Shackles Read online

  SHACKLES

  A NOVEL SET IN THE

  ISLAND OF GUERNSEY

  AROUND 1831

  BY

  FRANCES MURRAY

  I would like to dedicate this story to my friends in Guernsey; to Chris and Henry Le Tissier, José and Chris Day, Anne Forsyth, Jane and Chris Massey and indeed anyone in the Island who may remember me, FM

  This story is a sequel to Castaway and concerns some of the same characters. Like that tale this one is set in the Island of Guernsey in which the author lived for a number of years. While the characters and the events that are portrayed are wholly imaginary the story is set at a time when the British public was becoming increasingly hostile to slavery and the Act, which was to end it throughout the Empire, was starting to make its slow way through Parliament. The Act had its faults and the results were not always what the originators had hoped but it was a commendable start in a process, which is not yet complete. Furthermore, it is set only a few years after the publication of A Vindication of the Rights of Women and maybe an echo of that book is to be heard also.

  The characters in this story are wholly imaginary and bear no resemblance to anyone living or dead to be found in the Island of Guernsey. The author apologizes to the islanders for the use made of their geography and history and begs that they will understand her wishing to do so and to be assured of her lasting affection for the Island and its inhabitants.

  F.M.

  Jocasta Saughton is told that she is to become a governess and that the family who have fostered her since she was a baby now wish to have nothing more to do with her. They have obtained a post for her on the Channel Island of Guernsey and she arrives there exhausted, soaked to the skin and still bewildered and saddened by the suddenness of this change in her circumstances, to encounter the inexplicable hostility of her employer’s sister-in-law, Miss Helen, and the stubborn resistance of her eldest charge to learning anything from a mere female. She overcomes some of these disadvantages but not the sister-in-law’s vicious hostility, and the machinations of an incomer with a pretty daughter and an axe to grind. She is dismissed without notice which results in her being inadvertently and disastrously involved in a plot to frustrate the prosecution of a slave trader.

  CHAPTER ONE 6

  CHAPTER TWO 18

  CHAPTER THREE 31

  CHAPTER FOUR 45

  CHAPTER FIVE 58

  CHAPTER SIX 71

  CHAPTER SEVEN 87

  CHAPTER EIGHT 102

  CHAPTER NINE 118

  CHAPTER TEN 136

  CHAPTER ELEVEN 149

  CHAPTER TWELVE 166

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN 182

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN 201

  POSTSCRIPTUM 216

  Other books by Frances Murray 219

  CHAPTER ONE

  How happy is he born and taught,

  That serveth not another’s will.

  Sir Henry Wotton.

  In 1831 the great towns in England and Scotland were convulsed by riots and demonstrations demanding parliamentary reform. The world watched events with bated breath waiting to see a portent, a throne toppled, an empire convulsed. However, there was one small corner of the British Isles where no one had any attention to spare. In the summer of 1831 the sea-journey between the south coast of England and the Channel Islands had become regularised and reliable. Twice a week the SS Ariadne and the SS Lord Beresford threshed their way up the Little Roussel, paused under Castle Cornet so that passengers for St. Peter Port in Guernsey could be taken off by shore boat and then threshed off to Jersey.

  All through that momentous summer those two packet boats sailed twice a week, come storm or calm, come hell or high water (a phrase which might have been inspired by the waters around the Channel Islands) to the wonder and delight of the islanders, inured for centuries to the vagaries of wind and tide and the unreliability of sailing vessels which might take twelve hours or twelve days to reach their (often unintended) destinations. The packet companies stressed this regularity and reliability in their advertisements, spoke of the ease with which it was possible to connect with stagecoaches to London and other towns in the Home Counties and pointed with pride to the cheapness of the fares and the low cargo rates. The comfort and well-being of their passengers was, they claimed, their first concern.

  Miss Jocasta Saughton, passenger on the Lord Beresford would have disagreed: never in all her twenty years had she undergone such misery and discomfort. It made matters no better to consider that her situation was partly her own fault. She had arrived in Southampton after a coach journey from Oxford on a hot June night with five fellow-passengers who appeared to regard an open window as a threat to their existence. Consequently she had decided to save five shillings and sixpence of her slender resources by purchasing a ticket for the deck at half a guinea instead of a forecabin ticket at sixteen shillings. In June, she thought, it would be warm and sunny and she could revel in the fresh sea air after the stuffiness of the night coach. The ticket clerk seemed doubtful shook his head and muttered something about a spring tide but the morning was hot and sunny, with no more than a few long-drawn wisps of cloud high in the blue sky. She had insisted on a deck seat and the clerk had shrugged and given her the ten and sixpenny ticket.

  Aboard the Lord Beresford she was given to understand she had made an error. The steward who inspected her ticket shook his head and drew in his breath between his teeth in a very discomposing fashion. He asked of a colleague were there any seats in the cabin left unbespoken. The colleague bellowed that both cabins were packed tighter’n herrings in a barrel. The steward made a poor mouth over her half-guinea ticket and summoned a sailor with a jerk of his head.

  “Find ‘Delle a seat aft of the companion and in shelter,” he ordered, “see to it she’s got summat to hold on to.”

  He added a remark in a tongue that Miss Saughton took to be the Norman-French patois spoken in the islands. Even with her knowledge of the French language it was all but incomprehensible but she caught the phrase ‘coup d’vent’ and her heart sank. Before the Isle of Wight was a mile behind them the gentle breeze had become a strong south westerly wind into which the Lord Beresford ploughed and threshed and pounded, heaving and pitching until Miss Saughton ached with the exertion needed merely to stay on her seat and her hands cramped with holding to the stanchion. Time and again she blessed that steward when she saw her fellow-passengers thrown off their places on the slippery benches until most of them preferred to remain sprawled on the deck rather than struggle to keep their seats.

  Once during the journey, despite all her attempts to ignore the matter, she was forced to go in search of a privy. She made a hazardous way to the forecabin and in there saw what made her wonder whether the choice of a seat on deck was such a mistake after all. Never before had she seen anyone in the throes of sea-sickness, let alone thirty and more poor souls, and in the cabin the air was heavy with the stench of vomit. In the privy cabin a stewardess was tending a victim who, between bouts, was imploring death to put a period to her misery. When Miss Saughton emerged from the tiny compartment where she had been shaken about like dice in a cup the stewardess was scouring out a basin. She grinned at Miss Saughton in comradely fashion,

  “One of the lucky ones, are you, miss?”

  “Evidently,” Miss Saughton agreed and was punished for such presumption by being hurled across the cabin. The stewardess fielded her and with a congratulatory pat saw her through the door. Back on her seat she fastened her hands around the stanchion and determined not to move again. The steward who had taken her ticket came past and offered her a sandwich.

  “Glad to see you ain’t frighted, miss,” he bellowed above the noise of wind and waves and labouring engines. “She’s a grand craft the Lord Berrie, stand up to anything, I
reckon. Steady as a house, she is...”

  A monumental heave sent him staggering with his tray shedding sandwiches right across the deck. Out beyond the spray churned up by the paddles Miss Saughton caught a glimpse of what seemed to be land. Excitedly she pointed it out to the steward who had come rolling back and asked if that were Guernsey.

  “Lord love you, Miss, but that’s the Casquets. We’ve the worst to come yet. Always a heave round the Casquets.”

  He moved away retrieving soggy sandwiches and was proved right. The little steam-vessel was swept from end to end by spray and every now and again when she stuck her blunt prow into a comber, by vicious swirls of green water which seemed to be trying to wash the passengers into the scuppers and over the side.

  Jo Saughton clinging cataleptically to her stanchion, telling herself over and over again that nothing lasts for ever was not to know that there was an unfortunate combination of strong wind and spring tide. Underneath the Lord Beresford was a seven-knot current bearing them south into the teeth of a strong southwesterly and over the rockiest bottom in all the channel waters. All she knew was that she was more frightened than she had ever been in her life, shaken to shreds by the pounding and soaked to the skin by salt water. Her ordeal lasted for some thirty minutes and then suddenly, as is the way of such things, the tide turned, the sea smoothed, the wind dropped, and the rain began. The passengers got up from the deck and resettled themselves on the benches and the Lord Beresford ploughed on imperturbably into the rain for another hour.

  “Nearly there, Miss, “ said the steward who was engaged in wheeling a basket full of baggage. “See?”

  He pointed over the side and Jo saw vague shapes looming out of the mist. She got up shivering and moved to the rail, determined to see as much as she could of the island, which was to be her new home. However, the Lord Beresford was late and the summer dusk was closing in and all she could see was a low, humped silhouette against an angry western sky.

  Two men came to stand by her. They were evidently islanders for they pointed out various landmarks to each other with great content. The note of the engines altered and the paddle-beat slowed.

  “Coming in,” said the older man and hauled a watch from his waistcoat. “Four hours late, near enough.”

  “Many getting off?” asked his companion.

  “No, you and me and young Robin. And....”

  Jo was conscious that her jerked his head slightly in her direction. The younger man asked a question in a low voice and the older shrugged. Another youngish man emerged from the aftercabin and joined them at the rail. He was as green as glass and had a heavy cloak wrapped round him. One of the crew pushed a wheeled basket after him, piled high with boxes and baskets and sacks. The vessel heeled slightly as she turned in towards the harbour and Jo saw a grim shape lowering above them and drew in her breath.

  “Castle Cornet,” explained the newcomer. “We lie to under its lee to let the shore boats take us off.”

  Two sailors came to the side and opened a section of the rail, like a gate and then lowered a companionway. To Jo it seemed almost vertical and she swallowed.

  “We have to go down there?” she asked hollowly.

  “We’re set ashore by boat. This voyage, Guernsey’s only a port of call, eh. They don’t discharge cargo. Not till she comes back in the morning.”

  Jo could see two boats coming out of the harbour mouth and pulling strongly towards the steamer over the rain-pocked harbour waters.

  “Mess Robin,” called the older man.

  The newcomer turned and responded eagerly, pleased to be addressed.

  “Yes, Mess Domaille?”

  “You’ve been off just a week, is it?”

  “Yes, Mess Domaille.”

  “Was this barque here when you left?”

  Domaille was pointing at a beautiful vessel anchored in the roads.

  “She was launched the day before I left,” ‘Young Robin’ replied. “She’s from Captain De Beaumanoir’s yard, her. Owner’s a Portugee, came for the launch. She’s lovely, eh?”

  And so she was. Even Jo could see that. Her lines were clean and fine and she floated high on the water like a gull.

  “And Captain De Beaumanoir’s son, he’s home,” Robin enlarged, evidently pleased to air his more recent intelligence. “Sent in his papers to the Navy and started work in his Papa’s yard.”

  “Work!” snorted Mess Domaille’s young friend, “what work need he do? His father’s making money faster than a dog trotting and his mother could buy Jersey, so she’d a mind. Would you work, young Robin, if you’d no need?”

  “Not I,” breathed Robin enviously.

  “And I’ll wager every young lady on the island’s on the catch for him,” said the younger man. “Do your shop no harm, Robin, eh, to have them all vying to take his eye?”

  “Good business, Mess Domaille,” he agreed with a grin, “but they do say he’s spoken for. The widow Packard that’s a friend of his mother’s taken the corner house in Havilland Street and means to stay the summer and they tell me she‘s in and out of Captain De Beaumanoir’s house every day and the daughter as pretty as she can stare, her, and dressed all London smart.”

  Mess Domaille grunted.

  “Who lives longest will see most, “ he observed.

  Miss Saughton heard this with less than half an ear. She was staring intently at where her new life would begin, in this picturesque, grey little town just beginning to blossom in gleams of yellow light as the lamps were lit. The journey was over. She had arrived. Her stomach tightened in apprehension and she told herself that it was hunger for she had eaten nothing since the coffee and bread and butter with which the inn had greeted the passengers off the night coach at dawn that morning. Could it only have been yesterday that she had left everything familiar and dear for ever? This day had been the longest of her life and it was not yet over. The sense of desolation she had held at bay for so long threatened to overwhelm her and she fought back tears.

  That evening Pierre Nicolle and Ezra Le Cheminant who earned their drinks by carrying baggage when the mood took them were absorbing their evening cider in the tavern under the Hotel de l’Europe. They had carried out their cans to the doorway the better to see the telegraph on the top of Castle Cornet for, the steamer’s being so late meant that porters would be scarce and pickings good. When they saw the arms start to stir they nodded to one another, drained the cans and when they saw the steamer turn in towards the harbour they began to walk down to the quayside where the shore-boats lay. They watched them row out between the walls to the outer harbour and then climbed the wall to watch the steamer come in, her paddles slowly churning to keep her place under the lee of the Castle against the tide. The smaller boat reached the companionway first, the larger waited to take the baggage. Ezra and Pierre peered through the dusk at the descending passengers.

  “George de Putron,” said Ezra. “Back from his studies. Advocate Domaille.”

  “He’s been to London, him. On the matter of the Mouillepied Will.”

  “Young Robin.”

  “He’s been to fetch goods for the shop, eh?”

  “And a woman, a stranger.”

  Pierre scratched his head, pushing back his cap.

  “Not rich, her, or she’d have a maid.”

  “Young, pretty....” added Ezra.

  “Mess Domaille, he is much-married and has no kin in England, she is none of his.”

  “And George De Putron, he has his little friend to the Rue Cohu as all the world knows,” said Ezra grinning, “except his Maman. She can be no concern of theirs.”

  “Mess Robin?” suggested Pierre.

  “His mother would kill him if he brought a woman to the house and there is Delle Mahy to the Vale who is waiting for the old woman to die. They pass notes to each other after church.”

  “She will live for ever, her.”

  Ezra watched the boats approaching the harbour entrance for a few moments.

  “
Me, I have it! She must be the new gouvernante for the Lucas children. Their Jeanne told my cousin when she was to the market they were to have a new gouvernante.”

  Pleased to have solved the puzzle they watched the boat turn into the harbour.

  “She is pretty, her,” Ezra approved, “even white like a sheet and wet as a fish, she is pretty.”

  “That old Delle Lucas, she’ll not be best pleased at that,” Pierre said maliciously.

  “No,” Ezra agreed, grinning. “Michelle, my cousin, told me that Jeanne told her that Delle wanted to have the new parson’s sister for to teach the girls and the new parson for Mess Leo but M’dame Lucas would not have it so.”

  “The old Delle wants the new parson for herself, eh?” suggested Pierre.

  “At her last prayers, that one. Anyone in breeches will do.”

  “There’s money.”

  “Cor damme, eh?” Ezra shook his head. “Who’d want her? Even with a diamond on every finger? Voice like nails on glass and a tongue like a whip.”

  “And young Mess Leo,” said Pierre feelingly, “is a proper demon. Poor girl.”

  Horses clattered on the quayside and the two peered through the dusk.

  “‘Tis Mess Domaille’s carriage,” said Ezra. “That’s good, eh? He’ll take up Mess George for they both live to the Pollet. Not far to take their bags.”