Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

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 Fitz 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.”