Chapter Eight #2
“I did,” said Byron.
“I haven’t read it,” said Mr. Fields. “But everyone who is reading it seems to, um, to think it’s very good.” He looked down at his feet as he said this, as if it was not actually true, that people had been insulting the poem.
Jane smirked and hid it with her hand. “Really, we’re here to discuss Miss Seward.”
“Miss Seward,” said Mr. Fields.
“Yes,” said Jane. “We heard you went to examine her remains yesterday. We wondered, in your professional opinion, what killed her?”
“Laudanum overdose,” said Mr. Fields.
“Oh,” said Jane softly. “I see.”
“I couldn’t find the laudanum itself,” said Mr. Fields.
“But I’ve seen it many times. Blue lips, blue fingertips, no other sign.
The body just shuts down if there’s too much of the drug.
The opium eater stops breathing, and they simply expire.
It’s not entirely common, but I’m afraid it’s not rare.
She shouldn’t have had so much. I tell people that it’s not something to be trifled with, you know?
You have people just taking a bit for headaches and sprains or to get to sleep at night, and I don’t hold with that. It’s too dangerous, really.”
“You think it was an accident, then?” said Jane.
“Likely,” said Mr. Fields.
“Right,” said Byron.
“Right,” said Jane.
They both blinked at each other.
Mr. Fields looked back and forth between them. “Why are you interested?”
“Well, we thought she had been, um, murdered,” said Jane.
“Ah,” said Mr. Fields. “Well, it’s possible, of course. I’ve heard of people doing it, administering a lethal dose of opium. It’s one of the easier poisons to get one’s hands on, actually.”
“Possible,” said Jane. “But you think she probably did it to herself on accident.”
“Having not found the laundanum bottle, it really is difficult to say. She must have drunk the laudanum and then gone up to bed,” said Mr. Fields.
“If she had taken too much, it may have had a delay in onset. Or it may even have been that she began to feel the effects and decided to lie down because of them. So, there’s no way to be sure.
I imagine she keeps a bottle down in the tavern somewhere. ”
“Yes, just so,” said Jane.
“NO, THERE’S NOTHING.” Byron was kneeling down, going through cabinets in the tavern. “Lots of other bottles and spirits, but no laudanum.”
They’d come straight here after the discussion with Mr. Fields.
Jane tapped her fingernails against the countertop. She was standing over Byron. “Well, that doesn’t really mean anything.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Byron, looking up at her. “She could have gotten it from someone else. She could have drunk from their laudanum bottle and then gone upstairs on her own.”
“Yes,” said Jane.
“Yes,” said Byron, looking into the cabinet.
It was very quiet.
“Well, that’s, um, that’s really all there is, then,” said Jane, looking across the tavern to where the body was lain out.
“Yes,” said Byron.
Another long silence.
Byron stood up. “It’s really terrible that I’m feeling disappointed about this, I know. It’s a good thing to find out that this woman was not actually murdered.”
“You feel disappointed too?” said Jane, who had been attempting to conceal her own feelings. “I would have thought you’d be pleased. You wanted to clear your name, and that seems to have happened. It was an accident. It had nothing to do with you.”
“Well, yes, you’d think that would be enough,” said Byron.
“It’s not?”
“I still don’t know why I woke up there. We still don’t know what that ladder was doing there. And, I don’t know, it feels…” He gestured with both hands. “Like a ragged edge.”
“Oh, dear me, that’s exactly what I said to Cassandra last night,” said Jane.
“Utterly unfinished,” sighed Byron.
She shook her head.
He ran a hand through his hair.
“I suppose that’s the way of things sometimes,” said Jane. “In life, things don’t always add up to anything. Things don’t always mean anything. They happen, and then we just keep going, no matter how nonsensical or maddening it all was.”
“You’re not incorrect about that observation,” said Byron.
“I’m sure Lady Caroline will be happy to have you back.”
He smirked. “I shall have to explain it all to her, undoubtedly. I wondered if she’d like it better if I’d strangled a strumpet.”
“Oh, surely not,” said Jane.
“Do you know what she said of me?” said Byron, giving her a sort of bashful smile, as if this embarrassed him in a way, but in another way he was proud of it.
“What?”
“Mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” said Byron, and his cheeks flushed a bit.
“I think she likes things about me that, erm, well…” He sighed.
“I’m an adventure for her, that’s what I am.
A little diversion now that her husband has tired of her.
I should oblige her, I suppose. I should be what she wants, give her a thrill. ”
“I thought you were going to write sonnets about the back of her heels.”
“That too.”
They regarded each other.
Byron chuckled. “It’s too bad that’s the end of it with us, Miss Jane. I had a feeling, you know, a strange sort of feeling, but it felt right to me, that you and I were at the beginning of something rather prolonged.”
“Well, that would have been a bother for me.”
“Yes, with your scheduled life,” he said, with another chuckle.
She felt herself flush. “No, I suppose I know what you mean. I thought it, too.” Maybe I hoped it. Maybe my life has been ever so dull for ever so long.
He let out a breath, surveying the tavern, crossing his arms over his chest, his brow furrowed.
Neither spoke again for some time.
Finally, he said, “I shall escort you back home.”
“No, no need for that,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “my horse.”
“I can easily walk,” she said. “I walk into town all the time.”
“Yes, of course you would,” he said.
Another silence, and then they said their goodbyes.