Jane and the Stillroom Maid

Chapter 17 The Stillroom Book of Penfolds Hall

29 August 1806, cont.

JENNET ARNOLD LED ME SWIFTLY DOWN THE NORTHERN slope of Miller’s Dale, speaking not a word, while I struggled to keep her in view and abandoned all attempts to shelter my complexion with the tedious sunshade. Where the line of distant fields met the sapphire arc of sky, I could just make out a cluster of buildings and a church spire — Tideswell, I presumed. Well before it, rising from the fields like a fortress, were the stone walls and many courtyards of a great house. This was no country gentleman’s manor, with a modest gabling and an upper storey half-timbered; this was a Norman keep, hallowed by centuries of upheaval endured. At the first sight of its noble outlines I stopped short, arrested and open-mouthed. I had possessed no notion that Penfolds Hall was such a grand old pile. From its appearance it might have been formed in the time of the Black Prince, and survived the years of Tudor Wars. It had gloried in Elizabeth, and sheltered Charles I; it stood silent while Cromwell’s armies marched like so many ill-clad ants over the landscape, and felt its crenellated towers crumble under the reign of Hanover. Regarding the estate, with its vanished moat filled in by time, I had an idea of the first John d’Arcy, heir to the Earl of Holderness, plotting a Glorious Revolution by its hearth-stones.

It was clear, moreover, whence arose the local legends. However venerable those halls spread out below me, they wanted the appearance of happiness. What had Lydia Danforth felt, as she watched her babes die in the stony fastnesses? And felt her own spirit ebbing with last winter’s snows, into the bitter ground? Had she loved Charles Danforth enough to face the rumours of ill-fate — and been defeated at the last, so that not even love could survive her children’s graves? A chill hand clutched my heart, as though merely to gaze upon Penfolds Hall was to suffer a sort of petrification; I swallowed hard, and forced myself onwards in Jennet Arnold’s wake.

THE HOUSE’S APPEARANCE OF COLD DESERTION WAS immediately belied, however, upon achieving the kitchen gardens.

It was through these Jennet Arnold led me — down a well-trimmed grass path, between rows of trellised beans and lavender past its bloom; along solid hedges of box and rosemary, their fragrant arms entwined to keep the rabbits from the root plants — turnips and onions, carrots and potatoes. There was an admirable glass-paned conservatory, where tomatoes and melons and lemon trees basked in captured warmth; pears and quinces were trained against the main house’s walls; and every kind of herb ran riot in a knot garden outside the servants’ door.

Here, the sunlight fell in a golden wash, and two bright-cheeked young maids were gossipping and laughing with the mending under an apple tree. They fell silent and looked askance as we approached; the sound of singing drifted towards me through the kitchen’s leaded windows. “Greensleeves.”

“Come thee through to the stillroom, miss,” muttered Jennet, with her basket of elder over her arm. “That’s where our Tess’s book’ll be found.” She skirted the herb garden and pushed open a small side door set into the Great House’s walls, waiting for me to follow her example. I broke off a branch of lemon balm, crushed the leaves, and held it to my nose. All the joys of my girlhood at Steventon — the long morning hours rolling down the grassy slope in company with my brothers — rushed upon me. I breathed deep, and closed my eyes.

“It’s jus’ through here, miss,” Jennet called in a low, insistent voice. I tossed aside the lemon balm, aware of the girl’s urgency. She feared discovery — from Mrs. Haskell, probably. I stepped quickly to join her, and entered the cool dimness of Penfolds Hall.

We were standing in a stone-flagged corridor, low-ceilinged and flanked with simple plaster walls; the bones of the house were evident in the branching stone architraves that supported the upper storeys. This was the ground floor of the house, reserved for every sort of function except those of elegance and refinement: here there would be the kitchens — and I doubted not there were two, one for winter and one reserved for the airiness of summer; here were the washrooms, with their great tubs and mangles, the heavy irons ranked upon the shelves; here the offices and sitting-rooms of the housekeeper and the steward, where accounts were settled, rents paid, and country news exchanged; here, the pantries for china; the entrance to the wine-cellars; the storerooms for every sort of goods procured from England and abroad.

And, of course, the stillroom that had been Tess Arnold’s particular province.

Jennet peered over my shoulder towards the far end of the corridor. The clatter of pots and the shrill voices of several women suggested that beyond lay the kitchen.

“… a quantity of ash for the soap-making, and now’s all spoilt fra’ the rain. If another of they teacups goes missing, Sarah, ah’ll have it fra’ tha wages …”

The maid grasped my arm, and pulled me quickly through a doorway.

It was a surprisingly small space for the size of the household — a room perhaps twelve feet by ten, lined with shelves and marble counters. Jars of preserved vegetables and fruits, of jams and cordials and candied peel, winked brilliantly from those shelves with all the enticement of a jeweller’s cases. A large sink stood under a window, and an iron stove beside it; a scarred oak table ran the length of the stone floor, with fragrant bunches of herbs depending from the ceiling overhead. One hard wooden chair was tucked into a corner, perpetually unused from its neglected air; and a remarkable cabinet — at least as tall as myself, and filled with rank upon rank of square, iron-bound drawers — dominated the wall opposite to the door. Labels, penned in neat script, had been affixed to each shelf and each drawer of the cabinet. I crossed to where it stood, and peered at several. Betony. Myrrh. Elixir of Roses—

“Here it be,” Jennet said, and handed me Tess Arnold’s stillroom book.

I held in my hands a quarto-sized ledger, bound serviceably in linen; most of the pages had already been cut.[11] She had kept her records in the same neat script as her labels, rather more crabbed due to the dearness of paper and a native economy. I turned the initial pages with care, and observed that the dates commenced in 1802.

“I thought your sister entered into service at the age of twelve,” I remarked to Jennet. “This ledger encompasses only the past four years. Are there earlier volumes?”

She shook her head. “Tess only learnt her letters when she were seventeen. That’s when the Mistress coom to Penfolds, and set up her school.”

“The late Mrs. Danforth?”

“Aye. Full o’ ideas she were, ‘bout us and our letters. Those as wanted to learn, might. Our Tess was up until all hours, most nights, working on her copybook. She had the sharin’ of it with two others, and didn’t get the time of it she should; but happen she were quicker’n most.”

“I see. And so she commenced this ledger four years ago — when she would have been about twenty.”

“Our Tess knew the remedies Mam taught her by heart,” Jennet said frankly, “but she reckoned it’d save a good deal o’ trouble if they was writ down. So she asked the Mistress for this book, next time Master went to Derby; and the Mistress were happy to give it. The Mistress set a good deal o’ store by our Tess and her healing ways.”

“Did she, indeed?”

“T’were Tess got her the boy,” Jennet said frankly.

“The boy?” I repeated.

“Little John d’Arcy. Him what died last spring. No more’n two he were, and a fine, strong lad afore the convulsives got ’im. Apple of Master’s eye.”

Charles Danforth must be called the Master now, though she had spoken of him so bitterly in the hills above Miller’s Dale. The boundaries of Jennet Arnold’s world, I thought, must be contiguous with the extent of Danforth’s fields.

“Your mistress bore a son because of Tess’s remedies?”

“‘Fore that, Mistress only had girls — two what miscarried, and two what lived. Fond as he was of ’em, Miss Emma and Miss Julia did the Master no good at’ all.”

“I see.” Simples and excessive faith had produced the coveted heir; illness and misfortune had claimed him again, and his stillborn brother. Perhaps Lydia Danforth had meddled too much in the ways of Providence.

I opened the heavy volume and began to leaf through its pages. “If the boy was but two when he died, the entry you speak of should be somewhere in 1803. And so it is—‘Remedy against miscarriage’ and one for conceiving a boy.”

“Mistress always were prone to losin’ her babes afore they time.”

“Indeed.” I scanned Tess’s narrow lines. “And when the children fell ill?”

“Tess did ’er best,” Jennet retorted sullenly. “T’weren’t her fault they died. T’were the fault of they London doctors, what the Master called in. Tess weren’t good enough for him, though the Mistress set such store by ’er. And the little’uns died apace, for all they cuppings and bleedings and fancy draughts. How Tess did laugh at they great pompous oafs fra’ Buxton and London!”

I stared at Jennet, a creeping horror in my throat impeding all speech. The children of her fond mistress had died in pain and suffering — and Tess Arnold had laughed.

A scream from the stillroom doorway brought both our heads around. Mrs. Haskell stood there, her face as white as a sheet, and her eyes fixed upon my companion’s face.

“Thought I’d seen a ghost,” the housekeeper said faintly, “but it’s Tha’, Jennet Arnold, coom back like a bad penny. I thought I’d forbid Tha’ the house! Tha’ set that Michael Tivey on us all, and lucky we were not to be murdered in our beds! Shift thysel’, girl — there’s visitors coom—”

“Good morning,” I said, stepping into the housekeeper’s line of vision. “You must be Mrs. Haskell. I am Miss Jane Austen. I believe my friend Lord Harold Trowbridge has arrived in search of me?”

“Lord Harold? In search of Tha’?” The good woman looked bewildered, as well she might. “And ‘ow did the lady come to be ’ere, wi’out my knowing of it?”

“I confess I encountered this young woman in the grounds. I had walked some distance in the heat of the day, and felt a faintness coming on. She was so kind as to offer a glass of angelica water. Most refreshing!”

“Oh, aye.” The housekeeper eyed Jennet balefully. “What right the girl has to do the honours of the house, I’d like to know—”

“Lady Harriot Cavendish sends her best respects, Mrs. Haskell, and begs that you might extend to her the Penfolds receipt for quince preserve?”

“Preserve?”

“Ah’ve been searchin’ it out fer her,” Jennet said, “froom our Tess’s book.”

At the sound of the maid’s voice, Mrs. Haskell’s eyes sought her face, then shifted uneasily away. The fear and dislike that had dogged the housekeeper at the Inquest was not entirely fled. Mrs. Haskell crossed the stillroom swiftly and snatched the quarto volume from Jennet’s hands.

“Take it to Lady Harriot an’ welcome — and ajar o’ the preserve by way of a present,” she said hurriedly.

“You are too good,” I returned, with an inward exulting. Now I might peruse the stillroom book at my leisure.

“Did’na tell Tha’ to be off?” the housekeeper snapped furiously at Jennet.

“But—”

“Mr. Wickham!” Augusta Haskell screamed at the top of her lungs. “The constables, if you please!”

Jennet looked scathingly at Mrs. Haskell, and began muttering under her breath; the housekeeper stepped backwards, and made the sign against the evil eye. With a slight smile of scorn, Jennet turned for the door; to myself, she said not another word.

“T’were a black day for Derbyshire when that family crawled out of the hills,” Mrs. Haskell whispered. “I don’t say no word against Old Arnold, mind — him what’s done fer garden afore I were born — but I don’t have to tell the miss what that Tess was. Out for all she could get, and no better than she should be.”

“My dear Miss Austen,” observed Lord Harold placidly from the doorway. “I thought I heard you scream.”

“How very kind of you to come to my aid! I was merely remarking upon the excellence of the Penfolds cordials.” I reached for a clear glass bottle filled with a liquid like clouded brandy. “Angelica water, Lord Harold — most refreshing on such a heated day. I am sure it will do you a world of good.”

“JANE,” LORD HAROLD MUTTERED, AS WE FOLLOWED Mrs. Haskell above, “I would do much to support your endeavours; but do not allow me ever to sample such a concoction again. I shall be suffering the flux for a fortnight, I am sure.”