Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

“Under their robes, Pater, who knows? Water is easily found anywhere, but I’ve never heard of a group unencumbered by tents or caravans camping in the open. The moors are cruel.”

“That they are. I shall ask Ned what he’s heard.”

Nothing, as it turned out when Fitz spoke to Ned.

“No matter how popular Father Dominus’s remedy for impotence may be, Fitz, I’ll go bail he’s up to no good. Yet it makes little sense, does it? Here’s a fellow with genuine cure-alls aplenty up his sleeve, hauling in fat profits, apothecaries clamouring for all he can supply them, while he’s tramping a bridle-path that leads to naught save Pemberley. In charge of a group of children who seem not to be ill-treated. What’s his goal?” Ned asked, frowning.

“Charlie deems him a madman, and that may be the simple truth. Nothing about the business makes a shred of sense. In fact, it makes the circumstances surrounding Lydia’s death look clear as crystal. Now you say you can find no sense either, Ned.”

“More important, where is this factory of his? And he must have a warehouse. An orphanage would be a very clever disguise, wouldn’t it?”

Fitz looked alert. “You’re right, it would. Orphanages are at the discretion of the Parish, but not every parish has one. I know certain philanthropists endow orphanages. I think we may discount workhouses and poorhouses-they contain indigents of all ages. I’ve written to all the religious denominations owning a central authority, and will receive answers in the fullness of time, but there may be institutions quite unconnected to any religion.”

“Rest easy, Fitz! Jupiter and I will ride from place to place, even as far afield as York. Orphanages and charity homes are not as numerous as apples on a tree.”

“Unless the tree be a pear.”

“When you joke, Fitz, you’re worn out,” Ned said, smiling. “That wretched lock of white hair! I swear it grows wider daily.”

“Elizabeth thinks it makes me look distinguished.”

“All the better in a prime minister, then.”

“You’ll need plenty of gold. Here.” Fitz tossed Ned a bag of coins, deftly caught. “Find them, Ned! I’m grieved to see Elizabeth pining.”

“Peculiar, isn’t it?” Ned asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, this whole business started over Mary’s letter to Charlie-the one I purloined and copied. You were so upset about it! But looking back from whereabouts we are now, it hardly seems worth a tenth of what you made of it.”

“Don’t rub it in, Ned! I was too sensitive about the possible outcomes, busy thinking months-sometimes years-ahead. I should have waited on events, I see that now. You were in the right of it when you said I was making a mountain out of a molehill.”

“I don’t remember saying that,” Ned said, wrinkling his brow.

“You didn’t use those words, but that was what you meant. I ought to listen to you! You’re usually right, Ned.”

Ned laughed, a big sound. “It’s the poker up your arse, Fitz. Makes it a painful business to back down.”

From another man, a mortal insult: from Ned, a loving truth. “Punctilious to a fault, eh? Pride in my ancestry was ever my besetting sin.”

“And ambition.”

“No, that’s a later besetter. Still, if I had waited on events I wouldn’t have asked you to watch Mary, and we would have lost her at Mansfield.”

“I lost her anyway.”

“Oh, cease and desist, Ned! Though if we do find her, she may write her wretched book with my blessing. I’ll even pay for its publication.”

“The result will be the same, whether you pay or the publisher does. No one will read it.”

“That was what you said!”

THERE WERE ABOUT three tablespoons of water left in the bottom of her ewer, though thirst had not been the torment Mary had busily imagined. The cave was bitterly cold, especially at night; the screen may have been put there to conceal what lay outside her bars, but the canvas had excluded the wind that blew eternally, save for that ever-present moaning whine. Her only defence was to draw her heavy velvet curtain closed, but it was far from adequate. In winter she would not have survived a week. However, there could be no denying the fact that this chill did not provoke a consuming thirst. If she paced her cell, she grew warmer-but thirstier.

She now wore every item of clothing they had left her, dirty as well as clean: four pairs of woolly socks, four flannel nightgowns, one flannel over-robe. No gloves, and her hands were very cold. The scrap of bread had been eaten already, before it grew too stale to gnaw. Easier to follow the passage of time now that she could see daylight. Her stomach must have shrunk, for she felt no hunger pangs.

To her horror, rats came to feast on the loaf of bread Father Dominus had kicked aside on his last visit to her; when they had finished it they didn’t leave, just cruised the dark hours waiting for a far tastier meal-her own dead body. They did not look like the few rats she had seen before. They had been black and fierce, whereas these were small and grey, easily intimidated. Creatures of the moors, obviously.

It was only now that time hung so heavily upon her that she realised how busy and occupied she had been during most of her incarceration. Producing a page of perfect copperplate devoid of any error was a vastly different task from ordinary writing, when one could cross out a word, or over-write it, or pop in a carat-mark and put a forgotten word above. Much and all though she had condemned Father Dominus’s ideas, setting them down error-free on a page had taxed her, as it would have taxed any but a professional scribe, one of those persons who copied out an aspiring author’s prose to render it fit for a publisher’s eye.

Now it seemed as if all her woes had descended at once. She had nothing to occupy her time, and that fact loomed largest on her list. It was like being back caring for Mama, existing in a limbo of idleness, yet far worse; she had no music to console her, and no books she had not read at least a dozen times. Add to that inertia her lack of food, exercise and water, and-oh, dreadful!

The days when she had found prayer a compensation had long gone, though now, with naught else to do, she prayed, but to pass the time rather than with any confidence that prayers were things God answered. Were I Mama, she thought, I would find release and comfort in sleep; Mama had always been able to do that. But I am not made in Mama’s mould, so I cannot sleep the hours away.

So to keep her mind off the cold, she began to dissect her conduct since Mama’s death had liberated her, and came to the conclusion that all her efforts had been ludicrous. Not one thing had gone to plan, which hinted at one of two things: either Satan was conspiring against her, or else her aspirations, her ability to be practical, and her own person, were wanting. Since it hardly seemed likely that she was important enough to earn so much of Satan’s attention, the second alternative was obviously the correct one.

I was obsessed with Argus, and I thought if I wrote a book confirming his theories and observations, I would impress him so profoundly that he would be eager to meet me. Well, I will never know now whether things might have fallen out that way. I do have a crusading spirit in respect of the poor and downtrodden, but who am I to think that anything I do can help them? I see now that my research was not thorough enough, even including the allocation of my financial resources. I should have corresponded with several publishers first of all, and learned how much exactly my book would have cost me to publish. And, since I had reconciled myself to living with Lizzie at Pemberley when my funds were all used up, why did I deny myself at least a few of the comforts a gentlewoman expects when she travels? Some of it was to appear no better off than those I wished to interview for my book, but I am ingenious, I could have devised a scheme whereby I travelled quite comfortably, yet seemed when divorced from the activity of travel to be, say, a penurious governess. Some of it lay in the sheer euphoria of being free at last to do as I pleased, but more of it lay in an abysmal ignorance of the world at large. There was never a need on my part to have so many guineas in my reticule, for I had my letter of credit and could have withdrawn two or three guineas at a time.