The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

  Then back he went to his dissertation upon Lucifer, a jumble of hatred for the ordinary phenomenon of light that served to convince her that, in losing his sight, Father Dominus’s profound experience in the cave during his thirty-fifth year had translated into a rejection of the world he could no longer see save poorly. There were people throughout the globe who revered caves, even thought of them as the home of their god, but few had gone on from that concept to loathe and fear God’s most thrilling creation, light. All the near-infinite shades of grey had bled out of Father Dominus’s philosophy, leaving him with the black of God and the white of Satan, whom he called Lucifer because of its Latin meaning—Bearer of Light. The pitiless creed of a fanatic, and every religion had those. But not extreme enough for Father Dominus, whose mind besides was an original one.

  What must he have been like in his thirty-fifth year, hale and hearty and brimful of genius? Those lamps! His nostrums and elixirs, his energies and enthusiasms. Once, she was sure, a truly extraordinary man. But now, a mad one. Old, near-blind, relying upon the adulation of a small group of children to plump out a juiceless heart. Even the adulation was second-rate; he wanted no developed mind among his worshippers, so had deprived them of letters and numbers, taught them an apothecary’s cant without ever explaining what the words meant, set himself up as being far above them—and left his minion, Brother Jerome, to apply the more unpleasant aspects of discipline, thus deflecting fear and loathing onto Jerome as if it had no origins in him.

  Jerome…The odd one out, the foreigner brought in from Sheffield at, Mary presumed, a more advanced age than any of the other children. Therese and Ignatius insisted that they remembered no previous master, good or bad, and said flatly that none of the children did. A potion that obliterated memory in them? That was possible, of course. Or did he never steal them from bad masters?

  These caves! In other places those who lived in them were called troglodytes, but they were entire communities from the very old to newborn babes, not an artificial group like the Children of Jesus. From Therese she had learned that her own prison cell was quite close to the kitchen in which Therese and her little helpers made bread, stews, roast beef, tarts, soups, puddings. No Child of Jesus grew ill, or wasted away from consumption; provided they did their work in the laboratory (one of the big words he had taught them without explaining what it meant) if they were boys or the packing room if they were girls, they were free to roam from the Southern to the Northern Caves, and even outside if they chose.

  “Brother Jerome’s too busy to take notice,” said Ignatius. “We go where we want.”

  “Then why hasn’t anybody ever seen you?” Mary asked

  “It be the dark of God,” said Ignatius simply.

  “You mean the nighttime?”

  “Dark, yes.”

  “But don’t you love the day?”

  Brother Ignatius shuddered. “No, daytime’s awful! Hurts our eyes, Sister Mary, like red-hot pokers.”

  “Yes, of course it would. I had not stopped to think about that,” Mary said slowly. “I daresay that my eyes would hurt too, after so many days immured in lamplight. If you do go outside in the dark of God, where do you go? What do you do?”

  “Run around, play chasings. Skip with a rope.”

  “And no one sees you?”

  “Ain’t no one to see,” he said, deeming her dense. “Them’s the moors outside the Northern Caves. We don’t go outside the Southern.” He looked conspirational, leaned closer and spoke in a whisper. “We ain’t staying in the Southern Caves, moving everything to the others. Father says there be too many busy-bodies in the south—cottages going up everywhere.”

  “How do you get your supplies, Ignatius? The food? Coal for fires? Substances for the laboratory? The tins, boxes and bottles?”

  “Dunno, exactly. Brother Jerome does it, not Father. We got a cave full of donkeys. Sometimes Brother Jerome goes off with all the donkeys and comes back loaded up. The boys unpack the donkeys—coal, all sorts of stuff.”

  “And Father Dominus stays with you all the time?”

  “No, he goes out a lot, but while Lucifer is in the sky. He takes the orders and collects the money. If Lucifer is there, he walks, but if he goes out in the dark, Brother Jerome drives him in the donkey trap.”

  “What is money, Ignatius?”

  He rubbed his tonsure, where the scalp was quite glossy from much rubbing. “Dunno, Sister Mary.” A Owen returned to Pemberley on Tuesday after dark, too late for dinner. Accepting Parmenter’s offer of food for a little later, they sought Fitz out in the small library.

  Fitz listened in something of a quandary, not sure how much of Ned’s story he should tell them.

  His mood was bitter, mostly because of Elizabeth, who he knew was a tender creature, yet, yet…Something about her brought out the worst in him, made him say things to her that no wife would relish hearing, least of all Elizabeth. It was not her fault that her relatives were such a ramshackle lot. In fact, what puzzled him more and more as time went on was how Mr. and Mrs. Bennet had ever produced five such disparate offspring. Two absolute ladies in Jane and Elizabeth; a nonentity in Mary; and two blatant trollops in Kitty and Lydia. The miracle lay in Jane and Elizabeth, who simply did not belong in the Bennet litter basket. From whom had they got their refinement, their propriety? Not from their mother, or from their father. Nor from Mrs. Phillips, their aunt who lived in Meryton. The Gardiners had only visited once in each year, so could have had no real influence. It was as if a Gypsy had put Jane and Elizabeth in place of two trollop-babies. Changelings, not Bennets.

  Yet marriage to one meant marriage to the whole family. That, he had not fully understood, thinking to spirit his wife away to Derbyshire and make sure she never saw her family again. But she hadn’t seen it that way. She wanted to remain in contact with them!

  With a huge effort he dragged his thoughts away from his wife and listened to Charlie, whom Angus was letting speak for them; he spoke well too, neither illogically nor emotionally.

  “I do not believe that Mary ever entered the Green Man,” he was saying, “though she definitely encountered Captain Thunder. Here.” He laid out the reticule. “Empty. We found it on the road, and one of her handbags in the ditch nearby. The cur who claimed to be the landlord of the Green Man says that Captain Thunder has a house in the woods, but no one knows whereabouts. There is a reward on his head, and he cannot be sure that one of his fellow villains will not betray him. In the end we decided it was best to seek your advice and help before doing anything else.”

  “Thank you, Charlie,” said his father, very pleased at how the young man had handled things. Of course Angus would have been a steadying influence, but only if Charlie did not resent him. Clearly he and Angus had got along together very well, and it had not escaped him that Angus had consented to let Charlie enter the Green Man alone.

  He got up to pour Chambertin. “They say this is Bonaparte’s favourite wine,” he said, handing glasses around. “Now that the French are desperate for foreign currency, we are seeing some very good wines again, and I think I shall move in the House to lighten the import duty on cognac.” He sat down and crossed his legs. “You have done well, the three of you,” he said, with a special smile for Owen. “Knowing that by the time you would be able to set out, the trail would be cold, I put Ned Skinner on the problem too. In many ways he’s more skilled at this sort of thing than you, but his investigations haven’t advanced us much beyond yours—no mean feat on your parts.”

  Too concerned to hear what Ned had learned to bother with compliments, Charlie leaned forward. “Did he find Captain Thunder?”

  “Yes, he did. And your deductions are correct. Captain Thunder did indeed set upon Mary and rob her, but he didn’t take her to the Green Man. He left her in the midst of the forest, presumably there to wander in circles until she died. However, Charlie, your aunt is made of sterner stuff than most ladies. How she managed to find the road I do not know, just that she did. N
ed found her not yards away from it.”

  “Oh, bravo!” Charlie cried, face transfigured. “So she’s safe? She’s well?”

  “As to that, neither Ned nor I can hazard a guess,” Fitz said, frowning. “Ned had had a very heavy day of it, and by the time he found her, he was not feeling himself. A bellyache, he thinks due to bad food at the Black Cat.”

  The others were hanging on Fitz’s words, eyes round.

  “Mary was unconscious, and continued in her faint. She had been badly beaten, including a blow to the head. When Ned asked Captain Thunder for the details, he was informed that she had put up a terrific fight.”

  Growls and imprecations greeted this, but Fitz continued.

  “Ned put Mary across Jupiter’s withers, and rode for home. But as he approached the beginning of the Peaks he had to answer an urgent call of nature—the bad food had caught up with him. Not knowing how long he might be, he put Mary down on the bank beside the bridle-path he was travelling, and went into a grove of trees. When he returned, Mary was gone.”

  “Gone?” asked Angus, paling

  “Yes, vanished. Ned’s watch told him that he had been away for ten minutes, not a second longer.”

  “Ten minutes?” Charlie asked. “How could she vanish in just ten minutes?”

  “How, indeed? Ned searched as only Ned can, and I do assure you that his bellyache did not interfere with his thoroughness. He could find no trace of her. He mounted Jupiter and looked from that height, as well as farther afield. To no avail. She had been spirited away as a conjurer deals with his assistant at a circus.”

  “Captain Thunder!” Charlie cried, pounding his thigh.

  “No, Charlie. Whoever it was, Captain Thunder it was not. By that time his corpse was cold. Ned killed him in a struggle after he found the fellow’s house.”

  “How did he find it if none knew its whereabouts?” Owen asked.

  “He was told where it was by a spy in the Nottingham coach yard who must sniff out likely victims and share in the proceeds.”

  “Could she have regained consciousness and walked off?”

  Angus asked, hating to see Charlie’s pain, and hating to feel his own. Oh, Mary! You and your fool crusade!

  “Ned says not, and I believe him. The injuries to her wrists and even her throat did not matter, but the blow to her head was severe enough to cause prolonged unconsciousness. If she roused, which is possible, she would have been confused and stumbling, not fleet of foot. Ned scoured every inch of the countryside for five miles in all directions. One must assume that she did not walk off, but was carried.”

  “Why?” asked Angus, despairing.

  “I do not know.”

  “Who?” asked Owen. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “At first I thought whoever took her must have acted on some chivalrous impulse, perhaps thinking that Ned was on foul business. Since Chesterfield is the nearest town, I had extensive enquiries made there yesterday, hoping that a woman had been brought in and the mayor or the sheriff notified. But no one had brought in a woman. I had my people ask every doctor, with the same result. So whoever did steal Mary was not acting chivalrously. He has some nefarious scheme in mind. Were she known to be my relative, I would have thought, kidnapping, and have been waiting for a ransom demand. None has come. Because, I believe, no one knew who Mary was. Her condition was parlous. She was filthy and badly bruised.”

  “And all this because of a bad breakfast at the Black Cat?” cried Charlie. “Well, I know that place can produce bad food, but to find her, only to lose her again—!”

  “I agree.”

  “So what do we do now, Pater?”

  “We make the whole matter public—with reservations, of course. We post notices that Miss Mary Bennet is missing, whereabouts she was last seen, and what her possible condition is. We say that she is Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy’s sister, and we offer a reward of one hundred pounds for information leading to her retrieval. As Mary is very like Elizabeth in the face, I will have Susie take a pen-and-ink sketch from Elizabeth’s portrait, and include that in the notice. As well as going up in every town hall and village hall, I will put the notice in all the newspapers of the region.”

  “And I will put an article in the Westminster Chronicle that describes the perils a gentlewoman may face travelling by the public stage,” said Angus. “Its readers are scattered throughout England.”

  “Thank you,” Fitz said, inclining his head regally. He turned to his son. “If you like, Charlie, you may take a party of Pemberley men back to the bridle-path where the abduction occurred. Ned can give you directions.” He looked grim. “The thing is that the bridle-path in question is neither well-known nor well travelled. It is basically a shortcut to Chesterfield from Pemberley.” He lifted a warning finger. “I do not need to tell you that we say nothing about the fate of Captain Thunder.”

  “Agreed, Pater.”

  “Choose men who know the southern Peaks.”

  “Of course.”

  “Now go and eat some dinner, please. What do you think of my Chambertin?”

  “Smooth and fruity,” said Angus glibly. “Bonaparte has a good palate. Not unusual in a Frenchman,” he added demurely.

  Fitz sneered contemptuously. “The man is no Frenchman! He is a Corsican peasant.”

  The groom in the Nottingham coach station was a loose end that had to be tied, Ned Skinner realised, cursing his own lack of foresight. Why hadn’t he lingered long enough to discover the fellow’s name and origins? Because you had no idea how important they would be, he apostrophised himself wrathfully as he readied the light carriage and Jupiter for the journey to Hemmings with Lydia Wickham. Clearly the groom was Captain Thunder’s spy in Nottingham, took the highwayman’s gold in return for information about people who used the stage-coach. Not all such were on the verge of poverty; some could have afforded a private chaise, but thought that drew them to a highwayman’s attention, never dreaming of his network of informants. Shipments of coin to provincial banks also went by stage-coach, and the contents of some of the parcels were valuable. The groom in Captain Thunder’s pay knew the movements of every vehicle passing through the Nottingham depot, Nottingham being a big city with many industries, and therefore wealthy.

  The journals carrying the advertisement about Mary with its hundred-pound reward would be published shortly, and the groom could not be allowed to read one or hear of it. Did he, he would be off in a trice to lay his information, and Ned Skinner’s neck might come into danger. For who could forget him, at his size? The last thing Fitz needed was to have his factotum thrown into a cell on suspicion of anything, no matter how easy to clear up.

  Thus Ned did not enjoy his Thursday, spent conveying Mrs. Lydia Wickham to her new home, Hemmings.

  Lured into the carriage by a bottle of cognac, Lydia had proceeded to drink at a rate that saw her stuporose by the time she passed through Leek. Hemmings sat ten miles beyond the town, a small mansion in ten acres of park. Its stables had been stocked with a barouche and two matched chestnuts, and a pony for a trap. Very much the kind of residence Shelby Manor had been, except that, despite the looming darkness, Ned’s sharp eyes noted iron bars over the ground-floor windows. Yes, of course! The last inhabitant of Hemmings had been a raving lunatic, but Ned had been present when Fitz told Matthew Spottiswoode to see that the bars were removed, so why? Still…he closed his eyes in thought, trying to see how he could put this omission to best use. The bars could not stay there, so much was sure, as Mrs. Darcy and Mrs. Bingley were bound to pay their sister visits, but…Yes, it might work!

  He knew Miss Mirabelle Maplethorpe very well, and had no doubt that she would be up to the task of caring for Lydia. It had taken some shifting to procure her the position of Lydia’s lady companion, but he had succeeded and none the wiser, including Fitz.

  Miss Maplethorpe opened the door herself. “Ah, Ned.”

  “I have your charge, Mirry.”

  “We are ready. Bring her in,” s
aid Miss Maplethorpe, a tall, strapping woman of about forty whose face was debatably the reason why she was still single; it resembled the Judy in a Punch-and-Judy show. Poor Mirry! Rarely had face and occupation been so perfectly reconciled.

  “She’s out to it. The only way I could get her here without binding her hand and foot was to give her a bottle of cognac.”

  “I see.” Her glacial eyes surveyed him ironically. “You are quite big enough to carry her, Ned.”

  “True. But I do not fancy wearing a coat of puke all the way home. It’s due to come up—she’s a puker.”

  “Then wait a moment.” She left him on the step while she went somewhere deeper into the house, reappearing with two men who looked more like boxers than footmen.

  “Come on, boys.” And he led them to the carriage, opened its door. “You are here, Mrs. Wickham. Hop to it!”

  If she did not do that, she did move off the seat, put a foot on the step down, and fell in a heap, giggling. As Ned had prophesied, up came the cognac together with the contents of a hamper. The two men stepped back hastily.

  “A hand under either arm, boys—look sharp!”

  When Ned Skinner commanded, he was obeyed, puke or no puke. Still giggling and gagging, Lydia was half-dragged, half-carried into her new home, Miss Maplethorpe watching grimly.

  “Best of luck, Mirry,” said Ned. “Return the carriage and men to us tomorrow. Mr. Darcy’s orders.”

  He went to Jupiter and remounted.

  “Cheer up, old boy,” he said to the horse as he rode away. “Just ten miles to Leek, then we’ll put up for the night.”