“Are you much improved in health, Mamma?” I enquired.

“Let me see what you have done, my girl. Fetch your work!”

Surprised, I rose to retrieve my sketchbook from the hall table. I had managed to establish myself on the promontory above the footpath, and had remained there nearly two hours, despite a chilling wind. I was anxious to learn whether Mr. Ord should remain at Netley Lodge but a half-hour — as befitted a slight acquaintance — or an entire afternoon. His great black horse had not yet reappeared when the lateness of the hour urged me to collect my paints and summon Mr. Hawkins.

“There is only a very little... I merely attempted to capture a likeness...” I faltered, as she turned over the two poor watercolours I had achieved.

“You will never exhibit Cassandra’s talent, I fear — but we cannot all be everything, Jane. Cassandra is a beauty, and you are a wit; she paints, as Beauty must, while you sharpen your pen and commit the world to paper.” She patted my cheek with sudden fondness. “I hope you are not entertaining morbid thoughts of conversion to Rome — of walling yourself up in the living grave of a French convent!”

“Indeed I am not, ma’am.”

“Jane?” Martha gasped in incredulity. “The good sisters should all revolt within a twelvemonth!”

“You wrong me, Martha. I do crave a bit of solitude and peace — a walled garden, perhaps, if not a cell — in which I might revolve the simple tales my mother pretends to praise.”

For want of a kerchief, my parent pressed her napkin to her eyes. “You may be forced all too soon, Jane, to give up this cunning town and bury yourself in the country. Martha has told you of your brother’s letter?”

“A freehold! Dear Edward! That he should think of us!”

“Pity he did not choose to do so long since — that we might have been spared the pain of so many removals! First Bath — then Southampton — and now — God knows where.”

“Chawton or Wye, Mamma. Edward is very plain.”

“Well he should be! His generous impulse has been long enough in coming. But so it always is with your great men.” She glared at me darkly. “Edward may command more wealth than the rest of the family put together, Jane. Three years I have been a widow — and he only considers now of his family, when he is deprived of the chief delight of his life? Death has leveled his humours, you may depend upon it. He means to value such relations as he still claims, while life and breath remain to him.”

“Perhaps you are right, Mamma.” I knew better than to challenge such caprices and whims. “Do you fancy Wye, or Chawton?”

“It hardly matters,” she said doubtfully. “They are equally troublesome, in being such a great way off, and neither replete with acquaintance.”

I raised my brow expressively at Martha; we both could expect considerable agitation from Mrs. Austen in the coming days. She should rather remain in an unhappy situation, and avoid the trouble necessitated by change, than to exert herself towards an improvement of her prospects.

“I am a little acquainted with Wye,” Martha mused over her glass of orange wine. “It is pretty enough, and I should judge but two miles from Mr. Edward Austen’s estate. Chawton, however, has all the advantage of being in northern Hampshire, where so many of our old friends are established — and the accommodation appears excellent.”

“ ‘A bailiff’s cottage,’ ” I recited from my brother’s letter, “ ‘in the Great House village.’ ” We had all been conducted on a visit through Chawton Great House, Edward’s secondary estate, the previous summer when dear Elizabeth was yet alive. It had lately been quitted by its tenants, and was in a period of refurbishment; silent, echoing, august, and chill. Young Fanny had delighted in losing herself among the numerous twisting passages, the hidden doors and secret chambers; the little children had run like puppies through the extensive park. But I could not recall the bailiff, or his habitation.

“Edward writes that the cottage has no less than six bedrooms — several garrets for storage — a garden — and a few outhouses,” my mother lamented.

“Such riches!” Martha exclaimed. “And in a country village, we might have a pony cart, by and by!”

At that moment, the peace of the dinner hour was riven by the clangourous tolling of St. Michael’s bells, not a quarter mile distant from Castle Square. The tumult of sound — for each of the great bells in the tower must have loosed its tongue — shattered the night air in rolling waves, so that the very walls of the house commenced to shake.

“Good God!” my mother cried, and rose with her hand at her heart. “Are we invaded? Has the Monster crossed the Channel?”

I sped from the table to the front hall, followed by Martha. We threw open the door and saw a crowd of common folk — sailors, carters, tradesmen — at a run through Castle Square. They were bound, to a man, for Samuel Street, and thence, down Bugle in the direction of the wharves. Most were shouting unintelligibly. As I stared at them in consternation, I glimpsed a familiar figure slipping through the crowd like a hound on its scent: Orlando, the green-cloaked sprite. Had he taken his suite of rooms at the Dolphin, in expectation of his master’s return? I nearly called out his name, but was forestalled by Martha.

“What has happened?” she cried to a passing lad.

“Fire! The wharves are alight!”

“Lord, Jane — that part of town is not far off. Should we consider of the house? Ought we to begin packing?”

I shook my head. “Where can such a blaze go, between the Water and the walls? They are not eight feet thick for nothing. Let us return to my mother, however. She will be in need of smelling salts.”

In this I misjudged the good lady; she was, in fact, on tenterhooks to learn the news — and was only prevented from gaining the street by the condition of her dressing gown. “What if sparks are blown by the wind?” she demanded. “What if the roof catches alight? I do not place my confidence in your walls, Jane. Recollect the affair in Lyme, when your father was yet alive. We were very nearly burnt in our beds.”

“But in the event, were saved by means of numerous buckets of water, briskly applied,” I observed, “which are bound to be employed in the present case. Fires are common enough in port towns, Mamma. We cannot escape them, with so much tar and wood about.”

She was determined to sit up in the parlour, however, in expectation of flight; and spent the next several hours established over her needlework in a rigid attitude, with frequent ejaculations of fright. At last I could bear it no longer, and put on my cloak.

“You are never going out into that crowd, Jane!” my mother cried indignantly. “You shall be crushed. I am sure of it.”

“I shall not sleep until I know the worst,” I informed her firmly, and stepped into the night. I stood in Samuel Street, gazing the length of Bugle. The lurid glow of flames threw the wharves in sharp relief, as though they were stages erected for this sole performance, and the darting black figures that bent and swung over their water casks, a representation of the Inferno. I had not progressed much past West Gate Street when the heat struck my face like a blow. The smells of charred timbers and acrid resin tingled in my nostrils. And then, with a sound akin to cannon, some part of the wharf exploded. I cowered involuntarily, my hands pressed against my bonnet. Splinters of wood rocketed into the air. Men screamed aloud. The flames shot skywards in a hellish arc, under a roiling cloud of smoke black against the vivid scene; a vat of tar, perhaps, had flared in the heat, or a cask of gunpowder.

“Out of the way, damn ’ee!”

I turned — gazed full into the eyes of a pair of frightened dray horses — and stumbled backwards onto the paving. I had been standing open-mouthed in the very middle of Bugle Street, directly in the path of a waggoneer intent upon hauling water to the wharves. He sawed at the reins, glared at me in contempt, and clattered onwards over the stones. As I recovered myself, the rapid pulse at my throat receding, a distant boom! brought my head around. A second explosion — and a third — but from a completely different direction than the wharves. I hastened to my right, down West Gate Street, and mounted the steps to the town walls.