The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet Read online

  He stopped; Mary blinked. What utter nonsense! But she said in tones of awe, “Profound! Amazing!” She hesitated for as long as she thought she dared, then said, very delicately, “And Jesus?”

  “Jesus is the offspring of a truce between God and Lucifer.”

  Her jaw dropped. “What?”

  “I would have thought that self-evident, Sister Mary. Men could not bear the formlessness and facelessness and sexlessness of God, but also refused to be completely taken in by Lucifer’s wiles. God was getting nowhere, and Lucifer was getting nowhere. So they met on a rock in the sky that briefly turned into a star and forged Jesus. A man, yet not a man. Mortal, yet immortal. Good, yet evil.”

  Mary couldn’t help the sweat that broke out all over her body, nor the shudder of revulsion that precipitated her off her chair. “Father, you blaspheme! You are anathema! Apostate! But you have answered all my questions, even those I have not asked. Whatever you want with those children, it is evil. They will never be let grow up, will they? The little girls talk of a school in Manchester run by Mother Beata, who will train them as abigails, but there is no school, no Mother Beata! What do you do with the boys? Of that I have heard nothing, for Brother Ignatius is too dull and Brother Jerome too cunning to tell me. Wicked! You are wicked! I curse you, Dominus! You stole your children too young to be under cruel masters, which means you bought them for gin-money from their godless parents, or from the parish overseers! You exploit their innocence and think your duty acquitted because you feed, clothe and physick them! Like calves fatted for the table! You murder them, Dominus! You kill the innocent!”

  He had listened to her diatribe in amazement, so stunned that he was speechless. What opened his mouth on a torrent of words was her accusation that he murdered the innocent; if she had needed any proof, his hideous tantrum proved it. Screaming shrilly, screeching, spitting, his body convulsed with the enormity of his rage, he called her bitch, strumpet, seductress, Lilith, Jezebel, the names of a dozen other biblical temptresses, then began again, and again, and again. While Mary, beside herself, shouted him down with one single accusation over and over.

  “You kill the innocent! You kill the innocent!”

  It seemed not knowing what else to do, he picked up the ewer and pitched it at the bars, showering Mary with shards and precious water. Then he turned blindly, blundering into the screen, and ran away shrieking curses on her head.

  The screen tottered and fell, it seemed incredibly slowly, its upper border catching something beyond it and ripping that down too. An immensity of light poured in, so brilliant that Mary flung up an arm to shield her eyes. Only when she was sure she could cope with such intensity did she open her eyes to look upon a vista that, under different circumstances, would have awed her with its beauty. Wherever she lay at least a thousand feet above the surrounding countryside, which spread into the moors and weird rocks of peaks and tors. Derbyshire! Many miles from Mansfield!

  A wind whistled into the cave, a wind that must have been excluded by a sheet of dark green canvas that now lay on the floor beyond the screen. So that was why her prison had been perpetually filled by a soft, moaning whine! Not a window left open on a crack, but a sheet of canvas that somewhere had not been entirely efficient, and gaped a tiny crack in the seal.

  Oh! she thought, shivering, I will perish from the cold long before I can die of thirst!

  She could not reach the cave mouth, of course; it lay a good twenty feet away, and the bars still confined her. The bread lay beyond her reach, the water was drying rapidly in that terrible wind. Where did they enter and leave? In the right-hand wall there was nothing, but in the left-hand one three tunnel maws loomed; her exercise route, and two others farther away. Beside the farthest was a pile of tallow candles and a tinder box; that must be the tunnel that led far underground in the direction of the Northern Caves. The middle one, she decided, communicated with the old kitchen next door. Oh, what had happened to Therese? To Ignatius? They were dangerously close to puberty, which Mary’s instinct told her was Father Dominus’s boundary. Once a child crossed it into manhood or womanhood, he or she was disposed of. All she could hope was that, coming at the hands of a skilled apothecary, death was swift and oblivious. No need, surely, to resort to violence. Though, after listening to those warped and twisted concepts of God and the Devil, some tiny part of her wondered if perhaps they were indeed fatted calves, and sacrificed at puberty to a lightless god. No, surely not!

  But who, her relentless mind went on, can predict the quite unpredictable vagaries of a mind as diseased as Father Dominus’s? Not every madman was a raving lunatic, though Father Dominus could upon occasion manifest himself a raving lunatic. At other times he seemed as sane as she was herself, capable of producing facts in a logical order, and even, once or twice, convincing Mary that his Cosmogenesis had some merit, given his experiences.

  I need to see these children! she told herself, knowing that there was scant chance of its happening. I want to talk to them, not in furtive whispers with one ear tuned for Father or Jerome, but over sweet hot chocolate and delicious cakes, all the goodies that permit children to abandon their defences. I need to know that, having named them after a hybrid demigod half dark and half light, they are not spoiled in the sense that perishable food spoils; that their innocence is still there, still intact. If he needs them as mules to toil for him, and has not bothered to educate them in Cosmogenesis, then they will have survived. The danger is that these sole disciples need to be educated in his philosophy, or theology, or whatever it is he classifies it as. Certainly it is not a sane man’s ideology, and arises out of inadequacies in himself. But what sort of brain could witness utter darkness and be moved to worship it as God? Or brand all light as evil?

  Calmer after a while, she gazed around her little prison. Yes, the ewer on her table still held water, enough if she drank very sparingly to last for a number of days. Of food she had an elbow of stale bread. Well, food was not nearly as necessary for life as water. Admitting that her need now was far greater than ever before, she shook and rattled every bar in her cage, to no avail. They were mortared into the cave walls; if she had had any kind of implement, even a spoon, she might have tried to chip at the walls, but with the regimen of bread and water had come a demand for her spoon, her only eating implement.

  Tears ran down her face; she sobbed for some time. Then, exhausted, she slumped upon the side of her bed and put her head in her hands. The pencil marks said she had been in this place for about six weeks, and it seemed she was doomed to die after all. No Child of Jesus would come to help her; they had gone to the Northern Caves, including Therese and Ignatius.

  But despair passes, especially in the Marys of this world. Her shoulders squared, she sat up, jaws tight. I will not accept my fate tamely! she said to herself. I will drink two mouthfuls of water, then I will sleep. When my strength returns I will try to loosen the bars, this time at the big door they use to go in and out of my cell. Perhaps it is weaker.

  A plan she followed precisely. But the big door did not yield, and its lock was beyond her, as was the lock on the shelf. If only she had her mending kit! The little hooky device that unpicked stitches might have worked the internal apparatus of the big door’s lock. But she had absolutely nothing.

  I have finally reached the end of my tether, she thought, but I refuse to give in. I am in the Hand of God, yes, but also in my own hand. As long as I have water to drink, I will not yield to permanent despair.

  LYDIA TOO HAD realised that she was a prisoner, not long after Ned Skinner had delivered her to Hemmings and the clutches of Miss Mirabelle Maplethorpe. More experienced than any of her sisters, Lydia quickly recognised the woman’s origins as a bawdy-house. But never as one of the whores who did the actual servicing. Miss Maplethorpe ran the whores and made sure they serviced in whatever way a gentleman patron desired. What was Fitz about, to employ a woman like her? Mama had been given Mary; she was palmed off with a madam. Which perhaps meant that F
itz regarded her with as much contempt as he did fear that she might overset his plans. The bars on the windows indicated fear, but Miss Maplethorpe indicated utter contempt.

  Not that Miss Maplethorpe was uncivil: far from it. The only thing Lydia was denied was her freedom. With an unlimited supply of wine, port and cognac at her command, it seemed that Fitz truly expected her to sink into a state of permanent inebriation. Whereas the truth was that Lydia belonged to that peculiar sort of bibber who could, if they wished, stop drinking entirely. And now was definitely the time to stop drinking; she had to find out what was going on!

  However, she decided to keep her sobriety a secret. At first she emptied the bottles out of her bedroom windows, but the fluid stained the bricks of the outside wall. Then she found that if she poked the neck of a bottle between the bars of a ground-floor window, its contents fell into the earth of a garden bed and soaked away. She had plenty of time alone in which to do this, time she could pretend was spent drinking. No one, it seemed, chose the company of a drunkard.

  She had been in residence for a week when Ned Skinner came a-calling—now! Now was her moment! Spilling a little brandy on her dress, Lydia lolled in a chair and waited. Sure enough, Ned strolled in with her keeper, bent to peer into her face, caught a whiff of the dress, and straightened.

  “Foxed,” he said.

  “She always is. Come, we may talk next door.”

  As soon as she was certain they had settled in the adjoining drawing room, Lydia tiptoed to the communicating door, opened it a fraction, and listened. As she was looking at the backs of their heads, she was safe enough.

  “How are you managing?” Ned asked.

  “Oh, she’s no trouble. Starts to drink at breakfast and keeps on drinking until she passes out, but she likes to be bedded too. My men are kept busy enough servicing her. Clever of you, Ned, to recommend I bring male helpers.”

  “Mr. Darcy says her booze intake is to be regulated somewhat.”

  “Why, in God’s name?”

  “Her sisters are paying her a visit in ten days’ time.”

  “I see. But as regulating her intake will cause tantrums, wouldn’t it be better not to regulate it at all? Let her sisters see what she really is.”

  “Mr. Darcy does not wish that.”

  “And Mr. Darcy is your idol.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Have you found any trace of the other sister, Mary?”

  “None whatsoever. She’s vanished from the earth.”

  “I can assure you that she hasn’t turned up in a brothel, unless it be south of Canterbury or north of the Tweed, and that’s highly unlikely, given her age. Beauty is well and good, but thirty-eight summers make a female body stringy or blowsy, all depending. From what you say of her, stringy.”

  “Yes, she’s stringy. Flat-chested too.”

  “Then no brothel anywhere,” said Miss Maplethorpe.

  “How long can you look after this one, Mirry?”

  “Another two months. Then I must hie me back to Sheffield. Aggie is strict, but loath to use a horsewhip.”

  “Could you send Aggie as your replacement?”

  “Ned! She’s too vulgar. Mrs. Darcy and Mrs. Bingley would see through her. No, I think you must look inside a Bedlam.”

  “How will those women be any less vulgar? I’ll ask Mr. Darcy to advertise.”

  “Excellent. You’ll find someone, you have the time.”

  “I must go, Mirry.”

  “Tell your idol that Mrs. W. is safe and well. Indeed, she must have the constitution of an ox to have weathered so much poison. For taken in the amounts she takes it, booze is very poisonous. I have a bet that her mind will go before her body does. Would you like me to lace her port with a port-tasting potion from Father Dominus?”

  “Who?”

  “An old apothecary dolled up as a friar. He supplies me with a very good abortifacient, and the Old Master apparently had some of his poisons on hand. Also physicks to drive one mad, or induce a paralysis. I’m surprised you don’t know him. Thick with the Old Master, he was.”

  “I was too young, Mirry, and when the Old Master was present, I hid. I must say you do not look your age, m’dear.”

  “Thank Father Dominus!”

  “Mr. Darcy would not approve, so no potions, Mirry.”

  “I do believe you worship that man as fools worship God!”

  “Then do not blaspheme.” He got up. “Now about the iron bars—”

  Much though she would have loved to hear the rest, Lydia shut the door and raced to her chair, fell into it to loll with great realism. But no one entered. Not long after, she heard the sound of hooves on the gravel drive, and sat up indignantly.

  Oh, they were villains! And though it seemed Fitzwilliam Darcy had some scruples, he was heartless. Well, she had always known that. Sending George off to one war after another! Oh, George, my George! How can I live without you? Sober! she thought savagely. That is how I will live—sober.

  I am no mean actress, Lydia thought ten days later. What hoops I have made them jump! Especially that cow Mirry the Moo. Tears, tantrums, hours of screaming and screeching—it took real courage to go on with my performance when that yokel Rob threatened to choke me if I did not shut up. Well, I did not shut up, and Mirry the Moo was obliged to send him out of the house for fear that he really would choke me. I let my best language loose—peculiar, how people dislike that. In my opinion, scratches and bites are far worse, and I gave plenty of those.

  Thus it was that when the splendid Pemberley equipage drew up at the Hemmings door a little after lunch, Lydia was almost beside herself with excitement. Now her keepers would get their well-deserved comeuppance!

  The perfect lady’s companion, Miss Maplethorpe stayed only long enough to see the visitors comfortably settled, then left them alone with Lydia. The moment the door shut behind her, Lydia sat up straight and dropped all pretence of drunkenness.

  “Oh, that is better!” she exclaimed.

  Jane and Elizabeth had been amazed to see the change in their little sister—she looked so well! Every vestige of puffiness had vanished from her face and figure, she was clean from head to feet, and clad in a fashionable dress of ice-blue lawn. Her flaxen hair was done up in a bun on the crown of her head with tendril-like curls framing her face, and whatever she had used to darken her brows was quite unexceptionable. She appeared what she had not appeared in years: a lady.

  Jane looked at Elizabeth and Elizabeth looked at Jane; the improvement was remarkable, not to mention most welcome.

  “Better?” Jane asked.

  “I am sober,” Lydia assured them. “I had to be sober, to tell you what is going on.”

  “Going on?” Elizabeth asked, frowning.

  “Yes, yes, going on! Your heartless snob of a husband has abducted me, Lizzie—I am a prisoner in this awful place.”

  “How are you a prisoner?” Jane asked.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, Jane, have you no eyes in your head? Don’t the bars on the windows speak for themselves?”

  “What bars?” Jane barked, even her tranquil temper tried.

  Eyes screwed up against the glare of a fine summer’s day, Lydia realised that she could not see the silhouette of the bars through the diaphanous curtains. In such a hurry that she tipped her chair over, she ran to the nearest window. “Come, they are here! Come and see the bars for yourselves!”

  Jane and Elizabeth followed, anxious expressions on their faces. But now that she was at the window, Lydia could see no bars. Where were the bars?

  “Oh, how cunning!” she cried. “The cruel, scheming lot! Oh, they make me out to be a liar! Jane, Lizzie, I swear to you that until today there have been bars over every ground floor window in this house!” Eyes glittering, fists clenched, Lydia ground her teeth, a hideous sound. “I swear it on my husband’s dead body! There were bars!”

  Elizabeth pushed the window up and examined the bricks on all sides of it. “I can see no places where there m
ight have been bars, dear,” she said gently. “Come and sit down.”

  “There were bars, there were! I swear it on George’s grave!”

  “Lydia, it was your imagination,” said Elizabeth. “You have not been yourself of late. If you are sober now, surely you must see that this window was never barred.”

  “Lizzie, I am not drowned so deep in drink that I have taken to imagining things! These windows were barred. All of them!” A desperate note crept into her voice. “You must believe me, you must! I am your sister!”

  “If you are truly free from the effects of the wine, dear, why can I smell it on your breath?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I had a glass or two with my breakfast,” Lydia said sulkily. “I needed it to scrape up my courage.”

  “Dearest Lydia, there are no bars,” said Jane in her softest tones. “You are looking very well, but you still have a long way to go before you are cured of your drinking.”

  “I tell you, I am a prisoner! Mirry the Moo won’t let me go outside without her!”

  “Who?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Mirry the Moo. I call her that because she’s a cow.”

  “You do an injustice to a very nice lady,” said Elizabeth.

  “No lady, she! Mirry the Moo is the proprietress of a bawdy-house in Sheffield.”

  “Lydia!” cried Jane on a gasp.

  “She is, she is! I overheard her talking to Ned Skinner ten days ago, and she made no secret of it to him. What’s more, he knew all about her. They were talking of dosing me with poison, or something to paralyse me, or send me mad. All of which means that Fitz knows about them too.”

  “I think it is time you produced some proof of these wild statements,” Elizabeth said grimly.

  “With the bars gone, I’ve lost my proof!” Lydia began to weep. “Oh, it isn’t fair! If you don’t believe me, who will? Lizzie, you’re a sensible woman—surely you can see that I’m a threat to your precious Fitz?”