“He took a formidable risk. What if the British seamen under his command denied the charge against their captain?”
“They probably knew nothing of Chessyre's intent while yet in Portsmouth; they should have been sent out to regain the Stella once the prize was secured. Chessyre seized his moment, convinced that he should be safe.”
“—Acting solely from revenge?”
“And from interest, Jane. A healthy and hopeful self-interest. Eustace Chessyre thought to be made master on the strength of this action—and if Seagrave were removed from the Stella, why should not Chessyre command her? A temporary appointment, perhaps, but one that might satisfy so embittered a man. Never mind that masters and commanders are never posted into anything higher than a sloop: Chessyre was in the grip of delusion.”
“He should better have thrust the dirk into Seagrave's heart,” I observed, “and assumed command of the Stella while yet on the high seas.”
Frank was silent an instant in consideration. Then, with his eyes fixed upon the rain-splashed paving-stones at our feet, he said, “It is one thing to strike down an enemy in the heat of battle; it is quite another to kill a man in cold blood with whom one has sailed year after year. If pressed, I should say that Eustace Chessyre is not above plotting what is devious; he may calculate, and lie, and attempt to turn misfortune to every advantage—but I do not think he would do murder outright.”
“How kind you are!” I cried. “How judicious! The court-martial had better employ your powers of pleading on behalf of your fellow man, Fly. To say that the Lieutenant preferred Seagrave to die at the hangman's hands, rather than his own, is so much flummery. I wonder your man can live with himself!”
“He certainly does not live in comfort,” my brother said. “I have been long enough at war to recognise the stench of fear; it dogs the gundeck before every engagement, it sleeps in the hammocks of unsound men. Chessyre's room was rank with it, Jane. The man is awash in terror, and sinking fast.”
I halted on the street and stared at Frank. “And what do you believe him to fear? Discovery in deceit?”
“I cannot say. Something more powerful than myself, or all the threats I might bring to bear. But in parting with the fellow, I urged him to consider his course—to judge if it were sound—and pressed my direction into his hand. We might yet hope for a visit from the Lieutenant, and a reversion of events, before Thursday morning.”
We walked on, each of us silent, until achieving the turning for Queen Anne Street. There my footsteps slowed, and I gazed down the broad sweep of the High to the huddle of buildings that fronted the Quay. One of these—a squat, square stone structure of ancient date, with a peaked brick roof and windows barred with iron—was Wool House.
“What we require,” I told my brother, “is an impartial witness to the French captain's death.”
“That is exactly what we shall never have,” Fly retorted.
“Do not be so certain, my dear,” I replied. “Never is an unconscionable period.”
1Present day visitors to the probable site of Austen's house in Castle Square may still walk the wall that bordered what was once her garden but will notice that the sea has long since receded. A public-works land-reclamation project filled in the estuary that once divided this part of Southampton from the New Forest —Editor's note.
Chapter 6
Wood House
24 February 1807,
cont.
~
WOOL HOUSE DATES, I AM TOLD, FROM THE FOURTEENTH century, when Southampton was a far smaller port than it now appears, and the town's habitation was contained entirely between the Water Gate and the Bar. It was built during a period of warfare and constant strife; a period, too, of thriving commerce, when the wool from England's great herds travelled across the sea to weavers in Flanders, and thence to the princes of Florence. Wool House once formed the hub of this trade—a meeting place for the Wool Merchants Guild. They were warm men, quite plump in the pocket, and if indeed it was they who soldered bars to the building's window frames, we may comprehend the value of their fears.
In the interval of five hundred years that stretches between those times and ours, the incidence of warfare borne in ships across the Channel has hardly diminished; but the wool trade has found other weavers to surfeit, other backs to clothe, and fewer pockets to line with guineas. Wool House itself has