The Plight of the Darcy Brothers

by Marsha Altman

  Jane hesitated before answering. “If my father has requested to see Wickham, then I see no reason not to honor his request.”

  “Then we are agreed. I will write up the invitation in due haste.” He rose to do so. “Though, if things do go ill… well, we don't have Darcy to punch him, and I'm rather terrible at it, so we ought to have a servant picked out ahead of time. One of the burlier ones. Maybe the under-gardener. Wallace is rather large. Seems like he could do the job.”

  “Charles!” Jane's voice was half-indignant, half-laughing.

  “See? Darcy is not the only one in this family who can think up clever plans,” he said with a smile before leaving his wife to her laughter.

  With a relative calm reached and the most disturbing matter set aside, the Darcys were on the road again, and though much was unspoken between them, Grégoire became more at ease with them every day and they with him, odd habits as he had. They decided to push hard for Paris and rest there, because finding all the right people in such a massive city would take some time, and Darcy expressed a great desire for “proper lodgings.” Elizabeth admitted to being a bit sick of the inside of their carriage as well. She had exhausted the collection of books that Darcy had purchased once they were over the Channel, and English books were impossible to come by in such remote areas. Grégoire had only a Book of Hours in Latin, but if she found a French book to her liking, he offered to read it to her, translating as he went.

  She had yet to take him up on the noble offer when they found themselves stuck again, not twenty miles from the outskirts of Paris, by intolerable mud. When they were not stopped entirely, the carriage moved so slowly that Grégoire took to walking alongside the road and had no trouble keeping up with them. Their only consolation was that they were heading into a drier season and region, and this was merely a literal bump in the road.

  They had, theoretically, an opening of three months to get to Italy, allowing the same to return before Mary delivered, if she did deliver at all. (This Darcy did not mention to Elizabeth and asked Grégoire not to, but he did explain the circumstances. The look he got from the monk regarding Mary's “condition” was blank enough that Darcy wondered if the poor boy knew the facts of life at all.)

  They still were beyond any sight of Paris when, after a long silence during which Darcy could easily have fallen asleep if not for all of the bumping up and down, he was wrestled into full consciousness by his wife. “Darcy!” She pointed to the window.

  On the grass beside the road, Grégoire was staggering, and right before their eyes, he fainted. The carriage came to an immediate stop before Darcy could attempt to give the order, and he climbed out and ran to his brother, who was lying on his side, his color gone and his breathing unsteady.

  “Grégoire?” Darcy said, and then yelled at the coachman. “Get a doctor. Doctor! Uhm, le docteur!” He turned to his wife. “Elizabeth, please. If he's sick, let you not catch it.” This seemed to stay her some distance away, and he turned his attentions back to Grégoire, whose eyes were half-opened. “Can you speak? What is wrong?”

  But the monk was in too much pain to speak. That much, Darcy was able to discern when he saw the blood on the monk's back, soaking through those his grey robes.

  PROPER DISCIPLINE

  PARIS WAS PUT ASIDE as the coachman helped Darcy carry his brother into the coach, but not before Darcy removed his waistcoat and put it over him. Grégoire was only half-conscious and shivering, and all they could do before hurrying to an inn was to make him drink. He regained some color, but not much.

  Darcy carried his brother into the shabby inn and placed him on a proper bed, removing his cowl and calling for a doctor using a dictionary he had purchased along the way. He did his best to keep the sight of blood from Elizabeth. He did not want this for her, for so many reasons, and sent her instead to gather proper food and drink for them all. At last a doctor arrived, or someone who seemed like a doctor and had a nearly unpronounceable name that Darcy didn't bother to catch. The doctor went inside and shut the door, leaving Darcy to pace outside. The wait was very short, and the doctor reemerged, Darcy demanded an assessment.

  “Well,” said the doctor in his broken English. “He is a monk.”

  “He is.”

  “Then you cannot expect a flagellant of his physical strength to walk the half of France. It is asking too much.”

  “I did not ask him to walk,” Darcy replied too quickly, before he had swallowed the accented words. “You said—he did this to himself?”

  “Oui, Monsieur.”

  “What—what purpose could this possibly serve? What great sin has he committed?”

  The doctor shrugged. “My—limited understanding is that it is to remind oneself of the wounds of Christ our Lord, who was, of course—”

  “Yes, I know!” he interrupted. “But…” He realized there was no use arguing with the doctor over this. “You have some ointment for his wounds?”

  “Oui, but he will not take it. Let him rest, Monsieur.”

  He's as stubborn as… he was tempted to think, a Darcy. “I will take the ointment. Thank you for your services, Doctor.”

  The doctor nodded and handed over the jar with a contemptuous look at this rich Englishman who did not seem to understand the most basic concepts. Darcy ignored the look entirely and went straight into Grégoire's room without knocking.

  The monk was on the shabby cot, back in his soiled robes but without the hood, sitting up in prayer. Perhaps lying down was too painful. Grégoire looked up and seemed horrified by Darcy's intrusion, a look of shame upon his face, perhaps because he had been discovered.

  “The doctor says you should be resting.”

  “I am resting.”

  “Perhaps my understanding of your local culture is lax, but usually resting refers to lying down and sleeping.” But Darcy could not remain full of indignation for long as he looked at the pale, shuddering frame of the poor man he'd driven into exhaustion, however unknowingly. “Look at you. What have you done that deserves such great penance?”

  On this, Grégoire was silent.

  Darcy took a seat on the cot next to him. “I will not ask you to explain your illness. I know you would not expect me, as an Englishman or a heretic, to understand.”

  “I never said you were a heretic.”

  “But I do go to church on Sundays and listen to a sermon in English and perhaps a reading from the Bible in the vernacular. Surely that in of itself dooms me to hell?”

  “I am not one to presuppose who is destined for hell, Darcy.”

  “But surely you consider yourself among the damned, else you would not engage in such penance.”

  “I certainly hope not. But I am weak, and the Discipline is a means of fortification.”

  “As we witnessed today, I would say that the two are in fact interconnected, but not in the same way.” Darcy leaned over, so he was properly looking Grégoire in the eyes. “Let me be understood, Brother. If you intend drive yourself in such a manner on this journey, then I will take you no further. I will send you back to your monastery, where you can injure yourself in peace and not have the stress of the roads to put your very life in danger.” He added, “I would be sorry to do it, as I doubt we would see each other again. But nonetheless, do I make myself perfectly, utterly clear?”

  “I cannot disobey my abbot.”

  “And I cannot disobey my conscience. So we are at a standstill.”

  “So we are.”

  There was silence once more.

  “If you would,” Darcy said, “remove your robe.”

  “What?”

  “If you will not take medicine from the doctor, then you must at least take it from your brother, who himself is quite ill at the idea of seeing you in such a condition. There, have that on your conscience. Now, pull up your robe.”

  Grégoire did what he was told with a grunt of pain, exposing a wounded back of raw, broken flesh. There were scars as well, running down his back, from older wounds�
� It made Darcy sick, but nonetheless he poured some ointment from the jar onto his hand and began to apply it to the boy's back. “There. Does that feel better?”

  “It is—cooling.” Though uncomfortable with the concept, after some time, Grégoire did look relieved, if not totally out of pain. Darcy wished for some of Maddox's miracle drug, if only to help him sleep. “Thank you, Darcy.”

  “I would offer my services again, but I never wish to do this again,” Darcy said, rising. “Now get some real rest. For all of us.” He waited, with arms crossed, for Grégoire to lie down before leaving and seating himself on the bench outside the room. Now he felt exhausted, if only from the stress of facing the unfathomable. What century was his brother living in?

  “Darcy,” came his wife's voice, obviously concerned about his awkward position of tension on the bench. “How is he?”

  “Recovering,” he said, finally taking his head out of his hands as she sat down next to him.

  “Does the doctor have an explanation, or was he merely overexhausted? He has not been eating much.”

  “No.” He did not clarify what part of her question he was answering. “Lizzy, he is a monk. From a very strict order.”

  “This I know.”

  Whatever annoyance she had at his reluctance to reveal the details was tempered by his unease, so she put her hand over his, even though it was so much smaller, and leaned on him. He usually went through great measures to hide his unease, and she always saw through them anyway, which at times could be very convenient, because her touch did something to settle him. “He is… a flagellant.” He hoped he would not have to explain that. Elizabeth was well read. She was so good at surprising him with knowing of the existence of improper things.

  She needed time to dredge up whatever memories she had of the meaning of this word. It was a moment before she answered, “They are still around?”

  “It seems we are very far from England. And the Reformation.”

  “So that would explain—”

  “—his exhaustion and collapse, yes. Apparently from pain.”

  “And the blood on his robes.”

  “I did not mean for you to see that.”

  “Which is probably precisely why I saw it.”

  He somehow managed to crack a smile.

  There was another contemplative silence before she continued, “What are we to do?”

  “I have already spoken to him about it. Perhaps not in the most… understanding of fashions, but still. We are not medieval. I told him, quite honestly, that if this was to continue, obviously to the point where he would permanently injure or kill himself on some kind of religious obligation, then I would take him no further and find another translator with less masochistic tendencies,” he said. “I also added that I would regret doing so, as I would probably never see him again, if he returns to Mont Claire.”

  “So you do not wish him gone?”

  “Hardly.”

  With the way she was leaning on his elbow, her expression was hard to see and read. “So you accept him, then?”

  “As a backwards local with barbarous customs?”

  “As a brother.”

  This, he could not answer. At least not immediately. But Elizabeth seemed willing to wait. She stroked his back, which was stiff from all of the riding and from the tension.

  When he was soothed, he said, “Yes, I suppose. This does not mean I will willingly extend this courtesy to every child my father may have sired.” Of course, there was only one known other, but his name would remain unspoken until Darcy spoke it. “Grégoire is perfectly amiable and highly intelligent, a kind, generous man who is too hard on himself—somewhat literally, extremely literally. But that is his upbringing, so I suppose it cannot be unexpected.”

  “Darcy,” she said, “we cannot let him go back.”

  He had been thinking the same thing, but he was too tired to express it. He took her offered hand. “Our trip will be delayed.”

  “A few days will hardly make my sister any more or less with child,” she said. “Or even a week. However long it takes.”

  He was not eager to disagree with her.

  “Geoffrey! Geoffrey Darcy, you get back here this instant!” Nurse had already given up. She had chased Geoffrey around enough times that she was huffing and puffing, but Bingley shooed away the other servants. “He's my responsibility,” he said. “Geoffrey! I meant what I said!”

  But Geoffrey giggled and disappeared behind a corner. Georgie was standing there, so Bingley leaned over to his daughter. “Which way did he go?”

  She pointed.

  “Thank you,” he said, and broke into a full run, nearly crashing into half a dozen servants before he found Geoffrey struggling with a closet door that was locked, obviously intending to hide in there. Bingley picked him right up. “There you are. Do you have any idea what you're doing to us?”

  The boy, who was slowly returning to his normal coloration, merely giggled.

  “Come now. It's time for your bath.”

  “I'm not dirty!”

  “Still, you must—and I feel suddenly as though I'm a terrible hypocrite when I say this—you must bathe.”

  “I hate bathing.”

  Bingley thought laughing broke his supposed authority a bit, but he did anyway. Geoffrey was still stuck in his arms as Bingley carried him back to the nursery. “Ah, karma. Listen, I promised to take care of you, and that means seeing to your general cleanliness. If that means I must bathe you myself, I will!”

  His announcement did not go unnoticed. Jane was standing beside Georgie at the door to the nursery, holding a hand over her face at the sight of it.

  “Auntie!”

  “Auntie will not aid you in this one,” she said firmly.

  “Georgie!”

  Georgiana Bingley shook her head, mainly because her mother was giving her a stern look.

  “Don't exasperate yourself too much on this one, Husband,” Jane said, and Bingley shrugged and carried Geoffrey off.

  He was not far enough along before he heard it. Two things, one in response to each other.

  First, Georgie turned to her mother and said, quite clearly and with no failure of pronunciation, “What's he going to do to him now?”

  Second, at the sound of her daughter's long-delayed first words, Jane fainted dead away.

  After three days, Grégoire was fit to travel again. His diet kept him barely more than skin and bones, and his health had not been at peak upon his injuries, whenever they were incurred. Darcy took matters into his own hands, practically force-feeding the monk bread and meat and everything that was available and making him stay in bed.

  “He would do the same with Georgiana,” Elizabeth assured Grégoire. “He is most protective of her.”

  Darcy also hired the local priest so his brother could hear Mass without rising. He did this without being asked, and when asked why, merely shrugged and said to Elizabeth, “I do not think he would appreciate me reading from the Book of Common Prayer.”

  What he did not share with Elizabeth, as they prepared for their journey once again, was that he had thoroughly searched the small sack of Grégoire's things and had removed the knotted-cord whip, which had several steel bits in it. The whip was stained with blood, and looking at it made Darcy sick as he tossed it in the garbage pile outside.

  “It belongs to the abbey,” his brother protested. “Not to me.”

  “I will personally pay for the abbey to acquire a new one if they press me on it,” Darcy said. “You will have to find a new way to torture yourself. Try falling in love with a woman who despises you.”

  Grégoire was confused enough by this comment that he did not request an explanation as they joined Elizabeth in the carriage and made their way back to the main road.

  After merely a day, they reached their long-awaited initial destination of Paris. With Grégoire's help and Darcy's obvious bag of coin, they were able to situate themselves quite easily in a fine hotel meant for ambas
sadors and people of rank. Grégoire was given an adjoining room and ordered to at least sleep on the mattress, even if he insisted on moving it to the floor. Tired from their travels, Darcy had their dinner sent up and found a British manager who would begin making the proper arrangements and acquire directions to Mary's seminary. The man, Mr. Arnold, was a former courier for the army and did extremely good work. By nightfall, they had all the information they would need for their stay in Paris.

  “Look, Darcy,” Elizabeth said, passing a letter to him as he devoured his own half of the pile alongside his food. “From Geoffrey.”

  “From Geoffrey?”

  “He told me to wait until we arrived in Paris to open it.”

  Darcy took it and squinted at what, at the bottom of Jane's letter, was a scrawled “GD” and what was quite possibly a stick figure of a person, with blue ink scribbled all over the black limbs. “Huh,” he said with laughter. “Well, at least his education is coming along. Grégoire, here. From your nephew.”

  Grégoire reached into his robes, pulled out his cord glasses, and tied them around his ears so that the lenses were situated so he could see the drawing. “He is—how old?”

  “Two,” Darcy said. “I suppose you'll put up a huge fuss if I offer to buy you proper glasses. But, ah, I'm already a step ahead of you. Would your monkish pride be insulted if I bought a pair of glasses for myself and you happened to borrow them because they matched your own eyes so well?”

  His brother answered with a red face, “It is not pride. Pride is a sin.”

  “And so is having possessions, of course. I suppose the glasses belong to the abbey.”

  “They do.”

  “Can you read without them?”

  “If I try very hard, but I hear it is bad for my eyes.”

  “Well, I suppose Darcy, who I never to this day knew was farsighted and required reading glasses, will have to buy himself a pair,” Elizabeth said with a sly smile.

  “You are attempting to undermine me,” Grégoire said, but his tone was not entirely accusatory. “Why is he blue?”