by Lucy Worsley
Following Aunt Jane inside, Fanny’s eyes took a little while to get used to the dim light. The floor seemed to be covered with a mixture of old straw, dirt and strange, horrible pools of wetness. Along the wall were what at first appeared to be animals, lined up like the cows in the barn at Godmersham when they were waiting to be milked.
To her horror, as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, Fanny made out that they weren’t cattle, but men. Poor miserable men, their skin glimmering with sweat and their clothes – where they had clothes – in rags. There was a dreadful clinking sound, and Fanny saw that each one of them was chained by the arm or leg to his section of wall.
With Fanny’s entrance, they started up a kind of hooting and jeering, and rattling of their chains in a jangling chorus.
The slimy servant was once again standing before them in a deep bow.
‘Dear young ladies!’ he said. ‘Welcome to the Clink. They welcome you with the clinking of their chains. Now, would you like to see some of our lunatics dancing?’
With that, he whisked out from behind his back something that Fanny identified, to her horror, as a riding whip.
But Aunt Jane was replying.
‘No, not at all,’ she said. ‘Take us at once to the interview room, if you please. We wish to see a young man admitted here a few weeks ago.’
The man did not answer or move.
Then Fanny noticed that his dirt-seamed palm was outstretched once again.
Once again, her aunt dealt with the request, and they moved on through the fetid gloom.
Anna’s face looked very pale, and Fanny thought her cousin might be sick. She stopped abruptly. ‘Aunt Jane,’ Anna said, ‘how can Uncle Edward be a magistrate, yet allow this place to be run like this?’
‘Different institutions,’ Aunt Jane said. ‘This place is run by its governors. And the courts by the magistrates. And sometimes people fall between the cracks. That’s why we are here! To investigate a possible miscarriage of justice.’
She gathered her skirts, but now the prison warder was the one who refused to move.
‘Are you quite sure you wish to introduce the young ladies to one of the criminals?’ he said. ‘It’s not usual.’
‘Pray fetch Mr Dominic Drummer,’ said Aunt Jane, crisply, ‘and bring him to us. Without delay!’
She stalked right up to the man, standing almost on his toes. Aunt Jane was tall enough to tower over him menacingly, and she looked as skinny and sticklike as a witch.
That seemed to do the trick. He took them through a door with a little iron grille, as if to allow the warders sight and sound of any interview taking place within.
There were few objects in the stuffy cell beyond it, just a crude table, illuminated by hot shafts of sunlight. Within these beams of light, motes of dust, or maybe little gnats, moved about like frogs swimming in a pond.
Anna removed her bonnet and sat down. Some damp strands of dark hair clung to her forehead.
‘That door isn’t locked, is it?’ Fanny asked. But neither of the others answered, and she felt silly. Of course it wasn’t locked. They were here of their own accord. They were free to leave.
But the very idea of being locked into this terrible place as a punishment once again made her stomach do a flip-flop. What if her father knew she’d come here?
They all waited.
Then, all at a rush, the door opened, and in through it very quickly, as if shoved, came the person they’d wanted to see.
Mr Drummer stood swaying before them, pushing a long and unwashed fringe back from his forehead and tugging down the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. Fanny saw that his skin had taken on the grey pallor of the place, and the people in it.
He looked so grimy, and unhappy, and so different from what she’d expected, that it shocked her. And, unlike the previous times they’d met, he simply wouldn’t meet her eye. If anything, he looked horrified to see her.
Aunt Jane spoke, kindly and calmly. She explained that his plight had only recently come to her own attention and that of her nieces, and naturally as his friends they felt a special interest in his case, and would he mind explaining what it was all about?
Mr Drummer looked at the floor in mute agony.
He murmured something, and tugged again at his grubby shirt.
Aunt Jane obviously understood what he said, and spoke more urgently.
‘Mr Drummer! This is not the time to worry about propriety, or even the state of your linen. To put it frankly, we fear that you’ve been placed here unjustly, and that your own modesty has prevented you from asking your friends for help.’
A painful blush rose up the young man’s neck. He needed a shave, Fanny saw. It must be part of the cause of his shame.
She saw that Mr Drummer was torn between pride, and wanting them to go away, and desperate longing for a bit of sympathy.
She found her two hands were wringing each other, entirely of their own accord, something she’d never noticed them doing before.
Mr Drummer shuffled his weight from one foot to the other, blushing and blinking, and Fanny had to look away. It was unbearable to see him like this.
Finally, very reluctantly, he sat himself down at the table.
‘That is something like the truth,’ he admitted. ‘And you, Miss Austen, have been far too good to me. It is to you I owed my place at Godmersham, and I could not bear to inconvenience you or embarrass you by letting you know what had happened.’
‘Let that be over!’ cried Aunt Jane, perhaps more passionate than Fanny had ever seen her.
The warder looked in through the hole in the door at the sound of the raised voice.
‘All well, all well,’ Aunt Jane said hurriedly.
Mr Drummer stared hard at his hands on the table.
‘The thing is,’ he began, ‘I think I am guilty. I am guilty as charged. But I really don’t understand why.’
‘What happened in the shop?’ Aunt Jane asked him gently. ‘Take me through it step by step. I have some experience of thief-taking.’
There was no time for Fanny to catch Anna’s eye in surprise at this revelation. There was simply too much to take in.
‘Well, I bought my gloves,’ he said uncertainly, ‘with the money that you yourself, Miss Austen, were kind enough to give me in advance of my stipend being paid. Mr Austen,’ he said, mumbling in Fanny’s direction, ‘meant to do it, but he has so many matters to consider, so much business on his mind, that I didn’t like to ask.’
‘Stop thinking of everyone’s fine feelings,’ Aunt Jane commanded him. ‘The story, if you please.’
But Fanny hung her head. Her father had forgotten to give the young man his stipend! And he’d had no ready money!
‘So, I came out of the shop, with my gloves wrapped up in a paper package. And then, the woman came after me, and she said that she was missing a piece of valuable lace, and that she thought I had slipped it into my package!’
‘And had you?’ Anna asked. The sound of her voice surprised Fanny. Her attention had been so focused upon Dominic Drummer, and upon remembering how well shaped his jaw was, that she’d forgotten Anna was present.
‘Of course not!’ Mr Drummer said.
Yet he sounded bemused rather than indignant.
‘But this is the part I don’t understand,’ he continued. ‘Of course I didn’t steal the lace, the very thought is ridiculous. I didn’t even do up the package. She did it for me. But she was most forceful, and she insisted that I go back into the shop. Then she insisted on opening up the package. I didn’t object because I knew – believed – that of course there had been some mistake, and that she must have confused me with someone else.’
Fanny could easily imagine his courtesy, his willingness to please, perhaps his embarrassment on the shop assistant’s behalf at the mistake he thought she must have made.
‘And then?’
Aunt Jane spoke, as his words had petered out.
Mr Drummer shook his head from side to side in w
onderment, as if he could still not believe it.
‘Well, that’s the strange thing. There were the gloves, just as I thought, but there too inside the brown paper was a piece of lace, fine Brussels stuff, you know. She said it was worth forty shillings! And she insisted at once on calling the constables, and the other people in the shop looked at me, and they thought I was a thief, and …’
His humiliation was palpable. It almost coloured the air.
‘And you never once spoke up for yourself?’ Aunt Jane asked gently. ‘You never shouted, or said that there had been some mistake?’
He gradually lifted his head until his eyes met hers. Fanny could see beads of perspiration on his forehead, dampening his hair.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Because the evidence was there. Before my eyes. In a fit of madness, or forgetfulness, or something, I must have done it. I must have stolen the lace.’
Chapter 17
The breakfast table, Godmersham Park
During the carriage ride home, a silence fell upon the three of them. It had all been so unexpected. Fanny grew conscious of an ache in her head, and Mrs Sackree’s shopping not even started.
But Anna jogged Fanny’s arm.
‘Do you know what I’ve just remembered?’
Fanny shrugged.
‘I forgot about it while we were with Mr Drummer. But if my father’s letter didn’t come today, it must surely come tomorrow! In just twelve hours’ time!’
Fanny’s thoughts jerked back from the prison and the poor dirty madmen, back to the park of Godmersham and all the things which had seemed so important there. For her cousin’s sake, she mustered up a smile.
Aunt Jane carried on looking inscrutably out of the window. After he’d told them his story, Fanny’s aunt had promised Mr Drummer she’d try to get him moved, out of the common ward and into the gentlemen prisoners’ rooms in the gaoler’s house. She’d had to insist, ignoring his protestations.
‘Don’t,’ Aunt Jane had said. ‘The Austen family owe you.’
What a different world, Fanny thought, as she now rested her eyes upon the chestnut trees as they drove into the park.
Why did she have the good fortune to live here? She and her siblings, but for a twist of fate, might have been living the lives of those frightening witless creatures in the lunatic ward.
And now, at breakfast the following day, Fanny’s father was talking of the haymaking, and the harvest, and how the good weather might make it a bumper year.
Fanny felt a little strange as she looked at all the rolls, the jam, the jug of cream, and the silver coffee pot on the table. This was a bumper breakfast, and no mistake, and poor Mr Drummer wouldn’t be having anything like it.
She couldn’t even understand why Mr Drummer was in that place. He certainly couldn’t understand it himself. It was as if chance, not justice, had landed him there.
Fanny put down her half-eaten piece of toast. She remembered again his haunted face, and how ashamed he’d been of his hairy throat. She feared that her headache might come back.
But now there was a pounding of feet in the passage, and the door flew open. Anna was there, still in her dressing gown, with her hair all loose.
‘Saw … the post-chaise … from my bedroom window!’ she gasped. ‘It’s come! Open it, Uncle Edward, open it!’
She was holding a folded letter, with the red wax seal turned upwards.
Everyone at the breakfast table turned towards Fanny’s father. Fanny’s mother stood up, one hand on her heart, the other on Anna’s shoulder, pushing her down into a chair.
‘Carefully now!’ she was saying. ‘Remember to breathe, dear Anna!’
But Elizabeth’s own face was pink as well. The same excitement must be fizzing inside everyone’s stomach.
Fanny looked solemnly at her cousin. Anna’s future, Anna’s fate, might be decided in that letter. Had Uncle James allowed her to become engaged?
Fanny’s father picked up a butter knife to open the letter’s seal. It was a used, greasy one, but not even his wife had the heart to tell him off.
He read to the very end before saying anything.
‘Well?’
Fanny’s mother almost shrieked the word.
A big slow smile spread across Edward’s face.
Fanny noticed that he was enjoying this.
‘My brother James has … given his consent,’ he said at last. ‘He takes into account our wishes, as dear friends of his niece. So Anna is to be Mrs Terry! We’re going to have our first family wedding!’
With that the room seemed almost to go up in flames. Brothers and sisters were hugging Anna, and whooping, and Mrs Sackree was looking round the door to find out what all the uproar was.
But Anna herself said nothing, and her face was blank. Fanny’s father still sat there, smiling, looking again at his brother’s letter and rereading it.
Anna, Fanny noticed, was watching him intently, even while Marianne and Louie climbed all over her.
‘I must see what I can do for the young man,’ Fanny’s father said, at last, as if to himself.
He scarcely seemed to notice that, at that moment, his niece flew up out of her seat and ran round the table to give him a smacking kiss.
‘An Austen engagement!’ crowed Elizabeth. ‘And many more yet to come, girls,’ she said to Lizzie and Marianne.
Fanny looked down at her napkin. Her mother seemed not to have remembered, at this moment, that Fanny herself might have wanted, even expected, to have been the first Miss Austen engaged.
But now here was Anna, throwing her arms round Fanny’s neck and giving her a great big squeeze.
Soon their mother was ordering the carriage, and trying to organise everyone into getting dressed. There were calls to be paid on all her friends, to spread the news.
Elizabeth bustled herself right out of the room, while Fanny’s father turned to the rest of the post. Aunt Jane seized the newspaper, smiling at Anna as she sat down.
‘Have you got your heart’s desire at last, dear Anna?’ she asked, comfortably. ‘I am very happy for you.’
‘Oh yes,’ cried Anna, and Fanny could see that tears were glinting in her eyes. But Anna’s face didn’t seem full of joy. If anything, Fanny would have described her expression as relieved.
Chapter 18
Aunt Jane’s bedroom, Godmersham Park
Anna would be busy for the rest of the morning, Fanny suspected, being paraded round the house by her aunt Elizabeth and reintroduced to all the servants as the future Mrs Terry. Neither of them would be needing Fanny. It was a lonely feeling.
When breakfast was finished, though, Aunt Jane gave Fanny one of her sharp nods. As if by common consent, they slipped upstairs and into Aunt Jane’s room.
‘So!’ said Aunt Jane, throwing herself down on the sofa. She kicked her slippers off her bony feet, propped them up on a cushion and relaxed her long body as if exhausted. ‘What a great deal of emotion!’
To Fanny’s surprise, she felt her eyes pricking with tears.
‘Oh, Fanny,’ said her aunt, sitting up again. ‘You and Anna really are irresistible. Look at you! Remember how desperate you were, a few hours ago, for this very thing to come to pass?’
‘Well, yes,’ Fanny conceded. ‘But I’m not … feeling entirely right. Ever since we went to the House of Correction, I’ve felt hot and odd.’
‘It’s partly the weather,’ said her aunt, fanning herself with a piece of scribbled-on paper. ‘These have been torrid times both indoors and out. But look, the chestnuts are beginning to turn. There’s cooler weather coming.’
Fanny glanced out of Aunt Jane’s window. Yes, up here amongst the leaves of the crowns of the trees she could see that they were just on the brink of turning golden.
Soon they’d fall, Fanny thought. When that happened, she would have been out in society for a whole six months, yet not a single step closer to being married.
But Aunt Jane hadn’t finished. ‘And,’ she was saying, ‘I wouldn’
t be surprised if Anna’s engagement makes you perhaps feel a little … cheated? Put out?’
Fanny was so glad that her aunt had said it.
‘Of course, I’m happy Anna’s getting married,’ she said, in a rush, ‘but what about … what about me?’
Aunt Jane propped herself on an elbow.
‘Come here, Fanny,’ she said. ‘That’s right, sit down there on the carpet against the sofa, and I can mop your fevered brow.’
Soon her aunt’s paper-wafting was creating a gentle breeze over Fanny’s throbbing forehead.
‘You have been like two peas in a pod,’ her aunt was saying, in a faraway voice. ‘You have been like two halves of a whole, ever since you were born to my two brothers in exactly the same year. No wonder you feel that you’re being ripped asunder.’
‘But I’m supposed to want us to be ripped asunder, and married, and to have homes of our own!’
‘Yes,’ said her aunt. ‘You’re supposed to.’ But then she said no more.
The silence lengthened. It was like a pool of water. Fanny felt an urge to drop in a pebble, to ask something she’d long wanted to know.
‘Aunt Jane,’ she said, ‘why haven’t you ever got married?’
Her aunt had stretched back out on the chaise again. Fanny noticed that her toes began to twitch about, very slightly, like a cat’s tail when you stroked its fur the wrong way.
‘A number of reasons,’ Aunt Jane said to the ceiling. ‘Firstly, I prefer being peaceful and lazy. Look at your mother; how hard she has to work, running the house, looking after you children, and her niece too, giving, giving, giving all the time.’
Fanny raised her eyebrows. To her it seemed that her mother was more of a taker. She took away fun, frequently took away books, saying that Fanny was reading too much, took ill-aimed smacks at her children when they acted up.
‘Then,’ Aunt Jane continued, ‘I never met a man I liked well enough to give up my freedom to do various things which, ahem, wouldn’t be possible if I were married.’
Fanny sat up and turned to look at her aunt.