The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet Read online

  Even so, this nameless wood stretched away on either side, the ground coppered with dead leaves or bottle-green from clumps of bracken, and the road itself was as dim as twilight.

  Came the sound of hooves clopping behind her; Mary turned to see if perhaps a pig-carting farmer was upon her, only to see a solitary rider astride a tall, fleet-looking bay horse. What do I do now? Pretend he does not exist, or ask him if I am going in the right direction? Then as he drew closer she went limp with relief. It was the kind gentleman who had picked her up in the Nottingham coach yard, retrieved her guineas.

  “Oh, sir, how glad I am to see you!” she cried.

  He descended from the saddle as easily as if it were but a foot off the ground, looped the reins around his left forearm, and stepped in front of her.

  “I could not have asked for anything better,” he said with a smile. “You have no luck, do you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I had no chance to steal your guineas in a busy coach station, but here? Like taking a rattle off a baby!”

  Obeying an impulse, her hands dropped the bags and fastened tightly about her reticule. “Kindly forget what you have just said, sir, and permit me to find the Green Man,” she said, chin up, eyes steady and unafraid. Yes, her heart was beating fast and her breathing had quickened, but they were prompting her to fight, not flight.

  “I can’t do that.” The black hair, worn long enough to be tied back with a ribbon, stirred in a sudden gust of rainy air. “Besides, the Green Man is my ken—you’ll get no succour there, just a trip to a bawdy-house. You’re not young, marm, but you are uncommon pretty. Trust old Beatty’s wife to throw you out! She’s a Methodist, of whom there are many in these parts, more’s the pity. Who are you, to have so much money? When you fell in the muck I thought you a sad apology for a governess, forever running from the master’s amorous advances. Then I counted your guineas. Now I don’t know what to think, except that the money is no more yours than it is mine. Stole it, you did.”

  “I did not! Step aside, my man!”

  She may as well not have spoken. Head to one side, he looked her up and down in a considering way, eyes half closed, lips peeled back from equine teeth. “The question is, do I just take your guineas, or must I murder you? Were you bathed and better clad, might you be in a fact a gentlewoman? If ’tis so, I’d best kill you. Otherwise when Captain Thunder is maybe caught one day, you’d bear witness against him, eh?”

  Prudence commanded her to be quiet, not to betray her origins, but that low she had not sunk. “Is that your name, Captain Thunder? Yes, indeed, Captain Thunder, I would bear witness against you in a court of law! You deserve the gibbet as well as the gallows!”

  Clearly she puzzled him, gave him pause; women were prone to scream the house down, not answer him back. Skinny, filthy, alone, yet not reduced to terror.

  “Give me the money.”

  Her fists knotted over the reticule until their knuckles went white. “No! It is my money! I need it!”

  The horse was patient and placid; when he laid hands on her the animal stood its ground as its reins were jerked about, apparently uninterested in the developing struggle. The plan Mary had been forming to set the horse plunging and kicking evaporated. Until now nothing in her life had revealed how physically strong she was; she surprised him with that strength as she fought to keep her money. He couldn’t even bend her fingers back to break them, so convulsive was their grip on her reticule. Wiry and agile, she slipped from his hold. Off down the road she ran, yelling, but within yards he overtook her, gripping her shoulders cruelly.

  “Bitch! Cow!” he said, swinging her around and taking her throat in his left hand. His right crushed her wrists together until, nerveless, they released her hold on the reticule. It began to fall, was scooped up.

  Mary went quite mad. One foot lashed out at his shins, a knee tried to reach his groin, her nails clawed at his face and drew blood—how dared this brute rob her!

  But he had not let go her throat. A roaring invaded her ears, his face in front of her goggling eyes grew darker, less distinct. All fight left her; just as a crashing blow landed on her brow, Mary lost consciousness.

  Moaning, sick to her stomach, she woke to find she was crumpled at the base of a huge tree, almost hidden by its buttresses. Drear light percolated through the leaves from overhead, and it was raining. Had been raining for some time, if her soaked clothing was anything to go by.

  About an hour elapsed before she managed to drag herself into a sitting position on one buttress, there to ascertain her injuries. A very sore and bruised throat, bruised wrists, a great swelling over her right brow, and a piercing headache.

  When she felt able to stand she began to search for her bags and reticule, but in vain. No doubt Captain Thunder had taken them off the road and pitched them into thick bracken, probably well removed from her own site. Though no wind blew on the forest floor, her teeth were chattering and her skin chilly to the touch; she was cold and hurt, and everywhere she looked were massive trees. This was no secondary-growth forest, for its denizens looked a thousand years old. Perhaps it was Sherwood; in which case, she was miles from where she had been. Then good sense reasserted itself—no, this was not Sherwood! It was some other immensely old forest in a county famous for them. Probably not even very extensive, except that when one was in it, all concepts of dimension were lost.

  If she was to live, she had to find shelter against the encroaching night. After walking a small distance she found a beech rotted from within. It offered her enough protection to shield her from the rain; squeezed into the narrow cavity, Mary felt her spurt of energy peter out, and lost consciousness again.

  The blow to her brow had been more severe than she understood, and would plague her for days to come with lapses of consciousness; when next she roused, night prevailed. She had slipped to sit upon the ground, but at least it was not raining. Then she fell into a kind of coma, restless and haunted with horrible dreams, but when her eyes opened, they found daylight. An experimental walk told her that she was not well; her whole body was in pain, and she fancied she was running a fever. I am coming down with a chill, and I am hopelessly lost. What to do, what to do? If only my head would stop throbbing!

  He had meant this, she was sure. Captain Thunder, some local highwayman whose headquarters lay at the Green Man. By abandoning her in the depths of the forest, he intended she would perish from starvation and exposure, thinking thus to absolve himself of guilt for her death. Well, Captain Thunder, she thought, I am not going to oblige you by tamely lying down and giving up! Somehow I will find my way to the road.

  The nook in the beech tree that had sheltered her was soft, mossy—didn’t moss grow on the north side of trees? And if it did, then the moss-free side was south. Only the woods lay left and right of the road! To walk south or north depended upon which side of the road he had chosen to dump her. Oh, the wretch! A true disciple of Satan! Eyes closed, Mary tried to put herself in the mind of a highwayman, and decided he would favour the left hand because that was the hand governed by Satan. But was left facing Chesterfield, or facing Mansfield? Mansfield, because the inn he frequented had been ahead of her, not behind her, when he accosted her. Therefore, said she, I will go south on the side of the trees not covered in moss.

  How far would he have taken her? The trees did not allow a horse passage, so he would have had to carry her. Was he chivalrous enough to carry a lady as a lady ought to be carried—in his arms? No. Captain Thunder would have slung her over his shoulder, which meant he might have tramped as much as a mile inward from the road.

  She marched along resolutely, but the pain in her bones was worse and the headache splitting. When she looked up, the lacy vault above wheeled ominously, and her legs seemed to drive though piles of wool. I am not going to die! she cried over the pounding of her heart. I am not going to die, I am not going to die!

  Then in the distance she saw a break in the trees filled with sunlight—t
he road! She began to run, but her traitorous body was done with running; she tripped over a buried root and pitched flat out. The world went black. It is not fair! was the last thing she remembered thinking.

  When she roused the next time she was across the withers of a horse, bent like a staple. She stirred and muttered unintelligibly, then realised that she was at the mercy of another captor, not a rescuer. Rescuers held a lady in their arms, captors put them across the horse’s withers. I never knew England was so stuffed with villains, she tried to say. Whoever rode behind her lifted her head and shoulders and forced a fiery liquid down her gullet. Choking, spluttering, she flailed at him, but whatever he had made her drink set her bruised brain to whirling; back she slid into that world of darkness and nightmare.

  Oh, she was warm! Exquisitely comfortable! Mary opened her eyes to find herself on a feather bed, a hot brick at her feet. Her limbs felt light, and she didn’t smell of horse excrement. Someone had washed her thoroughly, even to, as her fingers discovered, her hair. The flannel nightgown was not hers, nor the socks upon her feet. But the pain in her body had diminished, and her headache was gone. The sole reminders of her ordeal were the bruises on her wrists, throat and brow, and the ones on her wrists, which she could see, had faded from black to a rather repulsive yellow. Which meant that considerable time had gone by. Where was she?

  She swung her feet out of the bed and sat on its edge, eyes wide in the gloom. All around her were stone walls, not man-made, but natural; a gap in them was covered by a curtain, and a natural stone seat had a wooden plank across it with a hole—a commode of sorts. There were two tables, one piled with simple food, the other with books. Both had a chair tucked beneath them. But by far the most magical thing about this place was its lighting. Instead of candles, which she had believed to be the only form of lighting, glass lamps stood giving off a steady glow from a flame protected by a chimney. She had seen such chimneys before, when a candle needed protection from a wind, but never this broad, steady flame poking through a metal slot. Below the slot was a reservoir of some sort of liquid in which the wide ribbon of wick swam. One of these lamps, she thought, intrigued, gave off the same amount of light as ten candles.

  Reluctantly abandoning her inspection of the lamps—there were four large and one small—she saw that a rug covered the floor and the curtain was of heavy dark green velvet.

  Hunger and thirst asserted themselves. A jug of small beer sat upon the food table together with a pewter mug, and while Mary disliked beer of any kind, this, after her travails, tasted like nectar. She broke chunks off a crusty loaf, found butter, jam and cheese, and some slices of an excellent ham. Oh, that was better!

  Stomach satisfied, function returned to her mind. Where was she? No inn or house had stone walls. Mary went to the curtain and pulled it aside.

  Bars. Iron bars!

  Horrified, she tried to see what lay beyond, but a massive screen blocked her view. And the only noise was a high, thin, shrill and constant howl. No sounds of human beings, or animals, or even plants. Under the howl was a heavy silence, as of a grave.

  It was then that Mary realised her prison was under the ground. She was buried alive.

  DERBYSHIRE AND HIS Duchess were to set off for their own seat on the morrow, so was the Bishop of London; Elizabeth made a special effort with the dinner on the night before. Her chef was French, but not from Paris; rather, he hailed from Provence, and could therefore be expected to produce an array of dishes that titillated the jaded palates of diners who sat at the best tables. There were still pockets of snow on The Peak itself, and Ned Skinner had gone west to the Welsh coast for shrimps, crabs, lobsters and swimmy fish, availing himself of the snow and ice on Snowdonia’s lofty crags as packing. Fish that did not produce gastric upsets were all the rage, and here at Pemberley the theme could be fish in digestive safety.

  Elizabeth chose to wear lilac chiffon, as she would not come out of mourning until November. No need for black during the second six months, but white was insipid and grey depressing. Easy for gentlemen, she thought; a black armband, and they could wear what they liked. Fitz would prefer her decked in her pearls, quite the best in England, but she preferred a collar of amethysts and wide amethyst bracelets.

  At the top of the staircase she met Angus Sinclair and Caroline Bingley.

  “My dear Elizabeth, you are the personification of your own gardens,” Angus said, kissing her hand.

  “That could be taken to mean sprawling and tasteless,” said Miss Bingley, very pleased with her amber-bronze spangles and stunning yellow sapphires.

  Elizabeth’s hackles rose. “Oh, come, Caroline, can you honestly think Pemberley’s gardens tasteless?”

  “Yes, I can. I also fail to understand why Fitz’s forebears did not use Inigo Jones or Capability Brown to lay them out—such an instinct for everything that is of the first mode!”

  “Then you have not seen the daffodils smothering the grass beneath the almonds in full bloom, or the dell where lily of the valley are almost met by tendrils of weeping pink prunus,” said Elizabeth tartly.

  “No, I confess I have not. My eyes were sufficiently offended by beds of orange marigolds, scarlet salvia and blue somethings,” said Caroline, not about to concede defeat.

  Angus had regained his breath, and laughed. “Caroline, Caroline, that is not fair!” he cried. “Fitz has been trying to emulate Versailles, which does have some hideously mismatched flower beds. But I am all with Elizabeth—it is Pemberley’s flowering glades that are the haunts of Oberon and Titania.”

  By this time they had reached the bottom of the grand staircase and were entering the Rubens Room, sumptuously crimson, cream and gilt, its furniture Louis Quinze.

  “Now this,” said Angus, sweeping his arm around, “you cannot criticise, Caroline. Other gentlemen’s seats may be littered with portraits of ancestors—most of them very badly executed—but at Pemberley one sees art.”

  “I find fat nudes repulsive,” said Miss Bingley disdainfully, saw Louisa Hurst and Posy, and went off to join them.

  “That woman is as sour as a Lisbon lemon,” said Angus under his breath to Elizabeth.

  In lilac her eyes were absolutely purple; they gazed at him gratefully. “Disappointed hopes, Angus dear. She so wanted Fitz!”

  “Well, the whole world knows that.”

  Fitz entered with the Duke and Duchess, and soon a merry pre-prandial congress was underway. Her husband, Elizabeth noted, was looking particularly complacent; so was Mr. Speaker, a great crony of Fitz’s. They have been carving up the empire and Fitz is to be prime minister as soon as the crowned heads of Europe can force Bonaparte’s abdication. I know it as surely as I know the bodies of my own children. And Angus has guessed, and is very unhappy, for he is no Tory. A champion of Whiggery is Angus, more progressive and liberal. Not that there is much in it; the Tories defend the privileges of the landed gentry, whereas the Whigs are more devoted to the entitlements of business and industry. Neither can be said to care about the poor.

  Parmenter announced dinner, which necessitated a rather long walk to the small state dining room, decorated in straw-coloured brocade, gilt and family portraits, though not poorly executed—these were Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Reynolds and Holbein.

  Charlie and Owen had arrived early enough to earn no censure from Fitz, secretly pleased. He had last set eyes on his son at Mrs. Bennet’s funeral, and he saw now that Charlie had grown both physically and mentally. No, he would never be entirely satisfactory, but he no longer looked like a bum-boy.

  Elizabeth put Charlie on one side of the Bishop of London and Owen on the other; they could converse about Latin and Greek authors if such was their pleasure. However, it was not. With a scornful look at Caroline Bingley, his chief traducer, Charlie chose to entertain the entire table with stories of his adventures showing Owen the Peak District; the subject was irreproachable and the emphasis on gentle humour, just right to amuse such a disparate audience. No mention of sister Mary was
made, though Elizabeth feared they had found no trace of her. If Manchester was her goal, she had not yet reached anywhere near it.

  The lobster, plainly broiled and dressed only with drawn butter, had just been removed when a disturbance outside came to all ears in the dining room. Someone was screaming and screeching, Parmenter was shouting, and a confused babble of men’s voices said that he had several footmen with him.

  The double doors flew open; all heads at the table turned.

  “Lydia!” said Elizabeth on a gasp, rising to her feet.

  Her sister looked shocking. Somewhere she had been caught in a heavy shower of rain, for her flimsy dress was soaked, clung to her corseted body shamelessly. If she had set out wearing a bonnet it had gone, nor did she have gloves, and it was obvious that she had ignored the conventions of mourning. Her dress was bright red—branding her a harlot—and cut very low. No one had done her hair, which stuck up wildly in all directions, and her face was a bizarre pastiche of mucus and smeared cosmetics. In one hand she clutched a piece of paper.

  “You bastard, Darcy!” she shrieked. “You heartless, cold-blooded monster! Fucking bastard! Fucking bugger! Cunt!”

  The words fell into a silence so profound and appalled that the women forgot to swoon at mention of them. As was the custom, Elizabeth sat at the foot of the table adjacent to the doors, while Fitz occupied its head fifteen feet farther away. At sight of Lydia he had tensed, but did not rise, and when she uttered the unutterable his face registered nothing but a fastidious disgust.

  “Do you know what this says?” Lydia demanded, still at a shriek, and waving the paper about. “It tells me that my husband is dead, killed in action in America! You heartless, cruel bugger! Bugger! Bugger! You sent George away, Fitzwilliam Darcy, you and no one else! He was an embarrassment, just as I am an embarrassment, your wife’s relatives that you wish did not exist!” Head thrown back, she emitted an eldritch wail. “Oh, my George, my George! I loved him, Darcy, I loved him! Twenty-one years we have been married, but always out of sight and out of mind! The moment Bonaparte gave you an excuse, you used your influence to send George to the wars in the Peninsula, left me to exist as best I could on a captain’s pay, for you refused to help me! I am your wife’s sister!” Another of those awful wails. “Oh, my George, my George! Dead in America, his bones in some grave I will never see! You fucking bastard, Darcy! Cunt!”