Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House jam-6

by Stephanie Barron

  “Ah, Tom,” Frank said, his visage suddenly scarlet “There you are. You are acquainted with Admiral Bertie, I believe?”

  Seagrave inclined his head; the Admiral barely acknowledged the courtesy, and an awkward silence fell.

  “I must leave you here, Austen,” Admiral Bertie said abruptly. “Hastings is most pressing in his desire to take refreshment, and I cannot keep him waiting. My compliments to your wife. Good day, Miss Austen.”

  “Admiral.”

  He strode off without a backwards glance: the clearest example in my experience of a mind uncomplicated by subtlety. Such a one is distinctly suited to the pursuit of the Enemy — he will have the rules of engagement by heart, and follow them $o the letter. Life, in its attacks and repulsions, must seem a simple arrangement enough. All the infinite shadings of circumstance and will, decision and restraint, are not for him. It does not do to think overmuch on the point of batde; but woe betide the pure of heart on dry land.

  I glanced at Seagrave. Here was just such another; and he was aground and awash in the present perplexity of his fortunes. Even this little exchange between my brother and a senior officer was rife with betrayal and deceit. There is a brutal innocence in your seafaring men: tho' accustomed to all the savagery of conflict from a tender age, they know little of social intercourse. Tom Seagrave was ill-equipped to take a sounding of the depths of such waters. I sincerely pitied him.

  “May I offer my heartfelt congratulations on the suspension of your trial, Captain,” I attempted.

  “You are too good, Miss Austen. Frank tells me you have been sitting some time with my wife. Pray, how did she take the news?”

  I felt my cheeks flame red. There seemed an embargo on every answer. For lack of a better, I said, “She fell into a swoon. But we left her in good hope of recovery. Her maid attended her.”

  “I see.” He drew his white gloves through hands made rough by constant exposure to the weather. “Louisa has not been well, for a twelvemonth at least, and I confess it wears at my heart. She abhors Portsmouth; and this wretched business has hardly contributed to her happiness. I thank you, Miss Austen, for your kindness to my wife.”

  “It was a pleasure, I assure you.”

  He appeared surprised, as well he might — there can be few that found aught in Louisa Seagrave to redeem the caprices of her temper.

  “I wonder, Captain,” I added, “whether you have consulted a reputable physician? For Mrs. Seagrave does appear a trifle … thin.” I had chosen my words; uneasy in her mind, or most dependent upon laudanum, must be discarded as ill-advised. “Mr. Hill, the naval surgeon, remarked upon her… nerves. I am sure that he—”

  “She will not bear a consultation,” Seagrave said abruptly, “though I have urged her repeatedly to it”

  “You must bring her to Southampton one day. I am sure the airing would do her good.”

  “Yes,” he replied, but his gaze fell to his gloves and he appeared less open than before. Perhaps he could not trust his Louisa amidst the delights of a watering place.

  “Tom,” broke in my brother with some urgency, “the Admiral tells me you were questioned as to your movements last night.”

  “I was.”

  “Why did you not tell them that you were at home?”

  The Captain smiled thinly. “I saw no reason to prevaricate. I was not at home. Though for all the good my activity did me, I should better have sat by the fire.”

  Frank slapped his thigh in irritation. “You went in search of Chessyre. I should never have sent you the contents of that express! The shock must certainly prove too great—”

  “Betrayal, particularly among friends, must always seize us unawares. A lifetime of experience cannot inure us to each new perfidy.”

  Seagrave's accent was cold to the point of ice; but my brother appeared oblivious. Tom, you must own the truth before it is too late. If you killed Chessyre in an affair of honour—”

  “I wish that I had. I did not. You may chuse to believe me or no, Austen — it is all one with me.”.

  Again, Frank flushed. “I am happy to find you value the good opinion of your friends so highly!”

  “The idea of friendship, it seems to me, has suffered an alteration. I once called Eustace Chessyre friend; but he might better have thrust my dirk into my back than Porthiault's chest — my end might have proved less lingering. I cannot forgive him for it”

  “Good God, Tom, will you build your gallows in the very naval yard?” Frank hissed.

  “And then there is Frank Austen,” Seagrave continued harshly, “whom I have also called friend. Frank Austen, whose desire for a fast frigate is everywhere known, whose ties to the Admiralty are so very good, whose efforts to clear me of dishonour must provide an occasion for the most officious and public spectacle of interference, and raise him in the esteem of everybody who has eyes to see — good, noble, avaricious Frank Austen, who should as soon steal a man's livelihood as shake his hand!”

  “Tom!” my brother protested, aghast.

  “Damn all friends, I say!”

  And Tom Seagrave stalked off without a word of apology.

  My brother stared after him. “I have half a mind to call him out! This is the basest ingratitude — and after all I have done, too!”

  I restrained him with one gloved hand. “It is a hard thing for an independent man to utter thanks. Seagrave must know himself indebted to your goodness; he shall reflect, and regret his harsh words, when anger has passed. Surely you see so much?”

  “I see nothing but a man determined to go to the Devil, Frank muttered. “He might at least have told us where he was last night.”

  “As to that—” I said, “surely it is obvious?”

  Chapter 13

  Mr. Pethering Pays a Call

  26 February 1807, cont.

  “NOTHING ABOUT THIS WRETCHED BUSINESS IS OBVIOUS to me,” Frank commented bitterly as we made for the Portsmouth hoy.

  I glanced at him sidelong. “There is a woman in Seagrave's case, Fly. Men never plead silence on the subject of their movements without they fancy themselves honour-bound to shield a lady's virtue. In their ponderous reticence they succeed in exposing that which they would most protect.”

  “You suspect poor Tom of an illicit attachment?”

  “Why else would your friend refuse to say where he was last night?”

  “For any number of reasons! A man may have his privacy, after all!”

  “Tom Seagrave has been careless in defending his; he must not be surprised to find it invaded. Mary tells me that Lucky Tom is everywhere known as a taker of prizes — not all of them ships. The ladies of her naval acquaintance regard Captain Seagrave as one who cannot keep his breeches on.”

  Frank snorted. “Mary does not understand the meaning of the phrase.”

  “I fear she does.”

  My brother saw me safely into the hoy beside Mr. Hill, the surgeon; Etienne LaForge already sat in the bow, his manacled hands held before him like a penitent's. The Frenchman's face was flushed, his expression turned inwards. He was in the grip of fever or anxiety — the one hardly distinguishable from the other.

  “I do not mean to make out that Tom is a saint, Jane,” my brother persisted. “l do not have to tell you what the Navy is. Women are left at home, to commit every kind of folly in unguarded idleness, while the men exist without sight of England for years, sometimes, at a stretch. Neglect and thoughtlessness may account for every kind of misery on both sides. But Tom has always seemed happy in his wife.”

  “His wife, however, is hardly happy in her husband.” I drew my brother a little apart from the others and spoke in a lowered tone. It was imperative, now, that I acquaint Frank with Louisa Seagrave's opinions regarding the Captain. He was astounded; nothing in life had prepared him for such bitterness of feeling on the part of a spouse; and he seemed to feel her betrayal as though it were his own.

  “Is she mad?” he cried. “When Tom is most in need of support, she must go
blathering to a recent acquaintance that he deserves to hang! The woman can only be bird-witted!”

  “She is anything but,” I replied evenly. “Her wisdom in revealing so much to a relative stranger must, of course, be disputed; but I believe her to have spoken from an agony of spirit that would not be gainsaid. Remember that she never accused Tom Seagrave of the French captain's murder. She is most unhappy in her union; she cannot respect or confide in the man who shares her fate; she does not approve of his way of life, and will not entrust her children to his care at sea. So much is certain. It remains for us to determine how much weight to accord her words.”

  “None at all, if I am to be consulted,” Frank muttered belligerendy. “She is a shrew and an ungrateful wretch, and Seagrave should be quit of her directly.”

  “Frank—”

  He turned upon me. “You cannot take her part, Jane. You cannot wish the man to hang, simply because a boy of seven was killed in battle. Boys of every age are dropped over the side; it is the nature of war.”

  “Then women are well out of it,” I retorted bitterly. “You must not apply the coldness of a man's heart, trained to command and to hurl lives into the breach, with the tender feelings of a mother.”

  “Louisa Seagrave has done the reverse,” Frank declared, “and the application is ill-judged. I know for a fact that Tom was most seriously cut-up about young Carruthers's loss; he felt the lad's death acutely. But if he were to feel every such death in excess of its due—”

  “—he should be incapable of command,” I concluded bleakly. “I quite see your point”

  We sailed up the Solent with the wind on the quarter and the threat of storm ominous at our backs. I could not be easy; my mind had received new information. I considered of my brother's life in a harsher light, I knew, of course, that he was daily witness to scenes of brutality; that he lived in the closest proximity with the baser instincts of man; that he was constantly exposed to mortal danger. But his love for the naval life had superseded every objection in the hearts of his family. We saw that Frank could not do otherwise than he had done, and the honour he had won seemed recompense enough for sacrifice. I had never considered, however, that he must play at God. Each action — each decision as captain to engage the Enemy — must bring with it the certainty of death for some among his men. My brother lived with the consequences as surely as he lived by the noon reckoning. I could not gaze at his beloved profile — already aged unnaturally by privation and war — without feeling equal parts pity and pride confounded in my heart.

  We sailed on in silence for a period, the rough seas slapping and tugging at the hoy's bow. Mr. Hill fell sound asleep, with his hands clasped over his breast; Etienne LaForge sat slumped by his side, looking quite ill. It was probable that the excitement and fatigue of the morning had sapped his strength, already delicate from prolonged fever; he could not achieve Wool House too soon. I burned with indignation at the thought of the Frenchman's incarceration; his precarious health demanded a decent room with clean linen, a steady fire, and adequate victuals. I must speak to Admiral Bertie. The surgeon should be housed as an officer, in the home of a naval family. Perhaps Mr. Hill — or even Mrs. Davies — might find the man a room….

  At my side Frank expelled a heavy sigh. “Lord knows I should prefer that Tom carry a tendre for a lady not his wife, than to suppose him a murderer — but it seems an unhappy choice.”

  “You were ready enough to believe the latter while disputing in the naval yard.”

  “Perhaps I was over-hasty there. A lesser man might kill for vengeance, but Tom did not earn his reputation through impulse and unreason. I should be surprised, upon reflection, did your Frenchman's tale of rank betrayal overrule Seagrave's good sense.”

  “This murder was not, however, the act of a hasty man,” I observed thoughtfully. “Death by impulse requires a knife or a pistol — something carried against attack, and deployed without thought, in the heat of passion or self-defence. But a garotte—”

  “—would suggest that Chessyre's killer came upon him from behind. That he crept up by stealth, and slipped the iron band deliberately about his neck, and pulled it taut. Yes, I quite seize your meaning, Jane. The murder was determined, organised, and carried out with despatch. That much is of a piece with Tom's usual tactics in war.”

  “Then a casual brigand we must discard. Three choices remain to us,” I concluded. “Either Chessyre was killed by his companion in plotting, to prevent him divulging all?? knew; or he was killed by Tom Seagrave, from vengeance. Or lastly by one of Seagrave's friends, who thought to tip the scales of justice in the Captain's favour by weighting them with the corpse of his accuser.”

  “I cannot like the character of such a friend.”

  “But can you put a name to him, Frank? Some old shipmate of Seagrave's, perhaps?”

  My brother shook his head in the negative.

  “Excepting, naturally — yourself,” I said.

  OUR RETURN TO MRS. DAVIES'S LODGING HOUSE WAS attended with unexpected ceremony.

  As the hoy dropped anchor in Southampton Water, and the skiff set out from the Quay to meet us, I observed a singular figure clutching the gunwales amidships. He was tall and spare — so spare that his narrow back curved like a fishhook over his protruding knees, and his thin wrists sprang from his coat sleeves like stalks of spring rhubarb. The master of the hoy, in observing this apparition's approach, muttered under his breath.

  “I'll not be taking that delicate article anywhere on the Water, Cap'n, and I'll thank'ee to tell him so.”

  His eyes narrowed against the wind, Frank clapped the master on the shoulder. “I doubt that gentleman has a voyage in view.”

  The skiff came alongside; the oarswomen shipped their blades; and the reedy fellow glanced at us beseechingly from under his broad-brimmed hat.

  “Captain Austen, I assume? Miss Austen?” He evinced no interest in Mr. Hill or Etienne LaForge, who were waiting patiently for a seat in the skiff.

  “You have the advantage of me, sir,” Frank replied.

  The gentleman ducked his head in acknowledgement. “Forgive me — I feel most unwell — that is, a trifle indisposed — the motion of the seas—” He swallowed convulsively and clutched once more at the skiff's sides. “I am Mr. Percival Pethering, Magistrate of Southampton, and I wish to speak with you, Captain, on a matter of utmost urgency.”

  “Am I to suppose,” said Frank with undisguised amusement, “that you have braved the seas in order to apprehend me? Then shift your position, sir, that I might hand my sister into the skiff.”

  “Naturally!” cried Pethering in an agony of consciousness. His hands remained fixed at the skiffs sides, his skeletal form immovable. “Only too happy to oblige! Provided, of course, that this cockle does not overturn….”

  “And you do not attempt to stand upright, all will be well.” Frank avoided the satiric looks of the oarswomen, and placed his hand under my elbow. “Lightly, Jane, lest Mr. Pethering be indisposed.”

  I cast him a chiding look. Fly is merciless in his abuse of the lubbers everywhere about him; he cannot resist this natural tendency towards superiority in matters naval; but Pethering held a temporal power that warranted respect.

  At the moment, however, the magistrate was incapable of taking offence. He was recumbent over the skiff's far side, being sick into the sea.

  We managed to achieve the Water Gate Quay without further incident. My brother assisted Mr. Pethering — who was most unsteady on his feet — from the skiff before even myself. The magistrate stood upon the stone pier drawing great gusts of salutary air, as though life, in all its miseries and joys, was newly granted him.

  Frank stepped easily to shore and bowed to the magistrate. “You are come upon the matter of Mr. Chessyre, I think?”

  “I am, sir. You have learned of his brutal end already. But we shall defer our speech until the lady” — this, with a nod for me — “is safely returned to your lodgings.”

  “My s
ister is entirely in my confidence, sir,” Frank told him stiffly.

  “Pray do not regard me in the slightest, Mr. Pethering,” I said.

  The magistrate hesitated. His small eyes shifted from Frank to myself, as though in the most acute indecision. Viewed in full, his countenance appeared drawn, his features sharp, his teeth very bad. I guessed him to be no older than myself, but the wispy tendrils of hair escaping from his hat suggested a man approaching his dotage. There was about Percival Pethering a pitiful air of ill-health, of seclusion within doors, of embarrassments nursed in the most painful solitude. He was not the sort for decisive action or lightning-swift thought.

  “Very well,” he conceded abruptly. “We shall talk as we go, and save your wife the trouble of accommodating an interview.”

  “You know of my wife?” Frank returned, with the first suggestion of unease.

  “It was she who told me where you might be found. I have been waiting for the hoy's return this last hour at least. You may judge from that how serious is the case.”

  “As murder must always be,” Frank observed.

  I was in danger of being led away from our companions of the morning without so much as a farewell; I turned, and found the two surgeons preparing to cross from the Quay to the far paving-stones where Wool House loomed.

  “Adieu, monsieur,” I told LaForge

  He looked very ill; but nonetheless he carried my gloved hand to his lips with an excess of courtier's gallantry. In this, as in everything, his manners belied the humbleness of his professed station; and I wondered again at his being in such a place and among such company.

  “Mr. Hill,” I murmured to the surgeon, “we must contrive between us to improve Monsieur LaForge's circumstances. He ought to be exchanged at the earliest opportunity; but he is most pressing, my brother tells me, in his desire to remain in England. Cannot we secure a more salubrious lodging? He ought not to be allowed to sleep another night on those chill stone floors.”

  “I quite agree,” Mr. Hill returned wryly, “but I fear in the case of a prisoner of war, comfort is the very last consideration. I shall write to Admiral Bertie tonight, and plead LaForge's case; your brother has requested that I should refer the Frenchman's desire to remain in this Kingdom to Bertie as well.”