Jane and the Stillroom Maid

Chapter 16 What the Sister Knew

29 August 1806, cont.

WE THOROUGHLY SEARCHED THE GROUND SURROUNDING the pile of rock, but discovered nothing more than a considerable amount of matted grass, a few broken stems of late daisies, and the evidence of a large stone’s having been dislodged. This last article Lord Harold examined on every side, even withdrawing a quizzing glass from his waistcoat pocket to scrutinise the surface more intently. At length he was satisfied.

“Observe, Jane,” he said, with a gesture towards a dark speckling on the rock indistinguishable to my eye from the usual grey mottling of gritstone. “Grains of black powder from the firing of a fowling piece. We must look for the wad to have been expelled somewhere between this spot and the place where the maid fell.”

I had often watched the gentlemen shoot at Godmersham, my brother Edward’s principal estate in Kent. A party of servants was required for the endeavour — first and foremost the gamekeeper and his beaters, who flushed the birds from the fields; and then the men consigned to loading the guns, with their horns of powder, their pouches of shot, their squares of clean rag cotton. It was an elaborate business, the bagging of a dozen brace; and the gentlemen achieved a sort of poetic power, lifting their barrels to follow the flight of the bird, while the gamekeeper’s fellows stumbled with bent backs through the chill air and bracken. I saw in memory my brother James — puffed-up, important, somewhat silly James — raffishly elegant in his long hunting coat of drab; and admirable in his silence. A report, the jerk of his shoulder, the puff of smoke at the gun’s mouth—

“And here it is, Jane,” Lord Harold said softly. “The usual bit of cotton, soiled with powder and oil. It tells us nothing of our sportsman, unfortunately, but that he was here.”

He drew a handkerchief from his coat and wrapped the spent wad carefully in its depths. Then he gazed swiftly around, eyes creased against the sun. “There. That oak. Come, Jane.”

I followed him through the dried grass and tumbled stones until we had reached the shade of the tree; but relief from sunstroke should never be Lord Harold’s object. He crouched down and studied the ground at the trunk’s foot, much as he had done near the cairn of stones.

“Hoofprints,” he muttered. “I expected as much. Fairly-worn shoes, and slightly sunk into the earth, despite the dryness all around — the rider was no stripling. The horse stands fourteen hands and is slightly lame in the off hind. That tells us something, at least. The murderer did not come by foot.”

He threw me an appraising look. “Are you the sort of lady who carries a sketchbook about you, Jane, and hastens to cry admiration at every picturesque?”

“You mistake me for my sister, sir.”

“A great pity. Had you adhered to the usual female type, we might usefully have recorded the disposition of the body as it fell, the place where the powder marked the stone, and the trajectory of the spent wad.”

“To what purpose, my lord?”

“The catching of Mr. Hemming in a lie. For if your theory is correct, my dear Jane, he will describe an entirely different location for each of these events. And I imagine he neglected to mention a horse.”

“So he did, indeed! And thus we may prove him never to have approached the scene at all!” I cried. “Admirable.”

“I see you reserve your enthusiasm for matters of duplicity,” Lord Harold said briskly. “Very well. What subterfuge remains for our undertaking?”

“A social call, I believe. To Penfolds Hall.”

“But the Danforths are as yet at Chatsworth — and shall be fixed there, so long as the mood of the countryside remains uncertain.”

“Exactly. And being unaware of that circumstance, we shall be thrown upon the offices of Mrs. Haskell and Mr. Wickham. You appear admirably suited to the management of the former, while I shall attempt to disarm the latter. Everything on your side, of the power of command; and on mine, the blush of a single young woman uncertain of her reception. We cannot admit of failure.”

Lord Harold readily agreed, but would have it that we should return along the path already traversed, in order to retrieve the hired curricle and horses turned out to grass behind the miller’s cottage. I demurred, with a view to walking the path Tess Arnold had taken from Penfolds Hall on the night of her death. His lordship comprehended the utility of such an attempt, but could not abandon the hired equipage; neither did he wish to abandon me. I assured him I should do perfectly well in solitude, as I was often given to rambling alone about the countryside; he protested that in the present air of violence, solitude was most unsafe, and offered to traverse the ground in my stead. I observed that it was foolhardy in the extreme for us to exchange places; being a far better walker than a driver of a team, I should more readily come to grief in handling the equipage than in enduring another mile through the fields. I had no intention, moreover, of passing a tedious hour in the company of the miller’s wife, while Lord Harold covered the distance and returned to the Dale. And so we ended as we often did: with a mutual respect for our several abilities, and the determination to leave one another in peace. Not for Lord Harold the expansion of his own self-importance, by a commensurate diminution of mine.

He set off for the Wye, and our patient equipage; I held my sunshade at a jaunty angle, and turned my steps northwards along the footpath towards Tideswell. It ran desultorily through the high grasses and waving flowers, plunged into a little wood, and presumably emerged on the nether side, in full view of Tideswell Dale and Penfolds Hall.

From the position of the sun in the sky, the abating of the breeze, and the sultry oppression of the day even so high in the hills, I should judge that it was very near noon, or somewhat thereafter. If I were to present a decent appearance at dinner, I must be returned to Bakewell no later than half-past three, my mother persisting in dining at the unfashionable hour of four o’clock. I hastened my steps, and hoped that Lord Harold might do the same. He must travel a greater distance along the Tideswell road than I should face across the fields; but he possessed all the advantage of speed.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour was suffered to wear away, and my arms in the service of my sunshade began to tire. As I was even now approaching the little wood, I allowed the sunshade to falter, and employed it instead as a sort of walking stick, for the swatting of undergrowth to either side of the path. A light film of sweat had dampened my curls under the close brim of my sunbonnet; my hands were sticky in their cotton-net gloves, and the muslin of my gown clung to my warm back. I was already rather tanned — hardly extraordinary when one travels in summer; but I should never emerge from this morning’s adventure without a sun-burn. Such an appearance as I should make in the elegant dining parlour at Chatsworth tomorrow evening, with a scattering of freckles across my nose! Lady Elizabeth should condescend to pity me; Lady Swithin, to forgive me; while the correct Miss Trimmer should regard the whole with contempt, and confide to Lady Harriot that, however intimate a friend of Lord Harold Trowbridge’s, she could not find me nice in my taste or habits.

It was cooler here beneath the trees; curlews called from the green shadows, and a cloud of midges danced before my eyes. I observed an arc of sunlight just ahead — an opening out of the forest — and there, in the lee of a large shrub, crouched a young woman.

She wore a mulberry-coloured gown of India cotton, and her hair was loose about her shoulders. She had set a large willow basket on a convenient stump, and was busily gathering berries from the shrub. I stopped short some thirty paces from her position and studied her. Something in her aspect was familiar, even at this distance; and then she turned her head, and I saw the wine-dark stain upon her cheek.

Tess Arnold’s sister.

“Hello, there!” I called out, and stepped forward with my sunshade raised.

She stood up, and bobbed a curtsey, waiting in silence until I should have passed. If my decision to greet her — she, whose dress and entire figure proclaimed her my social inferior — caused her any astonishment, she did not betray as much in her countenance.

“Pray tell me,” I attempted, with a little gasp of exertion, “whether this is the way to Penfolds Hall?”

“So it be,” she returned, in a voice entirely without affect.

“And is it very far? I fear the heat is most cruel today.”

She stared at me, taking in my close bonnet, the gloves, the folds of my muslin gown, and my stout boots. She was thinking, no doubt, that her own simple attire should be much cooler.

“Jus’ a ways on, miss.”

“Thank you. I am most obliged.”

She bent towards the tangle of branches once more, and I knew myself dismissed.

“That is an elder,” I observed of the shrub she was busily harvesting, “and not good for eating. What use do you find for the berries?”

Her hands arrested, she stared at me. “Doesn’t Tha’ know? Poultice for burns.”

“Indeed? That is a remedy that has not made its way to the south. We use an infusion of elder flowers for feverishness and a sore throat; or the bark, when mixed with a little butter, is useful for healing sores. The berries we leave to the birds.”

“Tha’s the lady from th’ Inquest.” She straightened, and rubbed her hands carefully on her skirt.

“And you are Tess Arnold’s sister.”

We studied one another an instant. Her countenance was less stony; her curiosity, I should judge, was piqued.

“What is your name?”

“Jennet.”

“Very well. I am Miss Austen. Are you also a stillroom maid?”

“I know the ways of simples.” She searched my face, clearly troubled in her mind. “Tha’s been lookin’ o’er the ground. Where she was killed. Wha’ fer?”

“A gentleman of my acquaintance has confessed to murder. I do not believe he killed your sister. Do you ever recall her mentioning a Mr. Hemming?”

“George Hemming? A course. We’ve known ’im twenty year or more.”

“And known him rather well, I should judge.”

Jennet shrugged, her expression inscrutable. “Did for old Master — and his last Missus, until they died. Almost one of the family, Hemming were. It’s never ’im as says he shot our Tess?”

She read the answer in my eyes. Her own closed abruptly. “I’d made sure t’were Danforth.”

“Why?”

The eyes flashed open. They were dark blue, I noticed, the colour of flags by the riverbank. “He’s a Mason, in’t ’e? An’ Tess were carved up like a new lamb. They Masons be done fer all sorts of evil. Murdering babies. Burnin’ ’em on an altar at midnight. But never none of their own. It’s the common folk as suffer, when evil walks the land.”

“Wherever did you hear such a story?” I exclaimed. “Mr. Danforth burning babies, indeed! A man who has lost his own children!”

“It’s a judgement,” she declared, “them little’uns. They went to they graves in torment, on account o’ ‘is sins! Tess said so. She knowed it. That’s why she were killed. She’d been watchin’ they Masons right here, above the Dale.”

“Here,” I repeated, much struck. Was it possible that Tess Arnold had made a habit of creeping out to spy on her betters, wearing gentlemen’s clothes?

“The altar be somewhere in the rocks above the Dale,” Jennet said darkly, “and Tess told me of the babe she saw them take, and how it were crying as if its heart would break. Two weeks before she died, t’were, and when I heard her blood were spread upon the crag, a traitor’s death, I knowed the reason why.”

“You said nothing of this at the Inquest,” I observed.

“I want nothing wit’ thy justice.” Jennet spat upon the ground. “Tha’ thinks yon Michael Tivey cares fer Law? Him what was always sniffin’ like a dog at our Tess’s heels? Bringin’ her medicines, givin’ her books, simperin’ and smilin’ and saying, ‘Eh, Mistress Tess, tha’s lookin’ mighty fine the mornin’!’ And her laughin’ up her sleeve all the while, and never givin’ him as much as he wanted. The Snake and Hind’s no court o’ law. Michael Tivey called our Tess a slut and a wanton when he wasn’t hangin’ by her bodice-lace.”

“And what did Andrew Danforth call her?”

Jennet drew breath sharply and bit her lip. “Don’t you go speakin’ against Mr. Andrew. He’s more a friend to us than anyone up t’a Big House, and always were.”

“And yet your sister lost her place because of him.”

“Tess? Dismissed on Mr. Andrew’s account? Go on!”

So she had not known the particulars of her sister’s disgrace.

“It’s just like Haskell to think the worst of our Tess,” Jennet muttered. “Her what’s known Mr. Andrew from a child. Who else should play with the boy, I ask you, in such a great lonely place? And the old Master dying like he did, and his second Missus, too! Our moother thought that Master Andrew would fair run mad with grief. We all done what we could, to make him happy again. Our grandfer, him what’s been gardener up t’Hall these fifty year and more, right took’m under his wing. And then Andrew’s broother come home, and sent him off to school—”

Tess Arnold, the playfellow of Andrew Danforth. Naturally it should be so. I had forgotten that they had been children together. But a vast deal of ground must separate the maid and her master, once the child was grown to a man.

“He’s a very charming gentleman,” I observed.

“Aye — and so good-humoured! Full o’ jokes and teazing, Mr. Andrew is.”

“Jokes and teazing. And — playacting, perhaps?”

“Aye.”

“Is it possible, Jennet, that Mr. Andrew persuaded your sister to wear Charles Danforth’s clothes?”

The girl took a step backwards. “Why should he?”

“I don’t know. Can you think of a reason why she was dressed as a man? Another joke, perhaps? An attempt at playacting?”

Jennet turned her head away and reached for her basket.

“Mr. Andrew is also a Freemason, Jennet. Like his brother.”

She did not answer; but her limbs were rigid with fear. She had revolved the idea already in her mind. For no one should wonder as Jennet why her sister had worn a man’s clothes.

“Would Andrew think it a joke to bring Tess to the Lodge, arrayed as a gentleman, under cover of darkness? Could your sister have died, Jennet, by way of a mistake? A bit of teazing gone wrong?”

Her eyes, when she turned back to me, were ablaze with pain and anger. Not only Tess Arnold had been fond of her playfellow; this girl with the ugly stain across her cheek had yearned for years in silence, and watched as Master Andrew escaped the Penfolds estate, and grew into a man, and considered of her no more than he should an old piece of drugget beneath his feet.

“Did Tess tell you where this meeting place was — the place in the rocks where the Masons gather?”

She shook her head.

“Might she have told anyone — a friend perhaps, another girl in service at the house?”

“She’d have told me if she told anybody,” Jennet said defiantly; then some of the anger drained from her frame. “Our Tess were close-mouthed. But happen it’ll be in her book.”

“Her book? — Tess could read and write?”

Jennet’s head came up with a dangerous pride. “Tha’ thinks we’re all simple as the remedies we make? Tess knew her letters. She kept a book, she did, all filled wit’ writin’. Receipts for ills, and the days she gave ’em out. The names of the ones as paid her.”

A stillroom book. One received, perhaps, from her mother before her, a veritable history of life and death at Penfolds Hall. “And have you looked into it, Jennet?”

The young woman averted her gaze. “I don’t have Tess’s learning.”

And her mother was blind.

“But you possess the book.”

All that was visible of her face was the wine-dark map.

“If you showed me it, Jennet — we might read it together.”

The young woman did not reply. Silent tears were rolling down her cheeks; and with a sensation of pity, I saw that at least one person in the world had truly loved Tess Arnold, and deeply mourned her loss. I reached out a hand, but stopped short of touching Jennet. Such containment — such inward suffering — commanded respect.

“I am no Michael Tivey,” I told her, “and all I seek is justice for your sister.”

“And a noose for Mr. Andrew,” she whispered miserably.