The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

by Colleen McCullough

  At first she had hoped that the book he was dictating to her would answer some of these questions, but after thirteen sessions he was still absorbed with the conundrum of God and the evil of light. A pattern was emerging: of a circular progress through his riddles akin to what was said of people hopelessly lost—that they walked in circles and always wound up where they started. And so it was with Father Dominus’s book. He didn’t seem to know how to get off the track he wandered and go in a straighter line.

  He had also curbed her contact with Ignatius and Therese. Now she walked to the underground river on her own, while Ignatius stood guard at the beginning of the tunnel and returned her to her cell when she emerged. Their communication dwindled to greetings and farewells; clearly he had been told not to say anything to her beyond those civilities. Removal of Therese was stranger. In her talks with Father Dominus not related to dictation Mary had realised that he despised the female sex, mature or immature. Affection would show in his face when he spoke of the boys, but the moment Mary introduced the girls into their conversation he would stiffen, the expression he wore would change to contempt, and he would brush her aside as if she were some noxious insect.

  Then Mary’s courses began to flow, and she was obliged to ask Therese for rags, as well as come to some arrangement about soaking and boiling them after use. It seemed Therese had to request the fabric for these rags from Father Dominus, who beat her with a stick and called her unclean. The rags were forthcoming, handed over by a tearful Therese together with the story of the old man’s reaction, but that was to be her last contact with Therese. After it, Camille brought her daily necessities, and would not succumb to Mary’s blandishments, though the frightened blue eyes held yearning.

  That tipped the scales in Mary’s attitude toward him. Until then her sense of self-preservation had prompted her to go softly, never to antagonise him, but such control was alien to Mary’s frank nature, and the bonds that tied her tongue were frail. When next he appeared to give dictation, she flew at him verbally, since the bars on her cage did not permit of any other opposition.

  “What do you mean, you awful old man,” said Mary, snapping the words, “by calling an innocent child unclean? Do you doubt your power over a little girl’s mind, that you would whip her with a rod? Disgraceful! That child manages a kitchen capable of producing good food for fifty stomachs, and how do you thank her? You pay her no wages, but that is no surprise, since you pay no wages to any Child of Jesus! But to beat her! To beat her because she asked for rags for my courses? To call her unclean? Sir, you are a bigot and a disgrace to your calling!”

  He had reared up in outrage, eyes rolling in his head, but when Mary mentioned rags and courses, he flung his arms about his head, hands blocking his ears, and rocked in his chair.

  For perhaps a minute she surveyed him angrily, then she sat down on her chair and sighed. “Father, you are a fraud,” she said. “You think yourself a son of God, and you keep these children to worship and adore you. I acquit you of being greedy for profits from your nostrums, for I believe that you spend them on good food and other comforts for your followers. Your expenses must be considerable, even including fodder for your donkey train and coal for the fires I presume you need in your laboratory as well as in your kitchen. Nothing you have dictated to me thus far has told me why you are here, or how long you have been here, or what you intend to achieve. But you disappoint me bitterly, to take out your spleen on an innocent like Therese—and for no better reason than her sex. The female sex is God’s creation in equal measure to the male sex, and how He has designed our bodily functions is His business, not yours, for you are not God. Do you hear me? You are not God!”

  His hands had dropped from his ears, though the look on his face said he didn’t like either Mary’s subject matter or the tone of her voice. But he didn’t get up and run; instead, he swung to face her, thin lips peeled back from perfect teeth.

  “I am God,” he said, fairly calmly, and smiled. “All members of the male sex are God. Females are the creation of Lucifer, put on earth to tempt, seduce, corrupt.”

  She snorted derisively. “Rubbish! Men are not God, any more than women are. Males and females both are God’s creation. And did it ever occur to you that it is not women who tempt and seduce, but men who are weak and unworthy? If there is a devil in humankind, it is in men, who strive to corrupt women, then blame women. I have had some experience of the devil in men, sir, and I assure you that it needs no lures thrown out by women. It is already inborn.”

  “This conversation is pointless!” he snapped. “Kindly pick up your pencil, madam.”

  “I will do that, Father Dominus, if you give me a new subject. Thus far I have given you nigh on two hundred pages of text, and only the first fifty are fresh and original. After that, you merely go over the same ground. Move on, Father! I am very interested in the genesis of Cosmogenesis. It is time you told your readers what happened after you entered the Seat of God in your thirty-fifth year. Why, for instance, did you enter it?”

  She had caught him; he stared at her in amazement, almost as if he had received another visitation. Mary breathed a silent sigh of relief. It was in his power to kill her, and perhaps for a few moments when she had castigated him so bitingly he had contemplated having Brother Jerome pitch her down her privy well to certain death, but, all-unknowing, she had saved her life by showing him where he was going wrong. The brain that once must have been as formidable as any in the whole country was softening, a gradual process of which perhaps he had some awareness, yet knew not how to remedy it. Would he, back in his heyday, have whipped poor little Therese? Or thought the female sex unclean? Mary didn’t know, but wanted to. Now, with any luck, she might find out, for he was grateful enough at her criticism to come to the conclusion that her life was worth sparing. He wanted to write this book, but he didn’t know how. A mind that could invent lamps and cure-alls apparently did not have the ability to plan a verbal construction. As long as she guided him in his literary work, he would keep her alive.

  “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 th
e 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.

  On the following day Brother Jerome appeared with her bread and water, though no butter, cheese or jam. Pale eyes watching her contemptuously, he held out a hand. “Gimme your work.”

  Silently she passed it through the bars, a miserably small set of pages compared to their earlier sessions, which had kept her so busy copying that she had little time for worry or idle thought.

  One day steak, mushrooms and pudding, now bread and water, she thought. What is happening? Has that frail mind crumbled? Or is my new regimen merely a symptom of the fact that I am now miles away from the kitchen? Water aplenty can be collected everywhere, but bread and what one puts on bread come from a kitchen.

  Father Dominus erupted screaming from behind the screen during her second day of bread and water, the pages she had given Jerome clutched in one hand.

  “What is this? What is this?” he shrieked, beads of foam gathering at the corners of his mouth.

  “It is what you dictated to me the day before yesterday,” Mary said, her voice betraying no fear.

  “I dictated to you for two hours then, madam—two hours!”

  “No, Father, you did not. You sat on your chair for two hours, but the only usable information you gave me is written down there. You rambled, sir.”

  “Liar! Liar!”

  “Why would I lie?” she asked reasonably. “I am quite intelligent enough to know that my life depends upon pleasing you, Father. Why therefore would I antagonise you?” She had an inspiration. “In fact, I thought you in sore need of sleep, and judged that tiredness caused this lapse in your concentration. Was I wrong?”

  Two little pellets stared at her with the bluish, milky glassiness of skimmed milk, but she stared back unintimidated. Let him stare!

  “Perhaps you are right,” he said finally, and stormed off with no intention, it seemed, of dictating to her this day.

  His mind was failing, of that she no longer had any doubt, but whether it might be called madness was moot.

  “Oh, if only I could establish sufficient rapport with him to talk rationally about the children!” she said to herself, perched on the edge of her bed. “I still have no idea why he acquired them, or how, or what happens to them when they attain maturity. Somehow I have
to cozen him into a softer mood.”

  Of Brother Ignatius there was no sign, nor did Jerome appear to replenish her supply of bread, down to half a loaf. An instinct had caused Mary not to waste water on washing her face or any part of her body: she might need what she had to drink, and that sparingly. With no dictation to copy and every book read at least several times, that day dragged, especially because she had not been let out for exercise. Sleep came slowly, was haunted by dreams, and lasted but a short time.

  When Father Dominus appeared he was carrying a fresh loaf of bread and a pitcher of water.

  “Oh, how glad I am to see you, Father!” Mary cried, smiling her best smile and hoping that it held no element of seduction. “I languish with nothing to do, and am looking forward to the next chapter of your Cosmogenesis.”

  He sat down, apparently having decided that her smile was not seductive, but instead of putting the bread and water jug on her shelf, he put them on the floor beside his chair. His message, she was sure, was to tell her that receiving this largesse depended entirely upon her own conduct during their interview.

  “Before we start the dictation, Father,” she said in her most winning voice—quite an effort for Mary—“there is so much I wish to understand about the darkness of God. Lucifer is self-apparent, and I agree with your philosophy wholeheartedly. But as yet we have not discussed Jesus, Who must be writ large in your cosmogeny, else you would not have christened your followers the Children of Jesus. There are fifty of them, you say, thirty boys and twenty girls. Those numbers must have a significance, for nothing you have said to date lacks import.”

  “Yes, you are intelligent,” he said, pleased. “All numbers of import must end in no number—that is, what the Greeks called zero. A nought, we write in Arabic numbers. Not only is zero no number, but in Arabic it has no beginning and no end. It is eternal. The eternal zero. Five plus three plus two are ten. The line that never meets itself and the circle that always does.”