Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

“Proceed as follows,” he said. “‘Lucifer’s greatest stratagem in his bid to control the destiny of men was his invention of gold. Consider its qualities, and be consumed with admiration for the subtlety of Lucifer’s mind! It is his own colour, brilliant and yellow as the Sun. It never tarnishes. It is malleable and ductile enough to be worked into all manner of objects. It is as permanent as it is heavy. It contains no imperfection. As long as men have existed, they have worshipped gold, and in doing so, worshipped Lucifer. Men kill for it. They hoard it. They base the economic prosperity of their societies on it. They conquer for it. They demonstrate their wealth by loading it upon their own selves and the bodies of their women, who hunger for it as an adornment. It goes into the tombs of the chieftains and emperors to tell future generations how great the power of the dead man.

“‘In my thirty-fifth year I was entrusted with the custody of the gold hoarded by a man given entirely over to Lucifer, though I did not see it at the time. This gold was in many forms-coins, jewellery, ornaments, objects. My master removed the precious stones from the jewellery and gave me the gold mountings, chains, pieces. I was to melt it down, remove any impurities, and cast the gold into ingots. Then I was to bring him the ingots. But the actual refining of the ingots had to be conducted in complete secrecy, so much so that my master refused to let me tell him whereabouts I would do this work.’”

His face had taken on a dreamy look; Mary scribbled with her pencil and said nothing, waiting out the pause.

“‘He knew I would not betray him, for he owned my soul. I remembered the moors and caves of the Peak District, and found a huge cave that now functions as my laboratory. It was perfect for my purposes, even including, in close proximity, a hidden cave in which I could stable the donkeys which brought in my requirements during the nights. When I had set myself up, I gave my helpers poisoned rum to drink, then threw them down a hole into the darkness. For six months I toiled, melting down the gold into ten-pound ingots-a smaller size than is usual, but I needed something of a weight that I myself could carry. I was young then, and wiry.

“‘And when my work was done, I went to explore the caves, and so found the dark Who is God. It was a revelation in many ways, far beyond the pillars of Cosmogenesis. For I looked on the gold ingots and saw them for what they were-the work of Lucifer. The property of Lucifer. The instrument of Lucifer. And I understood that my master was Lucifer’s servant in every way. Therefore he should not have his gold. I took it and I hid it far from the laboratory cave, and I never went back to my old master.

“‘I remained with God in the darkness for many moons. How much of Lucifer’s Sun time passed, I do not know. But when finally I emerged I was changed. Gold had no power over me, or any other of Lucifer’s tricks. Stark white spiders weaved their colourless strands over the gold, a mouldering that threw Lucifer’s power in his face as of no moment, a nothing. And there it sits to this day, in the darkness of God, rendered null and void.’”

Putting down her pencil, Mary stared at Father Dominus with awe and a new respect. “You are a singularity, Father,” she said. “You are a bigot and a tyrant, but you have had the strength to withstand the lure of gold.”

Working his muscles as if they hurt, he got to his feet. “I am tired,” he said on a whisper. “Copy that, please.”

“Gladly, but more gladly still if you would send me Therese.”

But, as was his wont, he had disappeared in a twinkle, and she could not be sure he had even heard her.

What a story! Was it true? Father Dominus could and did lie, but somehow this tale of gold had the ring of truth about it. Yet who could this mythical master have been, to have accumulated so much gold that it took Father Dominus six months to refine it? And would he really permit the publication of something that described with no emotion the murder of a number of helpers?

Her dinner came-a beefsteak with mushrooms, creamed potatoes, and, for dessert, a slice of steamed treacle pudding. A reward for putting her dictator on the right road again, she divined. Not one to look gift horses in the mouth, Mary demolished the meal with real enjoyment, and felt the strength flow into her. Perhaps he wasn’t mad, she thought, stomach full and attitude unusually benign.

Which did not last beyond the morrow, when Father Dominus came looking dishevelled and sleepless, sat down in his chair and proceeded to give her a treatise on the chemistry of gold and how to refine it. It seemed she had to ask him how to spell every fourth or fifth word, so larded was it with abstruse terms, and that shredded his temper.

“Learn to spell, madam!” he shouted, jumping up in a rage. “I am not here to serve as your lexicon!”

“I can spell extremely well, Father, but I am not an apothecary or a chemist! When I ask you to spell a word, that word is strange to my experience! If your subject were music, I would not need to ask how to spell glissando or toccata , for I am a proficient in music. But what you have dictated to me today is a closed book.”

“Pah!” he spat, and vanished.

Her menu went back to bread, butter and cheese, though she had exchanged the small beer for water-over the top of his objections. To Father Dominus, water meant typhoid and typhus; the three percent intoxicant in small beer as well as its brewing process made it safe to drink. And in that belief he was by no means alone; most families took their children straight from milk to small beer. Mary loathed it, and had only got her water after she pointed out to him that the streams flowing through the caves were as pure as water got.

From Ignatius, still appearing to let her out of her cage and let her walk into the river tunnel, she began to receive alarming signals that all was not well in the world of the Children of Jesus.

Lantern in hand, boots on her feet, she put her fingers on the rough wool of his sleeve and forced him to look at her face. “Dear Ignatius, what is the matter?”

“Not allowed to talk to you, Sister Mary!” he whispered.

“Nonsense! There is no one to hear us. What is it?”

“Father says we have to be out of the Southern Caves quick-smart, and there’s so much to do! Jerome’s too ready with his cane, and the little ones can’t keep up.”

“How little are the little ones?”

“Four-five-something like that.”

“Where is Therese?”

“Gone today to the Northern Caves. Her new kitchen’s ready.”

“And what about me? Am I to be moved?”

He looked hunted, miserable. “Dunno, Sister Mary. Now go!”

When she came back he hustled her into her cell, picked up her boots, and disappeared around the screen. Mary’s heart sank. That did not bode well, the confiscation of her boots, which Ignatius had taken to putting outside the tunnel entrance.

Father Dominus when he came was as restless as a child put on a stool to wear a dunce’s cap, and his dictation when finally it came was worthy of a dunce’s cap-disjointed, rambling, and bearing no relation to gold, God or Lucifer. In the end she asked him, voice as humble as she could make it, to spell out a list of abstruse terms for her, so that in future she would not need to break his concentration by requesting help. Thirty-two words into the list, he suddenly leaped up and whisked himself away.

For a while Mary tried to convince herself that all of this was the result of a geographical dislocation; it must surely be worrisome to have to supervise fifty-odd children in a move of some miles from a cave system that had been their home for years to a new one that perhaps they feared more, as it evidently contained both the laboratory and the packing cave. And the gold? No, she could not assume that. The gold was wherever God dwelled, and what he had said offered insufficient information to decide on a locality.