Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

by Stephanie Barron

  “And their rank?”

  “The elder is a post captain, the younger a master and commander.”

  This intelligence effectively thwarted further attempts at conversation. Nothing less than an admiral, it seemed, would do for a Lady Templeton. But her business was hardly with me; I could be ignored as a flaw in the paintwork, or a bit of thread discarded upon a table.

  Her ladyship pulled on her gloves and grasped her reticule. “I may not tarry any longer, Louisa. I have wasted for too much time as it is. You know what Luxford shall be in such an hour. I may only repeat that I am not in the habit of brooking refusal. I expect you to afford my arrangements the consideration they warrant, and to vouchsafe a reply to the inn by midnight. Sir Walter and I shall be forced to start for Kent no later than ten ‘clock on the morrow. Pray attend to the hour. You were never a punctual child; I hope the years have effected some amendment.”

  Mrs. Seagrave pressed her hand against her eyes. “Will you not stay, and take refreshment? I believe that Sir Walter intended some project for the boys’ amusement—”

  “Nonsense,” returned Lady Templeton briskly. “Sir Walter must attend me to the George at once. We have not the time for frivolity. We are not come upon a pleasure party, I would have you know.”

  “Charles and Edward take such delight in Sir Walter—”

  “I should prefer to see less of delight, and more of self-control! They could do with firmer management, Louisa. We shall procure a tutor post-haste, once they are removed to Luxford. I certainly cannot be expected to set up as nursemaid, however much Sir Walter may enjoy his second childhood!”

  Louisa Seagrave’s lips parted, as though she would muster some reply; but then her sallow face flushed an unbecoming red, and she fell back into silence.

  “I shall not wait for that wretched girl you chuse to call a maidservant, but shall show myself out,” Lady Templeton concluded. “The horses cannot be expected to stand long in this damp weather. Gibbon will be exceedingly angry.”

  Louisa Seagrave struggled to her feet. “We must not make poor Gibbon angry; he has suffered too long already in your service.”

  If Lady Templeton caught the barb beneath the simple words, she did not chuse to evidence it.

  “I thank you for your attention,” Mrs. Seagrave continued formally, “and wish you every conceivable comfort on your journey into Kent; but I cannot say whether it shall be in my power to accept your kind—”

  “Do not be a fool again, Louisa.”

  The abrupt warning, delivered without softening civilities or the slightest attempt to guard their subject from contempt, stopped Mrs. Seagrave’s pleasantries in her mouth. She bowed her head, and made no effort to escort her visitor to the door.

  My gaze followed the upright, formidable figure of her ladyship as she swept into the passage; and when the door had slammed with finality behind her, I could only look to the Captain’s wife with silent pity.

  “You have been honoured with a glimpse of my paternal aunt,” she told me with a shaky laugh. “I learned only yesterday of the passing of my father—Charles, Viscount Luxford—at Richmond three days since; he is to be buried Tuesday at Luxford House, in Kent.”

  “You have my deepest sympathy,” I said. “The loss of a parent must always be felt. I hope that he did not suffer long?”

  “He died of apoplexy, after too rich a dinner; and I am sure that no man died happier than Father. He was always the sort to relish a good meal.”

  It was difficult to know how to greet this intelligence. I was uncertain whether Louisa Seagrave possessed a brother who might accede to the tide, or if the estate was entailed upon another—whether she had seen her father since her headlong marriage, much less this redoubtable aunt. She was breathing heavily, as though under the spur of considerable emotion. She certainly had not mether relation with composure; but whether love, remorse, or hatred ranked uppermost in her spirits, I could not determine.

  “Lady Templeton wishes me to accompany her and Sir Walter into Kent. She thinks it necessary I pay my respects.”

  “That must be natural.”

  “There was never anything natural in the connexion between myself and my family, Miss Austen,” Mrs. Seagrave retorted with asperity. “To think that I must now make my appearance in Kent, with my little boys in tow—the heiress returned like a bad penny, with her questionable progeny behind her—and at such a time!”

  “Heiress?”

  “My father has no sons, and the estate is not entailed. Lady Templeton thinks it likely that Charles— But I cannot be tiring you with such tedious family business. I shall not speak of it. Tell me what you have been reading, Miss Austen! I hear that Mrs. Jordan was in the theatre at French Street; did you happen to see her play?”

  There was in her whole manner a feverish inattention to word and air that suggested the gravest anxiety. I had no notion how long a period Lady Templeton had demanded for the presentation of her schemes, but surely little of constructive activity had been accomplished in the Seagrave household this morning. Scattered about the room were signs of occupation too swiftly abandoned: a novel face downwards against a seat cushion; a boy’s stick and hoop thrust into a corner; needlework hastily set aside. Mrs. Seagrave had been working at something—a small gown of dimity, no doubt for the new baby. Such is the desperate occupation of a woman’s hours, while men decide the fate of the beloved, and all of existence may be summed up in a single word—guilty. We women sew, as though the world entire must hang upon a thread.

  “Should you like some refreshment? A glass of wine?” I enquired. “Let me fetch you one.”

  “No—that is, perhaps a small draught of Dr. Wharton’s Comfort. It is there, on the Pembroke table—” She gestured towards the center of the small room. I collected the blue bottle, uncorked it, and offered it to her. She did not wait for a glass of water, but tipped the flagon’s neck between her lips.

  Whatever Dr. Wharton had prescribed, it appeared to answer her affliction. Louisa Seagrave sighed and stopped up the bottle’s mouth with a hand that trembled only a little. “That is better,” she whispered. “I shall do.”

  I sank into a chair. She remained standing, her sharp profile turned towards the front windows, in the direction of the sea. “They will fire a gun,” she murmured, “if he is to hang. It is no distance at all, from Lombard Street to the quay. We shall hear it. Can it be that any in Portsmouth is deaf to the sound of guns today? But perhaps they shall take him across to Spithead, and hang him there.”

  “Do not speak of it,” I urged her. “It shall not come to that.”

  The restless eyes returned to mine. “You cannot believe him innocent! My dear Miss Austen, make no mistake. My husband deserves to hang.”

  It was the one pronouncement I had least expected, and I could find not a single word to answer it. I stared at her, horror pricking at my spine. Perhaps she was mad.

  “He killed that poor fellow as surely as though he fired the ball himself.”

  She knew, then, of the wound to Porthiault’s temple. And yet Seagrave himself had never mentioned it when he described the French captain’s last moments. He had merely spoken of a blow to the head—some wound undiscerned, that had stunned the man or killed him outright. It was Etienne LaForge who had examined the skull, and located the hole from the ball. But if Louisa Seagrave could speak of it so readily …

  “Your husband has told you this?” I whispered.

  Her lips worked, and then her entire countenance crumpled with the fierce violence of grief. “He did not need to say a word. I know the love he bore that child. I witnessed it every day, in the diminished affection he gave to his own sons—in the flight of all love and honour from myself! I did not have to be told.”

  “The child,” I repeated, as comprehension broke. “You would speak of the Young Gentleman! The boy who took a musket shot, while aloft in the shrouds, and was dashed to the decks with the roll of the ship. But why—”

  “Mas
ter Simon Carruthers,” Louisa Seagrave said. “Nearly two years he was in my husband’s keeping, and dearer to him than any child in the world. A bright, healthy lad with a courageous heart, a shock of blond hair, a ready grin. The boy’s father—Captain Carruthers— was a great friend of Thomas’s, and killed at Trafalgar. Simon’s place on the Stella was meant to be a great favour, a mark of esteem. Do you know what they do to a lad of that age, when he dies in battle? Do you?” Her voice was shrill, as though she teetered on the brink of hysterics; it demanded of me some answer.

  I shook my head.

  “They toss him overboard without a word of farewell, without a prayer for his parting soul. He slips astern like a sprig of jetsam, and is lost to the fishes and the rocks. No mother may bathe his body for burial, or stand by his graveside with a posy for remembrance.” She covered her face with her hands and began to sob wretchedly. The sound was guttural and harsh. “Such dreams as I have had, Miss Austen! Such visions of decay—the nightmares that haunt my sleep! Those are pearls that were his eyes …’”

  The high, piping voice of six-year-old Edward, raised in protest as his uncle Sir Walter was torn from all the delights of boat launchings at Sally Port, drifted through the ceiling from the nursery upstairs. I shuddered. It was horrible to think of such innocence blasted, and made food for fishes.

  “But a French musket brought down the boy. Surely you cannot—”

  “Seven years old. But seven years old! No stouter than one of my own boys should be.” She turned upon me as a wolf might avenge the baiting of her young. “Simon Carruthers should not have been at sea. I blame my husband! As who could not! He is guilty of the grossest folly—guilty of abuse and murder! It was Thomas who would have the boy torn from his mother at the tender age of five—Thomas, who being denied his own sons to parade about the quarterdeck, must borrow the heir of a hero, and throw the child into all the violence of a fighting ship in the midst of a brutal war. Madness, this crush of young lives in the gun’s breech, like the maul of apple blossom beneath a booted heel! Can you bear to think of his mother, Miss Austen?”

  His mother. The beautiful Phoebe Carruthers, in her gown of dark grey, her mass of golden hair. I had thought her a sort of Madonna when I glimpsed her in French Street last night, before I even knew of her mourning. Strange that a woman with every cause for grief should venture to a play.

  “Are you at all acquainted with Mrs. Carruthers?”

  “One cannot reside in Hampshire, and yet be ignorant of Phoebe Carruthers,’ Louisa Seagrave replied. “She is reckoned the most beautiful woman of the naval set; certainly she has suffered the most. The entire Admiralty is at her feet, I understand, from respect for her courage. Even Thomas—”

  She broke off, and stared at her hands. “You think me bitter, no doubt. You think me vengeful and cruel to urge my husband’s sacrifice. There are some, I know, who do not hesitate to call me mad. But I cannot view the Navy’s folly, Miss Austen, without I declare it criminal. I would not give my sons to Thomas when he longed to take them to sea. I refused him—and my refusal has long divided us. It is the rock upon which our marriage has broken. But I am justified in that poor child’s death! And if God is yet in His Heaven, Tom will hang for what he did.”

  There was a bustle in the hallway and the parlour door swung inwards to reveal my brother. Behind him I detected the forms of Mr. Hill and Monsieur LaForge. All three were subdued; and from the turn of Frank’s countenance, my heart sank. I feared the worst.

  “Mrs. Seagrave,” he said with a bow, “pray forgive an intrusion so unannounced. We thought it best to inform you—”

  “Oh, God, pray tell me at once!” the lady implored.

  Frank hesitated, and his eyes sought my face. “Captain Seagrave’s court-martial has been suspended by order of Admiral Hastings.”

  “He is free, then?” Mrs. Seagrave asked faintly.

  “For the moment. But he remains under charge. Suspension, I am afraid, is not the same as acquittal.” Frank glanced over his shoulder at the pair on the threshold. “I must apologise for carrying strangers in my train, and thrusting them upon you at such an hour. Mrs. Seagrave, may I present Mr. Hill and Monsieur LaForge, two gentlemen who have been most active on your husband’s behalf.”

  Louisa shielded her eyes as the gentlemen made their way into the room, then sank once more upon the sopha. From her attitude, she might be overpowered with relief and thankfulness; I alone of the party must suspect the truth.

  “The Lieutenant, Mr. Chessyre, failed to appear?” I enquired of Frank in a lowered tone.

  “Mr. Chessyre is dead,” my brother returned without preamble. “He was murdered last night in a brothel beyond Southampton’s walls, his body discovered only this morning.”

  I pressed one hand to my lips in horror.

  Louisa Seagrave began to laugh.

  1Jane refers here to a heraldic shield that has been split down the middle to accommodate the arms of the lady’s family, to the right, and the gentleman’s, to the left. The gentleman is presumably a baronet, for the symbol of the bloody gauntlet is traditionally accorded to that rank.—Editor’s note.

  Chapter 11

  The Sourse of the Crouble

  26 February 1807,

  cont.

  ~

  “THAT IS A VERY ILL YOUNG WOMAN,” MR. HILL DECLARED as we stood in Lombard Street almost an hour later. We had subdued Louisa Seagrave’s hysterics, and partaken of the dry sherry and iced cakes the maidservant had thrust upon us, however little appetite we felt for them.

  “If she were my wife,” the surgeon continued, “I should engage a private nurse and demand absolute quiet. Her children should be taken from her care, and a strict control placed upon her diet. A tour in the Swiss Alps might answer the case, if safe passage could be managed.”

  “Is the complaint a nervous one?” I enquired apprehensively. Even to Mr. Hill I dared not voice the idea of madness.

  “Perhaps it began as such. But she has not helped her situation by consuming so much of laudanum. It is a tincture that carries its own dependence; more and more of the stuff is required to achieve a salutary effect; nightmares and waking terror swiftly follow; and the total destruction of the bodily frame must eventually result She should be weaned from it as soon as may be.” He shook his head grimly.

  “You mean Dr. Wharton’s Comfort? But surely that cannot be harmful. It is stocked in every stillroom in the land. Babies take it from their wet nurses’ hands, to comfort them in crying.”.

  “Laudanum is a tincture of opium, Miss Austen,” enjoined Mr. Hill brusquely, “and no less vicious than what may be eaten in a Chinese den. I suggest, Captain Austen, that you speak to your friend about his wife.”

  “I expect to meet him within the hour,” Frank returned, “but it is a delicate subject. Perhaps if you would be so good as to vouchsafe an opinion—in a professional capacity, of course …”.

  “I can do nothing unless I am expressly consulted,” said Mr. Hill, “but I stand willing to perform the office.” 5 Frank bowed. Mr. Hill clapped LaForge on the shoulder.

  “We two shall take a nuncheon, Captain, and await you and your sister at the quay. Our French colleague deserves a toast to freedom, before he is immured once more in walls of stone.”

  Our French colleague looked almost prostrate with apprehension. He had attempted too much in his weakened condition. I smiled encouragement at LaForge. “Did you speak before the court, monsieurt”

  “I did,” he returned with feeling, “but I wish that I had not My tale served no purpose in freeing your captain—he was no longer in danger—and it exposed me most decidedly.”.

  “Exposed you? In what manner? I confess I do not understand.”

  “A man has been killed, Miss Austen. This Chessyre who lied about murder. I am the sole remaining person who professes to know the truth. That is not a healthy position, hein? You see before you a man in terror for his life, mademoiselle”

  “I suspec
t you take too much upon yourself, LaForge,” said Mr. Hill drily. “A good lunch should defray the worst anxiety. Pray come along and allow me to buy you a glass of claret There must be smugglers enough along the Channel coast to provide us with refreshment.”

  I could not be so sure that the answer to a Frenchman’s care must always be found in wine. I reflected, as I watched the two men proceed up the street, that there were worse habitations than a comfortable gaol of stone.

  “NOW, FRANK,” I CHARGED, AS WE STEPPED SWIFTLY INTO the High, “you must tell me everything you know about the proceedings against Seagrave and Mr. Chessyre’s death. Relate the particulars without exception.”

  He told me then of the ships of Seagrave’s squadron drawn up at anchor off the harbour, in the strait of die Solent opposite to Spithead; of the signals that flashed from each to each, and the air of unhappy expectancy that pervaded the crews assembled on deck; of the solemn looks of the empanelled officers—a vice admiral, a rear admiral, and Admiral Hastings, Seagrave’s commanding officer; of how Frank was forced to cool his heels while the court convened, his spirits oppressed by the gravest anxiety for his friend’s fate.

  My brother has never commanded a ship that has struck to the enemy, or been wrecked upon a stormy coast; and thus he has been spared the indignity and suspense of a court-martial.1 He had supposed that his ardent wish of speaking to Seagrave’s character, and delivering a witness in the form of Monsieur LaForge, might be exercised at the first opportunity; but, in fact, he was forced to await the court’s pleasure, while the charges against his friend were read out. Next Mr. Chessyre was summoned, and found to be absent; a tedious interval ensued, while the Admirals deliberated their course; and at last, Captain Seagrave was called before the panel to give his account of the Stella’s engagement with the Manon.

  In relating the latter, Frank became so enthralled with the details of battle that he quite forgot for a period the point of his recital, and I was forced to endure all the tedium of broadsides and their timing, until we had left the High Street behind and turned towards the Portsmouth naval yard. It was there we intended to fall in with Captain Seagrave, before undertaking the passage back up the Solent. I felt compelled to interrupt my brother’s effusions regarding the excellency of the Stella’s guns.