The Austen Girls

by Lucy Worsley

  The unexpected kindness made Fanny gulp. It also reminded her of the ordeal that lay ahead, and she straightened her shoulders. She tried to look as tall as Aunt Jane.

  ‘Thank you!’

  But of course, she wasn’t going to be alone. Mr Drummer would be right there behind her.

  ‘Miss Austen, if you require them, I have smelling salts in my pocket,’ Mr Drummer announced. ‘Just say the word.’

  She smiled. It was a bit nanny-ish of him, but it was awfully sweet. Emboldened, she stepped towards the town hall’s great door as if she were the finest lady in London town. Only on the inside was she still quaking.

  The letter from Mr Sprack had arrived the week after Lizzie’s engagement. Aunt Jane had called Fanny into her room to read it to her privately.

  ‘No need to tell your parents,’ she’d said, peering at Fanny over her reading glasses. ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t want you to give evidence in the public court. But Mr Sprack writes that a prestidigitarian, a woman, has been captured. He thinks that she might be the one employed in the draper’s shop in Canterbury, the one who planted the lace on Mr Drummer. The problem is that she will need to be identified in court.’

  ‘You mean,’ Fanny had asked, ‘that I might have to identify her? As the woman who showed me the lace? The one who said that if I gave her the money Mr Drummer could walk free?’

  ‘And your Mr Drummer, too, ideally,’ Aunt Jane had said.

  To Fanny’s surprise, she wasn’t at first daunted by the prospect. Her mind had somehow jumped immediately to the thought of travelling to Canterbury in the carriage with Mr Drummer. A courtroom, a judge, bearing witness: all had the power to make her feel sick. But surely she and Mr Drummer would have to travel together to get there. Everyone knew that it was improper for a young lady to ride with a young man, unless of course the circumstances made it unavoidable. It was an exciting thought.

  And the day had come. The carriage ride had been blissful, even if the conversation had been utterly proper for parson and parishioner. But now the treat was over and the awful part had arrived. Fanny had to force her feet to carry her over the town hall’s threshold.

  Inside, the officers were calling for order. It was with extreme reluctance that the crowd packing out the spectators’ benches began to quieten down.

  As she made her way forward, Fanny could feel that the eyes of the pack, every one of them, were on her bonnet, her gown, her figure.

  She folded her gloved hands before her, and inched her way towards the front.

  This is no good! said a little voice inside her head. Anna, for instance, would never mince into a courtroom in such a half-ashamed manner. And she wanted Mr Drummer, walking behind her, to think her brave and bold.

  So instead she put up her head, and stepped up smartly to the table before the judge.

  To her left, she recognised the warder from the House of Correction.

  And next to him stood a woman, in the grubby-looking grey gown of that place, with her hair ragged and her face dirty.

  ‘Miss Austen of Godmersham Park!’

  She heard the intake of breath in the crowded court, and once again felt wobbly as jelly. Yes, she had the protection of her father’s name and the name of her home. But if he actually knew that she was here, doing this, he would be furious.

  And her mother, well, she couldn’t even begin to think of what her mother would say.

  A black-suited gentleman was showing her where to stand, how to raise her hand for the oath.

  Who in Kent would marry a girl who had made such a public performance of herself? The treacherous voice in her head took on her mother’s tones.

  Then the answer came. Well, a man like Dominic Drummer might, and there he was standing right behind her. Anna came into Fanny’s mind as well. Yes, Anna, even though she was no longer Fanny’s cousin, would be proud to stand up and see justice done. And so, of course, would Aunt Jane and Mr Sprack. That was why they did their mysterious work.

  And justice would be done.

  Fanny knew it at once, even if the knowledge made her take a deep and desperate breath. For she’d caught the eye of the woman in grey. She knew at once, immediately, and without doubt, that it was the same person from the shop.

  But now, and to her horror, a flicker of something else, something unidentifiable, ran through Fanny’s body. Pity? Yes, it was pity. Fanny felt sorry for the woman, who looked defiant and miserable at the same time.

  Fanny knew all too well what it was like in that terrible House of Correction. She could only imagine how much worse it would be on the ship to Australia.

  ‘Do you see here present in the court the person who offered to pervert the course of justice for money?’

  Fanny looked at the lawyer who was asking her, then again at the woman, who was now staring straight ahead of her.

  Oh, but this was even harder than Fanny had expected. Why had the woman needed the money? Did she perhaps have hungry children to feed? How much Fanny herself had in the world, and this grubby woman, how little. She had not considered this aspect of being a thief-taker. She had not considered this at all.

  Fanny opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  Eventually, she remembered how the woman had been quite happy for Mr Drummer to go to Australia. It did the trick.

  From the soles of her feet, Fanny summoned up a little voice.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘I can confirm that this was the woman. And if you look closely at her left thumb, you will see she has a wart there.’

  The courtroom throbbed with a thunderous murmuring, and the lawyer smacked his hands on the table with satisfaction. The nasty warder from the House of Correction jerked the woman’s arm behind her back. And the woman herself turned straight towards Fanny, aiming a shiny great gob of her spit to go flying through the air.

  It fell short, but even so Fanny turned away in disgust, almost falling over a chair. It was so noisy. The faces of the crowd were almost spinning about her.

  Now it was Mr Drummer who gently shoved her downwards towards the chair, and whispered in her ear, putting his lips so near that Fanny could hear him despite the hubbub.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘Well done.’

  For the first time in her life, perhaps, Fanny felt she’d done something that could almost be described as heroic.

  Chapter 33

  The parsonage, Godmersham Park

  After the unsettling business of being a witness in court, and what was almost worse, the fury of her parents when they heard about it afterwards, Fanny found herself strolling towards the parsonage even more frequently than before.

  Just, of course, to consult her spiritual adviser. Mr Drummer scrupulously kept the door open, and never again talked of Aunt Jane or other secrets. But there was plenty else to discuss. Fanny needed to talk, quite often it seemed, about whether it was right or wrong to send women as well as men to Australia, and whether the present system of unpaid magistrates was satisfactory for administering the law of the land. She also still longed to talk about whether her sister Lizzie might not be too young to be engaged.

  Fanny had more than once overheard her parents arguing about the engagement. Why had her father not consulted her? her mother had yelled. Because she was so busy, too busy, her father stormed in reply, never able to listen to a single word he had to say because she was busy with all the blasted children. And now she could scarcely get out of bed because of the new baby expected at any moment.

  ‘And whose fault is that, Mr Austen?’ Fanny’s mother had yelled back.

  Fanny also feared that once again, just as with Anna, her father had perhaps said yes to Lizzie’s engagement partly because he was simply too genial, too lazy, and too eager to please other people to have given the decision the thought it deserved. He’d just assumed that his wife – as she’d so often said – would be only too glad to see a daughter married.

  What would Mr Drummer say? Would he agree that Lizzie was just a little to
o young to know her own mind? Fanny quickened her step. It would be so pleasurable, one day, to use words like ‘engagement’ and ‘marriage’ in his company.

  In the neat little garden at the side of his house, Mr Drummer was working away in his shirtsleeves with a shovel, rootling about for potatoes.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I’m not ashamed for you to see me doing this, Miss Austen. Of course you know I have no gardener. Not the same with Mrs Hurst, who just came to call. She managed to suggest without quite saying it that it’s undignified for me to look after my own vegetables.’

  ‘How ridiculous!’ Fanny said. ‘I knew those Hursts had delusions of grandeur.’

  She wanted to ask Mr Drummer if she thought that Lizzie would be happy as part of a family that took itself as seriously as her own Austen family did, with all the trials that brought her. But perhaps that was a bit too … much.

  He’d wonder what she’d come for, Fanny fretted, shifting her weight from foot to foot, if she didn’t have anything to say now she was here.

  Yet he seemed perfectly satisfied with her presence.

  ‘Come inside,’ he said. ‘It’s time for tea.’

  In the drawing room, he ceremoniously took her cashmere shawl from her, and kept it on his knee, stroking and admiring it. Fanny occupied herself with stirring up the coals a little.

  It occurred to her that she had perhaps taken rather too much upon herself, to treat his poker like this as if it were her own.

  She quickly sat down on the hearthrug.

  To her surprise, Mr Drummer began to open up the main matter of the moment.

  ‘And now, Miss Austen,’ he said, ‘after Mrs Hurst’s call, I believe that the happy news in the Godmersham family is public knowledge.’

  Of course. Of course, Mrs Hurst had paid the call to gossip and show off about an engagement. Fanny’s stomach tensed up.

  Mrs Hurst must be visiting all her neighbours, and saying, ‘Of course, it’s not right that the younger Miss Austen should be married before the elder. But Miss Fanny has been out in society for nearly a whole year, you know. Let me see, do we know any suitable young men for her? The family at Godmersham are really quite genteel …’

  Fanny grew so lost in imagining the scene that she hardly listened to what Mr Drummer was saying.

  To her surprise, he was down at her level, on his hands and knees on the hearthrug too, tilting his head to see into her face.

  His eyes held a tender, quizzical expression of concern.

  All at once she had a premonition of what was about to happen.

  Was this delightful, or horrible, or both? Shivery feelings began to run up and down Fanny’s wrists. Even her spine began to tingle.

  He coughed gently, and hung his head, so that he addressed her slippers.

  Fanny noticed, at this important moment, the very stupid fact that the rug had a worn patch where the old parson’s tea table had stood.

  ‘Miss Austen,’ he was saying urgently. ‘It could be a … double wedding, you know. I would be only too honoured to speak to your father if, I mean, if I could believe that your feelings would allow you to welcome such a move.’

  She saw then that he was kneeling shakily on the rug before her, while the tufts of his hair on the crown of his head quivered.

  He’s as nervous as I am! she thought.

  But his nervousness also created a warm, protective glow inside her. He always seemed to give her such a feeling, at the ball, in the prison, now in his own drawing room.

  As soon as he’d spoken, Fanny glanced involuntarily at the door. Here she was being proposed to! Surely this was a proposal? It wasn’t what she’d expected. She’d never pictured it like this. She’d imagined moonlight, or a garden, not just sitting on a rug.

  What would her parents say?

  Fanny simply didn’t know what to think. Sweet, charming, docile Mr Drummer. Why wasn’t she happy? Wouldn’t she be happy with him? Why was it not … sweeter?

  But surely, surely, this was exactly what she’d been waiting for. Yes, this is what she’d wanted. She’d dreamed of this moment!

  ‘Thank you,’ she panted. ‘But I must just speak to my father first, before I reply, reply formally I mean.’ Unceremoniously, she bolted out of the room. A concoction of pride and shame gave wings to her feet.

  ‘Sorry!’ she called back through the door. ‘I must just fix something first, before you do, speak to Papa, I mean.’

  He was on his feet too, and bowing, and saying of course, she should think things over, take some time, but what about her …

  She did not stay to listen. She was flying, flying up the drive. She knew exactly what she had to do: find her father. She needed to confront him, like she had that time before in the library, and to tell him that she’d made her choice, and that she demanded his approval.

  She was back in the house before she realised that in her haste and confusion and tumult she must have failed to hear Dominic warning her that she’d left her best shawl behind.

  Chapter 34

  Upstairs

  Why was it so quiet within the house?

  That was Fanny’s first thought after she’d hurled herself through the door in the garden wall and in through the side door and on into the marble hall, where her slippers were leaving little bits of wet grass on the floor.

  Despite having just received a proposal, she bent to pick up the mess. She couldn’t not do something like that.

  All the time she did so, Mr Drummer’s unexpected words were ringing in her ears. ‘Honoured,’ he’d said. ‘Your feelings,’ he’d said.

  She hadn’t thought it would be like this. She’d thought that her feelings would be bigger, more unmanageable. But she was determined to find her father at once and get on with it. Where was he? Where was Aunt Jane?

  Oh, but this was silly, Fanny thought, having looked into the quiet drawing room and then the empty library. Long oblongs of light from the late-afternoon sun were fading on the carpets. Everyone had disappeared, and Fanny noticed that both fires had died down. Clearly, no one had been attending to them. The house was going to pieces.

  She sighed, and set to work poking the drawing-room fire back into life. Soon it would be time for her to pour out the tea, as she’d done since their mother retreated upstairs. But making a fire! Pouring the tea! It wasn’t exactly an ordeal. Fanny had felt a lot luckier in her life since she had been to the House of Correction. She knew she had so much more than many other people; she had sent a woman to Australia. Compared to that, her life was easy.

  Holding the poker reminded her of the much smaller fireplace at the parsonage. And there again in her head was Mr Drummer, Mr Dominic Drummer. She finally had a proper suitor of her own … But was he extraordinary? Or was he only just good enough? Would he win the support of Aunt Jane, whose approval would be necessary if her father made a fuss? And Aunt Jane had always been so impenetrable!

  Fanny’s impatience to get on with the task of speaking to her father made her almost whimper out loud. She decided to venture upstairs. The stairs were strewn with the children’s toys, a discarded hobbyhorse; a spinning top. And a whip! Fanny picked it up, tutting with annoyance. It was dangerous, people might fall over it.

  Now she could hear voices, and Louie’s thin high wail.

  At last. So, everyone was up here.

  Fanny was sighing loudly as she set off along the wide corridor towards her mother’s room. But she was only halfway there when its door burst open. And there stood Aunt Jane, wiping her hands on a napkin. She wiped and wiped, as if her hands were very dirty.

  Fanny could not look away. It seemed, no, it couldn’t be … but it did seem as if her aunt’s hands were coated in something red. Something like blood.

  ‘Fanny,’ Aunt Jane said, ‘thank goodness you’re here. Lord knows where my brother Edward has gone out to, and Mrs Sackree most unfortunately is in Canterbury this afternoon.’

  Fanny snapped shut the lips she had opened to tell Aunt Jane that so
mething had happened. Something important, for once in her life.

  Aunt Jane noticed.

  ‘Later, Fanny,’ she said. ‘Later. It’s important that you must be brave now. You must be a heroine. You must take your brothers and sisters downstairs, and keep them busy. They shouldn’t be in here. They mustn’t be in here.’

  At her words, Louie came out of their mother’s bedroom, bawling, her face just a great wet mess of tears. In her wake came Henry, carrying baby Cassie, and looking very pale and serious.

  ‘Children!’ called Aunt Jane furiously. ‘Go downstairs at once with Fanny, now. At once.’ She plunged back inside, and Fanny could hear a strange, frightening sound from within, not a child’s wail, but a horrible panting, breathy, continuous scream.

  The little ones came spilling out of the room, and last of all came Lizzie.

  ‘Our new baby brother is coming out too soon,’ she said to Fanny. She was breathing far too fast, and had to gasp out the words. ‘There’s no one here to help. No one! Take them down at once, find the grooms, find somebody. And get the blood off them. And get the doctor!’

  Fanny’s slow brain realised that the awful sound was being made by their mother.

  Lizzie and Aunt Jane stared at her fiercely. The children cried.

  ‘Go, Fanny, go,’ said Aunt Jane. ‘Think of your brothers and sisters now. It’s important.’

  Fanny took a deep breath. It was all so … unexpected. She felt dizzy at the completely horrifying and unbelievable sight of a speck of red on Cassie’s bib.

  ‘Oh, Cassie,’ she said, sadly. ‘Let me take that off you. And we’ll go downstairs. Everything will be all right downstairs. Come on Henry,’ she said, ‘there’s a fire in the drawing room.’

  What a ridiculous, nonsensical thing to say, she told herself, when their mother was ill and needed a doctor. As if anyone cared if there was a fire!

  But she could see that the little children weren’t taking in her words, just the normal sound of her voice.

  ‘Mama!’ cried Louie again. ‘Her stomach is sick!’

  ‘Shut up, Louie,’ said George fiercely. ‘Shut up! Shut up!’