“Elizabeth is thriving,” returned Mrs. Foote. She had been brought to bed of her fourth daughter only before Christmas, and looked remarkably well — an example that must prove encouraging to those in a similar state. From long acquaintance with the Foote family, and their various troubles, I sincerely wished them happy, and rejoiced to see the lady in health. Mary Patton had married Edward Foote only four years previous; she was his second wife, the first — an illegitimate daughter of a baronet — proving too unsteady for the care of her household or children. Having exchanged Patton for Foote, Mary has been increasing without respite ever since.[5] As the Captain already possesses three children from his first unhappy union, he must certainly be accounted a prolific progenitor.

“And you, Mrs. Austen?” enquired Mrs. Foote, with an eye to Mary's figure, “are you in health?”

“Excellent health, I thank you. My poor sister Jane is not so well.”

“You have taken a cold,” said a faint voice at my shoulder. I curtseyed in the direction of Catherine Bertie, Admiral Bertie's daughter — who, though nearly ten years my junior, has already lost her bloom to the effects of ill-health. “Pray, let me offer you my vinaigrette.”

“What she needs is a good hot plaster,” declared a lantern-jawed woman of more advanced years. “I am Cecilia Braggen,” she added, as if by way of afterthought, “wife to Captain Jahleel Braggen. I do not usually force acquaintance, you may be assured; but I am come expressly on a matter of some urgency, and must solicit the aid and benevolence of you both. May we beg a seat in your parlour?”

“Of course!” Mary breathlessly replied, and led her visitors within.

I glanced at Mrs. Foote, who returned an expression of amused condolence; however urgent the matter to Mrs. Braggen, it could not command the entire sympathy of her companion.

“Jane,” Mrs. Foote whispered, as we moved to follow the others, do not feel obliged to satisfy her in the least regard. I fell in with the woman as I progressed along the High. She could not be turned back. But I am come myself to press you all most urgently — your mother and Miss Lloyd included — to join us for an evening party at Highfield House on Friday.”

“Friday? We should be delighted!” I cried. “I may answer for the others — we have no fixed engagements.”

“That is excellent news. And perhaps we shall have cause for celebration! Edward confides that Captain Austen may soon be posted to a frigate!”

“How very unlucky that the intelligence should already have spread so far,” I murmured uneasily. “There is just that degree of doubt in the case, that I should not wish the matter canvassed too soon. Mary, as yet, knows nothing of it.”

“Then I shall not breathe a word,” Mrs. Foote returned in a whisper. “Better that the full joy of it should burst upon her unawares!”

“… most distressing implications for the entire port,” Mrs. Braggen was exclaiming, as we joined the three women in Mrs. Davies's parlour. “Nineteen of the prisoners have fallen ill already, and with no one to nurse them, the situation will soon grow desperate! You cannot conceive the conditions in which they lie; the inclement weather must sharpen every discomfort. I have undertaken to organise our little society in shifts for the remainder of the week; but we are sadly pressed for hands. May I count upon each of you for at least a few hours — today or tomorrow, if convenient?”

I looked at Mary's pallid face and anxious eyes, and saw her palms pressed against her stomach. “Of what are you speaking?”

Cecilia Braggen wheeled upon me. “Of the French prisoners of war, confined in Wool House. There are forty of them held there, in a room fit for at most half that number; and they are all shaking with fever. The men who guard them — Marines, for the most part, and decidedly ill-educated — appear indifferent as to whether the poor fellows live or die. But I am persuaded that if disease is allowed to ravage the prisoners' ranks unchecked, it may soon spread to the Marines themselves — and you know what Marines are. The sickness will be all over the streets of Southampton in a thrice. We must act to stem the tide, before it is too late!”

“Mercy!” whispered Catherine Bertie. She held her vinaigrette to her flaring nostrils, and closed her eyes.

“But surely the French will soon be exchanged,” Mrs. Foote observed most sensibly. “I am sure they should fare far better on their native shores.”[6]

“I have it on good authority — from no less a personage than your father, Miss Bertie — that an exchange is not to be thought of before May. So you see where we are. I have presented my arguments most vigorously to the Admiral, and he agrees that we must attempt everything for the prisoners' comfort, and our own safety. He has offered me the services of his shipboard surgeon, a Mr. Hill.”.

“You would have us to nurse the French officers presently held in Wool House?” I repeated, for the sake of clarity. “What an extraordinary idea!”

“Do you speak French, Miss Austen?”

“A little,” I replied, revolving the idea in my mind. I had just been struck by the possible utility of a nurse, and the method by which I might serve my brother and Tom Seagrave. “Do you happen to know, Mrs. Braggen, from which of the captured prizes the Frenchmen hail?”

Cecilia Braggen stared. “I have not the slightest idea, Miss Austen! And I would not have you to expect an officer among your charges. The officers are all housed in good naval families. I speak, in the case of Wool House, of common seamen.”

“I do not believe that Captain Austen would wish his wife to risk exposure to illness at such a time,” observed Mrs. Foote gently, with a glance for the anxious and tongue-tied Mary. “And for my own part, I cannot undertake to carry all manner of disease into the nursery.”

“Father would certainly forbid it in my case!” cried Catherine Bertie, “however much he might recommend the charity, in the general way. You must know, Mrs. Braggen, that I have never been strong — and the winter months are replete with danger for a lady of delicate constitution!”

“It appears, Mrs. Braggen, as though you have won the heart of but a single recruit,” I told the hatchet-faced lady. “Pray inform me at what hour I must report for duty.”

Chapter 5

The Odour of Chessyre's Fear

24 February 1807, cont.

MARY AND I WERE GRANTED A REPRIEVE OF SEVERAL hours before I should be expected to take up my new vocation; at present, Mrs. Braggen's serving woman — a close confidante, it seemed, of many years' standing — was in attendance upon the surgeon, Mr. Hill. I should have laughed aloud at this sacrifice of a personal maid, in testament to Mrs. Braggen's devotion to her adopted cause, had Catherine Bertie not warmly assured me that dear Cecilia had worn herself to a fag end in nursing the sick at Wool House. She had absented herself from its noisome interior merely to solicit the aid of her naval sisters. I might expect her return in the midst of my own service — the better to instruct me, I suspected, in the finer points of contagion.

Mary and I bid (he ladies adieu — assured Mrs. Foote that we should not fail her on Friday evening — and tarried only long enough in the hall to be certain of escaping our departing friends. Happily, the rain had dwindled to a fine mist, exactly calculated to freshen Mary's complexion and add a springing curl to the wisps of hair escaping from my bonnet And so we set off.

My first object was to select a joint suitable for Martha's delectation, and order it sent home to Mrs. Davies; my second was to ensure that my brother's wife did not come to any harm in the public market, where she intended to examine every egg ever laid by ardent hen. At the last, if time permitted, I intended a healthful walk up the length of the High — which in Southampton runs the entire extent of the ancient center of town, from the Quay at water's edge, north to the very Bar Gate. Southampton, like its sister, Portsmouth, has always been fortified with broad, stout walls and the Keep so necessary for the defence of the realm; all the efforts at improvement — the Polygon that ambitious builders would tout, as the next Fashionable locus for Gentlemen of Means, fine shop fronts along the broad sweep of the High, the modern villas erected in the hills beyond the town, by sailors turned once more on land — cannot disguise the pleasant utility of a stone escarpment twenty feet tall and eight feet wide, perfectly suited for a promenade in view of the sea. The garden of our prospective house in Castle Square is bordered by the city's battlements, and from its height — achievable by flights of steps at several points along the wall's length — one might gaze at the New Forest beyond. The sea washes steadily at the great wall's foot; and I imagine that in warmer months — my window flung open to the night air — I shall fall off to sleep amidst the gentle susurration of the waves, and dream that I am rocking aboard one of my brother's ships.[7]