Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

Two coaches were waiting in the yard when Mary entered it at six the next morning, having had no sleep thanks to the ammoniac smell wafting off her own body. A dull ache at the back of her head ran through it and made her ears ring, her eyes water. There must be something in the Nottingham air, she decided, that makes people so unhelpful, so rude, for no one in the yard paid her any attention. Desperate, she grabbed at a fleeing groom’s sleeve and forcibly detained him.

“Which is the coach to Derby?” she asked.

He pointed, twisted free of her grasp, and ran.

Sighing, she gave her two handbags to the coachman of the vehicle indicated. “How much is the fare?” she asked.

“I’ll ticket you first stop. I’m late.”

Praying that today would be more pleasant, she climbed up and occupied the forward-facing window on the opposite side. Thus far she was the only passenger, a state of affairs she didn’t think would last. But it did! Thank you, God, thank you! The coach, an old and smelly one pulled by four slight horses only, rolled out of the yard. Perhaps, she thought, developing a sense of humour, I am so fragrant that no one can bear my company. Which went to show how much Mary was changing; the old Mary had found little in life to laugh at. Or perhaps the new Mary was so beset by ill fortune that she thought it better to laugh than to cry.

The sheer luxury of having the cabin all to herself sent her mood soaring. She swung her feet onto the seat, put her head against a herniating squab, and fell asleep.

Only the cessation of movement woke her. Feet down, she stuck her head out of the window.

“Mansfield!” roared the driver.

Mansfield? Mary’s geography did not extend to a list of every town in England, but it was extensive enough to tell her that Mansfield was not on the road from Nottingham to Derby. She scrambled out as the coachman was descending from the box.

“Sir, did you say Mansfield?” she asked.

“That I did.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, eyes gone as grey as the lowering sky. “Isn’t this the coach from Nottingham to Derby, sir?”

He looked at her as if she were mad. “Marm, this is the stage to Sheffield. Derby was t’other one!”

“But the groom pointed me to this one!”

“Grooms point at the sun, the moon, the stars and stray dogs, marm. This is the Sheffield stage-coach, else it wouldn’t be in Mansfield.”

“But I don’t want to go to Sheffield!”

“Happen you’d best get off, then. You owe me sixpence.”

“Is there a coach back to Nottingham?”

“Not today, there ain’t. But if you step inside yon inn and wait, happen you’ll find someone going in that direction.” He thought hard, grunted. “Or else going to Chesterfield. A lot of traffic between here and Chesterfield. From there you could get to Manchester, but knowing you, marm, you won’t want to go to any of them places.”

“I do want to go to Manchester! It is my ultimate destination!”

“There you are, then.” Out came a callused paw. “Cough up sixpence, if you please. Right or wrong coach, it’s sixpence from Nottingham to Mansfield.”

Seeing his logic, she loosened the drawstrings of her reticule to give him the coin, and recoiled: the bag reeked! Her guineas! She had forgotten to wash them!

Off trundled the Sheffield stage-coach, the two men on its roof flat out and snoring. Judging by the clouds, they would soon be soaking wet. Mary walked into the taproom of a small, very respectable inn, resigned to accepting a lift from some farmer who would make her sit in the tray with his pigs. That would contribute an interesting overtone to her aroma!

The place smelled of strong soap, and the floor was still wet. The landlord’s wife, wielding a scrubbing brush, got to her feet in a hurry.

“Be off with you, dirty creature!” she cried, nostrils flaring. “Go on, be off!” She waved the brush like a native his club.

“I will gladly depart, madam,” said Mary icily, “if first you will furnish me with the name of an establishment from which I may secure transportation in the direction of Chesterfield.”

Unimpressed, the woman eyed her contemptuously. “There’s only one place for the likes of you! The Green Man. You stink the same.”

“How may I find the Green Man?” As she asked, Mary found herself being hustled out into the road by a nerve-pinching grasp around her elbow. “Unhand me, you pitiless and worm-eaten female dog!” she cried, wrenching free. “Have you no charity? I have had a nasty accident! But instead of being kind, you are unkind. Female dog? That is a euphemism! I will call you what you are-a bitch !”

“Sticks and stones! A mile down that road,” said the landlady, and shut the taproom door with a bang. Mary heard a bolt slide.

“It is easy to see that Eau de Cheval is not anyone’s favourite perfume,” said Mary to no one, and, a bag in either hand, set out down “that road.”

A cottage stood to right and to left, but after them, the countryside went not to fields but to forest. Frowning, she looked up to find the sun, but no sun peered through the dense overcast. Unless the Green Man was very close, she was going to be drenched. She walked faster. Was she in truth heading west? Or did this road lead into the thickets and impenetrable glooms of Sherwood Forest? Nonsense, Mary! Sherwood Forest is long gone to a figment of the imagination, its great trees felled to make room for the country seats of newly enriched gentlemen, or else to form the strakes and ribs of His Majesty’s ships of the line. Only small tracts of it remain, and those some miles east of Mansfield. My reading has informed me of these facts.

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.”