“Will you help me to open the hatch?” I asked faintly.
He knocked the bowl of his pipe against his boot, and let the ashes drift onto the sand.
“Gather yer skirts,” he told me, “and I’ll give ye a hoist.”
MR. HAWKINS, BEING A WISE SEAMAN, KEPT A BUNDLE of tapers in his boat. Though the daylight was now broad, the tunnel was darkest pitch; and so he fetched me several of the paper twists, and lit the first with his own flint.
Then he lit another, and said: “Shall you lead the way, miss? Or shall I?”
I was too relieved at the notion of company, for the demurrals of pride. “If you do not dislike it—”
He merely grunted, and stepped forward with bent back. I gratefully followed.
The tunnel floor was much scuffed, as though an army had passed through; and I found this surprising, for Orlando was a stealthy creature and a careful one. Mr. Hawkins, never having seen the interior of the passage, could not be expected to comment. The way steadily ascended, and darkness filled in the gap behind; it was as though the tunnel mouth was closed to us, and no return should ever be possible. But I said nothing of this desperate fancy to my companion. He should have hawked and spit his disdain at my feet.
“There’s a branching in the way just ahead,” he muttered. Even Mr. Hawkins had enough respect for the dead spaces of the earth to speak soft and low. “Left, or right?”
He swung round as he said this, and the light of his taper moved in a golden arc beyond his head. In that instant, I saw—I knew not what: a figure tall, motionless, watchful as Death. The tunnel wall was at its back, and pressed against it thus, the spectre might have avoided detection. But now I had espied it: and before I could so much as cry aloud, the figure hurtled past the Bosun’s Mate, its right hand making a vicious strike for the taper. The fragile thing spun out of Mr. Hawkins’s grasp and sputtered on the tunnel floor. In the swift current of air occasioned by the figure’s flight, my own flame flickered and went out.
I felt his movement—the breeze of hurried passage—and heard the panic tearing at his lungs. As the figure darted past me, I clutched at the air—and closed on the stuff of a cloak.
Brutal hands gripped my shoulders and thrust me hard against the tunnel wall. I cried out as my head struck the stones; light exploded before my eyes, and I slid downwards to rest on the tunnel floor.
“Oi!” Jeb Hawkins shouted in rage towards the passage mouth. “Oi! You there!” He broke into pursuit, his stumbling gait that of an old, bent man in a darkened place; but in a moment, I was alone.
Gingerly, I felt with my fingers at the back of my skull. No blood—no broken skin—just a slight lump, to pair with the one I had earned on horseback. I pushed myself upright, and found that a slight dizziness passed quickly away. With care, I might make my way towards the tunnel mouth.
But what should await me there? The menacing figure, and brave Mr. Hawkins insensible at his feet?
Ought I to turn, instead, to the trapdoor set into the Abbey floor, and the freedom of the ruins above?
But what if the cloaked man—mon seigneur—had just quitted the place, and his conspirators remained?
Stiff with uncertainty, I could move neither forward nor back.
And then a voice shouted from the passage mouth. “Miss Austen?”
“Jeb!” I cried. “Are you unharmed?”
“Naught to do with me—but the skiff’s gone! The damned blackguard scarpered in ‘er!”
The outrage in Mr. Hawkins’s words must have been comical, had our situation been less unhappy.
I descended to the shingle. “Do you mean to say that your boat has been stolen?”
The Bosun’s Mate did not reply; he was employed in cursing with a fluency that attested to forty-odd years in His Majesty’s service. My ears burned with every ejaculation, though I am sure my brother Frank should have heard them unmoved.
I waited until his fury was spent, and then said briskly, “We must walk along the shingle until we reach the landing area below Netley Lodge, and take the path that leads past the ruins. It is three miles from the Abbey to Southampton—a trifling walk. I have often achieved it.”
The old seaman stared. “Do you not know that I’ve the gout in my leg? I can never walk all of three mile!”
It was true that our dealings with one another were generally afloat; I had formed no notion of his general spryness.
“Shall I go in search of aid?” I enquired. “Your friend, perhaps—Ned Bastable—who lives in Hound? Might he possess a cart … or … a conveyance of some kind?”
By way of answer, Mr. Hawkins lifted his bosun’s whistle from the chain where it rested around his neck, and commenced to blow.
“There’s vessels enough on the Water,” he gasped between exertions, “to carry us safe home. It’s not marooning what troubles me, miss! It’s the loss of my boat! Mark my words—someone’ll have to pay!”
He said this with such awful purpose that I understood, of a sudden, that my meagre purse should presently be petitioned to supply the want of Jeb Hawkins’s livelihood; and I wished all the more devoutly that I had heeded Lord Harold’s advice, and left Orlando to fend for himself. Perhaps the valet had simply tired of labouring in his lordship’s service, and had seized his chance to take swift passage elsewhere in the world—
“Ahoy there!” Jeb Hawkins cried, and waved his arms frantically. The whistle dropped to his chest. “It’s the Portsmouth hoy, miss—travels each day up the Water, bearing folk from one town to the other. Ahoy there! On the water! We’ve need of aid!”
As I watched, the smart sailing vessel far out in the middle of the Solent seemed to hesitate, and then—as I joined Mr. Hawkins in waving my arms—slowly came about and turned towards us.
“The draught’s too great to permit it to come in close,” Mr. Hawkins told me regretfully. “You’ll have to kilt yer skirts, miss, about yer knees.”
I gathered the black cloth in my hands without argument, and consigned my poor boots to the deep.
The shock of cold was as nothing to the tug of the current, and for an instant, I was terrified of being borne under, and of drowning in three feet of water from the weight of my clothes. But Mr. Hawkins reached a steadying hand to my elbow, and urged me forward. I bit my lip to avoid crying out, and kept my gaze trained on the hoy as it steadily approached. A sailor, red-faced and bearded, leaned forward from the bow.
“Ye blow a fair whistle,” he said. “That’s a navy man’s tune.”
“Aye, and I’ve the right to play it,” Mr. Hawkins returned testily. “I’m Jeb Hawkins, as once tanned yer backside on the Queen Anne, Davy Thomas—and how you can forget it—”
“Jeb Hawkins!” the sailor cried, and held out his hand. “How came you to be run aground?”
“My skiff was stolen, and the lady here incommoded.”
The cold seawater surging about my knees was so frigid at that moment, my teeth were clattering in my head, and I could barely acknowledge the sailor’s look of appraisal.
“Stolen?” he repeated. “And you marooned an’ all?”
“Davy Thomas!” shouted the captain from the cockpit, “stop yer palaverin’ and say what’s to-do!”
“A lady and the Bosun’s Mate as have had their boat stolen, Cap’n, sir,” Thomas replied with alacrity. “They be marooned!”
“A lady?” enquired a third—and far more cultured voice. “Then for God’s sake, man—swing her aboard!”
I raised my eyes to the centre of the vessel, where a quartet of passengers was seated. A young woman with round blue eyes that stared at me in horrified astonishment, a nursemaid in a dowdy cap, a child of less than two—and a man in the dress uniform of the Royal Navy.
“Fly?” I cried in astonishment—and dropped my skirts in the water.
Chapter 19
The Greased Monkey
1 November 1808, cont.
“WHATEVER ARE WE TO TELL MAMMA, JANE?” MY brother exclaimed as Mr. Hawkin
s and I settled ourselves amidships, snug in a pair of blankets afforded us by the hoy’s captain. Frank’s wife, Mary, was divided between wringing my gown of seawater, and murmuring vague phrases of sympathy. “She shall be forced to lock you in your bedchamber, if you do not display more sense.”
“What has sense to do with it, Fly? We did not intend to be marooned!”
“Nor did you intend to fall off your horse—but the injury was as severe.”
“I cannot think your decision to land in so lonely a place was wise,” Mary ventured doubtfully. “What possessed you to choose that isolated stretch of shingle?”
A glance at Mr. Hawkins confirmed that he had no intention of rescuing me from my predicament; the old seaman was sunk in black anger at the loss of his skiff.
“I have lately acquired a taste for sketching,” I told them lamely. “I thought to capture the prospect of … of Hythe, just opposite, by setting up my easel in that exact spot.”
As there was nothing very extraordinary in the stretch of shore across the Water, my brother should well look perplexed.
“Mr. Hawkins was so kind as to oblige me, by putting me off at the desired point; but once we had landed, and walked a little way to determine the most advantageous position—we returned to find that the boat, along with my nuncheon, paintbox, and sketching things, had been seized by an unknown!”
“That is worrisome in the extreme,” Frank said heavily.
I stared at him. “What can you mean? It is decidedly vexing—and I regret the loss of Mr. Hawkins’s boat, not to mention Cassandra’s paintbox—”
“Jane, have you heard nothing of the news out of Portsmouth?”
“I have not.”
He glanced at his wife, whose eyes filled with tears.
“We suffered an extraordinary attack in the early hours of morning. All of Portsmouth is in disarray.”
“The naval yard?” I demanded. “Was another ship fired?”
“Much worse, I fear,” he said glumly. “The prison hulks, moored off Spithead, were liberated by a means no one may comprehend. With my own eyes, Jane, I saw the riot of French ranks—hundreds of the inmates, swarming over the decks. The crews of two hulks at least were murdered as they stood. Captain Blackstone is believed dead, though his body has not yet been recovered—it is thought that it was heaved overboard when the hulks were fired—”
“Good God! To consider such a scene!”
“It was dreadful,” Mary muttered in a choked voice. “Beyond the power of words to describe. We saw the flames throughout the night, and Frank would not stay, but must hurry to the aid of those who fought the fires. He was gone well past dawn, Jane, and I could not sleep for fearing—”
He laid his hand over hers, and she bowed her head to his shoulder. “I determined to carry Mary and the child to Southampton this morning, to remain in Mamma’s care until Portsmouth is deemed safe.”
“Are the prospects so very bad, Frank?”
“Do not ask me to describe what I saw last night,” my brother said harshly. “It defied even my worst experience of battle. In war, one expects devastation—one meets it with a certain fortitude—but to affix the horrors of engagement upon a well-loved scene, familiar through years of association—”
Years, indeed. It was at the Royal Naval College in Portsmouth that Frank had learned his love of the sea, at the tender age of twelve. He had been hauling or dropping anchor in those waters all his life.
“But did no one witness the fiend who sparked so grave a crime?” I enquired.
“That is the question that must consume us all! I should have said an army was required to liberate those hulks—”
“Not a bit of it,” spat Jeb Hawkins. “At dead o’ night, when the crews are settin’ skeleton watch? All that’s needful is one greased monkey lithe enough to climb up through the chains—slit a throat or two on the quiet, like—and pilfer the guard’s keys. Then you’ve an entire hulk what’s crying for blood and freedom, and the monkey’s off about his business on the next scow down the line.”
My brother frowned, and might have hurled a biting retort—for in his eyes, the pride and vigilance of the Royal Navy required an enemy legion, to suffer such an ignominious action. I grasped his wrist, however, to forestall dispute.
“What of the prisoners now?” I enquired. “Have any been recovered?”
He shook his head. “Too many slipped unnoticed into the darkness, Jane. We feared for the fate of several ships of the line, moored likewise in Spithead, and subject to the ravages of fire, to spare much effort in pursuing the French. It is a heavy business, to protect a fighting vessel from its own stores of gunpowder. We are lucky that none of them exploded last night, and in an instant set off all the others!”
If you commanded the direction of Enemy forces … where next should you aim your imps of Hell?
It was as Lord Harold had predicted. So much of chaos, and of death, in the wee hours; a strike unlooked-for, despite the Navy’s vigilance. The liberation of the hulks should bring in its train a creeping fear, that not even His Majesty’s strongest ports could be defended against an enemy as clever as it was insidious.
Did his lordship know already what had occurred? Word should have been sent along the Navy signal lines, from Portsmouth to the Admiralty, as soon as the dawn had broken. That the evil had occurred in Lord Harold’s absence—when Orlando should unaccountably be silenced—when Mrs. Challoner entertained a party of friends in seeming innocence, and balls of light flared at midnight from the Abbey walls—
Had Sophia or her gallant Mr. Ord signalled the attack from the ruined heights?
“Hundreds of the French, still at large,” I murmured, and thought of the black-cloaked figure who had fled the Abbey passage not an hour ago.
“That is what Frank meant,” Mary added, “when he declared the theft of Mr. Hawkins’s boat to be worrisome in the extreme.”
“The skiff was stolen, no doubt, by a freed prisoner, who lurked along the shingle, and observed all that you did,” my brother declared. “He thanked God and the Emperor when you appeared in his view, Jane, complete with vessel and nuncheon!”
“—Which is halfway across the Channel now, and may he drown before he ever sees Calais!” Hawkins spat once more into the bilge, drew his pipe from his nankeen pocket—and saw that the tobacco was wet with seawater. He subsided into morose silence.
I ENDURED MY MOTHER’S STRICTURES REGARDING the idiotishness of girls left too long upon the shelf; promised her I should never again quit the house of an early morning without informing her of my direction; and refused to pen a note to Mrs. Challoner denying myself the honour of attending her evening party.
“What can it be to you, Jane, to give up this small pleasure?” my mother demanded in exasperation. “It is not as though you bear the woman any great affection; and now your brother is come, you might plead the necessity of a family engagement. Frank thinks of taking Mary to the theatre in French Street while he is ashore—for, you know, his time is not his own, and he may be ordered back to sea at any moment. Cannot you remain quietly at home with the baby and Martha Lloyd tomorrow, and allow your brother to enjoy an evening with his wife?”
It was a simple enough request. I apprehended how selfish I must seem—how lost to everything but my own petty concerns. Being prevented from sharing so much as a word of the truth—that the attack on Portsmouth required me to exert vigilance in the only quarter I might suspect—I was left with but the appearance of disappointed hopes, and a mulish insistence that I could not fail Mrs. Challoner.
“Cannot Frank and Mary be persuaded to the theatre this evening instead? For I should gladly look after little Mary Jane tonight. But tomorrow, Mamma, is quite out of the question—”
“Mary is resting at present, and cannot say whether she shall summon even enough strength to descend for dinner. You know that she is a very poor sailor, particularly in so small a vessel as the hoy. And with Martha not yet able to set her foot to the
floor—”
“Frank,” I called to my brother as he appeared at the foot of the stairs, “would you care to take a turn along the Water Gate Quay? We might learn what news there is of Portsmouth on the wharves, and stop at the butcher’s in our way, for the procuring of Cook’s joint.”
“That is a capital idea!” my brother cried. “Do not trouble yourself, Mamma, with fetching your purse—for I shall supply the joint this evening, in gratitude for all your kindness to my poor Mary.”
I FORMED A DESPERATE RESOLUTION AS WE WALKED through Butcher’s Row, and came out along the High, and turned our faces towards the sea. My brother is a fellow of considerable understanding, when dealing with matters nautical; but his notions of chivalry and the proper station of women are charmingly Gothick. He might ignore the vital nature of what I should tell him, and fix instead upon the impropriety of Lord Harold’s every action.
“Should you not like to see the theatre this evening, Fly? For who knows when you shall be called back to the St. Alban’s. Never put off until tomorrow the chance that might be seized today.”
“Very true,” he said with a look of humour in his eye; “and you might serve me admirably this evening, without the slightest disarrangement of your plans for tomorrow. What is this Mrs. Challoner, Jane, that she commands such attention? I will allow her to be a very dashing young woman—but I should not have thought her quite in your style.”
“Frank,” I said abruptly, “I must take you into my confidence on a matter of gravest import—but first, you must assure me that no word of what I tell you will pass to Mary, or, God forbid—to Mamma.”
His sandy brows came down at this. “I know that you should never fall into error, Jane, by your own inclination—and so must assume that no wrongdoing is involved in your tale.”
“None on my part. You are aware of my acquaintance with a gentleman by the name of Lord Harold Trowbridge?”
“Cass mentioned something of him, once,” he said in an altered tone. “The fellow is a blackguard, I collect, who treated you most shabbily. Has he descended upon Southampton?”
Jane and the Ghosts of Netley Page 16