Jane and the Man of the Cloth (23 page)

19 September 1804

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A
LL THROUGH THE LENGTH OF YESTERDAY THE WIND TORE ABOUT
Wings cottage—shuddering at the casements, howling around the corners, and ratding the very door frames— while the rain lashed at the roof, and sheets of salty spray cascaded over the Cobb. I have never known what it is to sail the seas, and feel the tossing of a fragile vessel in the maw of a storm; and having witnessed the raging tide so close upon my stoop, I am happy to leave such adventures to my hardier brothers. The only consolation in foul weather is to turn one's lock upon the street, and settle in by the fire with tea and a good book—and hope that Cook will devise a meal that comforts, as the day fades into night.

But that meal, once taken, reveals itself as the high point of an unendurably dull day; and the slow mounting of stairs, while one's candle flickers in the turbulent air, affords a moment to attend to the voices in the wind. My sleep was certainly marked by their ceaseless crying— though sleep itself was long in coming, and my tossing and turning amidst the bedclothes a parody of the frenzied trees beyond my window. Such thoughts as roiled within my brain—of murder, and deceit, and a sinister smiling frog—would not be stilled, and required the full compass of the night for their consideration. I awoke from a fitful dreaming not an hour past dawn, and found the daylight sky turned peaceful, with the tattered remnants of cloud fading blackly at the horizon. Rivulets of water ran down Lyme's steep high street, to end in the calmer basin of the bay; and the first carters bound for the market were busy about the cobblestones. Peace after tumult, and with it, a clearing of the mind; I should take up the errand of returning Mr. Sidmouth's cloak, which he had placed about my shoulders some ten days before, and all but forgotten in a corner of my clothes press. I would attempt the few miles’ walk to the Grange that very morning.

HOW VERY DIFFERENT WERE MY FEELINGS UPON THE PRESENT occasion, in approaching the old frame farmhouse high upon the downs, than they had been the night of my sister's misfortune!
Then,
my anxiety was active on another's behalf; but now, to my trepidation, I found it exerted entirely on my own. Deceit has ever been foreign to my nature, and the adoption of stratagems and disguise abhorrent; but truth and frankness would not serve in the present case, where so much of both were already prostrate upon dishonour's altar.

With firmer resolve, then, I redoubled my grip on Sidmouth's cloak and crossed the familiar courtyard, expecting every moment the onset of the dogs, or the boy Toby and his blunderbuss; but I was allowed to proceed unmolested today, and took it for a favourable omen. The courtyard itself was a confusion of waggons and harness, cast aside but not yet stored; and I remembered Roy Cavendish 's words with a sudden chill. The Customs man had offered it as certain knowledge that the smugglers preferred to land their goods in the very worst sort of weather, the better to confound the Crown's dragoons; and assuredly last night had been highly propitious for any sort of skulduggery. At this further suggestion of Sidmouth's propensities, I confess my heart sank; but I determined to go forward, there being little comfort in turning back, as ever benighted by ignorance.

My arrival at the door occasioned another tremor—for what words should I summon, did the master of High Down confront me at his very portal, though I
had
committed to visit his cousin? The mere sight of Sidmouth should reduce me to a painful penury with words, so conflicted were my emotions towards himself. But I was spared even
this
trial; after some few moments, when I felt certain the entire household had been called away, the housemaid Mary answered my ring at the bell, and bade me come in search of Mademoiselle LeFevre.

I followed her down the cool stone hallway, and out a door on the nether end, and along a path to the kitchens—which, owing to a fear of fire, were separately housed. And there I espied the three dogs—jasper, Fang, and Beelzebub, if memory served—in attitudes of languor about the kitchen door, and the sound of song emanating from within. It was assuredly Seraphine, her head bent over an ankle propped in her lap; and had it not been for a conviction that the foot was too small to be Sidmouth's, I should have turned and fled that very moment.

A sound I must have made, and her blond head came up; an instant's bewilderment, superseded as swiftly by recognition, and the ghost of a smile. “Miss Austen,” Seraphine said quietly, and set down the shears she held in her hand; “what a surprise. And a pleasure. Please”— with that, a gesture towards the kitchen's interior— be so good as to find a seat. I am almost finished my work here.”

I entered, and found that the ankle was attached to Toby, and that his face and arms appeared singularly bruised. “Whatever can have befallen the boy!” I exclaimed, and received a surly glance from the fellow in question by way of reply.

“He has had a fall,” Seraphine said smoothly.

“From the hay-loft,” Toby added, with a quick look at his nursemaid. “Missed the ladder in the dark, miss, on account o’ the lanthorn blowin’ over in the storm. Quite a tumble I had, and my foot gone lame.”

A hay-loft, indeed. To judge by the Grange's barn, such a fall should have succeeded in finishing young Toby, with a broken neck at the very least. More likely, to my mind, that he had taken a fall about the cliff, in the darkness of night and the confusion of a storm.

“I trust it is not broken?”

Seraphine shook her head and patted the bandage she had only just secured. “Our good Mr. Dagliesh has been and gone, and he assures us that Toby will be walking in no time. But until you are, young sir,” she finished somewhat sternly, “you are to pay heed to Mr. Dagliesh's words. Rest and sit, or your leg will be the worse for it.”

With a dark look and a mutter, Toby swung his ankle from Seraphine's lap and set it on the floor, barely disguising a whimper as he did so; and at that very moment, a shadow fell across the door and I turned to find Geoffrey Sidmouth standing behind me, his eyes intent upon my face and a pair of newly-whitded crutches in his hand.

“Mr. Sidmouth,” I said with what I trust was my usual composure, and a bob of my bonneted head. “I am able to return your cloak at long last, with my deepest thanks. I have no excuse to plead for my neglect of your kindness these many days, but the usual absorption of a lady in seaside schemes of pleasure.”

“There is no need for apology, Miss Austen—I might have sent a manservant, had I felt the cloak to be wanting—but your exertion in returning it is considerable, and not to be dismissed.” And at that he bowed, though the hint of mockery in the gesture served to lessen somewhat its civility, and reached a hand for my burden. I gave over the cloak into Sidmouth's safekeeping; and saw that his thoughts had shifted already to the stable boy Toby.

“Come along, lad,” he said, with a hand to Toby's head. “These crutches will have you to rights in an instant. Well do I remember my own turned ankles, from falling out of trees, Miss Austen,” he added, with a look for me, “and tripping over fox holes; they were as much a part of childhood as the turning of the seasons. And fortunately I remember how to fashion a crutch, when need be.”

Such gentleness, as he helped the boy to his feet! Such a tender concern for a stable lad's well-being, that he should whittle some support with his very hands! And how fond the look, as he watched Toby swing haltingly out the doorway, and cross the yard to the barn! Could such benevolence co-exist with the most vicious propensities? Impossible! But how, then, to explain the waggons about the courtyard, all speaking so eloquently of haste and necessity in the night?

My thoughts were disturbed by a sudden
Bump!
overhead, and the sound as of something rolling into a garret corner; I glanced up swiftly, and would swear I heard the shuffle of knees along bare floorboards, and then the very stillness of suspended breath. I looked to Seraphine for explanation, but she was bent over a cauldron hanging at the hearth; and if her cheeks were a trifle flushed, surely die heat of the fire might be taken as cause. Sidmouth, too, appeared insensible of the secretive movements above his head, being engaged in gathering up the cloth Seraphine had used for Toby's bandage; and I should have thought myself quite mad, did I not believe them both to have a purpose for assumed tranquillity.

I glanced about the kitchen, and observed a doorway in the far corner—concealing, perhaps, a staircase, and the way to the rooms above, where even now the Reverend's henchmen were foiled in their activity, by the appearance of a visitor below. The image of Davy Forely's grimacing face, glimpsed a week ago as he fled the dragoons on Sidmouth's horse, rose with conviction in my mind—was the lander even now recovering from his wounds, in hiding at High Down Grange? But to what purpose? For had not Captain Fielding divulged that no charge could be brought against the men, for retrieving a cargo of small beer? But
someone
was assuredly above, and keeping covert; Seraphine had pronounced my name quite clearly at my arrival, and Mr. Sidmouth equally so— a signal, perhaps, for the cessation of all movement in the garret. I must try what outright interrogation should reveal.

“I see you have visitors? Mr. Sidmouth,” I said, and awaited his response.

He moved lithely to the doorway and peered out into the sunshine, as though in search of an arriving chaise. “I fear you are mistaken, Miss Austen. We must look solely to yourself for amusement this morning.”

I allowed the slightest suggestion of confusion to cross my features. “But what, then, is the purpose of the waggons in the courtyard? I expected an entire party of pleasure-seekers upon my arrival—and yet could barely discover a soul!”

“We were about the haymaking yesterday,” Sidmouth said evenly, with a look to Seraphine; “until halted by the onset of the storm. Had Toby been better fitted to his work, the equipages should hardly have been left standing; but his injury, and the pressing nature of my own affairs, necessitated their present abandonment”

He could not have known, of course, that Toby had declared his injury to be a thing of the night—and well after any waggons should have been put up.

“I hope your expectations are not all downcast, Miss Austen, at finding us quite alone? For we are general!)’ so retiring at High Down Grange, that the addition of merely
one
to the circle is taken as a novelty. We are in your debt, you see, for this visit/’

“And I feel it particularly,’” said Seraphine, turning from the fire, “for you know I see almost no one. I wonder, Miss Austen, if you would care to take a turn along the cliffs—the weather being so fine? We might converse at some leisure in the open air; and as such days will offer only rarely in the coming months, we ought to seize them when we may.”

Though I had toiled fully two and a half miles uphill from Lyme in the previous hour, I surmised Seraphine to be seeking some privacy, if not my safe removal from the vicinity of the kitchen garret; and declared myself not antagonistic to the notion of exercise. While the lady went in search of her cloak, there being a brisk breeze off the sea, I settled myself into an empty chair; and so was left in the company of Mr. Sidmouth for some anxious moments.

“Let me repeat myself, Miss Austen, the better to show my gratitude, even at the risk of increasing your tedium,” he began, his brown eyes warm in his harsh-featured face. “I am very much obliged to you for this visit. I know full well that you are come at my express request, made only a few nights ago—a melancholy night, in retrospect, given the events that followed hard upon our evening's enjoyment at Darby.”

For a moment I knew not how to reply, surprised that he should mention even so obliquely the death of Captain Fielding.

“There is to be an inquest, I understand, at the Golden Lion,” I ventured at the last.

“It will avail them nothing,” Sidmouth said grimly, and threw himself into the chair Seraphine had vacated. “Fielding's murderer is long gone from the vicinity.”

“You would credit, then, the notion of a footpad? You believe Captain Fielding to have died by misadventure?”

“Is there an alternative?” he enquired, with a knitting of the brows. “—For the Captain is unlikely to have done away with himself, Miss Austen, having first dispensed with his valuables.”

“But another might have effected a similar appearance.”

“To what purpose?” Mr. Sidmouth's voice was so quiet as to be almost inaudible, and his countenance was stilled and shuttered.

“To suggest that what was murder by
design,
was merely a perilous encounter with a highwayman—the better to divert suspicion, and throw into doubt all hope of confounding the killer.”

“And why should any wish to trifle with Fielding's life in so terrible a manner?”

“Come, come, Mr. Sidmouth!” I cried. “Km are a man of the world.
You
know what it is to inspire enemies, and to maintain a relation of enmity with another. Surely
you
may supply a myriad of reasons for such an extraordinary course. You bore the Captain too little love, not to wish him as much ill-fortune as he was unhappy enough to endure.”