by Jane Lark
Jane smiled.
On the far side of the green was a forge, and beside it an inn. Its wooden sign, painted with a raven, swung in the breeze. Jane imagined it creaking with an eerie sound that would be disturbing in a gothic way if you stayed in one of those very crooked-looking rooms—certainly the windows all appeared slightly askew.
“I see a church spire!” Cassandra called. “The parsonage must be near it!”
Numerous memories of her days at Steventon flooded Jane’s mind, as longing for the past filled her chest. But the Reverend Leigh was not her father. It would not be the same, and she must prepare herself for that.
The carriage turned about the end of the green and a little farther along the narrow road they passed a very humble little church.
“Oh is that not lovely?” Jane’s mother exclaimed. “Very pretty. Perhaps one day one of you would draw it for me, so I might have a keepsake of our stay.” As she spoke the carriage turned off the road onto a gravel drive. The drive turned in a small semicircle before a fashionable square, house, with a flat roof and ornate moulding about the windows. It must have been very recently built; the stone was pale yellow, and glowing in a shaft of sunlight which had broken through the layer of cloud above it.
It was an omen. That is how Susan would have seen it. With her fervour for all things gothic.
It was a sign of fortune, a blessing, in the vein of First Impressions. That is what Lizzy would think, yet if she said that to Darcy he would laugh at her, but possibly only in his thoughts.
When the carriage drew to a halt, its iron rimmed wheels stirring up the gravel, Jane smiled. It was a sound so familiar to homecomings and visits to loved ones that it twisted something deeply embedded in her. Steventon was never entirely left behind because James was there, and he regularly invited Jane or Cassandra to stay to help with the children. But much as she loved her nieces and nephews, and James, it was not the same. It was no longer her home.
Three footmen came from the house. Two carried a trunk that looked heavy and the third was carrying a pile of small items of furniture.
Their activity implied that the house was not prepared to receive guests.
The carriage rocked. A moment later the man who had been sitting beside the driver opened the carriage door.
“Forgive me, ma’am, misses. Perhaps it would be wise to wait a moment before you disembark, while I discover what is occurring. There is another carriage here, which is in the process of being loaded.” He bowed his head before shutting the door, then turned away.
“Nonsense,” Jane’s mother breathed leaning forward to grip the door handle. “We are expected; whatever this hullabaloo is about, it can have no reason to prevent us remaining. Thomas agreed to us visiting.”
“Mama,” Cassandra said in vain, as Jane’s mother pushed down the latch.
Rogers, the man who had opened the door, hurried back to lower the step, and lifted his hand for Jane’s mother to take. “Ma’am.” The pitch of his voice was a slight reprimand, which implied his unspoken words were, “What are you doing?”
Her mother’s gloved hand grasped Rogers’s. “There is no need for us to wait, Rogers,’’ she said as she climbed out, all determination. Perhaps it is another visitor who is leaving… But certainly it will have no impact on our welcome.”
Jane’s heart beat more firmly, making the blood pulse in her veins. She gripped the door handle and followed her mother out, stepping down onto the gravel.
The ray of sunshine was now a clear opening in the cloud, and the light shined down spreading warmth. Jane breathed in the fresh country air. Behind the parsonage a cockerel crowed. Something in Jane’s stomach twisted. A confusion of emotion that gripped at her senses.
Cassandra climbed out too.
Jane breathed deeply once more, then indelicately arched her back, stretching. The carriage had become cramped after so many hours.
Cassandra’s fingers slipped about Jane’s elbow, as Jane’s mother walked ahead.
“Thomas!’ her mother called towards the open front door.
“Thomas!” Her mother called again.
“Where is Reverend Leigh?” Jane’s mother asked the man who had just finished loading a trunk into a cart.
“Within, ma’am. Would you have me fetch him for you?”
“Yes, he ought to be expecting us. Mrs Austen and her daughters.”
“Ma’am.” The man bowed, bending at the waist for a moment, then he turned and hurried ahead as Jane’s mother walked towards the door.
Cassandra threw Jane an intrigued and amused look, her arm wrapping fully about Jane’s as they followed.
“Thomas!” Jane’s mother called again when they walked through the door into the hall, before the footman had even disappeared out of view to impart the news of their arrival.
He walked on to a door at the end of the hall.
Jane’s mother followed as Jane and Cassandra trailed her. “Thomas!” Within the house her call was sharper. The sound rang along the low ceilinged space. “Thomas!”
A portly, gentleman stepped out of the door the footman had just walked into. His skin was ruddy, and he looked a little sweaty and flustered. “Cassandra. Good heavens. My dear cousin. What a time for you to come. I had entirely forgotten.”
“Forgotten us… Are you intending to leave?” Jane’s mother sounded shocked. But not only that, worried.
Cassandra let go of Jane’s arm, and stepped forward, but it was Jane who spoke. “Do not fret, Mother. We will find an inn.” Though they did not have the money to spend many unexpected nights in inns.
“Oh good Lord. Nonsense. Nonsense.” Reverend Leigh, Jane’s newly-met cousin, turned away, and walked back through the open doorway, reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief as he went. When they followed him into what turned out to be the parlour, he was dabbing the handkerchief against his forehead.
Light spilled into the small square room from two tall sash windows.
A man stood near the fireplace, dressed in black breeches, a long black waistcoat and a black redingote. His hands had been behind his back, but as Jane walked in behind her mother, his arms fell to his sides. “Good-day, ma’am.” He bowed to Jane’s mother. Then to Cassandra. “Miss.” Then to Jane. “Miss.”
“These ladies are my cousins, Mr Hill.” Mr Hill looked at Jane’s mother again, as Reverend Leigh began the introductions. “Mrs Cassandra Austen, Miss Austen, of the same name, and Miss Jane Austen. Mrs Austen is a Leigh too, by birth.” Reverend Leigh looked at her mother. “This gentleman is Mr Joseph Hill, the executor of the Stoneleigh Abbey estate.”
Stoneleigh Abbey… Jane had heard the name spoken often.
“Mr Hill.” Her mother nodded at the man.
Stoneleigh Abbey, from her mother’s descriptions, was palatial. To Jane it was a castle spoken of only in fairytales. Yet it was a real place. It was the pride of her mother’s family and those who had owned it bore the origin of her mother’s fabled nose.
“…It is delightful to have you here,” Reverend Leigh continued, “but I am sorry to say I must quit the house immediately, and now I have no idea what to do. I cannot delay, you see. Mr Hill is adamant we leave at once.”
“Leave…” Jane’s mother repeated, her eyes widening as her gaze questioned the words.
“Indeed. I am exceedingly sorry for it. After you have come all this way. But I have had some strange and yet wonderful news, and I am quite in shock. Though I have been told it is by no means certain unless I leave for Stoneleigh Abbey immediately.” The Reverend’s words had been hurried. They made little sense.
“Forgive me, what is uncertain?” Jane encouraged, her head full of the images she’d built of Stoneleigh Abbey through imagination. But for the first time she pictured her mother’s ancestral home made of bricks and mortar not magic.
Reverend Leigh looked at Jane. “Oh goodness. How rude I am, I have not even greeted you properly. Miss Austen?” It was a question, to clarify if Jane
was the elder.
Jane’s mother stepped forward. Her fingers touched Cassandra’s arm. “This is my eldest, Cassandra.” Cassandra bobbed a curtsey, in greeting. “And here is Jane.” Jane took her turn in offering deference to her mother’s elder cousin.
“Ladies.” He bowed in return.
But Jane was eager to know what the fuss was about. It was the sort of scurry that only seemed to occur in the country. It was the life she had led before Bath, and the life she loved to write of, when emotions ran high over the tiniest piece of news or gossip. But the mention of Stoneleigh Abbey was no tiny piece of news.
“But tell me,” Jane’s mother asked before Jane could, “what of Stoneleigh?”
“Oh and there I am so harassed by such unexpected news, I have not yet told you. Hill…” Reverend Leigh looked at the man behind him, as if for confirmation, then looked back at Jane’s mother. “The Honourable Mary Leigh is dead. She left no heir, quite obviously, as she never married, and now it seems I have the best claim upon the Stoneleigh Estate. But Mr Hill is adamant we must leave now, and I must establish myself in the house before others try to claim it. I am not the only relation with entitlement, merely the favoured, and so I am to quit the parsonage post-haste. And what to do with you?” His gaze passed from her mother to Jane, and then to Cassandra, his eyes and expression claiming them a puzzle to be solved.
“Might not Mrs Austen travel with you?” Mr Hill’s deep voice filled the small room.
“Might she?” Reverend Leigh turned to Mr Hill. “Do you think so? That would be capital if you are willing.”
“I can see no harm in it. None at all. It is only important that we leave at once. I would wait no longer. If anyone else were to reach the house before you, and claim it as theirs, then it may take years for the solicitors and The Lord Chancellor’s Court to agree before you are able to claim the inheritance that both myself and my mistress believe to be rightfully yours.”
The Reverend turned back to Jane’s mother. “And so, Cassandra, you see how it is. There is no time to waste. I must leave. I am merely taking my valuable possessions for now. I will leave my sister to organise the servants, finish packing and have another cart follow. She may remain here and manage the house until a new vicar can be found.”
The Reverend’s gaze had ceased to focus on them, his thoughts had turned inward, the last words he spoke to himself. Jane forgave him, though. She did not wish to waste her thoughts on her flustered cousin. Her thoughts were for Stoneleigh Abbey.
They were to go there.
The home of her ancestors.
The place where all the tales she had been told of her family’s history had occurred.
King Charles I had slept in its rooms!
Jane’s heart beat erratically, skipping into a sharp rhythm of excitement. She wished to laugh. She felt as giddy headed as Susan was over gothic tales.
Stoneleigh was a place her mother spoke of with pride in her voice and a look of wonder in her eyes, as others told of myths and legends like the story of King Arthur.
It had always inspired awe in Jane’s very sensitive spirit for things of make-believe—to have a claim upon the stories of heroes and heroines—from her own family—and for those tales of valour and intrigue to be true.
They had inspired Jane to write her first book at the age of sixteen, The History of England, in which she had freely written, and claimed, the Leigh family’s prejudice and ignorance of the historical truth, which she had inherited and adopted from her mother.
“My dear.” The Reverend took hold of her mother’s hand. “Will you come? Will you forgive me for being such a heartless host as to whisk you away immediately and pack you back into a carriage you have only just alighted from? You must be so fatigued. You must have been travelling for days. You may remain here, I suppose.” His dark eyebrows suddenly lifted, and so high they touched the fringe of his grey hair. “But then it is an adventure not to be missed! You must come!” The first part of his little speech had been orated in a vicar like voice, as though he spoke from a pulpit or at the church door as he said good-day to the flock he tended for God. The last was said with eagerness, in the style of one of Jane’s brothers, when they had been young men, without the responsibility of a family.
“An adventure indeed!” Jane’s mother turned and her hand slipped free from her cousin’s. “What say you, Cassandra?” Her eyes shone bright with pleasure.
It would make Jane’s mother happier than ever to see the home she had constantly held up before her children like a castle in the air.
Cassandra nodded.
Her mother looked at Jane, her eyes catching the light and glinting with a twinkle of the girlish excitement Jane felt. “Is this not just your cup of tea, Jane? Imagine the things we might see!”
Jane already could. She saw gothic pointed archways, dark rooms, long corridors and portrait filled walls. “Oh, yes, of course. We must go.”
All sense of weight was lifted from Jane for a moment. All the darkness forgotten.
This was a true adventure. A tale of country life worth living. A story good enough to capture in a novel.
“Yet as I said, Reverend Leigh—” Mr Hill interjected.
“I know, I know, we must leave with all haste.” Their cousin turned back to Mr Hill. “But may I at least offer the ladies refreshment? And would Mrs Hill like—”
“I would advise against delaying.” Mr Hill’s hands fisted as he spoke, as if holding onto his frustration at the need to repeat his warning.
“We stopped at an inn not too long ago,” Jane’s mother intervened. “I am happy to leave immediately, and why do you not simply travel in our carriage, cousin, and leave yours to follow once it is loaded? It may catch us up.”
The Reverend nodded, with a few repetitions, as though his head bobbed like an apple on the water. “An excellent idea.” He looked at Mr Hill, seeking confirmation. “Mr Hill…”
“Of course. I shall ride ahead, and so it will be a benefit for you to have companions. But simply, please let us leave.”
That must have been the manner of the men’s conversation prior to the arrival of Jane’s party. Mr Hill appeared to have been urging Reverend Leigh to leave without waiting for his belongings to be loaded, even those most precious.
“Very well,” Reverend Leigh’s head bobbed like an apple once more. “But what of Mrs Hill?”
Mr Hill looked at Jane’s mother. “May my wife travel with you also?”
“Of course.”
“Wonderful,” Reverend Leigh confirmed. “I have two letters I must write to ensure things are managed here, and then I am ready. Ladies would you await me in the carriage?” His hand lifted, with an indication for them to leave, and he bowed slightly, and a little awkwardly, then turned towards an open writing desk which stood in the corner of the room, with ink, quill and paper ready.
A vibrant urgency raced through Jane to handle those tools. She longed for a story to flow through her and capture her fingers in a flurry of letters.
“Cassandra, Jane…” Jane’s mother gathered them up like a mother hen, as excitement glowed in her eyes. “Well, well,” she whispered as they went back out into the hall, enthusiasm brimming in her voice. “I cannot believe we shall have such an honour.”
“We shall hear nothing but Theophilus Leigh and Baron Thomas Leigh, all the way there,” Cassandra whispered into Jane’s ear.
Jane gripped her sister’s arm and pulled her closer. “Well I shall not complain. I am dying to see the place. We have heard so much of it. We shall stand on the ground that a King has stood upon.”
“Your imagination is reeling already.”
“I see large halls, gargoyles and towers.”
Cassandra laughed as they walked back out into the fresh air, and heard the cockerel crow once more.
Chapter 4
13th August 1806
“Stoneleigh Village. Here we are,” Reverend Leigh stated when they saw the first houses built
in dark red brick.
At the commencement of their journey the carriage had been full of chatter and excitement, and Reverend Leigh had joined in their overexcited conversations, but ever since they had drawn near to Stoneleigh Abbey that sense of anticipation had been tainted by his anxiousness. Reverend Leigh feared he would be too late. What if a contestant for the inheritance was already at the house?
Jane bit her lip as she leaned to look from the window, longing to take off her bonnet and pull the glass down.
“Please do forgive the state of those cottages,” Mr Hill leant forward and said to Jane. “They are a little in disgrace.” Mr Hill had already reached the house but had come back to find them and take up the role of guide for the last leg of their journey. He smiled when Jane looked at him. Jane’s lips lifted at the edges. His eyes said he could tell she was impatient with enthusiasm, despite her cousin’s anxiety.
“Those are the almshouses; there, on the far side of the smithy. They were built by the family.” Mr Hill lifted a hand directing them all to look.
The houses were a row of terraced properties, all in red brick, with tall chimneys rising above the low roofs. Like soldiers on parade. “They are very grand,” Jane answered as she continued looking. They were orderly, precise, pretty, and if a house could be full of pride, she would say they were full of pride. Or perhaps it was her heart that welled with pride on their behalf. They had been created by someone from whom she had descended.
“There is the parsonage.”
Jane glanced back to see Mr Hill speaking particularly to Reverend Leigh.
“It is a smart property, but well away from the Great House, as the church is here in the village.”
The Reverend Leigh nodded, his head once more bobbing like an apple on a pond. Yet concern creased his brow, even though Mr Hill had assured him half an hour ago no one else had arrived before he’d left Stoneleigh Abbey.