The Keeper- Mary Bennet's Extraordinary Journey

by Don Jacobson

  This commission from a newly minted land-owning gentleman whose estate could be found in rural Hertfordshire had been a challenge and opportunity. He did not know where Christopher Bennet got his money; whether from Barbadian sugar or as a result of having picked the right side in the Stuart family wars so recently concluded with what many had begun calling The Glorious Revolution. It did not matter to Gibbons. His only concern was to have a ready source of funds to give him the wherewithal to continue his efforts to combine science and occult much in the manner of his friend Isaac Newton. Newton’s recent postulations on the nature of the fabric of the universe and time had given Gibbons pause—and a mission to prove them possible.

  The wardrobe he was finishing would, he hoped, show that the clockwork universe Newton suggested could be set and controlled by those who rested upon its infinite sweep hands. Logically, Newton’s universe was controlled by mathematics and material. But, Gibbons also knew that Newton considered the spiritual—not religious—element, the old ways, to be an equally important, if less discernable, driving force long neglected during the 1600 years of Christian ascendancy. The coarse term magic seemed to insult the deep ruminations of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Chinese and Indians who postulated that Man could pierce that veil which separated him from the pathways transcending the limitations of time and space. But, if it was to be seen as mysterious, then magic could suffice until a better term came along to explain what he expected the wardrobe to do.

  

  Nearly a year ago, before he agreed to undertake the project, Gibbons had traveled to the relative wilds some 30 miles from the City to understand the setting in which the work would reside. Arriving by coach at the crossroads town of Meryton, he inquired of the location of Longbourn, Christopher Bennet’s estate. Told that it was but a brief walk from town, Gibbons set off down a narrow lane which cut between lines of oak and elm trees bowing overhead to join in a leafy canopy which cut the worst of the mid-summer heat. Off to his left he observed a hummock which the locals had told him was known as Oakham, upon which summit could still be found the remains of medieval fortifications placed there by some unknown lord seeking to protect his holdings. No doubt the view was commanding, although now, in 1691, more peaceful than in earlier days.

  His craftsman’s eye was arrested by the manor house that lay across a narrow lawn behind a simple iron gate that separated the graveled drive from the cart path upon which he stood. The two-story front was pleasantly overgrown with the native ivy giving the aspect a natural feel. The windows, paned with what surely could only be plate glass from de Nehou’s new factory in France, attested to the affluence of the estate’s master. The grounds were well kept and inviting. This was a gentleman’s home, not his status symbol.

  Gibbons passed through a small side gate and walked up to the front portico. He pulled the bell cord and asked to be shown through to Mr. Bennet. As the servant announced him into the library, Gibbons had a moment to see an unguarded Christopher Bennet leaning over a writing table of darkly stained English oak reading some documents. The man seemed one with the furniture; he himself tanned a nutmeg brown and powerfully built with neck and shoulders more suited for a stevedore than a man of leisure.

  Ah, a man who has made his fortune in trade perhaps as a merchant as willing to stow the casks of tea below decks as to drink it in a drawing room, Gibbons thought.

  Bennet looked up at the sound of his servant’s voice. He schooled his features to impassivity, but that quickly changed to pleasure as he recognized Gibbons’ name. Striding around the table he crossed to the craftsman and bowed with dignity.

  “Master Gibbons, it is a great honor to meet someone so accomplished and respected. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Christopher Bennet, late of the Honourable East India Company, and now master of Longbourn,” he stated.

  Gibbons, used to dealing with all of the upper strata of British society, from country gentry to blue bloods walking the corridors of Whitehall Palace, genially nodded back and replied in his Nederlander-accented English, “Ich, sir, am Grinling Gibbons, Master Cabinetmaker, commissioned to the Royal Houses of Orange and Stuart. I have come in response to your request that I consider undertaking a project on your behalf.”

  Bennet stood straighter, impressed by Gibbons’ connections.

  “I am somewhat surprised that you have traveled all this way to visit my home,” Bennet commented, “I imagine that people would come to you given your clientele.”

  Gibbons let out a large chuckle. “Ach, Mr. Bennet. While many seek Gibbons out, I choose only the few projects that interest me the most, ones that meet my immediate creative needs. And those people I visit to see if we are of a like mind.”

  “In fact, I once was approached by a princeling in line for some throne in the Holy Roman Empire. He was ein fop. I brought in two paintings and said to pick his favorite and I mine. If we agreed, I would consider his project. If we did not…no amount of gold would convince me to work for him.

  “Naturlijk, my time in his court was short,” Gibbons snorted.

  Bennet smiled at the image of the gnarled cabinetmaker facing down a silken-hosed preener. While Gibbons’ accent and manner were amusing, it was his big hands—long-fingered, almost delicate, better suited for the harpsichord or a great organ than a hammer and chisel—that captivated Bennet. These were artist’s tools, capable of realizing a remarkable inner vision that few could appreciate and cherish let alone discern. And, if he was anything, Christopher Bennet was a man of great discernment.

  And what he sensed was Gibbons’ desire to find something, a kernel of treasure, in a world of the trivial. Now Bennet was a direct man. He was not one willing to beat around the bush. He wanted a Gibbons in his home not because it was ostentatious but because it was the best. But he knew that Gibbons wanted something as well. So he asked.

  “Pleasantries and social forms are lost on men like us, Mr. Gibbons, are they not? Perhaps we should stop dancing around each other. You have traveled on 30 miles of poor road to get here, and I have an estate to rebuild.

  “Just how must I be compatible so that my wife and staff will not be left wondering where we will hang a coat or safely store a bonnet?” Bennet challenged.

  Gibbons turned away, sweeping his eyes over the freshly painted walls lined with half-empty shelves, stopping only when he looked out the double French windows onto the rear garden. He began to speak.

  “I imagine that there are moments when you look out from this room, this sanctuary of male solitude, and see the shades of future children running and laughing or ladies walking arm-in-arm. Or a solitary girl, head bowed, weeping over a misbegotten love.

  “After all, is that not why we build? You—your estate; me—my cabinetry?

  “We create, not for ourselves, although that is a fortunate by-product, but rather for our posterity. For our families, our children, our children’s children, ja? Somewhere deep inside, we pray to hear those voices of the future saying, ‘my great grandfather built this.’ It is that legacy that will ensure that we will never be forgotten…for is that not the deepest of all human worries—that we will have lived a life that leaves no mark deep enough to be remembered once we are no longer here?”

  He turned and fixed his gaze on Bennet’s face, revealing his soul within the depths of his ice-blue eyes.

  Bennet held the stare, took a deep breath, and in a low voice asked again.

  “What is it you seek of me, Master Gibbons? You say posterity. You speak of the future. You talk of what can only be my descendants. Speak plainly, sir. Where are you headed here?”

  Gibbons took a moment. His eyes lost focus as if he were looking into another realm. Then he snapped back to Longbourn. He shook his head, his shoulders, clearly having arrived at a decision. He ignored Bennet’s questions.

  “Simply put Mr. Bennet, I will be happy to create a wardrobe that will fit into this home and any succeeding homes. It will be a work of art, something for the ages
, but it will also be a fully functional masterpiece doing all that we would expect and much we would not.

  “No, please do not interrupt me. I have decided that Longbourn and the Bennets will do. But, before I can conclude this conversation and begin work on this project, you will have to agree to a few conditions.”

  Now back in a world he understood, Bennet walked back behind his worktable and sat down, assuming the pose of a customer listening to the final offer. Gibbons motioned to the leather armchair opposite. Bennet nodded giving his permission. Gibbons seated himself and continued.

  “First, you will never ask me the cost, only agreeing to pay what I bill you.

  “Next, you will not have any input whatsoever on the final design of the project. I will decide on the materials, the decoration. You may ask for something. I may choose to include it…or not. That is my decision. And, you will not know what has been added or discarded until it is delivered. And, once you take possession of the wardrobe, you can never alter its design or finish.

  “Third, you must agree for your part and on behalf of all of your descendants that the wardrobe will never leave the control of your family. Someone from the Bennet family must always Keep the wardrobe.”

  Gibbons paused; leading Bennet to believe the list had been concluded. He stirred himself saying, “These are neither unreasonable nor unfair. I agree.” Gibbons cut off any further comment with a suddenly raised hand.

  “Oh, but I am not finished.

  “One last condition. The wardrobe will bear special properties, ones which will separate it from the norm,” he smiled, “This will not just be a receptacle for clothing. It will be unique in this world and all those that come after. My condition is that once you learn of this singular nature, you will never reveal it to anyone who is not a Bennet…and that means a blood relation. Not a wife or husband. No non-Bennet cousins or married-in brothers or sisters. No friends. Bennets only.

  “And if a Bennet is childless, the secret will die with him or her…but somehow, I imagine your line will be particularly fecund, so there will be little danger of that.”

  Now, Christopher Bennet was a man who prided himself on his sensible nature, and Gibbons seemed to be talking sense, but on a daft subject. There were no details of these special properties. Were they real? Or were they manifestations of that creative genius that always appears to border on insanity?

  Bennet sat quietly for a minute, staring at Gibbons who never moved or fidgeted. Then,

  “Well Mr. Gibbons, I do not see how any of your conditions are objectionable. Either you are totally rational in your belief that these special properties will exist once the wardrobe is completed, or you have been around Chinese smoke eaters far too often and have slipped the bonds of reality but will deliver a supreme example of your work that will be no more and no less than a wardrobe of beauty. And, not coincidentally, worth any price you demand.

  “Either way, I will be either pleasantly surprised or totally pleased.

  “Thus, I do agree to your final condition,” Bennet concluded.

  Gibbons satisfied sat back. He blurted in excitement,

  “It will be verwonderlijk…oh how say you in English…wondrous! To work…and to do the work I will ask of you just two things.

  “The third oak to the left of your front gate will supply the framing for the wardrobe. This will forever link the wardrobe to your Longbourn, as its heart is your heart, the power of this land and this family.

  “Und, Meneer Bennet, I will also need a bit of your blood. Oh, please do not think strangely of me. As I have always done before, I want to include part of the owner in the work. Your blood will imbue your spirit, much like Bussotti did with the Red Violin[ii], in your finished piece. It is what will attune it to your family, to their souls.”

  Bennet wagged his head slowly from side to side. He looked up and smiled at Gibbons. “Why is it that I believe that every patron of the arts has had one of these conversations? Am I Pope Julius? Am I Duke Ernst?[iii]

  “Oh, devil take me, you may have your blood and your oak.”

  Gibbons left Longbourn that afternoon followed by a wagon hauling a massive oak trunk. In his pocket was a small white ceramic vial stopped tightly by a cork.

  

  Now, in the still of his deserted workshop, Gibbons oiled the last strips of veneer. He gently closed the doors revealing a small cavity split down the middle, half on the left panel, half on the right. Humming a tuneless song, he turned to the low table next to him and picked up two small pieces of birch, each perfectly cut to fill the gap in the mandala. Gluing them in place, he pressed carefully to seat them.

  Then pulling the doors apart, he reached down again, this time to pick up a small gold bowl into which he had already poured the blood removed from a vein in Bennet’s left arm. Adding some linseed oil, he gently stirred the mixture with his horsehair brush. Humming lower now, he lightly dabbed the two birch pieces with the essence, instantly darkening the wood from near white to carmine.

  He set the bowl down, turned away and left the shop.

  The next morning he stood in the doorway looking at the wardrobe glistening in a sunshine swirling with dust motes. He squared his shoulders and strode across the room. Griping the open doors firmly and muttering a quiet incantation, he swiftly closed them.

  The design was completed, and for a moment shimmered in the light. A low note rang out as the two stained birch chips glimmered of their own accord. The mandala suddenly looked three dimensional, shifting in Gibbons’ eyes as the note continued to toll. He jerked his hands away, but the sense of motion continued.

  Then all was quiet. The wardrobe stood before him. His heart lifted because he knew that he had accomplished his task. Yet the elation faded as he realized that like Moses he could never partake of the glory of crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land. He was always to be marooned in the present.

  “It is finished,” he breathed.

  Chapter II

  Longbourn Estate, Hertfordshire, June 27, 1692

  Christopher Bennet read through the letter that had accompanied the wardrobe. He could hear his ecstatic wife extolling the virtues of the design and wondering where to install it for the greatest effect.

  Dear Mr. Bennet:

  It is with great pleasure that I deliver your finished wardrobe. You will note that I did include the one variation which you suggested, a hidden compartment under the inside floor. I found this to be an intelligent alteration. One can never have too many hiding places in these unsettled times. You will open it by pressing the embossed “B” on the floor panel. Closing requires the opposite action.

  As for my charge to you for the wardrobe: I ask not a single shilling. It is enough for me to know that I have succeeded in creating something like nothing ever made in this world. I will also take payment in imagining how the wardrobe will help the Bennets secure their happiness—I hope. But as with all great things, there will be equal measures of sorrow.

  As we had discussed before, the wardrobe has special properties. You may think me mad…or you may not. It is of little consequence to me. What I write next is the truth, as I know it to be. You and your fellow Bennets will have to prove my certainty.

  The wardrobe can, under certain circumstances, transport someone to a time undetermined in the future, and then be returned to the exact time of departure.

  Simply put, you and your descendants are no longer shackled to this age. You can experience man’s greatest exploration—the future.

  While I have not myself been able to utilize the portal, I have consulted the texts that embody the philosophies explaining the forces that drive the wardrobe. You may find some translations of the Mahabharata and the Nihon Shoki informative. But, in consultation with my fellows in the Academy, I have divined several rules that will govern the wardrobe. I do imagine there will be others uncovered as the wardrobe is used. I have included what the rules and expectations are for this remarkable device.

 
; Please never forget that, as a man of honour and as a gentleman, you have agreed to my pre-conditions on behalf of all your descendants. It will be your responsibility to ensure that they understand the importance of the wardrobe without question. Might I recommend a conversation with them when they attain their majority? I would further dare to suggest that you include a document in your personal papers addressed to your nearest descendant in the unfortunate event that you pass on before you can advise them of the secret.

  As the generations of Bennets progresses, I fear that the circle of those knowing the secret will become wide indeed. It may fall to a successor to decide to limit the spread of the knowledge that the wardrobe is a most powerful device.

  I am yours very truly,

  Grinling Gibbons.

  June 23, 1692

  Chapter III

  Longbourn Estate, Hertfordshire 1754

  Sam had faced the usual struggle of being a second son—trying to find his way in a world of gentlemen that demanded wealth, but strictly proscribed the way that wealth was gained. Better he should win big at the tables then to earn one French sous pleading a case before a Red judge. The path for him was dictated by tradition.

  Eldest son—the Land

  Second son—the King

  Third son—the Lord

  It was the height of summer when Samuel turned six and ten that his father called him into his library.

  The library—the domain of all elder Bennet men, the refuge of the Master of Longbourn—was the seat of power, a legacy that established the holder as undisputed authority. Each male Bennet had his own distinct manner that remained even after his successor occupied the high-ceilinged room.