The Bad Miss Bennet Abroad

by Jean Burnett

  I had considered writing a Gothic novel and now I was featuring in a tropical version of one. What awaited me next – a subterranean prison, or a perilous journey over the mountains carried by coarse soldiery?

  May 7th

  I did not encounter the pirates again for a few days. All I needed to do was send Adelaide into town once more to gather the latest gossip. This she was only too willing to do in the hope of meeting her cavalier again. Da Silva and his men remained en garde, polishing their swords assiduously.

  Adelaide reported that the townspeople were agog with news and many were terrified. Certain people had already headed for the hills, taking their chances on the caminho do ouro. No doubt the count has finally sent for troops but, by the time they arrive, Lafitte and his men will be long gone, taking with them whatever or whomever they choose. It is reported that the pirates are digging on the Beach of the Metal Box – so called because treasure is believed to be buried there. I certainly hope so.

  I threw caution to the wind and decided to take a walk to the harbour early on the following morning, accompanied by da Silva, before the heat grew too oppressive. I was feeding the damsel fish and thinking of my Romance when a voice came from behind – a voice with a French accent.

  ‘I like to feed these creatures too. I love the way they nibble your fingers without doing any harm.’ Lafitte swept me a low bow and instinctively I looked for da Silva. He was standing a few feet away, trying to look unobtrusive.

  ‘Bonjour, Monsieur Lafitte,’ I said, giving him my best French accent. ‘I am surprised to see you here. I heard that you were busy at one of Paraty’s beaches.’

  He laughed and dusted his fingers, wiping them delicately on his jacket. ‘There is a time for everything, madam. My men are working under the supervision of my first officer while I am taking the opportunity to feed the fish. It is indeed opportune that I should meet the most charming lady in Paraty at the same time.’

  He was certainly trusting for a pirate, if all I had heard about them was true. If only Adelaide had known she would have hot-footed down to the beach. Despite his honeyed words, I did not trust Lafitte. His black eyes remained hooded and cold when he spoke.

  ‘If I can be of any assistance to you, madam, you have only to ask.’ Another flourish and a bow followed.

  I remembered Papa’s advice about keeping your enemies close and I gave him a bright smile. ‘I would be delighted if you called upon us, again, captain. My little household would be honoured.’

  Lafitte smiled broadly, another smile that did not reach his eyes. ‘No doubt we will be taking the English tea. I would be charmed.’ He offered his arm and we made a stately progression around the harbour where da Silva, ignoring my commands as always, was waiting with two of his men. He scowled at Lafitte who relinquished my arm, made another bow and stalked off as if he owned the town – which might soon be the case.

  My household was horrified when I told them that Lafitte would pay us another visit, except for Adelaide who was beside herself with anticipation wondering whether Ramirez would accompany his captain. I needed to reduce the strain on my poor self, bearing in mind my condition. My plan was to return to my Romance. After our evening meal, I settled happily with ‘There Must Be Murder.’

  Chapter 11

  Apart from issuing the invitation to tea and sending the secret letters to Rio and Ouro Preto, there was nothing to be done about our situation. Doing nothing was always my dear Papa’s favourite course whenever anything unpleasant occurred, such as a fall in the Consols or the five percents. Poor Papa’s financial speculations were seldom successful, hence his inability to provide for his daughters. It was time to forget the real world and my personal discomforts by returning to my Romance.

  ‘Laurencia was gazing out of her chamber window, suffused with a tender melancholy, when she heard the urgent splashing of oars across the moonlit radiance of the bay.’

  At this point I heard the angelus bell ringing from the church of Nossa Senhora do Rosario and I recollected Mr Lathom’s story of the surly sullen bell sounding at midnight. I decided to incorporate this feature into my own work. The afternoon was taken up with finding a name for the hero and also a suitable title for Laurencia’s governess. In a mischievous moment, I decided to call her Serafina. She would be a dark figure in my story, probably a poisoner and a catspaw for the villain – Laurencia’s dastardly uncle with the imprisoned wife. The hero’s name would be Ferdinand.

  I whiled away the time until dinner very successfully in this manner. During our meal the sounds of revelry drifted up from the town’s taverns, which were doing tremendous business thanks to Lafitte’s crew. Dona Serafina could scarcely eat, she was praying so hard. Adelaide, eyes shining, asked to go into the town again on some pretext but I told her not to be ridiculous. She slunk off looking most put out, while Eufrasia rolled her eyes and da Silva went off to sharpen his sword once more.

  I bit down on something hard – a nut, I think, and the carious tooth screamed in protest once again. What a prospect lay before me, dear reader, probable kidnap by pirates, the agonies of childbirth and a visit to the barber surgeon to have a tooth pulled. Worse events had happened to the heroines of Gothic novels, but virtue had always triumphed. If only real life could be like a novel.

  I asked myself bitterly what benefit had accrued to me from my attachment to the heir to the throne. My encounters with royalty had always ended in disaster. I was aiming too high, no doubt. I had over-reached my true position in life. I should have taken Mr Darcy’s advice and married a curate. Indeed, my spirits were so low at that moment that I would have welcomed the presence of the Prig of Pemberley, and even listened patiently to one of his lectures, if I could have been safely lodged in England.

  At my back I felt the slight tremor of a sea breeze stealing in from the veranda and fancied that the ghost of Mr Wickham was standing nearby, a sea wraith watching my latest predicament with amusement. I threw a dish across the room and retired to bed.

  May 10th

  Captain Lafitte and his officers are due to visit us later in the week. In between checking our supplies of tea and instructing Adelaide to bake a batch of rout cakes, which she did most unwillingly (cooking is not one of her duties, but no Portuguese servant or slave understands the recipe), I tried to continue with my Romance.

  I allowed myself to dream for a moment that a British man o’war would arrive in the bay to chase off the pesky pirates. Surely Mr Luccombe with his connections could arrange something? I felt very aggrieved that, having been once more recruited to the service of my country, I was now being abandoned. In a more reasonable moment I admitted to myself that nobody could know of my predicament as yet. This led to more recriminations against Dom Pedro who had selected this prison paradise for me.

  What would Laurencia do in this situation? Apart from casting a sickly hue over her prospects… the writing of ‘sickly’ caused me to have recourse to more herbal tea and lumps of sugared ginger… I visualised my heroine in her vaulted chamber with its large Gothic window. She ventures out to traverse the corridors of her gloomy, crumbling home, idly passing her hand along a panel as the dusk gathers, her fingers press a certain point and a panel silently opens revealing a dark stairwell… no doubt this will lead to the cell of the imprisoned wife. At this point, I needed to introduce the evil Serafina who would contrive to lock the heroine in the basement she was unwisely exploring.

  Suddenly, Adelaide burst in to the room covered in flour and brandishing a wooden spoon. ‘The raisins is all maggoty!’ she cried. ‘What am I to do, madam? Everything goes to the bad in this climate.’ And everyone, I added silently. I went to inspect the kitchen quarters, reluctantly, where I did indeed find weevils or some such thing in among the dried fruit. Fortunately, they appeared to be dead so I instructed Adelaide to add more brandy to the recipe. This may be wasteful but we must be above vulgar economy. Together with the rich egg mixture and a quantity of orange flower water, it would disguise any
problems. The pirates at least would be accustomed to fare that was none too fresh. I must remember not to eat anything at the tea party.

  The kitchen presented its usual aspect of untidiness with a number of slaves sitting about doing very little, presided over by Eufrasia who proffered the fifth herbal tea of the day. A feeling of powerlessness and weariness washed over me and I began to weep.

  I became so agitated that Adelaide and Eufrasia advised me to occupy myself with a calming activity such as netting a purse, otherwise I would harm my health and possibly the baby would be affected. No doubt a highly agitated mother would produce a fractious, mentally impaired child. Oh woe!

  My maid produced a design that she had been given by a woman in the town and I settled myself at my desk with the pages of the Romance scattered around me. I commenced knitting a reticule in the shape of a pineapple, the symbol of this town. Unfortunately, the pattern proved to be one of fiendish difficulty, requiring an elaborate three dimensional technique which is quite beyond my limited talents. The top part must be worked in four shades of green, of seven rows each, shading from light to dark. These represent the leaves.

  The centre or fruit part is worked in shades of yellow shading to brown, thirty-six rounds of each, ending in green. One part is worked on the right side, another on the left and the green part at the bottom. I had scarcely cast on the stitches a feat requiring three cups of herbal tea to accomplish, when I became hopelessly entangled in the needles, catching my fingers and repeating some of the language learned from the ship’s parrot. Far from calming me the attempt rendered me almost apoplectic. Eufrasia took over and finished the article, adding green satin ribbons to the bottom of the pineapple.

  While I was still red faced with fury from my herculean efforts, Dona Serafina came stealthily into the room. She moves like a cat. Glancing casually at the papers she spied her own name and snatched up the page. Her English is poor and she was unable to decipher very much but she was clever enough to make out the words ‘evil’ and ‘Serafina’ together.

  As I arranged my face and unclenched my jaws she poured out a stream of Portuguese insults, which I understood well enough, having heard Dom Pedro use them frequently. I assume that she believed I was writing to complain about her to the prince. I had not the strength to explain my attempts at fiction.

  When she paused for breath I asked her sweetly if she would like to leave my service and return to Rio. Of course, I could not assist her in the present circumstances, but she was free to make her own way. I left her grinding her teeth and yanking her rosary chain as I staggered off and retired to bed with a damp cloth over my face.

  Chapter 12

  May 12th

  The domestic arrangements for Lafitte’s visit are now in hand and I am able to return to my Romance for a short while, before considering my own appearance. I reluctantly abandoned an important scene in which Laurencia finally reaches the basement of the castle.

  Terrified and in semi-darkness she hears the sound of soft weeping nearby and searches for its source. She is about to discover the unfortunate, imprisoned wife, when a large…

  ‘Madam,’ interrupted Adelaide, ‘I thought you would like me to prepare a buttermilk wash for you before the visit.’ She looked pointedly at my hands which I noted with horror were faintly spotted with freckles, and my arms were taking on a similar appearance.

  Calling for a mirror, I threw down my pen and hurried to my bedchamber. Elaborate, careful preparations would be needed if my looks were not to frighten the horses – or in this case Lafitte and his men – although in the circumstances that might be no bad thing. There was also the question of dress to consider. There are so few options in this climate.

  Eufrasia procured some Grecian-style laced up sandals for my swollen feet. In these, together with a filmy gauze gown (many layered), and an embroidered cloth arranged like a turban on my head, I resembled a fallen nymph after a hasty encounter with Zeus. I must have said this aloud because Adelaide remarked, ‘Well so you are, madam, in a manner of speaking!’ She scampered off and I cursed her for a saucy trollop.

  I lay on a couch while the buttermilk paste dried on my skin, plotting the further adventures of Laurencia, and wondering how I should converse with Lafitte. Eufrasia was left to arrange the food and drink while Adelaide preened herself in anticipation. She begged for one of my old gowns, but as she still had the yellow silk from those far off Brighton days, I refused.

  ‘You can scarcely have had much use from the yellow silk,’ I advised her. ‘It will be more than adequate for a piratical tea party.’ My maid immediately began to weep, assuring me that she had worn the gown during our stay in Venice and it had become stained with canal water during her dalliance with the Italian baker. I cannot imagine what she means.

  ‘It’s fit only for dusting, madam,’ she wailed until I relented and gave her a blue and white muslin with tired piping. I will probably never fit into it again.

  My maid is determined to impress Ramirez. Perhaps she plans to sail off into the sunset with him leaving me bereft. My problems are endless. In addition, I felt obliged to give another old gown to Eufrasia who was watching from the doorway with a sour expression on her ebony face.

  ‘She can have the yellow silk,’ Adelaide said. Eufrasia sneered and walked off. The women in this house are most tiresome. At least da Silva does not need to be bribed with my cast off wardrobe, and Dona Serafina wears only black. Adelaide ran off with the gown while I waited patiently for the paste to dry. When she re-appeared with the washing water, she was dressed in the blue and white, now with a noticeably lowered bodice. I fear she has lost her senses.

  The buttermilk paste has made only a small difference to my skin tone and I devoutly wished for some powder of Pearl of India, which is unobtainable in these parts. Even Eufrasia with her African herbs and potions could not produce such a thing. Not that Africans need whitening potions, of course.

  May 14th

  On the afternoon of the tea party, I arranged myself on a couch with assistance from the girls under the hostile gaze of Dona Serafina, who proclaimed my sandals to be ‘indecent’ because they revealed bare feet. I advised her that she should be absent from the gathering and she went off to pray at the Chapel of the Generous Woman.

  As I expected, the pirate arrived with only five of his officers, prominent among them the first officer Ramirez whose britches were so tight that he could not have digested a wafer let alone a rout cake. Adelaide’s eyes almost popped from her head when she beheld this vision. Lafitte and his men bowed low (carefully, in Ramirez’ case), as I excused myself for remaining on the couch.

  ‘This is an honour indeed, madam,’ purred Lafitte, while his men regarded the rout cakes with apprehension. Due to the problem with the weevils, the cakes were somewhat misshapen. Lafitte accepted a cup of English tea with pleasure, while the men toyed with their cups waiting for the alcoholic beverages. Passion fruit liqueur and cachaça fruit punch had been prepared, but I had given strict instructions that they should be served sparingly and that plenty of food should be offered. I did not relish a room full of drunken seafarers.

  After the niceties had been observed I decided that I must smoke out Lafitte’s real intentions. I began by asking about his early life and childhood, an innocent enough conversation. ‘I know you are from Saint Domingue, captain. How did you arrive in mainland America?’ His eyes took on a soft look for a moment as he harked back to his boyhood on the island with his three brothers. He spoke movingly of his mother.

  ‘She was a French Jewess who came to the Caribbean for a better life. When my father abandoned us we were all very young and my mother raised us in great hardship. I only wish she could have lived to see what I achieved.’ The statement was made with evident conviction. He was proud of his crimes, but even scoundrels can love their mothers. I recalled Lafitte’s desire to retire with a fortune.

  ‘Have you had any success at the beach, monsieur?’ This remark caused a strong reacti
on. Lafitte almost dashed down his china teacup (Royal Doulton English Renaissance) and his face grew dark with fury. ‘That is no concern of yours, madam, or of anyone in this town,’ he barked. ‘As long as we are not molested we will leave you in peace. Otherwise…’ he looked out of the window in the direction of his heavily armed ship.

  Adelaide saw fit to provide a distraction at this point by pressing more cake upon Ramirez. Indeed, she was pressing more than cake upon him until she caught my eye upon her. I knew that da Silva and his men were waiting on the veranda and a guard stood outside the dining room in an extravagantly casual attitude that deceived nobody.

  ‘I am sure the count would like to know of your intentions,’ I pressed on. Lafitte, his complexion now normal, smiled and pressed a finger against his nose. ‘You will all know something in due course, madam.’

  When they departed I retired to the veranda having judged the party a moderate success, although I was none the wiser about Lafitte’s intentions. My maid offered to visit the Beach of the Metal Box later.

  ‘I could offer them more rout cakes and listen in to the conversation,’ she offered but I shooed her away telling her to change into her working clothes. Permanently flushed, she departed to harass the kitchen staff while I returned to my Romance.

  Laurencia was in the dungeon area of the castle where she had heard a woman weeping. Pausing at a cell door with a small ~~greeting~~ grating she peered in and saw, by the faint light of a wan taper, the figure of a woman covered in a long black hooded cape. When she called softly through the grating the woman started up in terror.

  ‘Do not be afraid,’ Laurencia whispered, ‘I am a friend. What can I do to ~~realize~~ release you?’

  The woman approached the grating revealing a worn face with a sweet, sad expression. Her long dark hair was streaked with grey and our heroine could see that her form was thin and malnourished. Laurencia explained that she was the niece and ward of the marquis. The woman looked startled.