Chapter 1 1066-1651 #2
Edward Darcy crouched in the half-finished recess behind the west library fireplace, his hands dusty, his nails cracked, the weight of lineage and danger pressing on him from both sides.
The mason beside him said nothing—he had been paid well for his silence, more than enough to see his crippled son apprenticed in Matlock. The man’s tools whispered against the stone, each chisel tap deliberate, controlled, as though the sound itself might betray them.
Above them, the great manor of Pemberley slept on.
It had stood since the reign of Henry II, rebuilt and fortified during the Plantagenet wars, refined by generations of D’Arcys—now Darcys. The name had softened over time, but not the spine.
The true strength of the house now lay not in its stones but in its silences.
Edward rose slowly, brushing dust from his breeches as he inspected the niche. Narrow, but sufficient. A grown man could kneel upright within it. And with the false wall returned—hinged on a hidden pivot and plastered over—the hearth would show nothing.
“Good,” he murmured.
The mason nodded once and returned to smoothing the interior stone.
Edward crossed to the window and opened one of the tall casements, letting the sharp October air wash in.
Outside, the hills were black with mist, and only the faint orange glow from the stable lanterns showed that any life remained awake.
From far off, a dog barked. Somewhere near the ridge, an owl cried out.
No hoofbeats.
Not tonight.
He closed the window again and exhaled slowly. His breath fogged the cold glass.
Tomorrow, a man would come riding from London. A Jesuit. A priest.
The children would be told to stay upstairs. The servants had already been paid, and the youngest dismissed on some pretense. The old nursemaid—who still kept her rosary hidden beneath her skirts—had promised to sing hymns while the secret mass was held below.
Edward glanced at the far shelf, where his son’s primer lay open. The letters inside were printed in Latin and in English. Both languages had their place. Both had their danger.
He had taught William and Thomas to cross themselves silently. His daughter Anne whispered her Pater Noster in the dark before sleep.
No chanting. No bells. No kneeling in daylight.
And never—never—outside the house.
They were children of England, yes.
But more than that, they were Darcys.
By the time the hearth was restored, dawn was breaking.
Edward stood alone in the library, soot still under his fingernails, a faint line of plaster dust on his collar. The fire had been relit. No one entering would see anything but a tidy room—books, maps, the dull sheen of polished oak.
But he knew. As did God.
Behind the fire, a silence waited.
A holy silence.
And it gave him strength so that when the soldiers came riding past later that week, he was not afraid.
A patrol from the north, two men on horseback. One bore a halberd and the other wore a battered helmet, but they did not turn through the gates. They paused, looked up the long drive, and moved on.
Edward stood in the upstairs window and watched them go.
He did not flinch.
That evening, the family gathered for supper. Roast goose, boiled apples, bread thick with lard. The children squabbled quietly over the best portions, and Anne dropped a spoon, which clattered loudly before silence returned.
Afterward, as the servants cleared the table, Edward beckoned them all into the library.
He shut the door.
Then, his hands trembling with anticipation, he knelt by the hearth and pressed a hidden latch beneath the andiron. The wall gave way—just slightly.
The children crowded close.
“Is that where the priest will go?” Thomas whispered.
Edward nodded. “Only if needed.”
“Will we go there, too?”
“No. You will be safe upstairs.”
“But he will not,” William said, staring at the narrow dark.
“No,” Edward agreed, “but God will be with him.”
He paused, and then knelt fully, beckoning them closer.
“Now. Say it with me, as we practiced.”`
And in a nation where prayers could cost a man his life, the children of Pemberley lifted their voices in the barest of whispers:
Credo in Deum Patrem omnipoténtem…
∞∞∞
1651 — Court of Whitehall
The hall stank of sweat, wax, and slow betrayal.
Twenty-year-old Peter Darcy stood near the back of the room, his fine cloak itching at his neck, his jaw clenched so tightly he feared it might crack.
The court was packed with landowners—old families, most of them, summoned by writ to hear His Majesty's latest offer of clemency. Or, more precisely, submission.
The King’s voice echoed off the stone walls, warm as syrup, cold as steel beneath.
He was in high spirits. The rebellion was crushed.
The Parliamentarians defeated. The traitor king dead.
And now, in this new age of restoration, Charles II was determined to secure his throne by binding his nobles to him with lands, flattery—and more oaths of fealty.
Peter’s eyes flicked toward the dais where the names were being called.
“Richard Darcy of Pemberley,” the herald intoned.
Peter’s father stepped forward, and the younger man watched with a knot in his gut.
Richard’s shoulders were still square, his hair still dark, but his movements had grown heavier in recent years.
Not from age, but from the weight of choosing safety over conviction repeatedly during the years of the civil war.
The moment Richard reached the table, the king leaned forward with a gleam of amusement.
“Ah, the loyal gentleman from Derbyshire. A fine estate. I have heard much of Pemberley. And I believe your new affirmation brings it into even better standing.”
The parchment was laid out on the table: an oath of fealty not only to the crown, but to the newly reformed Church of England. A public, deliberate, irrevocable renunciation of Catholic faith.
Peter held his breath.
His father took the pen without hesitation.
He signed his name with a steady hand, ending with a flourish and a grin.
Peter flinched, as though struck.
The boy who knelt beside his grandmother to recite Latin prayers… who watched his maiden aunt tend to the secret altar behind the hearth… who listened to tales of ancestors hiding priests behind panels and chimney walls—that boy died a little.
He had known this was coming. He had ridden with his father to Whitehall that very morning. But now, standing among nobles draped in silks and smug smiles, he felt filthier than if he had crawled through gutters.
Father is betraying everything our ancestors held dear—for what? Money? Thirty pieces of silver.
“And now,” the king said, beaming, “a reward for fidelity.”
Another name was called.
“Henry Fitzwilliam.”
Peter turned as the Fitzwilliam heir, their nearest neighbor, strode forward with all the pomp of a peacock in spring. The man’s doublet gleamed; his lace was a foot thick. His family had been whispering at court for years, offering coin, secrets, and men.
“For service to the crown and loyalty in these troubled times,” the herald announced, “Henry Fitzwilliam is raised to the peerage, as Earl of Matlock.”
Applause rang out.
Peter’s stomach turned.
He stared down at his gloves, seeing the embroidery his grandmother had stitched along the cuff—tiny golden crosses barely visible. A quiet act of rebellion. A legacy no crown could erase.
“One day,” the King said to Richard Darcy as the room quieted, “perhaps you too shall be ennobled, should your loyalty remain constant.”
Peter’s breath came short. His heart pounded—not with pride, but with fury. He looked at the back of his father’s bowed head and felt cold all the way through.
Never, he thought. Not from a king who mocks God’s law. Not from a throne built on broken altars. I will keep my land—but I will not soil my soul.
He did not applaud. He did not smile. When he returned home to Pemberley that week, he waited…
Waited for two long years until his father died, and Pemberley was Peter’s to do with as he wished.
His father’s body was not yet even when the ground when Peter ordered the priest’s hole behind the library hearth to be rebuilt and reinforced.
Not for priests. Not yet.
But for memory.
And for resolve.
Never again shall the Darcy line forsake their God and their religion, Peter vowed.