Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

However, when a second adolescent body was found at the foot of a cliff not far from the first, news of it was conveyed to Mr. Darcy, together with the constable’s report on the first. Fitz called in Charlie and Angus, but not Owen, who, consumed with guilt, had gone home to Wales, leaving some sore hearts in the schoolroom and a militant sparkle in Georgie’s eyes.

Fitz looked grim. Then he explained why he had summoned them. “Youths and children die with quite depressing regularity,” he concluded, “especially at this time, when the Poor Laws are so abused. But this pair are out of the usual way. Both are about the same age-fourteen or fifteen. Pubescent, but not long such. One is male, the other female.” He shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “Neither bore the stigmata of enforced child labour-no weals from injudiciously plied whips or crops, and no broken skin. The lad has gone to a pauper’s grave already, but the girl has had a rigorously prosecuted post-mortem at my instruction, and she has no broken bones or scars from old injuries. Both were well fed and healthy to look at. The girl was healthy in all respects. No stroke or apoplexy felled her untimely.”

“So she didn’t fall from a cliff,” said Angus, whose Argus ears were pricking.

“She did not. She was put there to make it seem she had, and I suppose were Mary not missing, a constable wouldn’t even have been notified. She would simply have gone straight to the paupers’ burying ground.”

“Pater, when you sent for us after Aunt Lydia’s death, we encountered a very peculiar group of people,” said Charlie, looking at Angus. “However, I think Angus should tell you. If I do it, you’ll think I exaggerate.”

“Not at all,” said Fitz, surprised. “You recount events well, Charlie. But let Angus tell of this, if you like.”

“We encountered a procession of-we think-male children led by an old man,” said Angus. “He called them the Children of Jesus, and said they came from an orphanage of that name near York.”

Fitz frowned. “An orphanage run by religious?”

“Roman Catholic, perhaps. They looked Franciscan, though the shade of brown was wrong.”

“The Children of Jesus orphanage, run by quasi-Franciscan friars and located near York. Such an institution does not exist, near York or anywhere else north of the Thames, I would think. ‘Children of Jesus’ doesn’t sound right. It would be ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’ or ‘Mary Immaculate’ were it Roman. Romans are not fixated upon Jesus as an entity the way some Protestant sects are-I mean the ones which talk so much of Jesus that there is hardly a mention of God. The name Children of Jesus sounds as if it were made up by a someone unschooled in theology.”

“Then we were right to doubt them!” Charlie cried. “It was the old man-a very fishy person. Never looked one in the eye.”

“We were riding down a bridle-path,” said Angus, “that Charlie knew of, certainly, but we met no one except the Children of Jesus on it. How would a friar from York know of it? The old man said he was an apothecary, and was very quick- too quick!-to show us his wares, stacked on a hand cart. Perhaps fifty boxes of elixirs and nostrums of all descriptions-look anywhere you like! he said, and gave Charlie a tin of horse ointment. The labels all read CHILDREN OF JESUS this or that. Who knows? Perhaps the old man believes CHILDREN OF JESUS gives his remedies a certain cachet.” He cleared his throat and looked apologetically at Charlie. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you, but I rode over to Buxton to visit the apothecary shop, and was surprised to find the proprietor very keen on ‘Children of Jesus’ products. Swears by them! So do his customers, who are prepared to pay almost anything for ‘Children of Jesus’ choler elixir.” He looked impish. “It cures impotence. If the old man opened a shop in Westminster and sold that alone, he would make a fortune.”

When the laughter died away, Charlie spoke. “I think the old man is mad,” he said. “There was an eldritch quality to him, and I never saw thirty-odd little boys so demure and well-behaved as his were, not in all my life. They so winced and quivered when I asked to let them remove their cowls that I’m sure they didn’t want their faces on display to him. I think the old man terrorises them. Oh, how afraid I was of some of my schoolmasters! Though I fancied him mad, an even greater fear. The only things that ever petrified me when I was a little boy were you, Pater-sorry!-and the occasional lunatic who crossed my path. Sane people are terrified of mad people because their conduct can’t be predicted and they can’t be reasoned with. To little boys, that old man might be Satan.”

“To the apothecary in Buxton, he was Father Dominus,” said Angus. “I haven’t quite finished recounting my adventures, Charlie. Father Dominus always comes during daylight hours to be paid, but the goods are invariably delivered in the middle of the night, and by children in religious robes. My informant had never heard of a delivery during the day. He seemed to think that the children were refugees from bad masters whom Dominus had taken under his protection.”

“Curious,” Fitz said, steepling his fingers and putting their tips against his mouth. It made him look like a prime minister. “Where do they come from, since it isn’t York?” he asked. “If normally they go by night, that might account for their strange behaviour when you met them in broad daylight, but they must hail from somewhere, and there they will be known.”

“I’m sorry I lumped you in with lunatics, Pater.”

Fitz glanced at his son with a smile in his eyes. “I do have sufficient imagination, Charlie, to realise why a little boy would lump me in with lunatics. I must have been extremely forbidding.”

“A lot less so these days, Pater.”

“We must divide up our forces to deal with this,” Fitz said, amusement gone. “Angus and Charlie, you’ll concentrate on the caves. It may be that Father Dominus uses a cave in his wanderings, and if Mary is still alive, we must presume she’s being held in a cave. Whether there is any connection between her and the Children of Jesus is unknown, but if you work assiduously, perhaps some evidence will come to light. Angus, how long can you remain here?”

“As long as I have to, Fitz. I have good deputies to deal with matters in London, and my journalists must be having a mouse’s time with the cat away in Derbyshire. Unpolished prose.”

“Good. We must pray that things come to a head before all of us have to go, whether we want to or not. If Mary isn’t found before Oxford goes up and Parliament comes out of its summer recess, then I think there’s very little hope for her.”

“What of the orphanages?” Charlie asked.

“They go to Ned. It’s just such a job as he relishes, up on that monstrous black horse and riding from one place to another,” Fitz said dispassionately.

“By the way, Pater, while Angus was riding to Buxton, I was engaged in making some enquiries of my own,” said Charlie. “I asked about a procession of children who may or may not have been clad as religious. Farms, hamlets, villages, I asked. But the procession, even as a group rather than a line, never emerged at either end of our bridle-path. The only settlement in the direction from which they were coming is Pemberley, and we know they were never at Pemberley. I think that means they came down to it from Stanage Edge, though they were never in Bamford. And its far end is Chapel-en-le-Frith.”

“You are implying they entered a cave?” Fitz asked.

“Either that, or they crossed the open wilderness between the caverns and north of The Peak.”

“Did they look as if they were carrying food? Water?”