Jane and the Canterbury Tale

purpose there had been to search the dead maid’s room, as I myself had intended.

“Where, oh where, is my brother?” I cried, and turned to the cell door in a fever of anxiety.

“Miss Austen, are you unwell?” the Captain demanded.

“It is imperative I speak to Mr. Knight without delay!”

“You there,” MacCallister called, in a voice accustomed to command. “Unlock this door at once! Miss Austen—is it possible you might save her?” he added in an undertone.

“Unquestionably. But at a cost,” I warned. “I may not stay—Pray support your wife, Captain.”

“God bless you,” he said, as the door closed behind me.

I never felt less worthy of his words.

We drove as fast as two horses whipped to frothing-point could pull us—direct from Canterbury to Chilham, no more than half an hour on the road, at the spanking pace Edward set. Twitch was standing before the Castle door as the curricle drew up; I did not stay for Edward’s assistance, but jumped down as he did.

“Your master,” Edward said in a rush to the butler. “Where is he to be found?”

“In the north tower, sir,” Twitch replied.

Edward was already bolting up the grand stairs, taking two at a time. I followed with as much haste as my carriage dress allowed.

Chapter Thirty-Four The Lady in the Tower

“Four glowing coals are all old age possesses:

Boasting, lying, anger, and greed.”

Geoffrey Chaucer , “The Steward’s Prologue”

29 October 1813, Cont.

“Good god, man! Must you always appear when you are least wanted?”

Edward drew up in dismay, his feet rooted to the floor. Old Mr. Wildman stood before a heavy oak door. His sparse white hair was in disarray, his broad face suffused with choler, and his aspect so entirely wild, as to suggest a profound disturbance of mind and temper. I had never heard him speak with such acerbity to my brother.

“I had very nearly got her to unbar the door—which she will never do, now you are come!” he concluded.

“You would speak of Mrs. Thane?” My voice held no little urgency. “She has secured the bolt on her chamber—she is immured within?”

“She took to her bed as soon as you were gone yesterday e’en, and has not emerged since.” Old Wildman glanced at Edward with less heat in his aspect. “I confess that I fear for her mind. This latest blow—young Julian’s charge of murder—has overset her reason entirely. I know not what she might do in her despair … some dreadful violence …”

Behind him, as tho’ animated by a spectral presence, the massive oak door swung slowly inward. A chill autumn draught, as from an opened window, swirled into the passage. I felt a finger of fear travel up my spine, and stepped impulsively forward.

“Augusta?” Old Wildman called out.

I halted in the doorway, the two men at my back.

Mrs. Thane was standing barefooted on the stone sill of the tower’s great window, the leaded casements flung wide to the elements. Her grey hair was unbound and fell nearly to her ankles; she wore a linen shift, which billowed and sank like a sail in the October wind. She did not turn her head to acknowledge her audience, tho’ it must have been she who admitted us, before mounting to her precarious perch.

“I am glad you are come, Mr. Magistrate,” she spat with bitter contempt, “that you might witness the ruin of a once-great house! Your hand—your overweening arrogance, your meddling in what does not belong to you—has brought misery on me and mine! But I will have my vengeance! I curse you, Edward Knight! May all your family be haunted by the trouble you have caused, and end, every one, in an early grave!”

The colour drained from my brother’s face, and his lips parted as tho’ to protest. But it was I who stepped forward, however tentatively, into that wind-swept room, and halted with a word the woman who might have dashed herself to the carriage sweep three storeys below.

“Fiddle,” I said calmly.

Augusta Thane turned her basilisk stare upon me with an expression of hatred so profound I felt my heart quail within me. But I took another step forward. Neither Edward nor Old Wildman dared to move, it seemed.

“Every note of tragedy has been struck by yourself, has it not, Mrs. Thane?”

“What do you know of tragedy?” she retorted, her words as venomous as her aspect.

“Enough.” Another small step into the room, nearer to her position. “And I apprehend even more of the ways of murderers. How they may betray themselves by the smallest mistake. You do not possess a maid, I think, as you suggested yesterday when we met in the attic passage? —Or perhaps I should say, No maid living. For you cut Martha Kean’s throat in the coppice, did you not, having first lured her to the place with a note penned in your son’s hand?”

A groan fell from the lips of Old Wildman, but the woman who held all our gaze did not regard it; she smiled glitteringly at me, instead.

“Aye, I slit the wench’s throat—and was glad to do it! In that I preserved the reputation of my son, at least. That she should presume to bear his child!”

“His hand alone should secure the girl’s trust and her eager vigil in the coppice,” I mused. “I imagine it was your discovery of such a note—tossed in a corner of a room or mislaid upon a table, and establishing an assignation between Mr. Julian Thane and Martha Kean—that first apprised you of their clandestine entanglement. Did you keep the slip of paper by you to confront Julian with your knowledge?”

“I soon found a better use,” she retorted bitingly. “I never thought the idiot girl would keep the note in her pocket—I assumed she would toss it on the fire.”

“Unfortunate,” I agreed. “Indeed, when I consider of your every choice in the affair, you might almost have intended to hang your son.”

“Never!” she cried out. “Vicious jade—my son is all in all to me … a more princely being was never born …”

These last words trailed off in a keening sob, and she crouched low as tho’ in anguish, hugging her arms about her knees, grizzled locks trailing about her face. Her form rocked precariously on the sill. I felt rather than saw Edward start forward, as tho’ to intervene, but I held up one hand. She had not told us enough—and any approach now might send her flying into air.

“Really?” I said wonderingly. “Why, then, did you wear your son’s drab shooting coat when you murdered Martha, if not to see him hang?”

“So that the girl should take no alarum as I approached!” She spoke so rapidly, her words might almost have been gibberish. “Can you not have an idea of the beauty of it, clever Jane? I, tall as I am, striding towards the wench, the folds of the coat hiding the knife in my gloved hand—and she flung herself into my arms to die! Martha wanted Death. Oh, yes—she wanted Death as wantonly as a lover. Until, of course, the knife was at her throat—she turned to flee, but I had her in my grasp, I pulled back her hair and did the thing in seconds. Killing, you know, is a paltry business.”

Old Wildman had sunk down into a straight-backed chair that sat near the door; I risked a glance, and saw that his head was in his hands. He should be of little use; but Edward still stood beside me. I resumed my study of