Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House (42 page)

“Miss Austen, d'ye say?” he enquired sharply over our introduction. “Not any relation to Captain Francis Austen?”

“I am his sister, sir.”

“Excellent fellow! A true fighting captain, or I miss my mark! And no blubberhead neither. You won't find Frank Austen playing cat-and-mouse with Boney; goes straight at 'em, in the manner of dear old Nelson.”

“That is certainly my brother's philosophy. You are acquainted with him, I collect?”

“Supplied the Gap'n with carronades last summer, as he could not secure them in Portsmouth,” Mr. Dixon replied. “He should certainly have need of them, once the
St. Alban's
reached the Peninsula. A great hand for gunnery, your brother. Now! What shall we find to engage the interest of these young scrubs, eh? “

He scrutinized my nephews' faces, well aware that nothing more was required to command their full attention than the spectacle of the seventy-four.

The great third-rate towered above our heads, her keel a massive construction of elm to which great ribs of oak were fixed. She was nearly complete, the decks having been laid and the hull partitioned into bulkheads, powder magazines, storerooms, and cabins, with ladders running up and down. The Itchen yard is ideally suited for such a ship, for the river water flows in through a lock, and the finished vessel may float down to Southampton Water in time.

“Jupiter!” Edward exclaimed. “Isn't she a beauty, though! How long have you been a-building?”

The shipwright gazed at his work with ill-concealed affection. “Nearly three years she's been under our hands, and you shall not find a sweeter ship in all the Kingdom. No rot in her timbers, no crank in her design; and we shan't hear of this lady falling to pieces in a storm!”

“Are such things so common?” I murmured to Mr. Hawkins.

The Bosun's Mate glowered. “Have ye not heard of the Forty Thieves, ma'am? All ships o' the line, built in rotten yards? Floating coffins, they were—though I served in no less than five of 'em.”

“Good Lord.”

“When is she to sail, Mr. Dixon?” George enquired.

“We expect to launch her at Spithead in the spring. Perhaps your naval uncle will have the command of her! Should you like to look in?”

“
Should
we!” the boy replied. “Above all things!”

“Jeremiah!” Dixon called. “Yo, there—Jeremiah! Now, where is that Lascar?”

A dark-skinned, lanky fellow with jet-black hair ran up and salaamed, in the manner of the East Indies. A Lascar! The boys, I am certain, had never encountered a true exotic of the naval world—one of the renowned sailors of the Seven Seas. I smiled to see Edward's expression of interest, and George's of apprehension.

“Jeremiah at your service,” he said, with another low bow. “You wish to see the boat, yes?”

Mr. Dixon slapped my nephews on the back so firmly George winced. “Get along with ye, now. The Lascar won't bite. Refuses even to touch good English beef, if you'll credit it; but he's a dab hand with a plane and a saw.”

Nearly an hour later we bid Mr. Dixon goodbye, and Mr. Hawkins turned his skiff towards home. Yesterday's water party proved so delightful, however—so exactly suited to my nephews' temperaments and interests— that on this morning, their last day of liberty, I was determined to get them once more out-of-doors.

THE ABBEY RUINS, AND THE SCATTERED HABITATION that surrounds them, lie southeast of Southampton proper, just beyond the River Itchen. In fine weather, of a summer's afternoon, one might walk the three miles without fatigue; but with two boys on my hands, and the weather uncertain, I had thought it wiser to make a naval expedition of our scheme. As the diminutive craft bobbed and swayed under the boys' restless weight, I feared I had chosen with better hope than wisdom.

“Sit ye down, young master, and have a care, or ye'll pitch us all over t'a gunnels!” Mr. Hawkins growled at George. Mr. Hawkins is not unkind, but exacting in matters nautical. I grasped the seat of George's pantaloons firmly; they were his second-best, a dark grey intended for school in Winchester, and not the fresh black set of mourning he had received of our seamstress.

The Bosun's Mate maneuvered the skiff into a small channel that knifed through the strand, and sent the vessel skimming towards shore. Above us rose Netley Cliff, and the path that climbed towards the abbey.

“That'll be Netley Lodge.” Hawkins thrust a gnarled thumb over his shoulder as he rowed, in the direction of a well-tended, comfortable affair of stone that hugged the cliff's edge. “Grand place in the old days, so they say, but nobody's lived there for years.”

“And yet,” I countered as the boat came to rest on the shingle, “there is a thread of smoke from two of the four chimneys.”

The Bosun's Mate whistled under his breath. “Right you are, Miss! Somebody has opened up the great house—but who? ”

“Perhaps a wandering ruffian has taken up residence,” George suggested hopefully.

Mr. Hawkins shipped his oars. “Beyond is the village of Hound—nobbut a few cottages thrown up, and scarce of folk at that, what with the war. They'll know in Hound who've lit the fires at t'a Lodge.”

A freshening wind lifted Edward's hat from his head, and tossed it into the shallows; he scrambled from the boat in outraged pursuit.

The Bosun's Mate sniffed the salt air.

“Weather's changing. 'Twon't do to linger long, Miss Austen, among those bits o' rubble. I'll bide with a friend in Hound while ye amuse yerselves at t'Abbey.” He tossed a silver whistle—the emblem of his life's ambition—into George's ready hands. “Just ye blow on that, young master, when ye've a mind to head home. Jeb Hawkins'll be waiting.”

THEY RAN AHEAD OF ME, STRAIGHT UP THE PATH, IN A game of hunt and chase that involved a good deal of shrieking. I very nearly called after them to conduct themselves as gentlemen—my mother, I am sure, would have done so—but I reflected that the path was deserted enough, and the boys in want of exercise. In such a season the visitors to Netley must be fewer than in the summer months, when all of Hampshire finds a reason to sail down the Water in search of amusement The summer months! Even so! I had visited Netley last June in the company of the vanished Elizabeth— charming as ever in a gown of sprigged muslin, with a matching parasol. Elizabeth, who would never again walk with her arm through mine—

I breasted the hill, and caught my breath at the sight of the Abbey ruins: the church standing open-roofed under the sky; the slender shafts of the chancel house and the broken ribs of the clerestories; the grass-choked pavement of the north transept; and the cloister court, where wandering travellers once knocked at the wicket gate. A tree grows now in place of an altar. Ivy twines thick and green about the arched windows, as though to knit once more what the ages have unravelled. A futile hope: for all that time destroys, cannot be made new again, as my poor George and Edward have early discovered.

The boys plunged into the ruined church, and continued their game of pursuit; I proceeded at a more measured pace. I have come to Netley often enough during my residence in Southampton, but familiarity cannot breed contempt. This place was built by the good monks of Beaulieu in 1239, and throve for more than three hundred years as only the Cistercian abbeys could: wealthy in timber, and in the fat of the land; a center of learning and of prayer. There are those who will assert that by the reign of King Henry the Eighth, prayer was much in abeyance; that but a single volume was found in the library at the Abbey's dissolution; and that the monks were more eager to ride to hounds— hence the name of the neighbouring hamlet—than to offer masses for their benefactors. King Henry dissolved the monasteries of England in 1537, and with them, Netley; and the yearly income from all the property thus seized was in excess of a million pounds. Henry used his booty to political effect, rewarding his supporters with rich grants of land; and Netley Abbey was turned a nobleman's manor.

There is an ancient legend in these parts that one wellborn lady, forced into the veil, was walled up alive in the Abbey walls; but though many have searched for the lady's tomb, no one has ever found it. There are stories, too, of scavengers among the Abbey's stones, struck dumb and blind in attempting to lift what was not theirs. Whether haunted or no, the manor did not prosper, and ended, with time, as a blasted testament to King Henry's ambition.

I have long been partial to the Roman Catholic faith, as the object of devotion of no less a family than the Stuarts: maligned, neglected, and betrayed by all who knew them. I must admit, even still, that Henry's seizure of monastic property, and its eventual decay, has proved an invaluable contribution to the beauties of the English landscape.
²

Do spirits walk among the fallen timbers of this house? Do they mourn and whisper in the moonlight? I have an idea of a shade, poised upon the turret stair, her white habit trailing.

Absurd, to feel such a prickling at the neck in the middle of the day—to pace insouciantly down what had once been a sacred aisle, as though under the gaze of a multitude; to listen attentively to birdsong, aware that the slightest alteration of sound might herald an unwelcome intruder. Ladies have often called upon the ghosts of Netley—there is nothing strange in this….

In the distance, I heard young Edward's shout of triumph and George's, of despair. The birds continued to sing; a shaft of sun!ight pierced the ruined window frame, and a breath of wind stirred the ivy. I traversed the south transept and turned for the turret stair, which winds upwards into the sky—the turret itself having crumbled—and gives out onto the Abbey's walls. Here one may walk the perimeter of the ruin, with a fine view of the surrounding landscape. My head into the wind, I paced a while and allowed myself to consider of Elizabeth.

I am not the sort to indulge in grief; I have known it too often and too well. The older I become—and I shall be three-and-thirty this December—the more I take Death in my stride. I have not yet learned, however, to accept the caprice of its whims—nay, the absurdity of its choice, that would seize a young woman of health, beauty, prospects, and fortune, a young woman beloved by all who knew her—and yet leave
Jane:
who am possessed of neither fortune nor beauty

nor a hopeful family. I live as but a charge upon my relations.

Would I, in a spirit of sacrifice, exchange my ardent pulse for Lizzy's silent tomb? If a bargain could be made with God—a bargain for the sake of young Edward and George, or the little girls so soon to be shut up at school—a bargain for dear Neddie, crushed in the ruin of his hopes—would I have the courage to strike it?

I cast my eyes upon the flat grey sheen of Southampton Water—on the smoking chimneys of Hound, tumbling towards the sea; on the distant roofs of Southampton town, glinting within its walls. Dear to my sight, who am selfish in my grasp at life.
Forgive me, Lizzy. Though I loved you well, I cannot wish our lots exchanged.

The boys' voices had grown faint. Thunder pealed afar off, from the easterly direction; the unsteady day had dimmed. I descended the turret stair, grasping with my gloved hands at outcrops of broken stone, and sought my charges in the ruined refectory.

This was a groined chamber seventy feet long, lit by windows on the eastern side. For nearly three hundred years the Cistercians had dined here in silence, with their abbot at their head. The remains of a fresco adorned one wall, but the fragile pigments had worn to nothing, and the saints stared sightless, their palms outstretched. The refectory was empty.

Or was it?

Just beyond the range of vision, a shadow moved. Light as air and bodiless it seemed, like a wood dove fluttering. My heart in my mouth, I swiftly turned: and saw nothing where a shade had been.

The sound of a footfall behind me—did a weightless spirit mark its passage in the dust?

“Have I the honour of addressing Miss Austen?”

I whirled, my heart throbbing. And saw—

Not a ghost or envoy of the grave; no monk concealed by ghoulish cowl. A man, rather: diminutive of frame, lithe of limb, with a look of merriment on his face. A sprite, indeed, in his bottle-green cloak; a very wood elf conjured from the trees at the Abbey's back, and bowing to the floor as he surveyed me.

“Good God, sir! From whence did you spring?”

“The stones at your feet, ma'am. You
are
Miss Austen? Miss
Jane
Austen? “

“You have the advantage of me.”

“That must be preferable to the alternative. I am charged with a commission I dare not ignore, but must require certain proofs—
bona fide's,
as the Latin would say—before I may fulfill it”

“Are you mad?”

He grinned. “I am often asked that question. Would you be so kind as to reveal the date of your honoured father's death?”

Surprise loosed my tongue. “The twenty-first of January, 1805. Pray explain your impudence.”

“Assuredly, ma'am—but first I crave the intimate name of Lady Harriot Cavendish.”

“If you would mean Hary-O, I imagine half the fashionable world is acquainted with it. Are you quite satisfied?

“I should be happy to accept a lady's word.” He bowed again. “But my superiors demand absolute surety. Could you impart the title of the novel you sold to Messrs. Crosby & Co., of Stationers Hall Court, London, in the spring of 1803?”