The Gamekeeper’s Cabin (Pride and Prejudice)

December 24, 1812

The true magic of the holiday season is the spiritual renewal of gifts made in love. The greatest are those that come from sacrifices intended to remain hidden from all but He who sees everything.

∞∞∞

Station confers neither greater nor lesser love for one’s family:

Nor the willingness to sacrifice for their happiness.

∞∞∞

December 24, 1812

Cozy cotton-white billows surrounded her, their cushions crying she ought never leave. But impatient woman that she was, Elizabeth elbowed them aside.

And then freedom as the clutching fibers of sleep—how she knew ’twas that and not something more sinister, death perhaps—fell away.

A warm moistness huffed and shifted an errant fringe drooping against her forehead. Breathing guided her to the surface: not gales but gentle and tinctured with milk’s sweetness.

Resisting the impulse to return to the world, Elizabeth tried to burrow back into her chrysalis. Her tormenter would not have it. A finger, small yet insistent, pulled the curl away.

With wakefulness, awareness replaced dreamtime, and numbing frost wrapped her in its faerie tendrils.

How long have I slept? Was it sleep? I can remember Will shouting at me to stay awake.

Oh yes: the sleigh slid into a ditch, traces snapped, and Circe fled into the woods, stranding us.

And Will was afraid. I never knew him to sound as he did.

His voice, quivering then, had been the beacon toward which she pointed her prow.

But another echoed his urgent cry, piloting them through the sharp mist that stung even through carriage furs.

She thudded against her husband’s chest as Darcy struggled to force the drifts burying the ridges and swales.

She slid in and out of awareness but had been aware of being led deeper into the woods.

Georgie had warned me that Pemberley had two faces despite what Caroline vowed.

A particular beauty makes our home Titania’s Garden throughout an endless summer.

Leaf-fall is idyllic; its dry scent waiting to be inhaled in great gusts.

Winter, though, is worse than anything my newest sister could describe.

It has been over a year, and my blood is still Hertfordshire-thin.

Perhaps she had been too new a bride to understand the brutality of a Derbyshire December.

The bliss shared with Will insulated her from last year’s icy blasts.

Then she began increasing shortly after Twelfth Night.

Little Ben was her celebration of Pemberley’s fertile fields, heavy heads drooping, waiting for the scythe.

Elizabeth’s life had been a year-long whirl: wedding, increasing, and childbirth.

Pemberley’s mistress needed relief. The Darcys had broken free from their pink sandstone fastness to fly toward Thornhill in an adult Christmas escape.

Sharing time with Jane would be the tonic!

Elizabeth was reluctant to leave Ben with Nurse but craved a more anciently familiar Natal season.

Bingley’s invitation to share the day was, indeed, timely.

Only a tinge of white had tinted the sky above the western hills as they prepared to leave.

Dismissing the warning as morning frost, Darcy turned the sleigh onto the track linking the two manor houses.

Deep snow banks on the east-facing incline slowed their progress, and the weather shifted as the wind brought an Irish Sea blizzard howling into the Peak District.

Their situation became increasingly fraught.

Now she was securely warm away from the wind rattling impotently against the wall beside her head. As she cataloged her world, Elizabeth leaned into the tiny finger tracing soothing patterns on her cheek. A child’s whispered song laved her face, and she recalled her son’s baby’s breath.

Elizabeth cracked an eyelid to admit herself into her refuge. A button nose and gigantic eyes burning with curiosity dominated her vision. They widened. “Mama, Mama. The lady wak-ed up!”

The girl rocked back on her heels as hurried footsteps scraped across planks.

The child’s sudden retreat brought a surge of cold to cheeks accustomed to a coal fire’s heated rollers.

Then winter was dismissed from within despite the storm without.

A maternal hand rearranged Elizabeth’s blankets before gently lifting her head to plump the pillow.

“Ah, Mistress, you are back with us. The Master’ll be pleased.

I am sorry I left li’l Sarah to tend you; I was trying to build something hearty to chase the frost from your bones.

You were nigh unto half-frozen when the men brought you in. ”

Elizabeth shook off sleep and absorbed her sanctuary’s features.

There were few, a poor man’s bounty. An oil lantern atop a sturdy trestle table illuminated the sparsely furnished room: tidy, dominated by the fireplace at one end.

Elizabeth lay on a rustic bedframe. She peered over her blanket cocoon and saw two children huddled on another bed.

“A cup of tea should set you up before we eat.” That last word enlivened Elizabeth’s senses and put an edge on her midriff’s gnawing emptiness. She inhaled, and her nose found a stew’s hearty aroma.

The woman stepped away. Her movement brought the world into sharper focus.

Elizabeth’s gaze captured her pulling a steaming kettle from above the fire.

Then she carefully, near reverently, drew a tin from a hideout beneath the eaves.

Sarah attended her mother, watching hawk-like as the woman spooned leaves into another treasure, a china teapot, also brought from its home near the rafters.

Elizabeth recalled Grandmama Lizzie’s dower cottage, where the parlor had shelves high enough to protect ceramic shepherdesses from granddaughters’ busy fingers. This lady likewise had sequestered her life’s few pearls.

But the tea?

Leaves steeping, the woman brought the brew to Elizabeth’s side, a rose garland wreathing the teacup chalice—a solitary lump, brown in its sweet economy, balanced on the saucer.

“Sorry, Mistress, if the drink be thin: the leaves been used only two, maybe three, times. Mr. Tomkins likes his tea a bit lighter.” She dipped her scarved head and blushed at the patent falsehood that was dignity’s fig leaf. Elizabeth did not press her.

“Might be too weak for r’fined tastes, but ’tis hot.”

Her embarrassment showed at having her benefactress thawing in her rude cabin. “I dinna add milk as all we have is our goat, Miss Clary. Not sure if’n you might be partial to cow.”

Elizabeth rasped, her throat parched from sleep’s enforced idleness, “Just a splash, Mrs. Tomkins; you are Mrs. Tomkins, are you not? Although we had milk cows, my mama insisted we girls drink goat’s milk when we broke our fast. She was sure the creature’s hardiness would encourage healthy growth.”

The woman relaxed as Elizabeth’s friendly nature conferred a degree of consequence: that of hostess. Mrs. Tomkins set the cup on a stool, accepted a jug from Sarah, and dripped creamy liquor into Mrs. Darcy’s tea.

The perfection of that simple act was captivating, allowing Elizabeth to sort through what William had told her about Tomkins.

‘He is one of our new gamekeepers—Charlie Tomkins—hired because Will Rochet asked it of us. Tomkins had been one of Rochet’s followers aboard Sprite but has a weak hip thanks to an unfortunately placed French ball he took for Rochet.’ [1]

Maria wrote asking if we could find a place for him until the war ends. Afterward, he would live out his life at their new establishment. My Will would never turn off a beached sailor. But he said nothing about the man having a family.

A gamekeeper’s lot is meager, paying maybe twenty pounds a year, along with this cabin, produce from the home farm, and what he can take from the woods. There is barely enough here for one man and is thoroughly unsuited to keeping a wife, let alone three little ones.

Understanding the Tomkinses’ poverty, Elizabeth appreciated the gift of tea as if from the Magi’s trunks. She sat up, retrieved the cup and saucer, and leaned back against the wall to enjoy the drink’s fragrance.[2]

Her peaceful reverie was shattered as the door slammed open.

Two men, one laden with firewood and the other hauling water buckets, shouldered their way into the room.

Although a shawl muffled his head, Darcy was instantly recognizable.

The snow piled atop his greatcoat dropped onto the porch’s floorboards, reacting to his comical foot-to-foot shaking dance beyond the threshold.

A few icy remnants dangled from wool’s fuzz.

A snow-caked cape wrapped his hatless companion.

This man lowered the buckets, carefully removed his wrap, rolled it snowy side in, and limped past Darcy, who was filling the wood box.

Unlatching a rear door, the man opened the blanket and shook it into the dark passage that, by the warm fug flowing in, accessed an outbuilding, likely the stable.

Doors closed, the two men sought out their ladies.

Darcy stripped off his gloves and knelt on the rough-hewn planks by the head of the bed.

He removed the saucer and cup from Elizabeth’s hands before capturing them in his own, chilled despite his gloves.

“Elizabeth, dearest, are you well? I have been fearful that the time I took to fetch Tomkins would be your undoing.

“Remember how long it took you to recover after Ben…”

And, dear man, are you impervious to a blizzard?

Your concern for your dependents—voluntary or not—is one of your most endearing—and infuriating—traits.

Gently, though, Lizzy, Will seeks to present himself as invulnerable, yet, like a diamond of the first water beneath a cleaving tool, one slip and worthless shards fly everywhere.

Throat soothed, Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, Will, rest restored me. As you can see, Mrs. Tomkins has me bundled like a plump coney in my winter burrow. The tea was helpful.