Elizabeth's Refuge

by Timothy Underwood

  This morning was a sunny bright day, though the air still felt thin and cold whenever one stood in the shade. Unfortunately it was still cold enough that Elizabeth needed to wear a heavy coat yet. There had been no rain for the previous several days, so there was little of the horse droppings turned into a particularly grotesque mud by the rain waiting to be thrown up by the passing carriages careening loudly through the city center.

  They walked down the Rue de Richelieu, until they reached the area around the Palace of the Louvre and the Tuileries. There the couple paused to admire the large and fine triumphal arch Napoleon built there to celebrate his victory at Austerlitz.

  They also admired the Palace of the Tuileries where twenty years prior the famous battle between the king’s regiment of Swiss guards and the forces of the National Assembly had occurred, and the Swiss guards had been killed almost to a man following their defeat.

  “I can imagine those proudly uniformed men standing there, shouting refusal to the offer to surrender.” Elizabeth shivered. “I wonder what went through their minds in such an extremity.”

  “They knew their duty to their king, and they fulfilled it,” Darcy replied, admiringly.

  The palace was at present the residence of King Louis XVIII. After a moment’s discussion, wishing to enjoy the sunny morning, they refrained from inquiring of the staff if they might be given a tour of the public rooms of the palace.

  Directly adjacent to the Palace of the Tuileries was the large Palace of the Louvre, and the two palaces together formed a massive C. For Elizabeth the Museum du Roi in the Louvre was a far greater draw than seeing that portion of a royal residence which the general public might visit.

  They resisted the pull of famed art — though only for the moment, Elizabeth knew she soon would return to admire all the paintings in the great gallery of the Louvre — and instead walked through a passageway built into the Palace of the Louvre, and out to the bank of the Seine.

  There was a busy traffic of carriages and street vendors along this area, and the river rushed merrily along lightly murmuring. Many bridges crossed the river, all filled with traffic.

  Elizabeth had command of the guidebook, and Darcy had declared that he was in her hands today in determining which way to go. She looked both directions and then studied the map before her. The choice was whether to go east along the riverbank, and reach shortly the Garden of the Tuileries, or to go to the west, and cross to the Île de la Cité, which was, according to the guidebook, the oldest inhabited part of the city.

  The island contained a great many churches, most notably the Cathedral of the Notre Dame, which the guidebook insisted was well worth looking upon, and the tourist ought, it said, inquire of the doorman to be admitted in to admire the paintings.

  However the promise of a garden which looked upon their map to be similar in size to St. James’s Park, though far smaller than Hyde Park, won Elizabeth’s preference.

  She quickly grew disillusioned though with the garden. The bulk of land was made up of squares of evenly ordered trees trimmed so that the branches and leaves did not grow low enough for even Mr. Darcy to ever need to duck his head, and the tops had been trimmed so that they were all of an even size and did not interfere with each other.

  All this order and unnatural attempt at perfection surrounded several giant ponds whose borders were made up of giant circles of concrete, without any irregularity. “This is the French mode of formal design at its very worst!”

  Darcy laughingly replied, “We are in a royal garden in the center of France, what else could you expect?”

  “I have never seen a place of such an artificial appearance, with such false adornment,” Elizabeth replied heatedly. “I have never seen a park where nature has been permitted to do less and where natural beauty has been so much counteracted by awkward taste.”

  Darcy laughed. “I like to see you so passionately determined upon a point — especially when it is not a passionate determination against me.”

  Elizabeth smiled brilliantly at him, her anger forgotten for a moment. “You really do like to see me in such a mode?”

  “Exceedingly well, it brings out the fine color in your eyes, and the sparkles in your cheeks, and makes your dewy skin to glow yet brighter. I do dearly love to see you, in all your modes and expressions.”

  He took her in his arms and swung her around, giggling.

  “Ah, well in that case,” Elizabeth said smilingly to Darcy, still leaning against him with her arms around his neck, and feeling her breasts pressed against his muscular chest. “In that case I must rage against many more gardens for your entertainment.”

  “Not so bad, I think.” Darcy replied, “Perhaps if we saw it in summer, or in spring, with all the flowers abloom, and the full growth of leaves on the trees. I believe the smell might be quite delightful.”

  “It would yet be hideous. Designed by a geometer! Each tree the same distance from every other tree, in a square grid. When I ask you, when, whilst wandering in a forest, have you ever encountered trees which grow in a square grid?”

  “You shall like my estate at Pemberley exceedingly well — the philosophy of design there was entirely the opposite of here.”

  Elizabeth smiled at him. “Do you really think — I do hope one day I can return to our home, and see it with you.”

  “I as well, but even if that day of safety never arrives, I would far rather live in exile with you than in Pemberley itself without you.”

  Arm in arm they walked to the end of the park.

  The section on the far side from the Tuileries palace, while still not to Elizabeth’s taste, permitted more of irregularity. Then they crossed the street, and walked back along the high embankment built up to contain the flow of the Seine towards the bridge at Pont Neuf which was the first place they could cross over to the island.

  The Île de la Cité was filled with tight packed streets, even tighter than the Rue de Richelieu, and the tall buildings occluded the sun, and left Elizabeth and Darcy to shiver at the sudden return of winter, but when they had walked through the whole island, they found on the far side a large square with the large Cathedral on one side of it.

  They joined some worshippers, and a fair number of other tourists, some English, but also German and Italian, and possibly French extraction inside. At least Elizabeth believed that several of the people talking too loudly for the interior of a church in French while pointing eagerly at the paintings and the beautiful stained glass ceiling had more interest in the artistry of the place than its value as a location for sanctified Papist worship.

  The interior of the great cathedral took Elizabeth’s breath away with a sense of the sublime. The late morning sun streamed through the great circular stained glass windows.

  There were many statues and tombs with effigies, and there were fine religious paintings with scenes from the life of Christ, and from the lives of the Catholic saints. And Elizabeth loved the fine altarpiece in the center of the building, and the endless wooden lines of pews.

  They had the opportunity to climb to the top of the bell tower, and see the entire city from that height, which was quite as impressive of a sight as the view from the dome of St. Paul’s or that from the top of the monument to the Great Fire in London.

  “An exceptional building,” Darcy proclaimed, when they had returned to the ground and left the great cathedral, and turned to looked back at it. “The equal of St. Paul’s, in size and beauty, though entirely different in style.”

  “No, no! Far superior,” Elizabeth replied, smiling at her husband. “Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece has nothing to it.”

  “You would prefer the Gothic style of flying buttresses and tall bell towers to the more prosaic, and I daresay practical, large dome of St. Paul’s.”

  “Can you not see the romance in those bell towers? In every bit of statuary and every bas-relief decoration of that building? Can you not see with your mind the endless generations of monks ringing those massive b
ells — there is some great story about this building, which only awaits the proper poet to tell it.”

  “It would serve you right if one day someone writes a great novel about the cathedral.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “The story I imagine would take a poet to write, even if he told the story in prose.”

  “Does it make up for the ugliness of the park, the beauty of the cathedral?”

  “It is more than passing strange to me, how they can build a church, a monument to their saints, which is of such surpassing beauty, and yet make their gardens so ugly.”

  “They both are evenly structured and balanced in their core, but a well-balanced building is a thing of beauty, while well-balanced nature misses the purpose of nature, with is profusion, and freedom.”

  “No, no, there is enormous irregularity in the cathedral, and that is the source of the beauty. I believe the solution to my mystery is different. This was produced in the so called dark ages, before the rule in France was regular and orderly, under those weak kings that we bashed about at Agincourt, and Crecy and Poitiers. But then came the age of their absolute monarchs and it was they who designed the Louvre and the Tuileries, and the ugly regularity and order of the whole. This building reflects a weaker, happier, more human time. And the Tuileries reflects the tyranny — ah but I ought not say that here. It reflects the nature of modern king, and whatever virtues such a king may provide, with it is a loss of real beauty; real and human beauty.”

  “And that is why England shall always be superior to France, in fundamentals,” Darcy said laughing.

  “That is your interpretation, not mine!”

  They were somewhat tired of being continuously on foot by this point, and they had heard many good reports of the restaurateurs and the cafes in the Palais Royal, which in any case was close by their apartments.

  Darcy hailed a fiacre which took them back across the Seine, and then they trundled through the crowded streets of Paris up to the entrance to that remarkable structure.

  The one part of the Palais Royal was a colonnaded building surrounding a large garden with fountains and trees arranged again in far too much order for Elizabeth’s taste. Along three of the sides there were shops and cafes set along the galleries covered by the colonnades.

  The remarkable part of the building was on the fourth side. There was a double line of columns set as far apart as a road of moderate width, with a wood structure covering the whole, and a massive number of shops filled with books, dresses, fine jewelry and all other manner of goods on either side. There were large numbers of restaurants fine enough to even appease Darcy’s taste.

  Though the wind could blow into the open aired structure it was comparably comfortable inside, much warmer than the air outside, and the entire hall was packed with finely dressed Parisians promenading or shopping.

  Elizabeth and Darcy found the fanciest appearing cafe along the first floor and took the private room upstairs in it where they could look down on the crowds pleasantly walking below. They ate an excellent repast, liberally seasoned with the tart and creamy sorrel sauce which the French tended to cook everything with.

  Later Elizabeth went into several shops at Darcy’s encouragement. She was measured by a dressmaker who had been recommended as being at the height of fashion.

  Silk ribbons, swathes of cloth, varieties of patterns, compliments from the madame who managed the shop, gloves and bonnets and hats, and shoes and boots, and clothes for every conceivable occasion, and one or two which Elizabeth was not quite prepared to conceive of.

  All a heady, delightful mix.

  After a while, Elizabeth began to believe she might be perhaps ordering too many dresses. However, at almost that moment Darcy came to the shop to ask after her, and his encouragement ensured she did order too many dresses.

  They then found another cafe in the Palais Royal where some very fine chess players had met to compete against each other, and they spent a tense hour watching two extraordinary games play out.

  That evening when they returned to their apartments, while they waited for supper, Darcy had his valet retrieve a travelling chess set from his bags for them to make an attempt to replicate the mighty contest they had witnessed in the cafe.

  The chess set was made of the finest marble, with exquisitely carved pieces, and as Darcy set out the pieces she admired it.

  “Unexpectedly heavy,” Elizabeth said smiling as she nearly dropped one of the smooth marble knights. “Such perfect carvings. And those tiny rubies in the eyes.” She eagerly turned the knight over and over, admiring the tiny lines, and little details, the way that you could feel the locks of the horse’s mane, the way that the grain of the marble was perfectly polished away. She carefully rubbed her finger over the horse’s nose before putting the almost ebony black piece back on the board Darcy had neatly arranged. “How many dozens of pounds did this set cost?”

  “I have no knowledge of that, as this set is… not quite an heirloom, but it was purchased by my father, and—”

  “I am very glad then,” Elizabeth interrupted with a laugh, “I did not drop the piece.”

  Darcy laughed in reply, and he tapped a pawn on Elizabeth’s side of the table. She liked how his hand waved just a few inches in front of her chest as he did so.

  “This one was replaced after Georgiana dropped it a few years ago, you can see how the color is not quite the same. And this piece,” he tapped another with his fingers brushing her fingers, “this bishop once fell, but only the head came off, and very neatly, so a craftsman glued the pieces together again in a cunning way, but,” he picked up the bishop and handed it to Elizabeth, “you can see the line if you hold up the piece right to the light. But he polished away the rough edge so that it is almost impossible to feel where the hole came.”

  She did so, and saw as he said. But what caught her eyes more was the giant bible held by the Bishop, looking as much like some witch’s grimoire as a holy book. There was a line of tiny words on the open pages. But the letters were too small for Elizabeth to read.

  “It’s from the gospel of Matthew. My father’s favorite passage. He gave the order to be carved so.”

  “How did the artist make such tiny scratches, and on a black surface?”

  “With difficulty, I would imagine.” Darcy shrugged. “I once studied the pieces under the lens of my microscope, and—”

  “Under the lens of your microscope, I imagine every boy has one.”

  “Your father did not? He always struck me as the sort of man who might have scientific interests and leanings. It is not so expensive to get a decent one. Papa believed it was most important I gain a thorough understanding of the modern scientists, and my tutor had written several notable papers and he was a member of the royal society.”

  “And your tutor was a member of the royal society?” Elizabeth grinned, looking at Darcy. So casually wealthy that like the wealthy always did, he hired the service of the most interesting and best persons. Of course she now was so wealthy herself.

  A microscope, Papa certainly could have afforded a microscope if the desire had crossed his mind, but a tutor who was a member of the royal society?

  Whatever the cost, such men had the opportunity to find more prominent patrons than Papa. “I think my father had a preference for the less modern. He put his money into antiquarian books in the main — and stars. We had a fine telescope.”

  “Ah. We also extensively purchased books. In such days as these I cannot countenance the neglect of a family library.” Darcy grinned boyishly as he picked up one of the delicately carved white pawns and settled it two blocks forward on the heavy marble board. “I sound quite conceited with that tone.”

  “Only a little,” Elizabeth replied. “But an advantage that accrues to the very wealthy is that they can both pursue antiquarian books and microscopes and scientific learning.”

  Elizabeth moved her own pawn, and Darcy made his move.

  “I do not think,” he said, “that I am so very r
ich. Do not get the idea that I am one of the greatest fortunes in the land. A great fortune, yes, but there are at least a hundred estates of greater extent than mine. I cannot compare to a duke for example. Or to a Rothchild.”

  “Merely to an earl?”

  “Merely to an earl.” Darcy quirked his lips, and his eyes twinkled.

  He picked up his bishop to move and then hesitated, frowning. He asked in a half embarrassed voice, “You have not played chess frequently of late, have you?”

  “What?” Elizabeth looked down at the board again, and at Darcy’s bishop, and at her king, who had already been checkmated through the passage she’d opened up by moving her pawn. She laughed and groaned. “Just like Papa used to do to me. I forgot that trick.”

  She laughed and pushed Darcy’s pawns back into their original spaces, enjoying how now it was her turn to brush her fingers against his. “That was merely a, ah—”

  “A practice round?”

  “Exactly! This was a round to warm the fingers up, so that we could safely move the heavy chess pieces. It does not count.”

  “Certainly not. Certainly not. One must exert great caution in lifting such heavy objects lest one injure oneself.”

  Darcy grinned at her and Elizabeth grinned back.

  They played several more games, all of which Elizabeth lost, but she got much better over the course of the games. That night, as she lay in bed with Darcy, Elizabeth said to him, “Though it is not England, I think this can be home for us, at least for the time.”

  “Yes,” Darcy whispered back, “I like Paris very much.”

  “Do you think… we should stay here for now, for a while?”

  “Yes,” Darcy kissed her and pulled her body against his. “We shall.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  On a fine day late in May, three months following the event which left him with a permanently bent nose, a great official of the government, second to the Earl of Liverpool, came to visit Lord Lachglass in his home in London where he yet remained for the season.