by Lucy Worsley
‘Never mind that now,’ said Fanny, taking advantage of the situation. ‘Where is Anna?’
Lizzie said she’d last been seen storming off upstairs.
‘I’ll find her,’ Fanny promised. ‘I’ll do my best to calm her down.’
She picked up her skirts and ran upstairs. To her own room. No, it was empty. To Aunt Jane’s room. Empty again. Aunt Jane was presumably still downstairs, enjoying the uproar in the hall. Fanny was about to go down again and try the library when she remembered a wet afternoon she and Anna had once spent in the attics, running up and down the rough-boarded corridor and draping themselves with old curtains in one of the storerooms.
She galloped up the rickety flight that led right up into the garrets and roofs of the house.
‘Anna?’
Everything was still. A bumblebee buzzed its slow way between the banisters at the top of the stairs, and a shaft of September sun made the motes of dust spin and jig.
It was so silent that Fanny nearly went back down to look for Anna elsewhere.
But she noticed a scuff mark in the dust on the boards at the top of the stairs.
She crept along the passage through the attics. Which door led to the room with the curtains and old cushions and mouldering swags of velvet? This one, she thought. She pushed it, and it opened with a ghastly creak.
Yes! There was Anna. She was lying face down, upon a rolled-up carpet, and her shoulders were heaving.
Fanny sprang forward and placed her hand on her cousin’s back.
‘Oh, Anna, don’t cry, don’t cry,’ she said. ‘You were brave, like a heroine. You did the right thing! You couldn’t marry him, it was all wrong.’
‘Oh, Fanny,’ Anna said in a choked voice. ‘He looked so sad, like a hurt dog.’
‘He wasn’t right for you,’ said Fanny fiercely. ‘He wasn’t half as nice as Mr Drummer, for example.’ She suddenly thought that maybe Anna would feel better if she had something else to think about. ‘You know Mr Drummer?’ Fanny said with satisfaction. ‘Anna, I’ve got something to tell you about Mr Drummer!’
Anna went silent, and tense. She rolled away from Fanny and sat up bolt upright, looking out through the little dormer window.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘So, now you’re going to marry Mr Drummer, are you? And live in the Godmersham parsonage, where I was supposed to live! You win again, Fanny.’
The unfairness of the accusation hit Fanny with all the force of a speeding farm cart.
‘Anna!’ she managed to say. ‘That’s ridiculous!’
She sucked in her breath to start explaining why, but it was too late. Like a flash, Anna had leaped up and was shaking her fist, yes, actually shaking her fist in Fanny’s face.
‘Who are you, Fanny Austen,’ Anna was saying, ‘to tell me what to do? First you tell me to marry Mr Terry – yes, you did, you did tell me I had to marry him because no one else would marry me. An awful man like him! Then when I got engaged, you changed your mind, didn’t you? You didn’t like it, and you didn’t like the thought of me living in your parsonage, and you made me break it off! And now I’ve got … I’ve got to go back home …’
Anna was coughing and crying so hard that she had to break off speaking to choke in some breath. But Fanny couldn’t get a word in.
‘And all the time,’ Anna was ranting, ‘you, Fanny Austen, are too scared and too rich to find someone for yourself, aren’t you? And it’s “Mr Drummer this and Mr Drummer that” because he’s the safe option. Your parents will buy him for you, if you really want him, Fanny, won’t they? Like a new horse or a new dog. You know nothing,’ Anna concluded. ‘You know nothing of what life is like if you don’t have money. You’ve got too much money. It’s made you stupid. You and I, we’re not sisters, or cousins, or even friends. I hate you!’
Before Fanny could even answer, Anna had run out of the room. Fanny could hear her feet stomping along the dusty corridor. She was obviously determined that she should get away, and that Fanny should not follow.
Fanny collapsed, slowly, into a sitting position on the roll of carpet. Her heart bled for Anna’s pain.
It’s not my fault, she said to herself savagely. Anna’s just very sad that she had to hurt Mr Terry. So she wants to hurt other people.
Fanny said this to herself several times, as if repeating it would make it true.
It was true.
But then she slumped forward, and shoved the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, and stared at the stars that wheeled there in the blackness.
It was true, yes, it was true that she was not responsible for Anna’s grief.
Yet a tiny little truth worm uncoiled itself somewhere deep within Fanny’s gut.
It was true that she had hated the thought of Anna living in the parsonage with Mr Terry.
It was true that she’d much preferred to imagine a life where Mr Drummer was set free and able to live in his own house once again.
And most of all, she’d spent a lot of time imagining a life in which her father and mother would come around to the idea that another person should join Mr Drummer in Godmersham parsonage.
That person being Fanny herself.
Chapter 28
Aunt Jane’s bedroom, Godmersham Park
Anna’s thundering footsteps had completely disappeared, and silence had long returned to the sunny attic, before Fanny felt able to move.
She slowly got to her feet, testing them to check if they were still working. Anna’s horrible words had cut her deeply.
No longer cousins. No longer even friends.
There was only one thing to do. There was only one person who might be able to help her feel better.
She set off for Aunt Jane’s room.
‘Let her go,’ Aunt Jane said, taking one look at Fanny’s face. ‘You’ve done your best, Fanny. You are not your cousin’s keeper. She’s feeling her way, you know. Part of that is exploring where you begin and where she ends. You know it’s harder for her because she hasn’t got a mother.’
Fanny had to share her own mother with nine other people. But she did remember that warm feeling when her mama combed a nasty knot out of her hair, or said what a serious little thing she was, and quite the cleverest of the family.
So Aunt Jane’s words were cooling, like the mint balm she sometimes put on her skin. They allowed Fanny to crumble at last completely.
‘Oh,’ she sobbed, throwing herself into her aunt’s arms, ‘Anna said such horrible things.’
‘Careful, careful, mind my pen,’ said Aunt Jane, reaching round Fanny’s shoulders to put it back on her desk. ‘Look! I’ve ever so nearly got ink on your gown, and that would never do, would it? Not for Miss Goody-Goody, Smart-As-Paint, Tidy-Boots Fanny Austen?’
Fanny let out a hiccup.
All the time she was speaking, Aunt Jane was also giving Fanny the tightest of hugs. It was always the same with Aunt Jane; she never said exactly what you expected her to. But her teasing made Fanny feel a tiny bit better.
‘Let Anna go,’ said Aunt Jane again, as Fanny’s gulps subsided and she regained control of her breathing.
‘It’s just so unfair,’ Fanny said. ‘I didn’t ask to be born … rich. I don’t even want to be rich if it makes other people despise me. And we don’t feel rich here, you know that, even if Anna doesn’t. My father says that there are so many expenses, and my mother constantly says that we’re going short of the things we should have.’
‘Never say that,’ Aunt Jane said gravely, shunting Fanny over to the sofa. ‘You are very comfortably off, here at Godmersham Park. Even if your father doesn’t think so, you’ve got enough money to take the pressure off when it comes to marriage. Or indeed, choosing not to marry. Poor Anna, she feels so pushed and pulled.’
‘But doesn’t she have … freedom?’ Fanny asked. ‘My father and my mother would never have agreed, for example, if I’d wanted to marry Mr Terry. They’d have said it was undignified.’
For a tiny, treacherous second,
she wondered if it was true, as Anna had said, that they would let her marry Mr Drummer if she really, really insisted. Could that ever really happen?
‘Money,’ said Jane, ‘means choice. Not a lot of choice, girls don’t get that. But it means a bit more choice.’
Fanny was struck by something in her aunt’s voice.
‘Aunt Jane, what about you?’ she asked. ‘You’ve never got married. And you haven’t got all that much money to live on either.’
Aunt Jane looked at Fanny very hard.
‘You think I haven’t much money, hey, Fanny?’
Fanny blushed, and dropped her gaze.
‘Well,’ she stammered, ‘from what my father and mother may have said …’
Aunt Jane gave a grim little laugh.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘My own father, your grandfather, was just as hard up as Anna’s father is now. My brother Edward was the lucky one, getting adopted by the rich old lady who gave him this house, and marrying Elizabeth, who was rich herself. But I told you, I’ve plenty of money of my own. Even without a husband I could easily lay hands on the two hundred pounds our blackmailer thinks you’re going to bring along to the temple this evening.’
Fanny felt her eyes bulging.
‘But how did you earn so much money?’ she asked. ‘Two hundred pounds! That’s a huge amount!’ ‘Money’ was such a cold, dirty word. She felt reluctant, unladylike, even saying it. But Aunt Jane for once seemed in a mood to be clear about things formerly kept obscure.
‘Can you keep a secret?’ Aunt Jane whispered, holding Fanny in her gaze almost like a snake. ‘Can you keep the deepest, darkest secret I could tell you?’
Fanny nodded, silently, transfixed. She was almost in awe of her aunt, who seemed to know so much.
‘I earned it,’ Aunt Jane continued, speaking very softly, ‘by writing novels. I got two hundred pounds for my last one. And there –’ she flicked her eyes to the little writing desk – ‘is the next.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ Fanny cried. ‘You’re teasing me. You’re, well, you’re our aunt, not a famous novelist like, oh, I don’t know, Fanny Burney.’
In reply, her aunt stood up, and went over to the shelves by the bed, and pulled out a couple of little volumes. She handed them to Fanny, who opened the title page. ‘By a Lady’ was all it said.
Aunt Jane smiled.
‘But I’ve read this!’ Fanny said. ‘It was ever so funny. Everyone’s read it, my mother and all of us!’
Aunt Jane was nodding.
‘And did you really … write it? In secret?’
Aunt Jane was still nodding.
She watched and waited while Fanny processed the information.
Fanny’s mouth slowly fell open. It all began to make sense! Those endless letters that her aunt wrote! They weren’t letters … but works of fiction? And that’s why her aunt cared so much about them, and hated to be disturbed?
‘Fanny,’ her aunt said at last, reaching out her hand to take back the books. ‘You see that I have a secret, and that I’ve trusted you not to reveal it. My brother would not like it to be known that his sister was a dirty scribbler, earning money from her pen. But I do make money, lots of lovely money, and I like having my secret life that’s a bit apart from the family and the rest of you.’
Thoughts were churning in Fanny’s head.
‘Aunt Jane, so is that why you never got married? Because you didn’t need to?’
‘Oh, that’s a long story,’ her aunt said. ‘But you mustn’t feel, and Anna mustn’t feel, that it will be truly awful if you don’t find a husband. It’s simply not a vital thing to do at all. You’re beginning to see that for yourself, aren’t you? You’re a clever enough girl. And as well as keeping my secret, you must be sure, be quite sure, of what you want, before you make any decisions about your Dominic Drummer. And now, if you’ve finished sniffing, we’ve work to do.’
Fanny realised that her tears had completely dried up, and she hadn’t used her handkerchief in some minutes.
‘What work?’ she asked, confused.
‘Well, I have no intention of handing over my two hundred pounds to the blackmailer tonight,’ Aunt Jane said crisply. ‘So we’re going to trap her, you and I, and catch her in the act of trying to extort the money from you. And now we need to work out our plan.’
Fanny’s jaw dropped. How in Heaven were they going to do that?
Chapter 29
The temple, Godmersham Park
The long grass was wet and cold and slippery from the rain. It slithered round Fanny’s ankles like the tongues of eels. She stood close to the pillar of the temple and shrugged her cloak up around her neck. She prayed that the drizzle would let up.
This must be the miserable part of being a thief-taker, she thought.
It was very lonely, out here in the darkness. Fanny was trying not to lean against the comforting stone of the pillar because she knew it was covered in grimy lichen that would stain her rose-coloured cloak.
Even her beautiful cloak made her feel sad, for she knew Anna had a passion for it, and was jealous of it. Anna had disappeared somewhere for the whole day. Fanny didn’t know where she’d gone, and hadn’t liked to ask.
Fanny had been playing billiards with George and Henry after dinner when Aunt Jane had come in and given her a significant look.
‘No, no,’ Henry had screamed. ‘It’s not bedtime yet!’ He’d been winning the game, against his older brother too.
‘All right, all right,’ Aunt Jane had said vaguely. ‘Not quite bedtime yet. I must steal Fanny away, though. She and I have business.’
Then they’d been passing through the door in the garden wall, and out into the dark of the park where the clouds were heavy with rain.
Fanny had made a slow circuit of the temple, wading through the grasses, to make sure that no one else was there yet, while Aunt Jane had melted away into the darkness of the bushes at the little building’s rear, just as planned. Fanny would wait at the front so if the blackmailer did take the bait, she’d be clearly visible in the moonlight standing there all alone. Except there was no moon. The rain clouds had foiled that part of the plan.
Fanny’s knees began to feel a bit shaky. She longed to call out for Aunt Jane, and say that she could not go through with it. But the thought that her aunt would be disappointed braced her, and … so too did the thought of poor Mr Drummer, in prison, perhaps feeling cold and lonely himself.
Maybe fifteen minutes passed, agonisingly slowly, slower even than the deep tick of the clock in the marble hall of the house. Fanny started to daydream, just for a second, and then – inevitably – she was caught off guard when she heard what she’d been waiting for. It was the stealthy rustle of a person approaching through the grass. Oh! And that was the pinprick light of a lantern, wasn’t it?
The beam of light illuminated strands of grass, then the leather of a pair of stout boots, and then breeches … this wasn’t the shop woman from the draper’s at all! It was a man!
Fanny took a great gulp of air into her lungs, ready to scream. This was someone who definitely shouldn’t be here, in her father’s park.
But she’d invited this stranger to come – hadn’t she?
Her scream was stillborn in her throat. Was this in fact the blackmailer? What had she done?
Fanny froze, unsure whether to scream, or run, or keep her cool and challenge the intruder.
Think! she commanded herself. What would a real thief-taker do?
But the mysterious man decided for her.
He lifted his lantern, and now the pool of light travelled upward. A blue coat was revealed, and a long double row of buttons done up snugly round a swollen stomach. Then a necktie, and rather a florid face and … oh.
It was Mr Fortescue. Her father’s fellow magistrate. He peered out at her from under the curls of his old-fashioned wig.
He snorted.
‘So it’s true!’ he said. ‘I would never have thought it of a Miss Austen. The g
ossip in the bar at the Star has revealed your plan, my dear. To buy the freedom of Dominic Drummer for two hundred pounds. This can’t be done, you silly young pup. Not even ladies in love are above the law. And more to the point, and this is what I must have a word with your father about, where did you get that two hundred pounds? That’s too much money for a young person to have got hold of honestly.’
Fanny’s mouth opened and shut for a while, but no words came out. She was calculating what had happened. The draper’s shop woman must have smelt a rat. She must have decided not to trust Fanny to bring the money to the temple as agreed. And she must have decided to turn Fanny in! She’d told Mr Fortescue the magistrate that Fanny would pay a bribe to get Dominic Drummer off!
Fanny’s face felt hot. Would people think that she was so desperate for a husband that she’d try to buy one? With money that perhaps had been stolen?
She tried to speak, but her lips wouldn’t move.
Oh, come on, she said to herself. Anna wouldn’t just stand about saying nothing.
‘Sir,’ she pronounced at last, and she was pleased to hear that her voice was clear and steady. A gust of wind forced her to speak even louder, and that gave her more confidence.
‘Sir, you are mistaken in your facts,’ she said. ‘I am not the wrongdoer here. I am trying to catch the blackmailer.’
Mr Fortescue gave a bark of laughter.
‘Look here, Miss Fanny,’ he said confidentially, stepping unpleasantly close to her. ‘You’re in trouble. Young misses in trouble are much better off telling the truth, rather than making up more crazy lies.’
Suddenly he swung his lantern away wildly, its beam dancing off across broken stems.
‘Is that someone else?’ he said urgently. ‘Who’s there? Step forward! I am Mr Fortescue the magistrate. If you harm me, you will be pursued by officers of the law to the border of this county and beyond.’
Aunt Jane! It must be Aunt Jane. Fanny’s heart rose. Her aunt would explain, get her out of this mess.