Mr. Darcy's Great Escape

by Marsha Altman

  “What?”

  “The magic potion. It makes you fall in love. Why can’t it make you do other things?”

  “Can it fix me?” Darcy asked.

  “Do you want to be fixed?”

  In which direction? Did he want to see clearly or not at all? “I’m so happy here, Master Fitzwilliam,” his Uncle Gregory said. “Your father is not a bad man. Your grandfather was not a bad man. The Darcys are not bad men. I am here of my own free will. Nobody expects anything of me. No one can hurt me unless I let them. Do you know what it is to be safe and warm, nephew? I bet you don’t.”

  It would have been so much easier to deal with if Darcy could dismiss it. His uncle was a madman. Everything he said was to be immediately dismissed.

  “Do you have friends, nephew?”

  “I have George.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  Darcy had said yes. He had been wrong. His uncle had been right.

  “You didn’t answer me,” said Dr. Maddox, seamlessly back in. “You have to answer me.”

  “I don’t have to do anything!”

  “Yes, you do. You have to be a gentleman, whatever that means. You have to be a father and a friend and go outside and talk to people who don’t like you, don’t want to know you, only like you for your money and your looks.”

  He shivered. “Elizabeth loves me, and she doesn’t like my money.”

  “Then you must be the last man in the world, because that’s the person she said she could be prevailed upon to marry, no? You’re all alone.”

  “I have you.”

  “Seriously, Darcy. Who could I be? Who would marry Caroline Bingley? Not even a poor man with bad eyesight.”

  “True.” Darcy flinched. “Wait, then why am I in Austria?”

  “Are you in Austria?”

  He opened his eyes. He liked his bedchamber. It was small and filled with books, so they were right there for him. He didn’t have to get up and go past all the servants and go to the library, past cooks and servants who would chat and make fun of their master. He liked that it was small—secure. No one could attack him here. There was no room.

  It was a wonderful day but that was outside, and he could see perfectly well from inside, thank you very much. He could see the ocean, and he could hear it if he opened the window, but he didn’t like opening the window and letting everything in. He didn’t even open his door much.

  “Mr. Darcy, what are you doing there?”

  He was in the hallway. He had gotten up and gone to the hallway. He must have been lost. Silly Darcy, to get lost in such a small, confined place. He was more amused at himself when he smiled at Nurse. “Sorry, sorry.”

  “Do you want to shave today?”

  Why couldn’t he be the angry barbarian? Then he would have to run around and hurt people. He didn’t want to hurt people; he wanted to be a gentle man. On the Isle of Man. There, it was especially important. On the other hand, he didn’t like the blade in anyone else’s hands, and he was not equipped to shave himself. He knew how to balance a ledger or handle a tenant dispute, but not how to shave himself. What a useless man a landlord is. “No, I think I’ll let it grow.”

  Besides, it was so cold, and the beard was keeping him warm. Or it was keeping his cheeks warm. He didn’t like being cold. He liked being safe and warm. He laughed again; he didn’t know why.

  “Maddox,” he said, “do you think our ancestors grew beards to keep their faces warm?”

  No response from Dr. Maddox. He was just a lump on the straw pile, covered by the thin blanket.

  He turned back to his room, full of books and lacking space. There was a knock on the door. Funny, he thought it was open, and a young George Wickham looked up at him, not the third but the second. Or was it the first and not the second? Who was George Wickham—son of the steward George Wickham or the master Geoffrey Darcy? Either way, there he was, his playmate, his friend and enemy at the same time, convenient or not. He called him “little” because he was smaller than him, a boy of fifteen, not fully grown into his own skin yet.

  “My father sent me.”

  “Which one?”

  “He said I should learn from you.”

  “That’s all well and good,” Darcy said, sitting at his desk. “What am I supposed to teach you?”

  “I’m supposed to learn how to not be like you.”

  He could not decide whether to be offended or not. “How so?”

  “Because you’re a madman. The master of Pemberley has to be a gentleman.”

  “I’m not sure there’s a difference.”

  George frowned. “Now you’re scaring me.”

  “Am I really? Or are you just amused? Or are you scared because you understand?” Darcy said, pointing to his own chest. “There’s a place inside of you that’s dark. We all have it, the three of us, our little family heritage. There’s a dark place and you can never go there, even though it’s safe there because no one else can get there. It’s inside you. You have a last resort. You have a trap door. You only have to use it.”

  “Uncle—”

  “You know what I’m saying, don’t you?” Darcy stood up, towering over young George. “You understand me exactly. But you have to ignore it. Father will be so upset if you don’t. You have to be a gentleman. You have to go to balls and make friends and make female friends and find one to make more little Darcys, all with a little black seed inside them. You just can’t water it and let it grow, or it will consume you.” He grabbed George and shook him. “That’s what I’m supposed to say. That’s what Father wants me to say. You have to be one thing. You can’t be the other. You have to keep the darkness inside you. You have to put it away where you can’t see it. George? George, why are you crying?”

  George pointed to Grégoire, in his grey novice robes, even younger than him. “He gets to go away. You get to go away.”

  “Yes, he’s very lucky, isn’t he?” Darcy turned to Grégoire. “What do you have to say to that?”

  “I have given my life to God.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous; perfectly sensible people can care about God without hiding in a monastery. We’re not mindless medieval people.”

  “I don’t see you not hiding.”

  Darcy turned back to his charge, young George Wickham, son of the steward and son of Geoffrey Darcy at the same time. “So go out and make friends. You get people, George. I can’t do that. I don’t have those skills. I don’t want them. Get as many people as you can.”

  “Try not to get your own sister,” Grégoire said, and crossed himself. “You know, by accident. We assume.”

  Darcy laughed. “We assume.” It really was very funny. He laughed so hard, and George covered his ears. He laughed so hard, and in came that cold air, and it hurt his chest. When he coughed up, it was black. The darkness had grown inside him, and now it was practically pouring out of him in any way it could. Who knew the seed was in his lungs? It stopped being funny when it started hurting. His chest hurt. His lungs hurt. His throat hurt. His head hurt. He was tired and cold and exhausted from coughing. Exhausted from coughing.

  “Maddox,” he said. “I don’t think I’m well. I think you should look at this.”

  Dr. Maddox did not respond.

  “Seriously. Doctor! How many times did I tell you not to nod off while I’m talking?”

  Darcy tried to sit up, but he needed to hold on to the bars to do it. His attempt to stand was futile; his legs buckled from the strain of disuse, and he hit not the straw but the dirt ground, with the sound of his leg iron rattling. He groaned.

  “…What?” Finally, Daniel Maddox stirred, looking over his shoulder. He was a mass of black hair, so frizzy. If his beard were longer, he would look like a pirate. “Darcy? Are you all right?”

  “No, but I don’t want any of your poisons, Doctor, thank you very
much.”

  Dr. Maddox sat up. “What?” He was squinting. He wiped his eyes and yawned. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “We were talking—”

  “When? Yesterday?” Dr. Maddox positioned himself against the wall. He had not stood for some time as well. “When—what were we talking about?”

  “You liar, you didn’t mark the wall!”

  “Fifty-four days, Darcy.” He yawned again, as if he was waking up. “Well, fifty-five now. I really don’t know. It is more of a guess.”

  “I could smash your head in,” Darcy said, “but then I wouldn’t be a very gentle man, would I?”

  But Dr. Maddox was frowning. Dr. Maddox did not find his joke very funny. He was trying to see him in the very dim light from the one torch outside their cell. “Look, Darcy, I…” He stopped, a halt in his thinking. Like he had just woken up. But they had been talking! “Listen, if you want, you can see for yourself. You can see from there better than I can see from here.”

  Dr. Maddox pointed to the wall. The marks were back. They hadn’t been there before, and they were there now. Dr. Maddox had been awake before, and now he had only been asleep.

  They were there, plain as day.

  Darcy couldn’t say anything. Nothing came to him.

  “Darcy,” Dr. Maddox said with a heavy sigh and his “doctor” voice, “last time we spoke, we were trying to remember the end of The Knight’s Tale. Then I nodded off. Whatever else you said, I’m sorry, but I didn’t hear.” He was still frowning. “Are you all right?”

  Darcy was stupefied; nothing came to him. He was out in the open again. He suddenly remembered he was not comfortable around people, and Dr. Maddox was a person.

  “Darcy?”

  Darcy shook his head. His brown hair, never trimmed particularly short, was even longer now, and swayed when he moved his head. His beard hid him, but not enough. He could not hide from that uncomfortable stare, even if the man delivering the stare couldn’t see him. It didn’t help. “Uncle Gregory said he was happy.”

  “He was a sick man, Darcy. You said so yourself. Or, precisely, it was well-implied.” He said even more formally, “Mr. Darcy, I don’t think you’re well.”

  Darcy couldn’t speak. All he could do was nod.

  Chapter 17

  Passage into Darkness

  “Do we have any real idea of where we’re going?”

  Trust it to Caroline Maddox to point out the obvious. “No,” Lord Matlock said, sitting beside the two ladies at the front of the wagon. Grégoire sat inside it, next to the reliquary buried under blankets and hay and supplies. “None whatsoever. Brother Grégoire?”

  “God will light our path,” Grégoire said. “Look to your left.”

  “That’s not God,” Fitzwilliam said, readying his gun as a man with a lantern stumbled out of the woods. The man dropped his lantern and raised his rifle.

  “Give me your horses,” he said in French. Even with his heavy overcoat, torn and bloodied, he was still recognizable as a soldier with his white pants and red colors on his heavy hat. “Just one, please!”

  “Stay where you are,” Fitzwilliam shouted as he brought the wagon to a halt. He spoke French, and even though he was not dressed as a soldier, his accent made his nationality enough. “Or I’ll shoot.”

  The soldier held his rifle up but had not the strength to aim it properly before he collapsed in the snow, his rifle firing aimlessly. It was Grégoire, of course, who leapt senselessly out of the wagon and landed in the snow, his heavy robes caked in white powder as he lifted up the man and began dragging him back to the wagon. “Lord Matlock…”

  “For God’s sake, are we meant to carry every man we encounter, living or dead?” Fitzwilliam said with the remains of his good humor. There was no use trying to talk Grégoire out of his Good Samaritan habits, not while it was this cold and dark. They needed to find an inn, but for the moment, settled on dragging the soldier into the wagon.

  “He’s senseless,” Elizabeth said in English.

  “Mrs. Maddox, will you please hand me the flask from the front?” Grégoire asked, and she passed it to him wordlessly. “Please, monsieur, drink,” he said in French, pressing the open end to the soldier, who eventually opened his eyes and drank. Fitzwilliam started up the horses again, and after some time, the soldier came to his senses, after much drink.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To Transylvania. East.”

  “No!” he shouted weakly, attempting to sit up in the moving cart. “Let me off! I can’t go back there!”

  “Please, monsieur, stay still,” Grégoire said, putting his hand on the soldier’s shoulder. “You do not have to travel all the way but you cannot be out here, alone, in this weather.”

  “He’s a deserter,” Fitzwilliam said in English from up front.

  “Where are you taking me?” the soldier asked, his alarm rising.

  “We are only traveling through on some personal business,” Grégoire said to him in French. “I’m sorry, but we can’t give you one of our horses.” He implored the soldier to drink more, but was refused. “What is your name?”

  “Aubin.”

  “Like the saint,” Grégoire said. “I am Brother Grégoire. These people are my relatives, and sadly, we are on our way east. When it is safe, you can part from us.”

  “You were fleeing Russia?” Caroline asked in French.

  Aubin looked sideways at her, suspiciously, then back at Grégoire in front of him. “Yes. I am a deserter. I was freezing to death. Can you blame me?”

  “It is not my place to judge anyone,” Grégoire said. “Is there an inn nearby, or some sort of town? We need shelter as badly as you do.”

  “There is—to the north, about five miles, an inn. I was staying there, but I had nothing to pay them, so I had to leave. And I have to get home—or away from Russia.” He did, after a bit, take another nip. “Are you really a monk?”

  “Yes.” Grégoire removed his hat to reveal his tonsure.

  “French?”

  “Originally, yes.”

  “Then what in the hell are you doing with a bunch of Englishmen in Austria?”

  “My brother is in Transylvania,” Grégoire said. “It is complicated. Is that near here? Are you familiar with the geography?”

  Aubin looked hesitant to reveal more of his identity. “I passed through it—briefly, before my horse gave out from the cold. It wasn’t my horse. I took it from the stocks. It was the only way to make it through the mountains—the Carpathians.” He shook his head. “I am a voltigeur.”

  “A skirmisher,” Fitzwilliam said to Elizabeth and Caroline in English.

  “We were sent south—through Austria—but it was too cold. I’m from the south of France; so was most of my company. First we started getting colds; then we started dying. We were not prepared. We defeated ourselves.”

  “The folly of man,” Grégoire said sympathetically. “Will you show us the way to this inn?”

  Aubin nodded.

  It was not far. The night was indeed getting colder, even with all of the layers they had piled on before leaving Munich; their teeth were all chattering when they arrived. Aubin would not enter. He wanted to keep going on his journey.

  “Elizabeth,” Grégoire begged, “please lend me some coins. I will pay you back.”

  “For what?”

  “I am going to buy this man a horse. It won’t cost much. What is a horse worth in this season?”

  She dropped a few coins in his gloved hand. “Honestly, I would be surprised if you didn’t do something ridiculously charitable.”

  Grégoire quickly purchased the horse from the tavern owner and handed the reins to a confused Aubin, who thanked him profusely before disappearing into the night.

  “Will he make it?” Caroline whispered skeptically to Fi
tzwilliam.

  “It’s best not to speculate on such things,” was all he said as they entered the tavern. Inside they found they were the only patrons, and that the owner and his wife spoke only broken German and no French. Their first language was Romanian, which Grégoire recognized but could not speak. As his hosts prepared a meal, Grégoire had words with the owner, showing him the seal on the letter Caroline had received from the count holding Dr. Maddox and Darcy hostage. There was much talking and nodding in complex, accented German before Grégoire returned to the table. Before him was some kind of soup, filled with floating chunks of beef bones and sour cream. Caroline was looking hesitantly at her own bowl, and Lord Matlock was doing the same, while gnawing on some extremely buttery bread, but Elizabeth had already finished hers. “What did he say?”

  “The man we’re looking for is Count Vladimir Agnita, who lives in the county of Sibiu,” he said, crossing himself before taking up his own spoon. “It is only two days’ journey from here, if the weather holds out. If it snows—which it most likely will—then maybe three or four.”

  “But we don’t want to go knocking on his door,” Elizabeth said, as the wife of the owner served her another helping, and she began to devour it.

  “No,” Caroline said, finally resigning herself to her own food, only with a healthy helping of whatever was in her wooden cup.

  “The innkeeper says that this count is not well-liked by the local princes. One of them even stands to inherit his lands when he dies, his brother-in-law, a Count Olaf .” He bit off some of the bread, dipping it in the stew. “The owner recommends we see this man, also in Sibiu.”

  “The enemy of our enemy is our friend,” Fitzwilliam said. “Hopefully it will be so.”

  After eating many small dishes that none of them could identify, but that all seemed to contain a lot of butter and cream, and drinking what seemed to be some kind of orange liquor, they were all ready to retire. Fitzwilliam, ever the vigilant soldier, promised to stay up guarding their doors, but his rosy cheeks said something else.

  A few hours later, as Elizabeth crept out to empty her chamber pot, she found him asleep in the hallway, his gun at his side. When she was done with her business, she began to drag him back to his room, only to find helping hands. “Grégoire—”