Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron

Author:Stephanie Barron
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781616954246
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2014-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

6 Jane refers here to the account of her experiences published as Jane and the Stillroom Maid.—Editor’s note.

15

DIVIDED ALLEGIANCES

Wednesday, 28th December 1814

The Vyne, cont’d.

“The ice on the lake is not yet thick enough to cut and stack in blocks in this room,” Raphael West observed, “or we should not have found space to enter.”

“You were here when John Gage met his death?” I said stupidly. “Then you must have seen his murderer! Or—”

“—Or killed him myself.” His gaze was satiric. “Pray believe, Miss Austen, that I did not.”

“Then—”

“I was not standing inside this building when Gage’s horse went down.” He unlatched the far door and stepped out into the snow. “I suspect, however, that his murderer was. As he—or she—waited for the horse to spring its trap, I was searching diligently for the passage we just traversed. I did not find it yesterday morning; I had been convinced the entrance was hidden in the linenfold panelling of the Oak Gallery, when, with a very little thought, I should have perceived that it was far more likely to be near the Chapel. Those escaping their enemies will either bolt from a house or claim sanctuary; and our tunnel is ideally situated for either.”

“I had heard that you were seen in the Chapel,” I observed, “in conversation with Miss Gambier.”

“—Who, if interrogated, may be able to recall my appearance there.” He gave me a wry look, well aware of my motive in discovering his whereabouts. “Her presence inhibited my search; I withdrew by the East Corridor, probably at the very moment Mrs. Chute led your party in search of Miss Gambier. I heard a cavalcade of ladies’ feet, but did not stay to learn what the bustle was about. That intelligence came later—from Chute himself.”

I followed West from the ice house. The shadows were long on what little of the snow remained; where Lieutenant Gage’s body was found, a bare and muddy patch marred the landscape. The tree where I had discovered one end of the entrapping wire was not five yards from where I stood, by the edge of the carriageway. “Sanctuary,” I repeated. “To what can you possibly refer?”

“To William, Third Baron Sandys,” he said. “The Sandys family owned this place in Elizabeth’s time, long before the Chutes were thought of. The Third Baron committed the grievous error of joining the Earl of Essex in his rebellion against Elizabeth, and when Essex failed, Sandys was imprisoned in the Tower. He lost his fortune and his life as a result; Elizabeth seized The Vyne, and used it as a sort of royal lodging-house when the Duc de Biron came from France to call. The Vyne has long been rumoured to hide a bolt-hole. Colonel Henry Sandys, who fought for the Crown against Cromwell, certainly employed it to come and go unnoticed, during the Siege of Basingstoke.”

I looked from the muddy ground to the tree trunk, to the ice house, and back again. “In any event, it is an admirable means of fetching ice to the kitchens in summer.

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