Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

“Ned!” he called. “Ned! Ned!”

Where he stood was reasonably safe, he thought, but where once there had probably been a vast cavern was now an immense heap of boulders interspersed with smaller, sharper rocks, and much rubble. Strain his ears though he did, he could hear no trickling earth or groans from overtaxed stones: nothing to suggest a further fall. He moved onward, treading lightly, warily.

“Ned! Ned! Ned! Ned!”

“Here,” said a weak voice.

Following the sound, Fitz discovered Ned lying half under a boulder that concealed his legs and lower torso from sight.

“Ned,” he whispered, sinking to his knees.

“Are they safe? Did they all get out?”

“Every last one. Don’t speak, Ned. First we have to get this almighty stone off you.”

“I doubt that will make any difference to the outcome, Fitz. I’m done for.”

“Nonsense!”

“No, the simple truth. Bladder and bowels are squashed flat. Hip bones too. But you can try. You won’t rest if you don’t try, will you?”

The tears were pouring down Fitz’s face. “Yes, Ned, I have to try. It is my nature. We’ll dose you with opium first.”

Charlie appeared at his father’s shoulder. “Pater-no, I refuse to use that ridiculously pretentious term, even if it is Darcy custom and tradition! Papa is good enough for most men, and good enough for me. Papa, what is to be done?”

“Papa is good enough for me too, Charlie.” Fitz got to his feet, heedless of his tears. “Did the opium come? I think we can lever the stone off him with two or three stout men and stout iron poles. Have we any with us?”

“Yes. We had no idea whether we might have to shift rocks, so we included them.” He looked wry. “And a keg of gunpowder.” He knelt on one side of Ned, his father on the other.

“What happened to Father Dominus, Ned?” Fitz asked.

“I shot the old bastard in the heart. Should have gone down like a stone, but he didn’t. Carrying a torch, threw it into the passage. Must have heard me, and piled up powder in front of the detonating keg. I swear there was none when I walked through it back to the front cave.” Ned groaned, reached for Fitz’s hand. “I’m glad I lived to see you again.”

“Take heart, you’ll see years more of me.”

They decided not to move him until the barouche came, which was at dawn, lending some natural light to the shambles inside the cave. Fitz hadn’t left Ned’s side, though Charlie moved back and forth; Angus had inherited the duty of caring for the children.

Madderbury, the groom who had ridden to Pemberley, returned with the carriage, and informed them that enough carts and wagons would shortly arrive for the children. Dr. Marshall had been summoned, and would bring a nurse with him.

Three strong men wielding poles levered the boulder off Ned in one move, which left Fitz and Charlie staring in horror at the mess below Ned’s waist. He cannot survive, thought Fitz. But by sliding the six-foot-long wooden stretcher under Ned’s body they managed to lift him and lug him to the conveyance; the open nature of the barouche enabled them to lift him over the doors and put the stretcher diagonally from one seat to the other, the only way the vehicle could accommodate his formidable length. Fitz sat with him, opium ready, while Charlie sat on the box to make the coachman’s task more difficult with his constant orders to mind this, and avoid that.

It took many hours, though the summer’s day had not yet ended when finally the barouche reached Pemberley. Dr. Marshall was waiting. One look at the injuries saw the doctor praising their good sense in keeping Ned as flat as possible. The crush nature of the injuries had prevented massive bleeding, but, “There is no hope,” he said privately to Fitz as soon as the initial examination was over. “I did a year in the Peninsula with Sir Arthur Wellesley, so I’ve seen this kind of injury before. The wound is ragged, open, and contaminated by bowel contents. He’s lost blood, so I won’t bleed him myself. However, he won’t take more opium until he has spoken to you and Mr. Charlie. No one else. And he asked that it be soon. He knows he’s dying.”

Why does Papa weep so for him? wondered Charlie as, still in all their dirt from the search, they went to the room where Ned Skinner lay.

The big frame looked quite shrunken in the bed. Fitz drew up a chair and sat close by his head, his hand reaching for Ned’s, plucking at the coverlet. Bidden be seated, Charlie put his chair just beyond his father’s, for Ned had turned to look at Fitz, and Charlie wanted to see his face. Ned smiled, suddenly looking quite absurdly young, though he was eight-and-thirty.

“Charlie has to know,” he said, voice clear and strong.

“Yes, Ned, he must know, it’s right and fitting. Do you want to tell him, or shall I?”

“It’s not my place, Fitz. You tell him.”

It came out baldly: “Ned and I are half brothers.”

“That does not surprise me, Papa.”

“Because you’re a Darcy. A man could never ask for a better brother than Ned, Charlie. Yet I couldn’t acknowledge him. Not my doing, but my father’s. He made me swear a terrible oath that I would never reveal the relationship. With Ned, too young at the time to swear any oaths, he preferred to convince him he was unworthy.”

“Grandfather? Harold Hunsford Darcy?”

“Yes, Harold Darcy. Thank God every day that you never knew him, Charlie. A truly evil man. He ran dens of thieves, cutthroats-and brothels!-in Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, many other northern cities. Why? To amuse himself! He was so bored by the life of a gentleman that he took to crime. Indeed, he fancied himself a master criminal. Most of his activities he ran from his favourite brothel in Sheffield. Ned’s mother, a Jamaican, was his passion-yet he forced her to whore for him. She died of the pox when Ned was three. Pater died of the pox too, though my poor mother never knew that. His was hideously malignant-it killed him in six months, raving and demented. Mama was never well after bearing Georgiana, and died too. All the deaths happened in the same year. He wrote me a letter on his deathbed, and exacted the oath when he gave me that awful document. It exulted in his deeds, and told me of Ned’s whereabouts. After I buried him I went to Sheffield and took Ned, and gave him to be reared by respectable people. I was seventeen, Ned was four. Whenever I could, I spent time with him. So strange, Charlie! I looked into that dark little face with its curly black hair, and I loved him with might and main. Far more than ever I did Georgiana. Anyway, after Harold died I glued my world back together again in Humpty-Dumpty fashion, with pride and hauteur my mortar. But having Ned to love, I was never quite alone.”

Charlie sat, numb and winded. So much answered! “Uncle Ned?” He touched Ned’s shoulder very delicately, since his father held the hand. “Uncle Ned, you did a wonderful thing. Nearly fifty children will live because of you.” He managed a smile. “And live well, I pledge it.”

“Good.” Ned lay frowning for a long moment, then opened his dark eyes that were, Charlie could see now, so like Papa’s. “I have to wipe the slate clean.” He spoke suddenly, and in gasps. “Wipe it clean.”

“Then wipe it, Ned,” said Fitz.

“I murdered Lydia Wickham. Smothered her. Drunk. Out to it. Felt nothing. Too drunk.”

“Why, Ned? Not for my sake, surely.”

“Yes, for your sake. Easy to see you’d never be-rid of her. Never. Why? You’d done naught save give-that pair-money. On the cadge-always. So she thanked you by setting out to ruin you. You, the best man ever. When our father-died-you came to get me-give me a home-send me to school-spend time with me like an-equal-not you so high-and I-so low. I loved killing her!” He stared across Fitz to Charlie. “Look after your father. Won’t-be here to do it. You must.”