JANE dived closer and stared down at the letter in Oliver’s hand.
‘Cassandra Austen? Are you sure?’ I spoke without thinking.
Oliver shot me a startled look, but the Bishop, who had picked up the second sheet, said hoarsely, ‘It’s true, see for yourself.’ He carefully passed me the letter. ‘Look there, it says “Chawton Cottage”. And that is her signature at the bottom.’ He laid the third letter gently on his desk, and gazed at it in awe. ‘This one, too. Cassandra Austen! I can’t believe it.’
I gingerly placed the letter he’d given me on a side table and stared down at it. At first glance it looked to me as though someone had dipped a beetle in ink and let it crawl across the page in all directions. A more careful scrutiny revealed that the author had in fact written across the page from top to bottom in the usual way, and then, wanting to say more, had turned the sheet ninety degrees and written at right-angles across the original text.
Seeing my confusion Jane said kindly, ‘Cassandra was well known for crossing her lines when she had a great deal to say. She was always one for economy and disliked excessively the thought of making her correspondent pay for extra sheets.’
This time I thought before I spoke. ‘It’s not easy to read,’ Neither Oliver nor the Bishop replied, being each much too absorbed in the first and third of Cassandra Austen’s three letters.
Jane was reading over the Bishop’s shoulder, but she looked up at me in surprise. ‘Hard to read? I do not see how that may be. Why, I was always struck with the prettiness of my sister’s hand – so small and neat. Now, do pray hush, Cassandra, for I long to read her letters as I was so often used to do.’ She bent her head and read silently for several seconds, before exclaiming ‘Good Gracious!’ and ‘How extraordinary!’.
I resisted asking the obvious question and had just managed to decipher the first few lines of the second letter, when Oliver suddenly cried, ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘What? What is it?’ the Bishop and I chorused.
‘This letter not only confirms that James Stanier Clarke cursed Jane Austen, it also says that old Mrs Austen gave Bishop North four of Jane Austen’s personal possessions.’
‘What?’ I peered at the letter. ‘What did she give him?’
He bent over the angular handwriting. ‘Cassandra Austen writes that her mother gave Bishop North, “…a page from Jane’s unfinished manuscript penned with all the vigour of her heart and mind; her quill pen used to write her last novel; a letter she had written and wept over after the death of a beloved friend; and a gold chain upon which Jane had often worn the topaz cross given her by our kind brother Charles.”’
‘Are you serious? A page from an unfinished manuscript! From which novel?’
‘It doesn’t say.’
‘I expect it will be from The Brothers – that which your father called Sanditon – Cassandra.’ Jane’s eyes grew misty. ‘I remember I had been working on it before I took ill.’ She sighed. ‘Sickness is a dangerous indulgence at that age and I recall I had a good deal of fever and many indifferent nights. In the end I was compelled to lay the unfinished manuscript aside. I wonder that Cassandra kept it, and that it ever was deemed worthy of publication.’
‘But if Bishop North had Jane Austen’s things, what did he do with them?’ I asked, ignoring Jane.
Oliver indicated his letter. ‘He was meant to give them to a friend who planned to undo the curse.’
‘I think it was Vicesimus Knox,’ I volunteered, holding up my letter. ‘Cassandra Austen says here that he wrote to the Earl of Guilford years earlier asking about the items.’
‘Did the Earl have them?’ asked Oliver, frowning.
‘No.’ I bent over the letter again; it was getting easier to read. ‘According to this, Bishop North put the parcel of Jane Austen’s things in his desk for Knox to collect.’
‘This desk?’ demanded Oliver eagerly. He looked hungrily at the mahogany desk
‘Certainly not,’ said the Bishop. ‘This desk was my father’s.’
I shook my head. ‘No, because Cassandra describes Bishop North’s desk as being––’ I squinted at the elegant script, ‘“… a singular piece of furniture, ornately carved with figures of the Green Man.”’ Maybe it was the weirdness of the situation, but I couldn’t help smiling. ‘A desk carved with little green men. How funny. I didn’t think they imagined aliens back then.’
‘The Earl is not referring to little green men, Cassandra!’ Bishop Stiles sighed at my ignorance. ‘He means the Green Man. It was a pagan figure, usually represented in the form of a bearded head carved in wood and surrounded by leaves or other vegetation. I imagine the desk would have been made of oak with Green Man carvings around the top or on the sides.’
‘Doesn’t sound very Bishop-y,’ I murmured.
‘Which may be why the desk is no longer in the Bishop’s Palace,’ observed Bishop Stiles grimly.
‘Are you sure it’s not here?’ asked Oliver, looking around the room.
‘Positive,’ declared the Bishop. ‘But even if it were, surely the parcel would have been found by now?’
Oliver slowly shook his head. ‘I think we’d know if it had been found. The things Cassandra Austen describes are too important to have gone unannounced.’
‘True,’ agreed the Bishop. ‘But why hasn’t anyone found the parcel yet?’
Oliver considered. ‘Maybe Bishop North had some kind of secret hiding place in his desk that no one ever––’
‘No, no, no!’ I cried suddenly.
‘What is it, Cass? What’s the matter?’ Oliver was at my side in an instant.
I stared down at the second letter. ‘It says here that Knox meant to perform the ritual on St Swithun’s Day.’
‘Isn’t that July fifteenth?’ asked Oliver, carefully taking the letter from me and scanning it.
‘That’s right,’ said the Bishop. ‘It is his feast day next Wednesday.’
‘You… you don’t think it means we have to perform the ritual on St Swithun’s day?’ I asked, with a rising sense of dread.
Bishop Stiles paled. ‘I hope not.’ He continued perusing the third letter.
‘Maybe that’s why Knox never cast the spell,’ said Oliver suddenly. ‘You know, Bishop North died on July twelfth. That’s just three days before St Swithun’s Day.’
‘It would explain why North never gave Knox the parcel of Jane Austen’s things,’ said the Bishop.
‘But… if the spell has to be cast on St Swithun’s Day…’ I faltered. ‘Then that means…’
‘We have only six days to find the Grimoire and Jane Austen’s possessions,’ finished Oliver, in a surprisingly optimistic voice.
‘Six days,’ I groaned, thinking of Aunt Butters still unconscious in the hospital, waiting for me to save her. I chanced a glance at Jane. She was horribly pale. Not a good sign.
‘I do think it very likely,’ said the Bishop, grimly. ‘Listen to what Cassandra Austen writes at the end of this letter: “Thus, I beseech you, dear Bishop Sumner, to undertake this task: find those lost items and perform the vital ritual next St Swithun’s Day so that my dearest Jane may be released from the world between worlds and restored her to her rightful place in Heaven.”’
‘Sounds like it’s definitely St Swithun’s Day, then,’ said Oliver.
‘I very much fear that is correct,’ said Jane, floating towards me. ‘It is but a week away and that is the length of time which I suspect Amelia has left. I am sorry Cassandra, but I cannot think it a coincidence.’
I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t look at anyone in case they saw the panic in my face. All I could do was say urgently, ‘We have to find that parcel!’
‘Absolutely.’ Oliver’s eyes gleamed with eager light. ‘Imagine if we did. Imagine holding Jane Austen’s quill and her gold chain and reading her letter and that page of her manuscript!’
‘It would be amazing,’ I agreed. ‘But it would be even better having them for the spell so we can free Aunt Butters and Jane Austen’s ghost.’
‘At least we have Cassandra Austen’s letters. These are an incredible find.’ Oliver gazed in wonder at the two letters he was holding.
‘I’ll take those,’ said the Bishop suddenly. He held out an imperative hand.
Oliver hesitated and I saw a flash of hunger in his eyes. For one heart-stopping second I thought he was going to refuse. But all he said was, ‘They’re valuable, sir. You’ll keep them safe?’
‘Of course.’ To my surprise, Bishop Stiles drew three plastic archival sleeves from a drawer and deftly slid Cassandra Austen’s letters into them. He caught my startled look and said a touch defensively, ‘Some very important people write to me, you know, and I have a duty to preserve their correspondence.’
‘I could look after the letters for you if you wanted, sir,’ suggested Oliver, his eyes never leaving them. ‘I’ve had a lot of experience with original documents.’
The Bishop shook his head. ‘These are neither for public viewing nor for private research. That much is clear from the way Bishop Sumner concealed them in the Chronicle. I have a responsibility to ensure their sanctity. But while I decide what is best to be done with them, they’ll be safe here.’ He locked the letters in his desk. ‘Remember, it is with Jane Austen’s, not Cassandra Austen’s, possessions that we are concerned.’
‘Agreed,’ said Oliver. ‘So if the parcel of her things were still in the desk and we could find it and the Grimoire––’
‘It’d be a miracle,’ I said glumly.
‘Miracles do happen, Cassandra,’ said Jane and the Bishop at exactly the same moment.
‘I believe in miracles,’ said Oliver, smiling at me in a way that heated my blood and sent the colour rushing to my cheeks. ‘We just need to find that desk. I’m sure the parcel is hidden in it somewhere.’
‘But it could be anywhere,’ I objected. ‘I mean, we don’t even know when it was removed from the Bishop’s Palace.’
‘Ah, now that I can help you with,’ said the Bishop, striding to a cupboard. Opening it, he pulled a fat brown book from a shelf. ‘This,’ he said, thumping the book onto his desk, ‘is the Bishop’s Ledger. If the desk was sold then there should be a record of it in here.’
He turned several pages. ‘Charles Sumner succeeded George Pretyman Tomlin as Bishop of Winchester after Tomlin died suddenly in November of 1827. It’s possible that the new Bishop, or even his steward, objected to the desk’s pagan carvings and sold it without knowing what it concealed.’ Bishop Stiles ran a long forefinger down one page after another. ‘Ah, here we are – just as I suspected.’ He read aloud: ‘“Fourteenth of January, 1828, I have this day sent the carved oak desk to Buxton’s the auctioneers. There to be sold with the worldly goods of the late Dr. Sir George Pretyman Tomline, Bishop of Winchester; the money to be given to the poor of the parish. Signed: Elias Wantage, Steward.”’.
‘1828.’ Oliver whistled. ‘That’s nearly two hundred years ago.’
‘Which makes it an antique,’ I said hopefully. ‘And probably valuable, which means—’
‘It might still be somewhere.’ Oliver brightened. ‘So all we have to do is advertise.’ ‘Social media,’ I agreed.
‘Facebook, Twitter and Instagram,’ nodded Oliver.
‘What about the Times?’ said Jane and the Bishop in unison.
‘Let’s do it all,’ I replied.
‘We must offer a reward,’ said the Bishop. ‘A hundred pounds.’
I paled. I had exactly thirteen pounds in my wallet and twenty-five pounds in the bank. I planned to get a job as soon as we’d freed Jane and Aunty B, but until then—
‘A hundred pounds won’t cut it, sir,’ said Oliver firmly. ‘Let’s make it a thousand. I’d gladly pay a thousand pounds to… to free Jane Austen’s ghost.’