Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Darcy arrived at his London house without warning anyone of his coming. The servant had scarcely time to register who stood before him as Darcy stepped inside, his coat still fastened, his gloves carried loose in one hand.
“Sir! Mr Darcy,” the footman said, recovering himself. “We were not apprised—”
“Has a parcel arrived from Pemberley?” Darcy asked.
The man hesitated, caught between duty and recollection. “Yes, sir. Yesterday afternoon. Miss Darcy’s hand was upon it.”
Darcy inclined his head once. “Where is it?”
“In your study, sir. I thought—”
“That will do. Will you see Brutus walked and settled, please?”
The footman’s eyes dropped to the massive dog standing at Darcy’s side. “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.” Darcy went toward the study without further explanation. The house lay quiet in the manner of a place only partially occupied, its rooms kept in order rather than use. The sound of his passage echoed like a whisper of empty spaces.
The study was as he had left it. The desk stood cleared. The chair was drawn in. No fire had been laid. Upon the table, precisely centred, rested a brown-paper parcel tied with twine.
Darcy closed the door behind him. He set aside his gloves, drew out his knife, and cut the string.
The paper fell back to reveal the book beneath—always smaller than memory suggested, but heavier in the hand, its leather darkened and worn smooth at the edges, the spine bearing the marks of frequent consultation.
Rev. Josias Harrowe.
1605. Revised in 1769.
The pages were thick and irregular, the margins crowded with a careful, persistent hand. Lines had been corrected, words altered, phrases reconsidered and set down anew. This was not a fair copy. It was a working one.
He read standing, the book resting against the desk.
The bell rang somewhere in the house—a summons from the kitchen no doubt. Darcy’s stomach rumbled in reply, but he scarcely looked up.
The ballad—the book contained many, but there was only one that interested him—did not announce itself. It began without flourish, as though assuming the reader’s patience. The beginning, he knew like his own heart, but this time, he heard it in her voice.
When Avalon in mist was bound,
And noble steel undone,
The thorn abid upon that ground
Till reckoning were begun.
Darcy read more slowly after that, his attention drawn not only to the verse but to the notes that flanked it. Corrections had been made with care, not to beautify the language but to attempt to explain it.
His eyes lingered there. This… this was the one that came directly after Elizabeth Bennet’s recitation.
The knight who swore to keep her safe
He paused. The word “swore” was underlined in the margin, once, firmly. A later hand had added a notation beside it, smaller, more cramped, but it was too smudged to be legible.
Darcy turned the page.
Came late upon the fen.
Late.
Not absent. Not faithless. Late.
His fingers rested against the paper as though it might answer him if he only stared long enough.
In his stead, the silence fell.
Silence? Not death. Not ruin. Silence—an absence that remained.
On field and hill and glen.
Only the word “Where?” and a question mark in the margin.
A voice sounded beyond the door, lowered, cautious. Someone spoke his name, and a moment later, a tea cart was wheeled in. But the maid hesitated at the threshold, and Darcy heard the housekeeper advising her to just leave it there and not disturb the master further.
He read on.
Yet still the thorn unseen abides
Where river meets the lane;
And they who keep their plighted faith
Shall call her forth again.
The annotations grew denser toward the latter pages, as though Harrowe himself had begun to understand, too late, the shape of what he was translating. Words circled. Passages were reconsidered. One line bore three successive attempts at typesetting correction, none entirely satisfactory.
Darcy reached the end at last and remained where he was, the book open before him, his attention fixed not upon the page but upon the space just beyond it.
What lay before him was not explanation. It was corroboration without clarity—meaning dispersed across hands, centuries, and intentions, none of them sufficient alone. Harrowe had translated faithfully; that much was plain. But Harrowe had not resolved what he copied, and perhaps had not dared to.
Darcy moved around the desk and set the volume aside. The room felt smaller for having held it open so long. He stood for a moment, his hand resting against the back of the chair, and considered what remained to him.
If the ballad spoke truly, then memory alone could not answer this. If the records existed—as he had long suspected—then they would not be here. They would be in the keeping of someone who had guarded confusion as carefully as others guarded certainty.
He rang the bell.
When the servant appeared, Darcy was already reaching for his coat. “Have my carriage brought round at once,” he said. “I am going out. And tell Cook not to trouble herself over a formal supper. I will be late.”
“Yes, sir. Shall I send for some hot bricks or a basket?”
“No,” Darcy replied. “That will not be necessary where I am going.”
And with that, he left the study dark behind him, the questions he carried no longer waiting to be read, but answered—if they could be—only by those who had kept them alive.
Darcy was announced into his uncle’s study with less ceremony than usual, for the simple reason that Lord Matlock was already crossing the space before the servant had finished speaking his name.
“Darcy?” He looked genuinely startled. “I had a letter from you scarcely a week ago. I had thought you would be in Hertfordshire through Christmas.”
“So had I,” Darcy said, stopping just inside the room. “But circumstances dictated otherwise. Has there been any further word from Richard?”
Matlock did not answer at once. He turned back to the desk, drew a letter from beneath a folio, and held it there without unfolding it. “He has arrived safely.”
Darcy’s shoulders eased by a degree. “And?”
“And he writes… cautiously,” Matlock replied. “Which is unlike him.”
Darcy crossed the room. “But he is well? Not near any fighting?”
“So far as he says. He is quartered away from the line for the present. His concern is not the enemy.”
“So why the urgency? Does he detail why he was recalled?”
Matlock took up the letter again, unfolding it at last. “When he went on leave back in September, his superiors believed the season sufficiently provisioned. There were shortages, yes, but nothing beyond the army’s ability to manage. Arrangements were made accordingly.”
“And now?”
“And now,” Matlock said, “what was expected has not arrived.”
“Not at all?”
“Not where it was to have gone. Some shipments were delayed. Others diverted. A few were lost to weather. Nothing remarkable in isolation.”
“But enough, together, to strain what remains.”
“Enough to make winter planning uncertain.” Matlock hesitated. “Enough that they no longer trust their assumptions, and they wanted an experienced officer, with knowledge of the local resources, ready to hand.”
Darcy moved toward the window, then stopped short of it. “So, Richard has been asked to go from house to house, as it were, buying grain and meat for England’s soldiers.”
“They have not said so plainly,” Matlock replied, “but that is the substance of it. He has been asked to secure provisions by whatever means prove expedient. To smooth delays. To press local stewards. To make arrangements where arrangements have failed.”
Darcy scowled. “As though diligence might conjure stores that are not there.”
“As though influence might persuade the land to yield,” Matlock said. “He is to do what can be done quickly, without troubling London with causes.”
“And what does he report?”
Matlock unfolded the letter once more. “That some houses comply readily. Others cannot. Not from refusal, but from want. He writes of granaries already drawn down, of contracts fulfilled on paper and empty in fact. Of promises made in good faith that cannot now be kept.”
Darcy considered this. “Everywhere?”
“So far as the reports extend. Not ruin all at once, but sparse across regions that ought to sustain themselves. Stores drawn down faster than expected. Replacement slow, or insufficient, or absent altogether.”
“Then it is not a local failure.”
“No.”
“But neither is it sudden.”
“Not… precisely.” Matlock frowned. “The recognition of it has come rather unhappily, and it seems, by some surprise. But I daresay it has been gathering quietly—slowly enough that it might have been borne, had nothing else gone amiss.”
Darcy nodded. “And they have sent Richard to stave off the reckoning. This is not the first season in which provision has proved thinner than expected. Derbyshire has felt the strain for some months now, and we’d nothing held over from last year, either.”
Matlock inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Yes. My steward wrote to yours in September. At the time, it appeared no more than the ordinary consequence of an uneven yield—nothing to provoke alarm. But now, I understand, matters are somewhat worse than first believed.”
“I had word of the same while I was in Hertfordshire,” Darcy said.
“Enough to warrant grave concern. There is little to be had elsewhere, and Pemberley’s stores are the lowest they have been in ages.
No one, it seems, has anything to sell. But now, my steward reports having heard rumours to the contrary. ”
Matlock sat up straighter. “What rumours, Darcy have you heard?”
“It is no rumour, Uncle. I have seen it with my own eyes, in Hertfordshire.”
His uncle appeared taken aback. “So, it is true? Why, that is but half a day’s ride! How should we all not have known of it? Are you sure, Darcy?”