Jane and the Barque of Frailty jam-9

by Stephanie Barron

  The words required no translator.

  “I was,” she said in her guttural way, then muttered a few hurried French words of farewell to Manon.

  “Restez,” Manon commanded, and grasped the Russian’s arm. “If it is justice you seek, you must talk to Mademoiselle Austen. She, too, does not credit the tale of suicide; and for reasons of her own she has sought the advice of a lawyer, look you. A powerful man who might discover the truth. Mademoiselle will help you. But you must trust her. I will speak the words you cannot. It is understood?”

  Druschka stiffened, and for an instant I feared she might bolt as swift as a hare across the open stretch of green, her precious book hurled to the winds. Then resolve seemed to break in her, and she sank down once more on the stone bench.

  “Pray ask her, Manon, why her mistress was embarrassed for funds in the last days before her death.”

  The question was put, and the answer came in a shrug. The Princess had never wanted for money before; her income was disbursed each quarter by her bankers, and in London this was the firm of Coutts. The sum was made over by her brother; the Princess’s husband did not utter her name aloud, tho’ he had certainly kept all the wealth she had brought to her marriage.

  “Was the Princess a gamester?”

  Druschka shook her head emphatically: No.

  I glanced at Manon, perplexed; perhaps the rumour of indebtedness was unfounded. Yet the Princess had certainly sought my brother’s aid, and not her own banker’s. That surely bespoke a measure of desperation, or deceit. I attempted another approach.

  “Was the Princess’s behaviour all that it should be, in the days leading up to her death?”

  Manon translated the reply. “My lady was beside herself; she was nearly out of her mind. I have never seen her so. And when I asked her the reason, she would not confide in me. I knew, then, that the trouble was very bad. Hours and hours she spent at her desk, writing her letters — a madness in the paper and ink — and then I would find the ashes of what she had burned. None of them sent.”

  I could not help but think of Lord Castlereagh, and the salacious correspondence published in the Morning Post. Was this the proof of all his lordship would deny?

  “Letters to whom?” I demanded.

  Druschka lifted up her hands.

  “She cannot read,” Manon explained.

  I glanced down at the leather-bound volume the maid still clutched close to her heart. “Why, then, is this book so precious?”

  “It is her mistress’s journal,” Manon replied. “This, alone, Tscholikova failed to burn. Druschka has been guarding it against the brother — Prince Pirov — for fear he will destroy it. She brought it to me in the hope I might decipher the words — tell her why her mistress died. The Princess wrote in French, voyez-vous. Druschka speaks that tongue, but the letters are foreign to her … ”

  I held Manon’s gaze. “And this the Princess did not burn. Good God! What we might find there … ”

  Manon crouched near the Russian maid, and spoke softly to her in French. Druschka cradled her head in her hands, the book sliding unheeded to the ground. A broken phrase fell from her lips.

  “What can women hope,” Manon translated, “against all the power of the Tsar?”

  “The Tsar!” I cried.

  Druschka stared at me in horror, as tho’ I had uttered an oath aloud.

  “But what has he to do, pray, with the death of Princess Tscholikova?” I pressed. And so she began her tale.

  IT WAS A MEANDERING STORY, FULL OF INCIDENT and memory: the Princess as a child, consigned to her English governess from the age of seven and ignored by her bitter father; the Princess’s mother, dead in childbirth of a stillborn son; the elder brother, Prince Pirov, attached to the St. Petersburg Court, a glittering and distant figure, close to the young Tsar. Evgenia buried in the country, lonely but for her dolls. The wolfhounds by the fire of an evening; the sound of hunting horns in the freezing early dusk. Druschka was her nursemaid, banished by the young woman who journeyed all the way from London to instruct the Princess in French and Italian, watercolours and the use of the globes; but the Englishwoman was unhappy — she was a cold creature, colder than the steppes — and it was to Druschka the Princess came for stories at bedtime, Druschka who tended Evgenia when she was ill.

  I watched as a few tears slid from the aged eyes, Manon’s voice a quiet whisper above Druschka’s own; the brisk wind of spring toyed with my bonnet strings and I shuddered, as tho’ I, too, felt the cold of the steppes in my blood.

  When the old Prince died, Evgenia was summoned to St. Petersburg and the English governess was sent packing back home, no companion being necessary for a girl of fifteen on the point of her debut; Evgenia would live with her brother now, in the grand palace on the Neva, and her brother’s wife — a haughty woman with vast estates in her dowry, for all she was only a countess — would introduce the child to Society, and find her a husband. Druschka expected her young mistress to leap with joy at the prospect — she did not think the girl could pack her trunks fast enough — but to her dismay, Evgenia was afraid. She bore her brother no love and his wife even less; she feared that she might fail them — too stupid, too ugly, too maladroit.

  This last word Manon handed me in its French form, with a sort of flourish; the maid was warming to her tale, I knew, and enjoying the fairy nature of it. But I read the future in the young girl’s palpitating bosom — for indeed, she had failed them all, she who married well but without love, then slipped into the reckless affairs of youth when once the cage was opened …

  I waited until the Russian maid had explained how she came to accompany her mistress, the sole comfort the girl could claim from a past swiftly stripped from her; how Evgenia had been courted for her wealth by the most powerful men in Russia; how she had fallen in love with an hussar, and seen him killed. When at length Druschka arrived at Prince Tscholikov and his appointment to Vienna— I held up my hand, and said to Manon, “Ask her for whom the Princess abandoned her husband. An

  Austrian? Another Russian? Who was the cause of her mistress’s downfall?”

  But Druschka surprised me again.

  “The Tsar,” she spat. “C’est lui.”

  “The Tsar was her lover?” I blinked in astonishment at Manon. “I have certainly heard that he is a very fine figure of a man — and full young for the lofty estate he claims — but surely… was he not in St. Petersburg?”

  “Non et non et non,” the Russian woman protested in a frenzy of frustration. She then broke into such a torrent of French that I was forced to be patient, and await Manon’s translation.

  “It would seem,” she said at length, “that the Princess was ordered to meet with a foreigner attached to the Viennese Court. The world assumed this man to be her lover — but she met with him only at the behest of her brother, Prince Pirov, who said it was the wish of the Tsar. Druschka does not know why the two met, or what they did together; her mistress would never speak of it. But her husband grew jealous; in the end he accused the Princess of adultery, and banished her from his house. She went first to Paris, and then to London. Now she is dead, and Prince Pirov — the brother — will hear nothing of murder. The Prince does not wish for justice. He wishes for obscurity, and silence, and shame. Druschka believes that this, too, is at the order of the Tsar. And she cannot rest.”

  My mind was in a whirl; the intelligence was too incredible to apprehend all at once. If Druschka could be believed — if she had not merely formed a tissue of sense from a smattering of facts, interpreted as she chose — then what she described was a woman who had sacrificed her reputation, her honour, her place in society, and eventually her life — for reasons of state, and policy.

  “Who was this foreigner, Druschka?” I asked. “The one the Princess knew in Vienna?”

  “Le français,” the maid replied. “D’Entraigues.”

  Chapter 18

  The Earl ’s Seal

  Saturday, 27 April 1811, cont.
/>
  AS PRINCESS TSCHOLIKOVA’S JOURNAL WAS WRITTEN in French, we agreed that Manon would be charged with reading it — my command of the tongue being hardly equal to a native’s. I urged the maid to pay particular attention to the last few weeks of the Princess’s existence, and to report what she gleaned from the entries with as much despatch as possible. Then Manon and I parted from Druschka with firm promises of support, and adjurations to say nothing of all she had disclosed. Druschka appeared to live in such terror of the long arm of the Tsar, that I felt assured of her silence.

  Once returned to Sloane Street, I went in search of Eliza.

  She was pirouetting before the mirrors in her dressing room, all thought of the gallows banished. Her cold had very nearly gone off, and her plump countenance was pink with satisfaction at a new gown — a bronze-green silk with a high ruffed collar— which showed off her dark eyes to perfection.

  “I might wear topazes with this,” she mused, “or perhaps my garnet earrings. What do you think, Jane?”

  “Eliza, have you written to your friend the Comtesse?”

  My sister pouted at me in disappointment. “I fully apprehend that we are a day closer to the horrors threatened by those Bow Street men — but can we not spend the morning in pleasure rather than the pursuit of villains? This is dear Henry’s last day for a se’nnight! And if you are gloomy, Jane, he will fear the worst — and believe me in ill-health. He will be such a prey to anxiety that he will never leave for Oxford on the morrow, and we will be forced to go about this havey-cavey business in the most underhanded fashion. It is vital, my dear, that we appear gay to the point of dissipation! Fashion must be our subject — millinery and shopping our sole pursuits — so that Henry may trot off to Oxford on his hired mare without a backward look!”

  “Are you aware, Eliza, that it was the Comte d’Entraigues who ruined Princess Tscholikova in Vienna — who disgraced her name and caused her husband to break with her forever?”

  “No! Was it indeed? Were they lovers, then?”

  “Or worse.”

  Eliza blinked. “What could be worse?”

  “Never mind that! You will agree that the association must place your friend’s possession of the Princess’s jewels in the most sinister light! Recollect the degree of hatred Anne de St.-Huberti exhibited towards the Princess at the theatre, on the very night of Tscholikova’s murder—”

  Eliza sank onto the silken pouf drawn up near her dressing table. “That is unfortunate. I had cherished the hope that the entire business was the result of a misunderstanding … and how I shall have the courage to look Anne in the face now, I know not.”

  “You have written to her, then?”

  “She comes to me today. Four o’clock is the appointed hour — for you know Henry will certainly walk round to his club if Anne is to bear me company, and nothing could be better! I think, Jane, that you should absent yourself as well — for the poor creature is unlikely to admit her sins before the entire world!”

  “Impossible, Eliza. I should return to find you lying in a pool of blood!”

  “Nonsense,” she said briskly, as Manon entered the dressing room with a hot iron, intent upon curling her mistress’s hair. “If the Comtesse is not above doing violence to an old friend, who has only ever wished her well — I shall scream for Manon, and she shall send for those odious Runners immediately!”

  However unremarkable her degree of sense, Eliza certainly did not lack for courage.

  “I shall sit in the housekeeper’s room with Madame Bigeon,” I relented, “but do not ask me to remove myself further. With so much you must be content.”

  “Very well, very well,” Eliza returned pettishly. “Now take yourself off to Henry! I am determined he shall suspect nothing of our trouble on this day — and if you betray me, Jane, I shall never forgive you!”

  I FOUND MY BROTHER IN THE BREAKFAST PARLOUR, chair pushed back from the ruins of bacon, pert head buried in his newspapers.

  “There is a letter for you,” he offered as I entered the room.

  “Cassandra? She will be charging me again with the purchase of green crewels, no doubt, and enquiring after the success of Eliza’s party — my letter will have crossed hers in the post.”

  “Green crewels?” Henry repeated, diverted from his reading.

  “She has set her heart on seven yards of the stuff, to make up for a summer gown, and I spent all her money on coloured muslin instead! It will fall to pieces in the first wash, and I shall be forced to endure her reproaches for the remainder of the Season. I must drag you to Grafton House this morning, Henry, to buy what Cassandra prefers.[19] You may carry the parcels for me.”

  I turned over the post as I spoke, and discovered no letter from my sister — but a heavy packet of hot-pressed paper, addressed to Miss Austen, and bearing a crest in black wax on the obverse.

  “From whom can this be?” I wondered aloud.

  “Moira,” Henry said flatly. “You’ve made a conquest, Jane. Does the Earl wish to take you driving again in the Park, under the guise of spreading Whig rumours?”

  I had said nothing to my brother of the substance of my conversation with his lordship. He was as likely to scoff at the idea of treason, as he was to dismiss the value of Lord Harold’s papers. With deliberate lightness, therefore, I rejoined, “I must snatch at any chance of an alliance, my dear — even if the swain be dottering, and nearly in his grave! Indeed, I should prefer him to be so, that I might have all the dignity of widowhood, and none of the longueurs of marriage.”

  “As his lordship’s heir is but three years of age,” Henry retorted with satisfaction, “I believe it is you who should find your grave first. Do not be telling Cassandra of this clandestine correspondence! She will be thinking you quite as abandoned to propriety as poor little Marianne — despatching letter after letter to Willoughby’s lodgings!”

  And with this fond reference to my novel — which in all the suspense of murder I had very nearly forgot — Henry went to collect his wife.

  I broke the Earl’s seal without delay.

  Brooks’s Club

  26 April 1811

  My dear Miss Austen—

  Your interesting communication of several hours past has given me to think, not only of Harry and the blessed days of fellowship that are long gone, but of certain events in His Majesty’s government during the years 1808–1809, viz., the conduct of the Peninsular Campaign and certain intrigues of governance surrounding it.

  I am, and have always been, devoted to the philosophy and cause of the Whig party, particularly as led and espoused by that great figure of the recent age, Charles James Fox. The brief fifteen months in which Mr. Fox held the position of First Minister, during which period I was also honoured to serve— I speak of what is commonly known as the Ministry of All Talents — I may frankly state that he demonstrated to an admiring kingdom that perspicacity, restraint, and honour that must always distinguish both the statesman and the gentleman. I say nothing of his regrettable indiscretions among the female set, nor of his addiction to gaming. The fact that Mr. Fox was able to conduct himself with the acuteness and daring of a born leader, tho’ his cabinet united Whigs with men not of his own chusing but of the Opposition — a union indeed of the first minds of England — is a credit to his ability to set aside personal ambition, in the interest of King and Country, to the very day of his death in harness.

  But I digress. In speaking of Mr. Fox, I would merely illustrate my own degree of experience with those men who lead the Tory faction. I have not only observed them from the vantage of my long years in Opposition; I have known several from the cradle, and others from the ministry in which we both served. You enquired of me whom I might adjudge to be enemies of Lord C. In this, I believe you had my fellow Whigs in view; I believe you expected a recital of such names as Lords Grenville and Grey, Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Brougham, Mr. Ponsonby and his ilk — all of them reasonably opposed to Lord C.’s aims, and certainly to his conduct of war during the
period in which he governed that ministry. Of Mr. Fox’s nephew Lord Holland, whose dedication to his late uncle’s principles has always been frank and warm, and whose opposition to the endless campaigns in which we find ourselves has been vociferously expressed in the House of Lords, I need say little — other than that his contempt for Lord C. is invariably confined to the political realm, and never results in a social breach among their mutual acquaintance.

  Your acute understanding, Miss Austen, and the various points you raise in support of your conjectures, have occupied my mind the better part of several hours. The cause at issue — the unfortunate death of that lady to which you referred, and the possibility of her end having been not of her own chusing — is sufficiently grave as to warrant my attention; but the possible consequences of too frank an avowal, and too broad an application of suspicion, must urge me to demand your discretion. Men may be ruined for a whisper; I have seen it done. Therefore, let the intelligence I now offer you be held in the strictest confidence, until such time as you feel you possess sufficient proofs, as to make the employment of your knowledge both necessary and inevitable.

  Lord C.’s most determined enemy is undoubtedly not a Whig, but a fellow Tory — Mr. G.C., who suffered at his lordship’s hands on the duelling ground. I am sure I need not be more explicit. That gentleman, as he stiles himself, is without scruple or feeling; and tho’ his merits are justly regarded as brilliant, and the scope of his ambition no higher than his probable ascent, I cannot regard him as anything but a ruthless and grasping adversary. The claims of party and unity should be as nothing to such a man; and the threat of a rival everything. If you would look for your enemy, find him there.

  The two men’s names have been much linked of late in the popular press, as objects of the Regent’s affection, and as possible candidates for a return to high office in a ministry of the Regent’s appointing. I will say nothing of the indignation every Whig must feel, at the defection of the Prince of Wales from that party which has ever been his chief support, and among whom he finds the better part of his friends; that is matter for another day. Suffice it to say, Miss Austen, that popular report fails in this one instance: Lord C. is certainly in the Regent’s eye, as a lynchpin of His Majesty’s desired ministry; but it is Lord Sidmouth with whom he shall serve, and the Marquess of Wellesley — not G.C. That gentleman is in bad odour with the Regent, by dint of his affection for and ties to the Regent’s despised wife— the Princess of Wales.[20]