this death as a misadventure among the lower orders—and with it, all burden to himself. But such was not to be. The claims of a gentleman must be felt.

  “How old a gentleman should you judge him to be, Miss Austen?”

  The face had been clean-shaven, the skin delicate. “He cannot be much above twenty.”

  A whoop from the riverbank then attracted our notice. Mr. Cooper raised high his severed line, an enormous trout depending from its length.

  “Edward! We have need of you!” Mr. Hemming cried.

  My cousin frowned, then set his fish carefully upon the grass at his feet and ambled towards us.

  “Was there any sign of a horse?” Mr. Hemming returned to me with urgency. “Hoofprints, perhaps?—Could he have found his death from a fall?”

  I shook my head. “He has been brutally and most savagely murdered, sir. There is nothing else to be said.”

  “My dear Jane,” my cousin observed as he achieved our position, “you look remarkably unwell.”

  “Miss Austen has sustained a shock,” Mr. Hemming informed him. “She has discovered a gentleman in the rocks above, quite dead.”

  “A corpse?” Mr. Cooper exclaimed, with a look of consternation. “Not again, Jane! However shall we explain this to my aunt?”

  BUT I WAS SAVED THE NECESSITY OF UNPLEASANT explanation some hours more. Mr. Hemming conveyed me to the relative comfort of the miller’s cottage, where I was seated in a hard wooden chair by an ancient woman of obscure dialect. There I sipped some water from a chipped earthenware mug, and gazed out of the unglazed window, and felt my terror ease with the water slipping noisily over the mill-wheel’s vanes. It should have been the perfect pastoral scene, of a kind beloved of my favoured poets, but for the preparations undergone a few moments before: the miller’s waggon readied, and his sole draught horse lured from the fields; a pallet laid out between two poles, and secured with a length of rope; the miller’s wife dispensing a spare sheet, worn quite through in places by time and the marriage bed. A few moments only saw the work completed, and then my cousin, the miller, and Mr. Hemming toiled up the craggy path in search of the ravaged body. They should not miss it for the crows.

  Perhaps an hour passed before they reappeared, bearing a draped mass on the pallet between them. The countenances of all three, labourer and gentlemen alike, were stamped with grave disquiet. They set the pallet in the bed of the miller’s waggon with grunts of exertion and relief. The miller’s wife stood in her doorway, twisting her hands in her apron and considering, no doubt, of her sheet.

  Mr. Cooper drew a tremulous breath. “May God have mercy on his soul,” he murmured, and wiped his streaming brow with a handkerchief.

  “Did you recognise the face?” I enquired of Mr. Hemming.

  “I did not,” he brusquely replied. “The poor wretch might hail from anywhere—he need not be a gentleman of this county. There are many who pass through Derbyshire in the summer months.”

  He failed to meet my gaze with steadiness, and seemed most anxious to encourage the thought of the murdered man’s alienation from his final resting place. A dim note of warning sounded in the recesses of my brain—but suspicion of such a man as George Hemming must be absurd. His desire to regard the murdered fellow as foreign to Derbyshire should not be extraordinary. It is one thing to witness the mutilation of a stranger—death might have occurred as the result of a thousand grievances and enmities unknown. But the brutal end of an acquaintance is quite another matter. Such an end cannot be readily forgot.

  “Are you well enough to attempt a journey, Jane?” Mr. Cooper enquired.

  “I am. What is to be done with the corpse?”

  Mr. Hemming stared at me in surprise; not one in an hundred ladies, perhaps, should have considered it her place to pursue such a matter. But then he recollected that I had discovered the poor soul myself, and must naturally feel an interest.

  “I think it best to convey the body into Buxton,” he said. “It is no greater distance than Bakewell, although in the opposite direction; and chances are good that Deceased will be known there. Many strangers to the district put up in Buxton, intending to take the waters.”

  “And does the Coroner for this district also reside in that town?”

  “He does not,” Mr. Hemming replied, “but that is no very great matter. Tivey may ride over from Bakewell if he chuses; he does so often enough.”

  “The choice appears to have been made already for him, sir,” I returned with some surprise. “He cannot help but ride over; he cannot neglect of so painful a duty! Is the local Justice, perhaps, a resident of Buxton rather than Bakewell?”

  “Sir James may be said to reside in neither,” Mr. Hemming replied shortly, “his estate being at Monyash.”

  “Monyash! But that is a good deal south of here, and only a few miles from Bakewell, is it not?”

  Mr. Hemming turned towards the waggon with a suggestion of angry impatience in his countenance, and retorted that he preferred to carry the body into Buxton, and there was an end to the matter. He hoped to divert some greater misfortune, I guessed, in directing the corpse into a neighbourhood not his own. But why? Gone were the happy manners of the morning; he had become taciturn, preoccupied, closed in his confidence. I read some great trouble in Mr. Hemming’s looks—a greater unease than even the ravaged corpse had produced. Was it possible that the solicitor detected something in the gentleman’s aspect—or in the gruesome manner of his death—that gave rise to the gravest anxiety?

  Did he suspect, perhaps, the hand that had done these acts?

  Or was Mr. Hemming merely desirous of being rid of interfering females?

  “Would you wish us to accompany you, Hemming?” enquired my cousin Mr. Cooper. He made the offer most unwillingly; we should lose the better part of the morning in traversing the hills, first west to Buxton, and then east again to Bakewell.

  “Pray escort Miss Austen back to your inn, Edward, and leave this unhappy affair to me.” Mr. Hemming did not deign to look at my cousin as he said this, but kept his eyes resolutely turned towards the harness of his pony. “You shall take my trap, and leave it in The Rutland Arms’ stableyard. I shall send for it later.”

  “But how shall you return to Bakewell from Buxton, Mr. Hemming?” I said in exasperation, “if we have commanded your horse? Why should we not all proceed companionably together towards Bakewell, and allow the Coroner and the Justice to exert their authority within their own district? Is not this diversion to Buxton a great deal of trouble, for no very good reason?”

  “My reasons are my own, Miss Austen—” Mr. Hemming began abruptly, when he was interrupted by my cousin.

  “I confess I must agree with Jane,” Mr. Cooper admitt
ed doubtfully. “I cannot see the purpose of such needless activity, when so many of the principals reside in Bakewell. And we cannot know for certain, after all, that this poor unfortunate was staying in Buxton; he might as readily have taken a room at The Rutland Arms, like ourselves! I am sure that the Justice shall wonder at your decision, George. He will like to know—as we do—why you are so desirous of sending him over hill and dale in pursuit of his duty!”

  The solicitor opened his mouth as though to speak, looked from the miller to ourselves without uttering a word, and then shrugged in resignation. “Very well,” he muttered, “let it be Bakewell, then, and the Devil take the consequences!”

  With which impenetrable remark, he pulled himself up into the seat of his trap, and reached for the reins.

  WE MADE OUR PROGRESS TOWARDS BAKEWELL IN THE heat of the day, the miller’s waggon following slowly behind. The air was oppressive with the promise of thunder, and a mass of cloud hovered over Dark Peak. Our passage was utterly silent but for the sound of the horses’ hooves; even my cousin was unmoved to send Heavenward a sacred song. Heavy as our spirits were, I was mistress enough of my faculties by the time we reached Bakewell to urge Mr. Hemming onward in search of the surgeon, when he would first have set me down at The Rutland Arms. And so it was that we came into Water Street.

  Hemming pulled up in the midst of a dozen equipages; the miller’s waggon ground to a halt behind. Tuesday is market day in Bakewell, and Water Street was at a standstill. The solicitor craned his head over the sheep farmers and lead miners, the quarry workers and tradesmen lounging in the doorways, and cried out, “Mr. Tivey! I want the surgeon, Mr. Tivey!”

  All conversation ceased. The tradesmen straightened; the farmers stared. I felt suddenly as though I were condemned to death by exposure. My cousin gave a little sigh of exasperation. And then, with a clang of iron and sparks from the blacksmith’s forge opposite, a broad-shouldered devil of a man set down his hammer.

  He was not much above thirty, with powerful forearms and heavy dark brows, a living embodiment of the fabled Vulcan. He wiped blackened palms on his leather apron and studied our faces. “What’s so great a matter, George Hemming, that it warrants a summons on market day? Tha’ knows I’m not my own man of a Tuesday.”

  Mr. Hemming jumped down from his gig, and the crowd parted to permit his passage. He spoke in a lowered tone to Michael Tivey, while the men standing nearest did not attempt to conceal their interest. However bent upon discretion Mr. Hemming might be, however, it appeared that Mr. Tivey did not share his inclination. He turned away from the solicitor’s urgent intelligence, and whistled appreciatively, his eyes on the shrouded burden in the miller’s waggon. “If no one claims ’im, ah’ll be wanting the body for study, mind.”

  “He will certainly be claimed,” Mr. Hemming said sternly. “This is no itinerant labourer you might anatomise, Tivey. You have a gentleman in your hands.”

  “That’s as may be. Tha’d best take him along to the Snake and Hind. Jacob Patter will give me the use of his scullery.”

  A murmur of debate and excitement swelled around us. No one present could be in doubt as to the nature of the blacksmith’s direction; the Snake and Hind was a coaching inn at the head of Water Street, and Jacob Patter its proprietor. Mr. Tivey intended the use of the scullery as a resting place for the dead. It was there he would examine the corpse, with the curious of Bakewell struggling for a view through the chinks in the publican’s shutters. We were, I thought drily, rather remote from civilisation in the depths of Derbyshire.

  “Damn Tivey and his love of sensation,” Mr. Hemming muttered. He had returned to the gig and now offered his hand. “I might have passed the matter off with credit, but for his indiscretion. Pray forgive me, Miss Austen, for deserting you at such a time. Have you courage enough to attempt the town on foot, or shall I send Mr. Cooper as escort?”

  “Mr. Cooper had far better attend you to the Snake and Hind,” I replied. “The offices of a clergyman must be in greater demand there than at The Rutland Arms. I shall be quite all right, I assure you.”

  My cousin did not look as though he appreciated my sacrifice.

  Dr. Bascomb’s Water to Strengthen a Woman after Travel

  teep equal parts pomegranate buds, oak bark, and rose leaves in boiling spring water until very strong. Then add to each pint of the tea a quarter-pint of red wine. Dip clean cotton in the posset and apply hot to the Sufferer’s forehead, or anywhere on the body that is pained. Applications in evening are most beneficial.

  —From the Stillroom Book

  of Tess Arnold,

  Penfolds Hall, Derbyshire,

  1802–1806

  Chapter 3

  A Turn at Fancy Dress

  26 August 1806, cont.

  ∼

  A CRUSH OF THE POPULACE MILLED ABOUT THE STREETS of Bakewell in happy confusion: farm women and domestic servants bustling with purpose and large twig baskets; young boys singing the praises of tin and soap and bristle brushes made of boar. There were cheese sellers and egg sellers and a man who held a pair of squealing piglets high for inspection; and I should have enjoyed the hurly-burly of market day, were it not for the picture of horror that still lingered in my mind. A profusion of odours mingled in the August heat—the sweat of men and of horses, the deep mustiness of sheep’s wool. Roasting sausage and spoiling hay. Bruised peaches. And the smell of butcher’s blood.

  It was everywhere in the folds of my light muslin gown and the damp curls of my hair, that warm, sweet, engulfing odour from the heights of Miller’s Dale. I felt a wretched desire to be sick, and steadied myself against a hitching post.

  There is a madman loose in the hills. Only this could explain the savagery visited upon the poor fellow lying among the rocks. The attack seemed very nearly inhuman, as though a wild beast had come upon the gentleman unawares, and torn him asunder.

  That he was a gentleman, I had no doubt. His clothing was well-made, and near enough in style to my fashionable brothers’ to suggest that he was a person of some means. A traveller such as ourselves, perhaps. An admirer of the beauties of the Peaks. Certainly not an angler, for there had been no sign of abandoned tackle. But what traveller wandered alone through hill and dale, so far from Bakewell, and without an equipage or a mount? And where were his party—the friends who might have put a name to his broken form?

  Not a traveller, then. A person long familiar with the Peaks. An excellent walker, who had come from a farm or a nearby estate in the first light of morning and mounted the path above the Wye by slow degrees, lost in heavy thought, until he achieved the heights—and a meeting that had brought his death.

  “Jane!”

  It was my sister Cassandra’s voice. I turned and espied her in the doorway of the confectioner’s opposite, waving a gloved hand. Her chestnut curls peeked demurely from a lace cap, and the cut of her gown was sober; for the briefest instant I might have been gazing upon the image of my mother, drawn from life a score of years ago. How old we are become, I thought, and waited for the passage of a waggon before traversing the paving stones.

  “You must sample one of Mrs. Carver’s puddings,” my sister urged. “Only think—they are called Bakewell puddings, and are peculiar to the region. I have been enjoying mine this quarter-hour, but I am certain Mrs. Carver would not hesitate to bring another for yourself.”

  I sank onto a stool in a corner of the close room and placed my head in my hands. “I could not bear the sight of food at present.”

  “What has happened?” Cassandra enquired. “I did not look for you in Bakewell until the dinner hour, at least. Are you unwell, Jane?”

  Her gentle hand was upon my shoulder. A great weariness had me in its grip, and it was enough to rest there amidst the warm smells of pastry and jam and say nothing. But Cassandra would have an answer.

  “Where is my cousin?”

  “With the blacksmith.”

  “Has Mr. Hemming’s pony thrown a shoe?”

  “
The blacksmith, Cassandra, is also the surgeon. There has been … an accident.” I raised my head and looked at her; she was all anxiety.

  “Mr. Cooper,” she breathed in horror.

  “No.” I gripped her wrist in reassurance. “A person quite unknown to us all. A gentleman, rather young, with blond curls and the face of an angel. He had the look of a poet about him—rather as Cowper ought to look, and never could. He was murdered, Cassandra.”

  “Murdered! Oh, surely not—”

  “It was horrible.” I shuddered with all the force of memory. “A great wound to the temple from a lead ball, and his bowels entirely cut out. His tongue had been severed, and there was a welter of blood about the rocks. I shall never forget the cawing of those crows—”

  A stifled scream alerted me to the presence of Mrs. Carver behind her counter, and to the rising tendency of my own conversation. It would not do to cause a fit of public hysterics.

  Cassandra’s right eyebrow rose in reproof. “It sounds to be a scene drawn straight from a horrid novel,” she observed. “One of Mrs. Radcliffe’s. Only it should have been in Italy, several centuries ago, and the victim a wandering prince. Take some tea, Jane. I find that it is delightfully restoring, despite the heat of the day. Or perhaps Mrs. Carver might compound a cordial.”

  “When she is done imparting the news of murder to her neighbours,” I replied.

  THE RUTLAND ARMS IS A FINE, MODERN BUILDING OF stone commanding the top of Matlock Street, with all of Bakewell falling away before it. A posting-house named The White Horse was formerly upon the site, but some two years since the Duke of Rutland, who owns the land upon which the old inn sat, pulled down the building and threw up this new one, to our infinite satisfaction. I find myself in possession of an airy bedchamber overlooking Matlock Street, where every carriage of consequence is subject to my view; and as the principal London stages must change horses here before proceeding on to Manchester, the parade of the fashionable, the frivolous, the indigent, and the wary must be a source of constant amusement. Add to this the luxury of a snug upstairs parlour set aside for our party’s use, and the wild beauty of the surrounding country—and we are considerably more comfortable than we should have been among the victims of whooping cough.