Face it, woman, whatever you do you're royally fu—
The oak door from the picture gallery swung open and slammed into the arm of the servant next to the side table.
"Owwwww!" the fifteen-year-old trainee dining maid, Pink, complained, rubbing an elbow through her white uniform.
"Is he here yet?" Mary Weasenham demanded. A not-so-thin figure wearing wire-rimmed eyeglasses bustled into the oak-paneled family dining room, wearing an appalling light-blue and white dress; a long thin tube of a thing with a single purple ribbon around the bodice below the bosom, and shaped with no waist at all. The outfit was styled Regency from a pattern book some two hundred years into the future. The fancy may have suited a young girl, fresh ready to come out into society. On the frame of a merchant's wife in her thirties who had already born eight children, it looked a horror.
Lizzy's soft voice drifted across the room as she folded the letter and newspaper page back into its message packet. "The north gate porter has it our visitor and his party have declined luncheon and are to rest and repair until the evening meal." An arched eyebrow raising a fraction and expressing her faint regard for the pompous man visited upon them.
Mary gushed, "Oh, dear—our Mister Darcy's reputation proceeds, I fear?"
"That's enough!" The knife flew three inches to side of Pink's right ear and imbedded itself through the tapestry and into the oak paneling behind. The young girl squeaked in fright, frozen, unable to move.
"I may be a pauper in my cousin's house—but I will not have our lives arranged by silly ideas from—" Lizzy stood up sharply, snarling. "—from That Book."
Lizzy's desperation had become more and more agitated all week. With the visitor finally here, that frustration blew like a ball from a matchlock. "This is your doing—just show me that Austen girl, or her great-great-grandmother? I have a sharp blade to run through the heart of one of her ancestors."
Leaving the table, message packet in hand, she stormed across the room, her manner akin to something of a she-wolf; the grey dress and long dark hair were flowing behind. On the way to the door, she snatched the dagger from the tapestry (imbedded in the crotch of a figure Lord A'Courting a Maiden), wiped it on her other sleeve, and stalked out of the room.
"Romantic love, Pah!" Lizzy railed from down the picture gallery corridor.
One hundred and eighty-eight and a half years before the Ring of Fire,
Saturday, 2nd November, 1811
The old bailiff's house, Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire
Jane Austen crossed out a line back and forward with some vigor in frustration and anger, tiny drops of ink splattering across the page, the small round writing table, the tea cup and saucer on the windowsill on her left, and some spots spattering down onto the floor.
The patchwork blanket had been brought down from bed this morning and wrapped around for warmth. It slipped off her boney left shoulder. Jane dragged it back around her using her right arm, in the process dislodging some more stray mouse-brown curls from the two Prussian pencils holding her hair up in a bun at the back.
The ink-stained left hand screwed up the sheet of paper. Her latest book had started so well, but now Mansfield Park was grinding to a sick halt, the downside of dealing with her agent's and publisher's expectations. She sighed, defeated.
Sense and Sensibility, the first to be published, had been on sale for a month now, selling quite well she was told in letters from London. It might even make a slim profit in three or four years. It had better. Persuaded to self-publish and at no risk to the publisher, it had cost Jane and the family four hundred and fifty pounds. But the house needed the money back desperately—now, not next year or the year thereafter. Henry, her agent in London, was trying for a single up-front fee for her next book.
For her part, the first true experience of writing for new cash and a deadline was sheer hell. A series of shrill notes from her publisher were seeking a follow-up story whilst the market demand was hot, and thus requiring a first draft manuscript tuit de suite.
The panic was overwhelming.
Tick.
For the first time ever she was stymied, and blocked.
Tick.
The small French clock on the mantelpiece began its chimes on the hour of eleven o'clock.
Instead of knuckling down with the manuscript after breakfast at nine as usual, the turkeys had been fed, this year's blackberry and raspberry canes had been cut to the ground, the last of the dying rhubarb leaves cleared away, and four letters to friends and family were sitting by the front door waiting for the mid-day wagon to Alton.
Jane was disgusted with herself. Her main character Fanny Price was stuck in a scene half way up the drive going nowhere.
This isn't working . . . a tragedy in three volumes that I really should throw into my hope chest for a few months.
Sometimes when a story isn't setting, all you can do is walk away from it for a piece and then come back afresh later. This time she didn't have that luxury, people had Expectations.
She paused, rubbed the condensation from the window glass, and peered out over the top of her eyeglasses. Farm hands from the great house were piling old tree trunks and off-cut branches from hedge laying into the middle of the village green for Guy Fawkes Night on Tuesday.
The door opened behind her, and she could hear her sister Cassandra rearranging clothes on the drying frame. "Jane, you've almost let the fire go out."
"Here, toss this on with the others."
A scrunched up page was tossed over Jane's shoulder, it bounced off the clotheshorse draped with nightgowns and day caps that sat in front of the embers of last night's fire. The paper ball fell to the floor.
"Is he here yet?"
"No sign yet. You know Henry. He's never on time for anything. What's going on out there?" Cassandra asked, moving up to her sister staring out the window, gently massaging her shoulders.
Mister Pink, the blacksmith, was building wooden frames at the far south end of the horse paddock, where fireworks including rockets and Catherine wheels would be attached.
"How much is Eddie paying for the display this year?"
"No idea. Sometimes I think our little brother has more money than sense."
The Lord Chancellor's office had declared that larger patriotic celebrations were in order this year; the whole country was to pray for the health of the king (who was expected to die before Christmas). But on a more cheerful note, also to celebrate in support the regiments at war in Portugal. After two successful battles this year, there were signs that Napoleon's armies were not invincible after all.
Cassie could feel Jane looking down at the page in front of her on the small table. A line was drawn diagonally across the next page.
Oh dear. "Looks like Old Mister G has nearly finished the barrel run. The boys seem to be having fun," Cassie said, trying one last time to cheer her sister.
Further away through the mist of the late morning, Old Trickster Goddennson supervised a gaggle of village boys blocking off the soak away gulleys along the side of the Guildford road, creating a clear lane for the fiery barrel run on Bonfire Night down the lane.
Her sister shrugged under her hands.
"I'll leave you alone to get on with your writing. See you in a bit."
Cassandra patted Jane's left shoulder a final time, worried at the obvious distress and anguish Henry was causing.
****
Jane pinched the bridge of her nose. Her headache was making it difficult to focus, the text on the page swimming.
Enough! Ghaaahh!
The hateful metal-tipped nib pen flew across the room, and imbedded itself in a cushion on the old, sagging sofa opposite.
The authoress rubbed the side of the middle finger of her right hand, massaging the indent in her flesh to the left of the nail. These new pens were too hard on the hand and hurt like the blue blazes.
Only a few minutes late for a change, Judgment Day approached from the other side of the parlor room door.
tap tap
"Jenny?" A reedy, thin male voice, somehow both a question and a demand.
Oh why doesn't someone just go and hit me on the head with a brick?
1635, Basing House
"Oh, dear . . . "
Mary picked up an empty pewter cup from the side table, looking up over the top of her eyeglasses at the Paulet family crest (three silver swords on a black shield) repeating across the ceiling, tutting and entreating skywards, along the way ignoring the black mold creeping from the window through the plasterwork.
"My dear Miss Austen, do not fash yourself, and forgive her. Unlike the marquis, this poor cousin Lizzy is going to be a bit more of a challenge."
Mary peered again into the empty cup and saw no jug on the side. "You, girl, more small beer," she casually demanded of the sniffling serving girl, who went off and bawled all the way through the door.
You just can't get the staff these days.
Mary looked up again, channeling her favorite authoress and questioning, "I do hope you know more of our merry players than we do?"
Arranging the marriage of the marquis to Lady Honora De Bourgh a few months earlier had been relatively simple. An original, up-time copy of Pride and Prejudice thereafter for the bride as a confinement gift had just been a thoughtful fancy and happenstance on her part. The new marchioness of Winchester's family and a character in the book by the same name had prompted it as a small entertainment during her first confinement. Unfortunately that pregnancy had not made it to three months, a bad omen.
Now Lady Honora was uncomfortably pregnant again, and this time completely confined upstairs in the ladies wing near the piss-pot, the extensive bath house on the first floor, and said to be expecting twins any day. As prospective godparents, Mary and her husband, Rob Weasenham (also here as a factor for the Bedford Corporation), had travelled to Basing House for the winter.
The marquis of Winchester's only son, young Charles, aged five (the only surviving child of the marquis from his first marriage to Lady Jane Savage) was to be breeched tomorrow on St. Clements's Day; taken from the care of the women of the house, his girlish locks cut, and clothing changed for the last time from dresses to breeches.
Mary tossed her latest read A Secret Passage to Love onto the dining table with such vigor her bookmark slipped from between the pages unseen.
By Dame Barbara Cartland's left tit, this household is in a right stir!
Charles' uncle and godfather, Lord Sir John Savage, had just arrived at the Basing estate for this important occasion with a small party.
Mary had hopes.
Actually, Mary had had gleeful conniptions last month after she had worked out that Sir John, a recent widower, was the eldest son of Lord Rivers and therefore awash with cash. More accurately named Viscount Sir John Rockfold Peacock D'Arcy Savage, he was also heir through his mother (the fearsome Lady Catherine Rivers) to the prestige and fortune of the D'Arcys of Essex.
This WasMeant To Be.
Lady Rivers was bringing a new companion for Lizzy.
Mary giggled like a loon, and danced a little jig.
Another sign from Miss Austen.
Not a Charlotte, she conceded, a slight moue on her lips—a Katherine.
Oh well—not quite like the book, but almost right.
Nodding to herself, Mary was convinced everything would turn out well with her plans for the emotional housekeeper, Fizzing Lizzy.
"I'm sure she knows not what she says, and that our Mister Darcy is just as you describe."
And a Lucas girl to hand to be a firm friend.
"Don't worry, Miss Austen. Lizzy's frightened; she needs to marry quickly, and it's only prejudice. And don't we know what to do there?"
With the fervor of a founding member of the English Goodwife's Association of Romance Readers, Mary selected her meal with her own knife from the plates on the side table with a wry smile. She accepted her third small beer of the day from the still sniveling serving girl and plotted the next step in her campaign.
Later in the day, inside the village church of Our Lady of Basing
"But whyyyy?"
Charlie's whiney voice chewed through her head as he stomped down the side steps through the arch from the high altar.
Bringing the boy had been a daft idea and had been getting in the way all afternoon. Honora and the Irish midwife had sent Lizzy off into the village with Charlie for the afternoon, away from that awful Weasenham woman. The wives and crones of the village were dressing the church for Saint Kat's vigil on the First Night of Winter. Lizzy had been left in peace in the north aisle to wrap the spokes of the iron-studded hay wagon wheel with green and yellow.
However the change in Charlie's own circumstances were looming vast and arriving at speed, and now his tone was petulant in the extreme.
An old pang, Jane—if only Jane were still here, struck at exactly the wrong time, making her tone sharper than intended.
"Charles, pay attention! Take care of . . . "
Of course, at that point the five-year-old spun around at her sharp tone and the top third of the two-foot-long scented beeswax candle cradled in his arms smacked the foot of great-great-grandfather's pink, green and yellow alabaster statue which was lying in prayer upon his tomb.
"Don't . . . "
The child tried to vigorously brush the shower of flakes from the front of his pink dress, instead smearing soft beeswax into the red piping and fine stitch work around the buttons all down the front.
Absolutely hopeless.
Before Lizzy had taken him in hand, the boy and his young hound, Ollie, had been running through the house and around the estate like wild things. Accident-prone or devil-charmed, her charge was certain to get through at least three changes of dresses a day; splattered with mud, muck, soot, flour, chalk, grass—you name it, it found him.
Blessed Catherine,save us from boys! Her eyes flicked to the small statue in its niche halfway up the wall. Her own personal saint stared back, the patroness of female scholars and unmarried women, holding a scroll in one hand, and a wheel in the other.
"Charles . . . come here to me." Draping green ribbons over the axle of the wagon wheel propped against the lime-washed north wall, Lizzy fished a kerchief from her sleeve. Folding down onto her knees, down to the same level as the child, she wiped Charlie's eyes and ruffled the long, brown, curly hair that was due for the chop on the morrow.
"Give me that." The remaining pieces of candle from the lad's hands were placed safely on the floor.
"Blow."
Charlie snorted into the cloth.
"Your godfather—" Lizzy dissembled, trying to separate her own feelings from what must happen for Charles.
She tried again. "Your uncle is not a monster."
His character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world declared the passage from Pride and Prejudice in her head.
The Seymour Curse, she got that from her mother. Seymour women read too well, remembered far too much, and were hot-tempered in their speech.
Damn that gooseherd, Mary Weasenham, and her stupid, stupid plans!
Lizzy tried not to lose composure in front of the boy. Taking a deep breath, and taking faint solace stroking Charles' curls, she mentally kicked panic back in its box. "He has come to honor the memory of your mother, and set you on the road to be a lord of England in her memory."
Well, at least that part should be true enough. And I'm sure he'll be a stiff-shirted prig about it.
The boy sniffed, not exactly the brightest rabbit from the warren. His little face screwed up as he pulled away with a look of raw cunning. "Aunt Elizabeth?"
"Yes, Charles?"
"What color pony do you think he's brought me?"
Exasperated, Lizzy looked up into the eyes of old Queenie Godden, who was dressing juniper boughs around one of the square pillars. She could tell they both were thinking the same thing. Men, and especially little boys, could be ungrateful, uncaring, unemotion
al monsters at just exactly the wrong time.
1811, Chawton
tap tap
"Jenny?" a reedy, thin male voice, somehow both a question and a demand.
Oh God. Why doesn't someone just go and hit me on the head with a brick?
tap tap
"Jenny?"
Jane peeled off her glasses, wiped the tears and, unnoticed, kicked the disheveled manuscript pile next to her left foot on the floor in the process. By rights it should be twice as high; the original plan laid in spring was to be done with the first draft by now.
"Jenny, are you in there?"
"What do you want?" she snapped as she flicked the latch and opened the door.
"And good morning to you too."
Tall Henry, supremely self-assured Henry; royal blue frock coat, dark green britches, and today's pièce de résistance, a red, yellow and brown horizontal striped waistcoat.
"Jenny, I have news. Very good news."
Her brother was the only one who still called her that. To everyone else in the family she was just Jane. Or Aunt Jane, or Cousin Jane, and she knew damn well some muttered sotto voce in drawing rooms behind her back, Poor Jane.
"Poor Jane, she was cast off, you know? Very sad. And now she writes and writes, spends all her money on paper and books and reads like a demon. Now she's too old—no wonder no one will make her an offer."
The Austen children took after their father, all freakishly tall. Henry danced around his five foot eight inch sister, and loped into the small, crowded front room. Two inches taller, the demented bee dropped its beaver-skin tophat and monogrammed gentleman's satchel bulging fit to burst into Mother's arm chair (the one on the other side of the fire).
"Well?" The intruder flopped onto the old sofa. "Are you going to ask what it is yet?"
So unlike the rest of their siblings, they were as like two peas in the pod; impatient of temperament, mercurial of humor, talkative often to extreme, inquisitive . . .
"Is this new?" propping his boots on the window sill.
. . . easily distracted.