Jane and the Canterbury Tale

by Stephanie Barron

  My brother strode into the house, tossing his hat and gloves on the central table. He looked tired, cross, and every day his six-and-forty years.

  “Good morning, Johncock.”

  “Good morning, sir. Trust your journey was comfortable, sir?”

  “Tolerable enough. It is over, in any case.”

  I rose from the stairs, the white stuff of my gown as ghostly as a shade’s in the dimness of the hall. Edward started, and stepped backwards, as my form fluttered upwards; his hand lifted involuntarily to his eyes, as tho’ he could not believe the evidence of his senses. An expression of mingled yearning and horror o’erspread his countenance like nothing I had seen before.

  “Good God, what is it?” I cried—and the dreadful look vanished.

  “Jane,” he said with effort. “I thought—that is to say—” He swallowed convulsively. “I did not think to see you there.”

  Johncock was staring hard at his master, as tho’ Edward had thrown off a fit. The candle wavered in his hand, spilling hot wax on the polished marble floor.

  Comprehension swept over me. In the half-light, with exhaustion hard upon him, my brother had thought he glimpsed a shade in earnest—that the spirit of his lost, beloved Elizabeth had awaited his return on the stairs. I knew, then, that despite the passage of five years he still looked for her everywhere—that he expected to glimpse her one day, flitting through Bentigh’s allée, or lingering behind one of the temple’s columns. Perhaps he had seen his Lizzy at Godmersham before this, haunting his footsteps. Who was I to say? But my heart twisted within me, and a painful knot formed in my throat. Edward, who possessed so much—his wealth and good fortune were the envy of all his brothers—yet lacked the one thing necessary to his happiness.

  “We did not expect you so soon.” I stepped woodenly to the floor. My voice sounded queer in my own ears—heavy and forced, as it seemed sometimes when I cajoled my mother out of her sullens. “The boys will be pleased you are come back in time to bid them farewell.”

  “I have much to tell you.” Edward pressed his fingers against his eyes. “But first I must sleep. Will you breakfast with me, Jane—let us say, at eight o’clock?”

  “There is an inquest at noon,” I told him, “in the village of Chilham. I think it would be as well if you were there.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The Plantation Steward’s Boy

  The young man’s appearance seemed sound, to a casual eye,

  But deep in his heart lay the arrow of which he might die.…

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER, “THE LANDOWNER’S TALE”

  28 OCTOBER 1813, CONT.

  “YOUR ERRAND IN LONDON PROSPERED?” I ENQUIRED AS I poured Edward a cup of coffee. It was now half-past eight, and we had met again in the grey light of the breakfast-parlour while the rest of the household still slumbered. Edward had stayed to hear my tale of the maid’s death, frowning over Fanny’s discovery of the corpse; listened to an account of Bredloe’s conclusions, and Finch-Hatton’s conjectures; then repaired to his bedchamber to snatch a few hours’ sleep. I spent the interval in refreshing my appearance, donning a suitable gown for day wear, and writing down the previous account in my journal; by seven, I was longing for coffee, and heard the movements of the servants below-stairs with considerable relief.

  “If by prospered you would suggest that I know more at present than I did when I quitted Kent two days ago—then indeed, Jane, my errand prospered. But I fear it is in a manner that is likely to cost me much effort, time, and reputation.”

  My brother tossed off these words with such suppressed savagery that I was astounded, the coffee pot dangling from my hand.

  “I have set free the one man I ought to have kept caged,” he said, “and have already despatched orders that Sir Davie Myrrh, and that scoundrel he chuses to call his solicitor, be clapped in irons by any who chance to espy them.”

  “Not truly!” I cried. “I was correct, then, in believing I had seen Mr. Burbage before—at the inquest into Fiske’s death?”

  “Yes, Jane, he undoubtedly attended the inquest. Tho’ as I have not seen the fellow again to speak to, I have not been able to wring a confession from him on that point.”

  I set down the coffee pot. “Pray speak plainly, Edward.”

  “Very well—I shall leave off being clever, and attempt to be patient. I shall start at the beginning, and tell you the whole.”

  And so, as my brother consumed a beefsteak and I dipped a few fingers of toast into my coffee—I heard a round tale.

  Edward had begun his London odyssey with a visit to India House, where the name of Sir Davie Myrrh was not unknown. He was able to corroborate much of the seaman’s phantastickal stories, and learnt that he had indeed been glimpsed in Ceylon last year, but had been little heard from of late; it was believed the baronet was voyaging in the West Indies at present. For further intelligence, Edward was directed to the chambers of Sir Davie’s solicitors—Mssrs. Reeve and Bobbit, of Lincoln’s Inn.

  “Not Burbage at all,” I supplied. “How curious!”

  “—Tho’ Mr. Reeve was familiar with Burbage’s name and history,” Edward continued. “The solicitor had no notion Burbage was passing himself off as Sir Davie’s man, nor that his client had been languishing in Canterbury gaol, and was most distressed to think that Sir Davie found no use for the talents of Reeve and Bobbit in such a pass. He apprehended why, of course, once I described the circumstances of our interview. Sir Davie, so Mr. Reeve confessed, lives in the grip of a singular obsession—and it was that which brought him to Canterbury, rather than any plan of Curzon Fiske’s. Fiske was merely a convenient tool to a greater end—tho’ the unfortunate rogue had no idea of it.”

  “What sort of obsession?”

  Edward pushed aside his plate with a sigh. “Do you recollect Sir Davie saying that he once possessed estates in Jamaica—sugar plantations, naturally—as well as Kildane Hall in England?”

  “I recollect he referred to them, but—”

  “—he swaddled both in a fine-woven cloth of reminiscence and adventure that diverted our attention from the essential point. Sir Davie, in his years of wandering the globe, managed to lose Kildane Hall and all his family’s hard-won fortune.”

  “Was he a gamester, like Curzon Fiske?”

  “I should say rather that he was careless—and too trusting of other men, who took advantage of his complaisance. The firm of Reeve and Bobbit has acted in the baronetcy’s interest for generations—Reeve himself knew Sir Davie’s father well—and he maintains that Kildane’s revenues were exhausted by a combination of poor management on the part of its steward, in whose hands Sir Davie left the business of the estate, and the greed of that same man—who absconded to the Americas with thousands of pounds in estate income. During Sir Davie’s protracted absence, Reeve undertook to write to him, earnestly representing in what poor case Kildane stood—and was answered after some months by Sir Davie’s demand that he mortgage Kildane, and forward the funds thus received to Jamaica, where Sir Davie’s plantations stood in urgent need of support. This Reeve did—tho’ with a heavy heart, for he did not like to see a noble English place made to support a failing concern half a world away. However, it was done—and a bare eighteen months later Reeve was informed that the Jamaican plantation had failed, the land was to be sold, and that Kildane must be made over to its lien-holders in payment on the debt. You may imagine how powerless the solicitor felt, Jane.”

  “It is a wreck of considerable proportions,” I agreed. “But how came this about? I had understood there was a fortune to be made in sugar!”

  “That is because you are familiar with Old Mr. Wildman,” Edward said with the first sign of satisfaction I had heard in his voice, “who has prospered in the Jamaican trade—and curiously enough, it is upon Wildman that the tale turns.”

  “Is Mr. Wildman acquainted with Sir Davie Myrrh?”

  “Not at all, to my knowledge,” Edward replied, “but he knows his late Jamaican
plantation too well. It was Wildman who drove Sir Davie to ruin in those parts, so Mr. Reeve assures me, through a concerted effort at competition—and some ruthless methods no gentleman should have stooped to employ. There was a mysterious fire in a sugar mill, I collect, that brought production to a standstill, and a revolt among the slaves that wreaked havoc with the baronet’s harvest. Wildman was then the chief steward of the famous Quebec Estate—the largest plantation in Jamaica, four times the size of Sir Davie’s holdings, with four times the number of slaves required to work it. It was the Quebec Estate, Jane, which Wildman eventually bought from Mr. William Beckford; and it is the Quebec Estate that afforded our neighbour the wealth to purchase Chilham Castle, some decades ago, when he determined to return to England with his Creole bride.”

  “What has all this to do with Curzon Fiske—or Mr. Burbage, if it comes to that?”

  “Burbage is the son of Sir Davie Myrrh’s late plantation steward. He grew up in Jamaica, and was happy there—until his father shot himself, when the baronet was ruined. The lad was left with no home, no prospects, and nowhere to turn—except to Sir Davie.”

  “And both men blame Mr. Wildman for their misfortunes?” I said, with growing comprehension.

  “As Reeve vowed—it is an obsession with Sir Davie to see himself revenged upon the family at Chilham Castle.”

  We were both silent an instant, as Edward’s words lingered in the air. “But why Curzon Fiske?” I demanded. “What possible rôle had he to play?”

  “That of victim, of course.”

  “I do not understand.”

  Edward leaned across the table with all the intimacy of a conspirator. “Fiske, you will recall, met up with Sir Davie Myrrh in Bangalore, and spent a number of idle months with the baronet in Ceylon. I suspect that the two canvassed their grievances a good deal during the period—and discovered a mutual object of hatred in Old Mr. Wildman of Chilham Castle. The one saw him as a ruthless despoiler of wealth, and the other as the enemy of his marital hopes.”

  I seized my brother’s arm. “I had almost forgot! Jupiter told me the whole of that final evening three years since, when Fiske gambled his last—and put up his wife as stake! Our own George Moore nearly won Adelaide at cards, Edward—but that Mr. Lushington would have it Fiske cheated!”

  “What in God’s name are you speaking of, Jane?”

  “The story will keep, my dear, until such time as you may turn your attention to it. But you were saying that Fiske had every reason to hate Old Wildman—pray continue.”

  “I think it probable that Fiske and Sir Davie saw their paths aligned. They quitted Ceylon with the intention of repairing to Canterbury—Fiske, in an effort to regain his wife, and the baronet, with the object of being avenged. It was Fiske’s misfortune that he did not perceive he was to be the agent of Sir Davie’s satisfaction. Burbage, however, was fully alive to it.”

  “Edward, are you suggesting that Sir Davie killed Fiske, and Burbage helped him to do it?”

  “I can think of nothing more probable! One of them—I presume Sir Davie, as it was he who pretends to have stood in the back garden awaiting the message from Adelaide’s maid—stole young James Wildman’s pistol from the gun room while all the wedding guests were occupied at the ball; he may then have passed it to Burbage, along with the intelligence that Fiske would be waiting near St. Lawrence Church; and the thing was done.”

  “Fiske was murdered and poor James’s gun left in the churchyard,” I murmured. “Yes, I do see. They thought there could be nothing more natural, in the eyes of a suspicious Law, than for a Wildman to rid the world of Curzon Fiske on the night of his wife’s bigamous marriage—only think of the scandal Fiske’s timely death should avert! To burden James with the guilt is revenge, indeed; did Sir Davie succeed in bringing Old Mr. Wildman’s beloved heir to the scaffold, he should visit upon Chilham Castle such a manifold tragedy! It is in every way diabolical!”

  “You have stated my frame of the case in a nutshell,” my brother concluded.

  I glanced at him curiously. “But what of Martha, lying cold in the Chilham publick house?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps she saw Sir Davie steal the gun—or hand it to Burbage. And when Fiske was found, she began to talk.”

  “It seems quite apt,” I said uneasily. “And yet—”

  “And yet, we have not a single shred of evidence, from beginning to end. Not a particle of proof. We have helped the very men we suspect, to walk out of their cell; and wished them godspeed on their voyage to the Galápagos. I swear I could put a gun to my own head, Jane, when I consider of it!”

  “What has been done, to recover them?”

  “When I quitted the chambers of Reeve and Bobbit, I went to the Bow Street Runners—they are given to meeting at the Bear, a publick house in Covent Garden—”

  “—not two steps from Henry’s lodgings in Henrietta Street,” I finished. “I am well aware. The Runners are even now in pursuit of Sir Davie Myrrh?”

  “Their first object must be the principal ports. I am in no wise convinced that the Galápagos is truly the baronet’s destination; the offering may have been a blind, intended to throw us off the scent. I have urged the Runners to search the Channel ports, as well as those giving on to the North Sea.”

  “I understand the Baltic is lovely this time of year. And now?”

  “I must attend an inquest.” Edward rose. “You are looking hagged, Jane, and decidedly unwell. You have taken a cold in the head, from an injudicious gallivanting about the country. Pray lie down upon your bed this morning, like a dutiful aunt.”

  “And miss the opportunity of speeding George Moore and all his family from the house?” I shook my head in disdain. “They have only to vanish down the sweep, Edward, with Harriot’s brave handkerchief fluttering, for me to require Fanny to instantly harness her Rowan. I intend to pay a call upon Chilham Castle while you are at the village publick house—and she must drive me.”

  My brother’s eyes narrowed. “You will not betray a word of my conjectures?”

  “Not a syllable! I merely wish to know how dear Mrs. Wildman bears the protracted blessing of Mrs. Thane’s continued presence. I have been sadly neglecting my duty; I have been tardy in paying my calls. And you know Jupiter is to leave us once your boys have gone to Oxford. Fanny will be wanting a diversion for her spirits. She shall sadly miss his company; he is the most engaging fellow.”

  “You might drop a hint in Thane’s ear that his sister is very soon likely to be freed,” Edward said doubtfully, “but do not allow that young buck to be waltzing with Fanny, pray!”

  And so he left me.

  I sat a while longer over my coffee and toast, revolving all that Edward had told me. If I indulged a very different set of conjectures than the Magistrate’s, in my brother’s absence, I am sure he shall be the first to forgive me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  A Convenient Indisposition

  How can men, you say, defend the wall

  Of a castle so assailed; it is bound to fall.

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER, “THE WIFE OF BATH’S PROLOGUE”

  28 OCTOBER 1813, CONT.

  IN THE END, OF COURSE, IT WAS PAST NOON BEFORE GENTLE Rowan was harnessed and Fanny at leisure to drive me to the Wildmans’, for the morning was spent in bidding farewell to Young Edward and George, and all their sundry belongings, which were strapped to Edward’s travelling-coach for the first leg of their journey by post to Oxford. They are to bait at Lenham, and spend a night in London, before journeying into Oxfordshire. Young Edward elected to ride his favourite hunter behind the coach, leaving his younger brother to the splendid isolation of its interior—or what should be splendid isolation, once the Moore family quits it. Mr. and Mrs. Moore elected to have a saving in their post charges, by travelling as far as Lenham at Edward’s expence, and with his exasperated sons; from there, they shall have to fend for themselves in achieving their own home at Wrotham. But I have hopes of Harriot’s greater comfort in futur
e: in all the flurry of strapping bandboxes to the rear of the coach, and shifting my nephews’ things so as to have their own nearer to hand, Harriot found a moment to embrace me, and whisper in confidence her thanks for my encouragement and understanding.

  “And only reflect, Jane! Mr. Moore assures me that he perceives no further need for charitable works in the Indies—and our gold is to remain quite our own, henceforth!”

  I tucked away this morsel of intelligence, as further confirmation of my suspicions—that Curzon Fiske had steadily blackmailed his old school friend George Moore, in return for silence on a delicate subject: that the late Archbishop’s son had gambled at cards, for the stake of another man’s wife.

  My brother Edward had sufficient time only to offer his guests a distracted farewell, clasp his younger son to his bosom, and take his elder’s hand, before being gone on horseback in the direction of Chilham.

  “Ought to take leave myself,” Mr. Finch-Hatton said doubtfully as he gazed at Fanny; and tho’ the young man has risen much in my esteem, and I should not tire of learning more of him, I could not in good conscience encourage him to linger. He should look both too particular with regard to Fanny, and too diffident in declaring himself—and I cannot believe him ready to declare himself in a manner calculated to make my niece happy. There is too little of the ardent lover, and too much of the boy, still raging in the man of five-and-twenty.

  Of her own feelings on the subject, Fanny betrayed nothing—unless one may interpret an air of distracted impatience, as evidence of her desire for her visitor to be gone. She is the female least susceptible in the entire neighbourhood to Jupiter’s charms, which cannot argue for his suit’s prospering. I find, as these weeks of my visit to Godmersham wear away, that I cannot penetrate Fanny’s heart at all—have no notion, indeed, of which qualities in a gentleman she most prizes—but should argue in favour of the quiet probity and sound understanding of John Plumptre succeeding, where Jupiter’s casual presumption cannot.