The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet Page 34

  “That is splendid news, Fitz,” said Mary, very pleased.

  “As you say, Mary, an MP has to be good for something.”

  Angus saw nothing of Mary for the next three days; all her time was given up to the children, since even nine nursemaids proved hard to find at such short notice.

  It isn’t fair, he told himself; in the days when she lived in Hertford, I saw more of her than I have here at Pemberley. Some kind of task always has first call on her time, including these wretched children—and her without a maternal bone in her entire body! Jane does it melting with sensibility, Kitty does it because she is easily dominated, and Elizabeth does it because, of all of them, she is the true mother. But Mary does it from that huge sense of duty—does love enter into her life at all? At this moment I tend to think it does not. She is kind, but not loving.

  Prey to the blue devils and atypically morose, he was jerked out of what was threatening to become a mire of self-pity by the appearance of his beloved, who doffed her apron and demanded that he take her for an airing.

  “For I am tired of wees and poohs,” she declared as they left the house in the direction of Mary’s favourite glade, which happened to be Elizabeth’s favourite as well.

  “Infantile talk is depressing,” he said.

  “So is human waste,” she answered tartly, and ground her teeth. “I find myself more attuned to the prospect of educating them in literacy and numeracy than in weeing and washing. How can they shun anything as delightful as water?”

  “You find it delightful because your nurse gave you your first bath before you could remember,” he said, spirits soaring just to be with her.

  “They must commence their schooling as soon as possible. I believe that there is a warehouse in Manchester that sells desks, slates, slate pencils, chalk, blackboards, copy-books and the like.” She stuck out her chin and looked militant. “Now that I don’t have to pay to have my book published, I have plenty of money—yes, I have abandoned all thought of writing a book. I’ll crawl before I can walk, and what better place to crawl in than a schoolroom? One of the most disgraceful aspects of childhood at Longbourn was Papa’s reluctance to see us well-educated. So we went to the Meryton school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic, but after that we were not given a governess. Had we, then Kitty and Lydia might not have turned out so wild, or I so narrow. The daughters of gentlemen should have a governess. Instead, Papa spent the money on his library, Mama’s clothes, and our dinner table.”

  Head whirling, Angus fixed on the most pertinent fact among these confidences. “May I ask you a question, Mary?”

  “Of course you may.”

  “Pay for your publication? Is that what you were planning to do when you finished your book?”

  “Yes. I knew it was going to cost many thousands—almost all that I had, in fact.”

  “Mary, you silly chicken! First of all, if a publisher knows you are determined to pay to have a book published, then he will take you for every penny you have. But you must never pay to have a book published! If it’s worth reading, a publisher will be willing to incur the expense of publication himself. In effect, he takes a gamble on the author—that the book will attract enough readers to make a profit. If it does make a profit, he will pay you what is called a royalty on each copy sold. The royalty is usually a small percentage of the book’s price.” He glared at her. “Oh, you are a silly chicken! Do you truly mean that you scrimped and pinched your pennies on your travels because of your book?”

  A delicious pinkness had suffused her cheeks; she hung her head, apparently willing to be apostrophised as a silly chicken. “I wanted it published,” she said gruffly.

  “And nearly got yourself murdered! I could shake you!”

  “Pray do not be angry!”

  He waved his hands about wildly. “No, I am not angry! Well, a wee bit—but only a wee bit. Och, Mary, you would drive a sane and sober man to madness and the bottle!”

  The sight of Angus in such straits was quite fascinating, but it also caused her to experience a sudden empty panic in her middle regions—what if one day she angered him so much he walked away? She gulped, backed away from the thought. “Would you be able to drive me into Manchester for the schoolroom needs?” she asked.

  “Of course, but not tomorrow. In case you had forgotten, we bury poor Ned Skinner Darcy tomorrow.”

  “No, I had not forgotten,” she said, voice low. “Oh, and we made Fitz and Charlie laugh!”

  “And thereby did them a very good turn. Death is always in our midst, Mary, you know that. Anything that lightens grief, even for a moment, is a blessing. While Ned has lain waiting for the vindication he couldn’t have in life, you and your sisters have dealt with those he saved. He could not do aught else than applaud your kindness and hard work. In one way, they are his children.”

  “Yes, you are right.”

  They walked on in silence as far as the glade, where the sun, directly overhead, turned the water in the little brook to solid gold save for the diamonds of its tumbles.

  Mary gasped. “Angus, I have just thought of something!”

  “What?” he asked warily.

  “Father Dominus told me that he had a hoard of bars of gold. I know the caves have collapsed, but do you think you could look for the gold? Imagine how many orphanages it would build.”

  “Not as many as you think,” he said prosaically. “Besides, the old villain must have stolen it from the government. Gold is marked on each ingot—that’s the proper name for a bar of gold—with the brand of its owner, and that owner is almost inevitably the government.”

  “No, he said he melted it down from coins and jewellery that had been entrusted to him by some far bigger villain. He melted it down and poured it into ingots himself. More than that I do not know, save that it definitely was acquired by nefarious means.”

  “I think he was bamming you.”

  “He said each ingot weighed ten pounds.”

  “Which, being gold, isn’t very big in size. Gold is hugely heavy, Mary. Ten pounds of it would be nowhere near the size of a house brick, I assure you.”

  “Please, Angus, please! Promise me that you’ll look!”

  How could he refuse? “Very well, I promise. But don’t hope, Mary. Charlie, Fitz and I are going back to see if there’s been a fresh subsidence, and to look at the hill itself. If we find any gold, rest assured that we’ll claim it on behalf of the Children of Jesus. Who, I suspect, would be entitled to a large percentage of any treasure-trove. If, that is, it can be proven that the real owner is not the government.”

  Her face took on a martial expression. “Oh, no, the children cannot have it! They’d spend it on the wrong things, like any poor people gifted with unexpected fortune. It will build orphanages.” Her chest heaved on an ecstatic sigh. “Just fancy, Angus! Perhaps my incarceration had a divine purpose—to unearth ill-gotten gold and set it to work on gifting the poor with the things that really matter—health and education.”

  “She is determined,” Angus said to Fitz after Ned Skinner Darcy was laid in his resting place.

  “If such a treasure exists, Angus, Father Dominus didn’t earn it from selling a cure for impotence, no matter how successful it was. The gold may be ill-gotten, but from where or from whom? The government does ship consignments of gold coins around the country, but none has been plundered that I or any other MP remembers. Which is why I doubt the story. Except that I know of one man who might have amassed so much, and all of it ill-gotten. A man long dead who, as far as I know, had no association with Father Dominus. Yet it’s true that when that man died, his ill-gotten gains could not be found anywhere, apart from precious stones prised out of jewellery.”

  Fitz’s face bore a look that forbade questions—a pity. Who did Fitz know had that kind of mentality? For he spoke as if he had known the man personally. As many layers as French pastry, that was Fitz. Who had changed radically, but for the better.

  When he informed Angus that he
would refuse the prime ministership, Angus was staggered.

  “Fitz, you wanted it heart and soul!” he cried.

  “Yes, but that was before all this. Some secrets I will carry to my grave, though I’ve come to love and esteem you greatly over this summer, and hope that we’ll be brothers-in-law. We Darcys have been pristine of reputation, and we’ll go on being pristine. Were I prime minister, I might be tempted to use my powers in unscrupulous ways. Well, I don’t choose to walk down that road. I’ll refuse to contend for the post, and so I have written to the men supporting my candidacy. I’m sorry if I’ve misled you, my dear Angus, but I’ve misled no one more than I have myself.”

  “Yes, I understand, Fitz.”

  That had been several days ago. Now it was gold, thanks to Mary, in her element driving back and forth to Macclesfield after teachers and nursemaids.

  Now that they knew about the existence of the waterfall, which Fitz remembered seeing when out hunting deer, it was easier to understand how Father Dominus had kept the Children of Jesus away from prying eyes. Hardly one in a thousand Englishmen could swim, so pools and waterfalls were phenomena to be admired at a distance, even by poets, writers, painters and other peculiar folk.

  Charlie was too slight to ride Jupiter, so his father had taken the animal, which accepted him with pleasure. Probably, Charlie thought, Ned and Papa shared some smell, or sat in the saddle the same way despite the weight difference. Who knew the mysteries of animals?

  There were relics of the occupants in among the chaos of rocks and boulders: bottles, tins, labels floating on the placid surface of the pool. They ventured inside, but Fitz didn’t want to see the spot where Ned had lain for so many hours, so they kept away from it.

  Saddest discovery of all lay in a cave branching off the laboratory. Familiarity with the enormous masses of collapsed stone had imbued all three men with confidence when moving among the chaos; there seemed to be little chance, a week and more after the explosion, of further subsidence, especially given the continued dry weather—even in Manchester it was not raining.

  A smell of decay had perfused the air inside the laboratory, a smell that stimulated Angus to explore the wall beyond the fire alcove more closely than anyone had thus far. Behind a boulder he found a tunnel that had not collapsed; heedless of shouted warnings from Fitz and Charlie, he entered it. Ten feet farther on it opened into what had been yet another huge cavern, now mostly obliterated. Here the stench was almost intolerable, emanating from the carcasses of donkeys.

  Fitz’s and Charlie’s curiosity had overcome their caution, but none of the three wanted to linger there.

  “The poor things died of injuries, or were partly buried,” Angus said. “Many more probably lie completely covered.”

  “At least it tells us how Father Dominus brought in his supplies,” Fitz said, leading the way back to the laboratory. “A donkey train! Given that a number must have had to carry various donkey edibles, I wonder how many beasts Father Dominus had?”

  “Fifty at least,” said Angus. “One for each person, with a few more for good measure. It would be interesting to know whereabouts he shopped. I’ll set enquiries afoot, if only to gratify my own curiosity. My money is on Manchester.”

  “Did the children drive them?” Charlie asked.

  “Occasionally, perhaps, if a few were used to deliver drugs, but from what Mary has said, I imagine Brother Jerome usually managed the business alone by stringing them together.”

  “Mary is rather close-mouthed about her experience,” Fitz said, frowning.

  “Yes, she is.” Angus extinguished his torch and walked out into the fresh air. “I know not how her mind works, I confess. Most females are agog to tell of their adventures down to the very smallest detail, but she seems not to trust that our reactions will reflect her own standpoint. I suspect this may have something to do with a childhood and young womanhood spent in a repressive atmosphere.”

  “Angus, I congratulate you!” Charlie cried, beaming. “To have read that aright, you must love her very much indeed. Mary’s papa was the only male influence in her life during Longbourn days, and he detested her. I believe the result of that is her mistrust of men. She’s so intelligent, you see, that it goes against her grain to accept the male sex as superior.”

  All of this philosophising lay too far from Fitz’s heart to bear; he gave a snort and said, “If the old man hid any gold here, it’s buried for time immemorial. I suggest we climb the hill and see what else came down.”

  There were dimples and hollows in the surface of the hill where something underneath had collapsed, but as they ascended higher they became aware of stout bushes growing where bushes would not have grown had Nature done the planting.

  “Look, Papa,” said Charlie, uprooting a bush. “There’s a roundish hole that goes far down, getting narrower.”

  “Ventilation wells,” said Fitz. “The amount of light one of these admits would be negligible.”

  The higher they ascended, the less evidence of subsidence they encountered until, near the hill’s rocky crown, there were no dents or dimples in the ground, though the bushes still grew to conceal holes. Wedged in one they had found the carcass of a sheep, and decided that Father Dominus had patrolled regularly to remove ovine bodies before shepherds found them. Which may have given the hill a bad name among shepherds, and caused them to avoid it as grazing for their flocks.

  “I don’t understand,” said Angus as they paused beside a bush. “All he had were fifty-odd children, yet under here he might have housed a thousand, given the number of ventilation wells. Why bother with these upper caverns, or are they mere tunnels? If they’re tunnels, he had some reason to keep going.”

  “We’ll never know what drove him, Angus,” Fitz said with a sigh. “We don’t even know how long he suffered his madness beyond what he told Mary about an enlightenment in his thirty-fifth year. Certainly he retained his skills as an apothecary, and they were considerable, else his nostrums would not have worked, and we know they did. I believe Mary has not told us everything she knows about Father Dominus—look at how long it took her to speak about the possibility that he had hoarded gold. Somewhere during his life he must have had a business or a shop, and at a different time in his life he must have had access to gold—if Mary is to be believed.”

  “No!” snapped Angus. “If Father Dominus is to be believed!”

  “I cry pardon.”

  “It is rather delicious to speculate on the old boy’s life,” said Charlie, playing peacemaker. “What if at one time he did have an apothecary’s shop, a wife, children? And if so, what has happened to them? Did they die in some epidemic, leaving him gone mad?” He giggled. “It would make a good three-volume novel.”

  “Perhaps they’re still alive, and wondering whatever happened to their dear papa,” said Angus, grinning.

  Charlie pulled out the last bush on the hill. “I’m going down to have a look,” he said after peering into the hole. “This one is wider, I’ll fit.”

  “Not without rope and torches,” said Fitz.

  “Not at all!” Angus cried.

  But Charlie was already loping down the hill.

  “Fitz, you must stop him!”

  The fine dark eyes looked ironic. “You know, Angus, it will do you good to father a few children. I’m sure Mary is up to the task, so don’t let her wither on the vine, please. Lady Catherine de Bourgh had Anne when she was forty-five. I grant you that Anne was no recommendation for a late child, but she did show it is—er—possible. Mary is barely thirty-nine.”

  Face crimson, Angus spluttered out an incoherent reply that had Fitz laughing.

  “What I’m saying, my friend, is that sometimes it is necessary to let go the leading-strings, no matter how your heart cries out against it. I’ll let Charlie explore knowing the dangers, just stand up here myself praying to every god I know.”

  “Then I’ll pray too.”

  Back came Charlie leading Jupiter, laden with rope
, torches, bags. “Papa, this beautiful animal is game for anything! I wish I rode heavier! Then you wouldn’t have him. Such a gentle nature!”

  “You’ll never have him, Charlie. He’s my last link to Ned.”

  Fitz tied one end of a long rope around his waist with Angus three feet in front of him; the two men took the strain as Charlie descended into the depths holding a torch and a tinder box. At thirty feet the rope suddenly slackened; Charlie was on the floor of the cave, and safe thus far.

  “Not too deep!” came his voice, thin but audible. “It’s the second-to-last cave, quite small. I think it must have been Father Dominus’s room—it has a table, a chair, a desk, another chair, and a bed. Like a monk’s cell, not even a rush mat on the floor. There are two openings, almost opposite each other. One’s sense of direction is uncertain down here, but I’ll look into the unscreened opening first.”

  “Charlie, be careful!” was wrenched from Fitz.

  The two men waited what seemed an eternity.

  “It’s just a tunnel leading downhill,” came Charlie’s voice at last. “The other is curtained off with black velvet from above the top of the aperture—the material drags on the floor, as if he wanted to keep all light out. I’m going in.”

  “The nadir of parenthood,” Fitz said between his teeth. “Take heed, Angus. No one can escape it.”

  They waited then, speechless, ears straining for Charlie’s voice, dreading a vast rumble.

  “I say, Papa, it’s amazing! Father Dominus’s temple to his God, I think. Utterly black. Haul me up!”