Jane and the Canterbury Tale

“Hie, you lummox!” he called into the passage.

Three chairs were brought, one at a time, by the struggling urchin Jack. The warden glared around at all of us, then inclined his head with grudging deference to Edward, and turned on his heel.

As the door was locked with a metallic groan, I experienced a positive thrill of apprehension. It was as tho’ I had become a character of Mrs. Radcliffe’s, and must expect to find a skeleton behind every veil.

Chapter Twenty-Two The Seaman’s Story

He’d been in every harbor, no matter where,

From Gottland to the Cape of Finisterre.…

Geoffrey Chaucer, “General Prologue”

25 October 1813, Cont.

“Well, this is a degree of comfort unlooked-for,” Sir Davie observed with an air of gratification as we took our seats. “Unfortunate that I haven’t any Port to send round, or ratafia for the lady. You are remiss, Burbage—quite remiss—you have made no introductions—but perhaps you are not in possession of the lady’s name, never having expected to be honoured by her presence this morning.”

“I am Miss Austen,” I told him, “Mr. Knight’s sister. We shared a bench at the inquest.”

It seemed to me that Mr. Burbage started a little at my words; but Sir Davie was already assessing my countenance shrewdly.

“That affair was not very edifying, alas—too much of the curious truth was, as I suspect, deliberately left out, Miss Austen. Forgive me for speaking frankly, Mr. Knight; I do not presume to infringe upon your province, or criticise one whose motives I suspect are pure. I may address you as Mr. Knight, I hope? ‘Your Honour’ seems unduly grave.”

“Murder is invariably so,” Edward observed. “If you are done with your pleasantries, Sir Davie, I have a few questions I should like to put to you.”

The seaman opened his eyes a little. “Ought one ever to be done with pleasantries, my dear sir? How else, pray, is the savage world to be civilised?”

“You are, I presume, Sir Davie Myrrh?”

The seaman’s eyes rolled towards his solicitor. “Surely you have vouched for my identity, Burbage?”

“Mr. Knight asks purely as a matter of form, sir. I would suggest you answer the Magistrate’s question fully and frankly.”

“And, Mr. Burbage,” my brother added, “if you would be so good as to note down Sir Davie’s statement? I may supply you with pencil and paper for the purpose.”

These items being handed from one man to the other, with every appearance of mutual respect and understanding, Sir Davie Myrrh sighed. “Very well. I shall give it to you direct as the Baronetage would have it: Myrrh of Kildane Hall. Davie Ambrose Myrrh, born December 8, 1760, married May 15, 1784, Anne, daughter of Sylvester, Fifth Viscount Havisham of Pembroke, in the county of Warwickshire; by which lady (deceased 1785) he had issue, a stillborn son.”

He turned his satiric gaze upon myself. “I could entertain you, madam, with a further recitation of my family’s glorious history; its resistance under Cromwell, and exertions of loyalty towards Charles the Second; its elevation from mere knighthood to the baronetage; the demonstration, with each succeeding generation, of increasing attention to Duty and the Crown, ending—rather ignobly—with myself, the tenth baronet, who, tho’ achieving the venerable age of three-and-fifty with health and humour unimpaired, has nonetheless lost wife, child, fortune, and even Kildane Hall. Should you like to learn how I managed it?”

“Not at present,” Edward interposed firmly, before I could answer Yes, very much. “What we principally wish to know is how you came to be standing at the front entrance of Chilham Castle on the evening of the twentieth of October inst., presenting a silken pouch to one Adelaide Fiske MacCallister.”

“Ah,” Sir Davie murmured, “but to apprehend how I came to be there, Mr. Knight, you ought to know a little of my history. For no man springs newly-formed into a given day or moment—be it night or morning, October or April, Chilham or Timbuktu. If I am to explain how I came to have a gift for Mrs. Fiske—or did you call her something else?—you must first know how I fell under obligation to her husband. I do not refer, of course, to this person MacCallister. He has no place in the tale at all. I refer to Curzon Fiske, an excellent fellow now sadly laid into an early grave, who was so obliging as to save my life in Ceylon some eighteen months since.”

Edward gave a slight sigh of satisfaction. “I suspected you were acquainted with Fiske. It was he who gave you the tamarind seeds, of course?”

“Not so swiftly, I beg! You leap to the story’s close without a care for the intriguing coincidence of events! Burbage,” Sir Davie exclaimed as he jumped from his hard wooden bed and began to stroll like another Kemble about the theatre of his cell, “you must make the Magistrate understand that he can never hope to penetrate this affair without a thorough knowledge of the peril in which Fiske and I moved, some years ago! If he persists in seeing merely a dead wastrel on the Pilgrim’s Way, when he might rather know the final, agonising loss of a daring man’s hope, as his blood trickles into the unforgiving earth, Mr. Knight cannot pretend to grasp the subtleties of man’s existence—or, at the very least, this shocking affair!”

“Sir Davie,” Mr. Burbage said, “as your solicitor it is my duty to urge you, most earnestly, to answer the questions Mr. Knight may put to you, as succinctly and swiftly as possible. To do aught else is to try the patience of a gentleman whose time is taken up with numerous affairs.”

“Burbage,” Sir Davie uttered mournfully. “I had thought better of you. I had thought you a man of romance, and spirit.”

Edward glanced enquiringly at me; I nodded ever so slightly.

“Very well,” my brother said. “You may tell us, briefly, how you came to know Curzon Fiske.”

“Ah,” Sir Davie breathed as tho’ released into a happy dream, “now there is a tale worth telling! But first perhaps I should just mention how I came to be in Ceylon at all—having spent the better part of my life on the other side of the world, rather as Columbus did, in attempting to reach the Subcontinent. I speak, of course, of Jamaica. My father, the ninth baronet, being a practical rather than a snobbish fellow, had sunk our fortunes into sugar—and did so handsomely from the trade, that I was sent out to the West Indies as a lad of but sixteen, to sit at the feet of the plantation overseer and learn the substance of the business. But it was not to be—for once upon the high seas I discovered a passion for ships that has never left me to this day! Tho’ embarking as a supercargo—a passenger, you should call it—on a merchant vessel bound for the tropics, I soon begged to learn the duties of a true sailor; and being a likely lad enough, for all I was the heir to a baronetcy, I was allowed to have my way. I donned the garb of a common seaman, and earned my bread before the mast, so that my Creole friends did not know me when at last I disembarked in Freetown, and were obliged to take a brown and hale young man to their bosom, who appeared more like a plantation slave in their eyes than the English gentleman they had been led to expect!”

“All very interesting, I am sure,” Edward broke in, “but your youth cannot have any bearing on your present incarceration. Pray honour us with the facts of your acquaintance with Fiske, and your reasons for appearing at the Castle on the night of your friend’s murder.”

If Edward expected the word murder to arrest Sir Davie’s reminiscent flight, he was to be disappointed.

“All in good time, my dear sir, all in good time.”

As Sir Davie launched into a further account of his experience of the islands—his passion for the tropics—his