The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

by Colleen McCullough

  “Give it up, gentlemen!” she said at last, tired and a little angry. “I cannot embroider the facts. You have seen thirty little boys, I have seen only the two you saw pushing the hand cart. Believe the testimony of your own eyes, not my hearsay, for hearsay is all it is. I was kept in a barred cell, and moved no farther from it than a tunnel that led downward to an underground river. Wherever the children were kept gave them no excuse to see for themselves the woman of whom Therese and Ignatius talked. When I asked Father Dominus about the cell, he denied building it. Whoever did, he said, did so before his time. All I can tell you is that the poor children were shifted to some new location, and disliked it. Father’s reasons for the move are unknown to me, but they were not very recent. It seems an old plan of his.”

  “Let us cease and desist,” Fitz said, eyes on Mary’s face. “You have had enough. You were right to think a subsidence occurred. Though the public caves were not affected, the movement was felt everywhere, and for the time being all inspections of the caves are cancelled. We must presume that within the area are many caves as yet undiscovered, and that somewhere in them are the Children of Jesus. The question is, did the subsidence occur where they are, or completely elsewhere? The old man’s dementia is apparently increasing, so we cannot know whether he has locked them up, or still lets them roam free. Provided, that is, that they are still alive.”

  There was no point in shielding Mary from anything. Fitz told her—and, perforce, Elizabeth, Jane and Kitty—about the two dead bodies. This, coming hours after learning of Lydia’s death, almost overset Mary. To her own surprise, she held out her hand to Angus, and was given it. Such a comfort!

  “The dead girl must be Sister Therese,” she said, blinking at tears. “I am sure of it. I never did believe there was a Mother Beata. I think that once the girls matured, they were to be killed. Yes, the girl’s body belongs to Sister Therese, and I insist that she be buried in decent circumstances. Mourners, a stone at her head, consecrated ground.”

  “I’ll see to it,” said Angus. “Fitz has bigger things to do, Mary. How, I don’t know, but we have to find those poor children. If Father Dominus’s madness has progressed beyond human values, then he won’t care about the children.”

  “Did he give you any reason why he has the children, Mary?” Elizabeth asked. “It seems he fed them well, clothed them—doesn’t that suggest he loved them, at least in the beginning? I know you say they’re terrorised, Charlie, but if he had always had that effect upon them, they would not have joined him. From what you say, Brother Ignatius loved him, Mary.”

  “Brother Ignatius was simple. I think Father Dominus deliberately kept all his children simple—certainly they were never taught to read or write. He told me that he stole them from bad masters, but if Sister Therese and Brother Ignatius bore no sign of ill-treatment, perhaps he stole them at a very young age from their parents, or—or even bought them from their parents or the parish overseers. Parish care can be cruel, depending upon the rapacity of the overseer. It would not have been hard to acquire them at a very young age if there was money in it. As to whether he would have killed all of them upon maturity, we’ll possibly never know, for Ignatius was the oldest of the boys, and Therese the girls.” Mary sighed and clutched Angus’s hand harder. “If he is mad, and I for one don’t doubt that, then to be adored by these simple little people must have contributed to his high opinion of himself. Don’t forget that they worked for him, and were paid nothing. The gospel of St. Mark says, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ If Father Dominus believed himself chosen, one can make some sense of it.”

  “Much will be answered if we find them,” said Fitz.

  “May I say something about their being found?” Mary asked.

  Fitz stared at her, smiling slightly. “By all means.”

  “Don’t look in places where the caves are well known, but farther north. If the first body was Brother Ignatius, then he floated down the Derwent, yet was still north of the caves people visit. In the bowels of my prison was a stream, I could hear it flowing strongly, then saw it on my exercise walks. Until I talked to Angus and Charlie, it hadn’t occurred to me that these underground rivers are just that—under the ground. So my stream was much deeper than I had imagined. Go to the north, where all is desolation. These children are like moles, they can’t tolerate the light of day. Search by night.”

  The gentlemen were staring at Mary in admiration, and Angus was bursting with pride.

  “What a head you have on your shoulders!” he said.

  “If I do, then why do I get into such dreadful scrapes?”

  Fitz took over, disliking loss of purpose. “The moon is coming up for half, so we can search at night for quite some time. I have spyglasses, and may be able to locate more. It’s quite a dry summer, which means less cloud.”

  “I shall have prayers said for the children in churches of all denominations,” said Elizabeth. “They’ll haunt my sleep until they’re found, but if they’re found dead, I’ll never sleep well again. Fitz, may I have the funds?”

  “Of course,” he said at once. “Like you, Elizabeth, they haunt my sleep. I’ll call in Ned and put him to work as well. His eyes are very sharp, and he works best at night. In the meantime, those from Pemberley who search will carry tents and camp on the moors. Riding back and forth takes up too much time, though we’ll keep horses with us. I must ask the ladies to limit their use of carriages and riding horses, for I want the grooms as searchers. Huckstep will come with us and leave a deputy here with two grooms. I’ll also commandeer footmen and gardeners if you tell me how many you can do without.”

  “Take whomsoever you want,” said Elizabeth.

  “Though,” she said to her husband later that night, “I don’t believe that method will answer this conundrum. Mary was freed by a natural convulsion in the earth. My prayers will do as much good as your men.”

  “I believe in God,” he said ironically, “but a God of sorts only. My God expects us to help ourselves, not make Him do all the work. Faith is too blind, so I’ll put my trust in men.”

  “And in Ned Skinner most of all.”

  “I have a premonition about that.”

  “Why did you oppose Mary’s crusade so bitterly?”

  His manner grew stiff. “I am not at liberty to say.”

  “Not at liberty?”

  “The more so, now our son is prospering.”

  “Cryptic to the last.”

  He kissed her hand. “Goodnight, Elizabeth.”

  “Well, Lizzie,” said Jane over breakfast next morning, “though we cannot actively help the men in their search, there are still things we can do.” The large amber eyes looked stern. “I am going to assume that the children will be found alive and safe. That their health will be unimpaired.”

  “Oh, splendidly said, Jane!” cried Kitty. “They will be saved, I’m sure of it too.”

  “You’re leading up to something,” Elizabeth said warily.

  “Yes, I am.” Jane answered. “Lydia has left a hole in my heart that only time and apprehension of her murderers will mend. But consider this, Lizzie! About fifty children between four and twelve who probably don’t remember any life except the one they’ve had with Father Dominus. What will happen to them when they’re found?”

  “They’ll go to the Parish if theirs can be located, or to orphanages wherever there are vacancies,” said Kitty with composure, spreading butter thinly on unsweetened wafers.

  “Exactly so!” cried Jane, sounding wrathful. “Oh, my temper has been sorely tried of late! First Lydia is done to death by thieves who can’t be found, now we have fifty-odd children who have never known the joys of childhood!”

  “There are few joys of childhood to be found on the Parish, or in the orphanages, or walking England’s roads because they have no parish,” said Mary dispassionately. “The comfortably off are privileged, and can give their children joys—if, that is, they don’t spoil them on the one hand, or beat
them mercilessly on the other.” She got up to help herself to a second plate of sausages, liver, kidneys, scrambled eggs, bacon and fried potatoes. “All too often, children of any class are regarded as a nuisance—seen, but not heard. Argus says that it’s cheaper for pauper females to feed their babies gin than milk, as they’re too dried up to give them suck. The poorest children I saw on my brief travels were infested with vermin, had rotten teeth, crooked backs and shockingly bowed legs, bore atrocious sores, were hungry, wore rags and went barefoot. Joys, Jane? I don’t think poor children have any. Whereas children of our own class tend to have too many, which makes them expect joys—and gives them a perpetual discontent that follows them all of their lives. Comfort should be ever-present, and joys merely an occasional treat. Save for the only joys that truly matter—the company of brothers, sisters and parents.”

  How could we have forgotten Mary? Elizabeth wondered. Just such an encomium as she would have come out with in Longbourn days, save that this one is wise. Where, along her way, did she pick up wisdom? She never used to have any. Her travels and travails, I suppose, which doesn’t say much for the sheltered life of females of the first respectability. Jane is wincing because she knows very well that her sons are grossly over-indulged, especially when their father isn’t home to discipline them. And then they go to Eton or some other public school to be tormented and thrashed until they’re old enough to turn into tormentors and thrashers. It is a vicious circle.

  “We’re drifting off the subject,” said Jane with unusual asperity, “which is the Children of Jesus.”

  “What do you want to say, Jane?” asked Elizabeth.

  “That when the children are found alive and well, the gentlemen will lose interest in them immediately. Fitz will donate one of his many secretaries to sort them out, return them to their proper parishes, or their parents, or put them in orphanages. Except that we know orphanages are already overcrowded. There won’t be room for them, especially because, from what Mary says, they won’t know their parents or their parishes. So they’ll end up more miserable than they were under Father Dominus’s care, for at least he fed and clothed them, and they seem not to have suffered illness.”

  “You want to build an orphanage,” said Kitty, revealing that she had unsuspected powers of deduction.

  Elizabeth and Mary stared at their flighty widgeon of a sister Jane in amazement, with the pleasure of finding an ally.

  “Quite so!” said Jane. “Why separate the poor little things when they have been together for years? Mary, you’re the one who Angus said had a head on your shoulders. Therefore you are the one who should deal with the practicalities—how much it will cost to establish an orphanage, for example? Kitty, you frequent all the best houses in London, so you should seek donations to the Children of Jesus orphanage. I will engage to speak to Angus Sinclair and beg that he publish their plight in his journal. I will also speak to the Bishop of London and imply that one of our aims is to eradicate any Papist, Methodist or Baptist tendencies the children may have picked up from Father Dominus, whose theology, Mary says, is apostate. The Bishop of London is no proselytiser, but it is an irresistible opportunity for the Church of England.”

  Jane’s eyes were glowing as huge and yellow as a cat’s, and her face was quite transfigured. “We will break new ground in the care of indigent children! I’ll choose the staff myself, and supervise all aspects of the orphanage’s progress in future years. You’ll share this duty with me, Lizzie, which is why I suggest that the orphanage be situated halfway between Bingley Hall and Pemberley. I think Fitz and Charles should buy the land and pay for the building of a proper institution. No, I refuse to hear of our using an existing house! Ours will be designed for its specific purpose. The money Kitty brings in will be invested in the Funds to provide income for wages, food, clothing, and a proper Church of England school as well as a library.”

  By this, Elizabeth was gasping. Who would ever have guessed that Jane, of all people, possessed so much zealotry? At least it would keep her from having too much time to spend missing Charles. Only she, Elizabeth, foresaw opposition from the gentlemen. Mary thought the orphanage a splendid idea, but deplored its small scope and thought they should be building several. Kitty sat bending her not very powerful mind to the problem of how to obtain donations from the Mighty, very attached to their money. And Jane was utterly convinced her plan would succeed.

  “To think that all of this originated in Mary’s strange obsession with the poor,” Elizabeth said to Angus, who rode to Pemberley to (he had explained to Fitz and Charlie) write an urgent letter to London; his real reason was to make sure his Mary had not decamped. “It’s been like a pebble thrown upon a snowy slope,” Elizabeth continued. “Instead of coming to a harmless halt, it’s rolled, gathering a huge coat of snow, until it threatens to overwhelm us. I’m glad that Jane seems to have tossed off all desire to weep herself into the vapours, but at least when she did that, we all knew where we stood. Nowadays anything may happen.”

  Angus laughed until Elizabeth’s reproachful expression told him she couldn’t see a funny side. “Jane is probably right,” he said then. “We would cheerfully have handed the children to the parish overseers and forgotten them. Logic says that they were too young to know what a parish is when they were abducted—or sold—and may not remember any parents. So a Children of Jesus home is actually an excellent idea. I imagine Mary is in favour?”

  “And that’s all that really concerns you, you lovesick Scot! Yes, of course she is, though she envisions orphanages being built all over England,” said Elizabeth, smiling. “However, I cannot see Fitz consenting to schemes that would beggar him in a year.”

  “He shouldn’t have to, or be asked to. The mills of any government grind even slower than those of God, for exceeding fine takes time, especially in Westminster. I see Fitz’s most pressing task as flogging his parliamentary colleagues into a radical program of changes to the lower end of society. He can always trumpet what happened in France—the Lords are prone to listen to that argument. All people resist change, Lizzie, but change will have to come. Not all of it will be in favour of the poor, thanks to take-out payments in many parishes. Some have hardly an employable man or woman on their lists, so attractive is the thought of being paid a pittance not to work. The poor-rates are soaring.”

  “Go and find Mary,” she said, tired of the poor.

  His contrary beloved did look pleased to see him, but not in the guise of a lover. Yet. Some of her reactions since her return had given him hope, but his innate good sense warned him against endowing them with too much significance. He could only imagine what it must have been like for her during her imprisonment, and thus far had not been able to talk to her for long enough to discover just how deep in fact were the wellsprings of her unquenchable determination. So he attributed her reactions to a realisation of her feminine weakness, when in reality she had come to no such realisation. Mary knew she was not a weak female; Angus still harboured a man’s illusions about it.

  “We found the subsidence,” he was able to tell her. “It seems the caves extend much farther than anyone had counted on, but now their extent will remain unknown. The innermost caverns are quite blocked by immense falls of rock. What is something of a mystery is why the subsidence occurred at all.”

  “And the underground river?”

  “We can hear it, but it’s changed course.”

  “When do you move north and search by night?”

  “Tonight. The day has been relatively cloudless, so we have hope that the moon will shine. We’ve amassed a number of what Fitz calls spyglasses. He’s asked farmers with flocks grazing in the region to bring them farther south. Less moving forms to confuse us when we search by night.”

  “My goodness!” said Mary, impressed. “It sounds like an army manoeuvre. I never thought of sheep. Don’t they sleep at night?”

  “Yes, but any untoward noise startles them.”

  “Are there deer?”


  “I imagine so.”

  “The children won’t be easy to see in their brown garb.”

  “We are aware of that,” he said gently.

  It had been agreed that the search parties (there were three, one each for Fitz, Charlie and Angus) should concentrate upon the bases of peaks, hills and tors, but also carefully inspect the banks of the Derwent and its tributaries. It was the biggest river in the region, and flowed strongly, even in summer. Since Brother Ignatius (if indeed it were he) had been found floating on it, that argued some proximity, if not to the river itself, then to some tributary or underground stream that fed into it.

  The first night was an eerie experience, for few settled men, be they labourers or gentlemen, were used to moving through the night on foot, and surreptitiously at that. While it was up, the half moon radiated a colourless light that drenched the landscape without enlivening it; even after the moon set, a glow suffused the heavens from the light of more stars than most had ever dreamed existed. With their eyes used to the darkness, it was easier to see than Angus, for one, had thought possible. The few deer could be identified as what they were, especially if a man had a spyglass. What were more surprising were the dogs that roamed in search of quarry—rabbit, shrew, rat and, later in the year, lambs. Once they had been pets or working dogs, Fitz explained, either abandoned or in search of better food than their masters had given them, and they were savage, all signs of domesticity lost.

  Then Charlie had a bright idea, which was to dress the small child of a Pemberley groom in brown robes and ask him to walk near the river bank for some distance, then turn and walk into more moorish terrain. The seven-year-old had no fear, and thoroughly enjoyed his perambulations, especially because he was allowed to stay up far past his usual bedtime. Tracking him gave the searchers some idea of what they would see if a Child of Jesus appeared.