Jane and the Canterbury Tale

all.”

I had not expected my niece to wilt before the manners of an imposing upper servant, and was momentarily exasperated with her. But I reflected that even so pert a creature as Miss Eliza Bennet should have done the same, upon arriving at Pemberley, had she been aware that Mr. Darcy was already in residence—and that perhaps some explanation might be found for Fanny’s unwillingness to thrust herself into the Chilham household.

“Twitch,” said a voice from the doorway, “why do you leave our visitors dawdling on the sweep, when they ought already to have been announced? Step lively, you fool!”

I glanced towards the entry, and saw a formidable figure: iron-haired, thin-lipped, her eyes dark and imperious as Cleopatra’s.

“Yes, Mrs. Thane,” Twitch answered woodenly, and led us into the Castle.

Chapter Thirteen A Delicate Interrogation

This cunning world would keep me forever in fear,

Unless I worked this hard at keeping things clear.

Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Shipman’s Tale” 

22 October 1813, Cont.

It is only now that we are returned home, and I am established in a comfortable chair before the library fire with a shawl draped over my chilled feet, that I may reflect a little on the strangeness of the atmosphere at Chilham Castle today. I have been somewhat acquainted with the household and family in past years, and have reckoned them to be a fine, high-spirited, handsome collection of people, without much seriousness in their heads or purpose in life; a family that enjoys giving pleasure to others as much as to themselves, and which has been marked out neither for great distinction nor hideous misfortune.

Mr. James Wildman amassed his wealth in trade—through the management of a vast sugar plantation in Jamaica, owned by one Mr. William Beckford. Mr. Beckford is grown infamous in the Polite World, I understand, for having seduced at a tender age the son and heir of an earl—and for being forced to flee the country with his wife in the wake of the subsequent scandal. To us Austens, however, he figures merely as cousin to our own Miss Beckford of Chawton, who until this past spring lived at the Great House with all the Middletons. How small is the world between Hampshire and Kent, to be sure![6]

William Beckford is known far beyond England, however, for a connoisseur, a collector of art, a musician who once studied under no less a master than Mozart, and as the author of the horrid novel Vathek. It is Beckford’s name that young James Beckford Wildman claims—Beckford having stood as the boy’s godfather. We may assume the choice of both name and patron to signify gratitude on Mr. Wildman Senior’s part, rather than any approbation of William Beckford’s tastes or habits. The amassing of a considerable fortune must be said to sweep all prudish reserve aside—and Mr. Wildman owed his present comfort entirely to Beckford’s Jamaican plantation. He managed the Quebec Estate, as the plantation was known, so well, in fact—and Beckford proved so profligate in his building and furnishing of his absurd pile at Fonthill Abbey—that Wildman was presently able to relieve his illustrious employer’s straitened circumstances, by purchasing the plantation outright; and at a very good price, if rumour is believed.

The revenues from Jamaican sugar proved so lucrative, that Mr. Wildman was gradually able to put enough by to purchase Chilham Castle when his son was but four years old. The Wildman income is thought to be in the neighbourhood of twenty thousand a year. (If only another such Prize might be secured on the Marriage Mart for my own dear creation, Caroline Bingley! But Chilham is no Pemberley, alas.)

The Castle is far older than its present owner’s claims to gentility, having been built in the early seventeenth century on the ruins of a medieval motte and bailey. Set on high ground, and facing the little village of Chilham, it is a pleasant facade in the Italian Renaissance stile, much improved in recent years by Jamaican profits. The building curves in a polygon shape, with the last link missing—establishing an inner courtyard flanked by the horseshoe of the house. All the principal rooms are to the rear, facing some twenty acres of gardens that fall away in gradual terraces below; Capability Brown had the original draughting of it, tho’ later hands have struggled gamely to mar his work.

Today, however, the air of Chilham Castle verged on the tragic, with a fillip of the sinister. Even the sunshine that was wont to stream through its leaded windows had fled hurriedly to more hospitable roofs; wind sighed in the lofty eaves; and had a ghoul commenced howling in the best Gothick manner I should not have been surprized. I must impute such a change to the influence of the Thane family.

We followed Mrs. Thane into the Great Hall, where she turned abruptly at the foot of the sweeping Jacobean staircase. She was arrayed entirely in black crepe, of an outworn mode that suggested it had been purchased in respect of her late husband’s passing; a mourning brooch of jet was fastened upon her bosom. Was so much magnificence meant to honour a son-in-law she had refused entirely to acknowledge while living?

“You are Mr. Knight, I collect—a near neighbour,” she pronounced. “And you are Miss Knight?”

Fanny curtseyed.

“And that person is Miss … Austen, is it? The poor relation? You are Mr. Knight’s spinster sister, I believe?”

Shock very nearly left me speechless. “One of them, ma’am.”

“Both unmarried? What a sadly unprosperous family! I recollect your face from the ball, of course, and must regret that we were not then introduced; I was but briefly in attendance, as my ill-health will not permit me to indulge in protracted dissipations.”

The wedding of her daughter, a protracted dissipation.

The basilisk stare turned on Fanny. “You, however, I could hardly fail to notice. You danced several dances with my son.”

From the haughtiness of the lady’s tone, we must assume she regarded Fanny’s waltzing with as much disapprobation as John Plumptre—but from an entirely different cause. Mrs. Thane might have been a monarch, and Fanny an unlettered girl from a distant village, whose pretensions in seducing the prince must be ruthlessly suppressed. I bridled on my niece’s behalf, but no words were necessary—for Edward stepped forward, his countenance set.

“How pleasant to animadvert on the gaieties of a few days ago,” he observed, “and how sad to think they were of such short duration! I am First Magistrate of Canterbury, Mrs. Thane, and cannot help but be charged with resolving Mr. Curzon Fiske’s murder. I have urgent business with Mr. Wildman and his son. Pray lead me to them.”

It was an order, not a request; and Mrs. Thane’s head reared back, as tho’ she had been treated to an insult. “May I remind you, sir, that there is a servant present!” she hissed.

Edward glanced satirically at Twitch. He stood as tho’ deaf, a little in advance of Mrs. Thane.

“I am sure most of the servants were aware of the tragedy long before you learnt of it, ma’am, as the local beaters were in at the discovery of the body; and I should never stand on ceremony with James Wildman’s man,” my brother said in an accent of considerable amusement, “for I have known him these twenty years and more. Is your master in his book room, Twitch? You need not announce me.” With that, he bowed easily to Mrs. Thane, and strode off towards the rear of the house.

Twitch made no move to impede Edward; rather, he gestured towards the opposite passage—which at Chilham is known as the Circular Gallery—and said, “If you will allow me, Miss Fanny, the ladies are sitting in the drawing-room. I’m sure Mrs. Wildman will be most happy to see you.”

“I shall conduct them to her,” Mrs. Thane interjected. “And as you are now at leisure, Twitch—perhaps you may think on the proper deference becoming to a servant, and the ways in which