by Don Jacobson
“While many believe that Gibbons further memorialized this pledge in his Rules, any who have studied the original document know this assertion to be a false solemnization created by Keepers to seal the lips of younger Bennets.
“I, myself, recall two young ladies to whom I would have offered this injunction if I had thought of it. However, they subsequently proved that not only would such a tale have been unnecessary, t’would have been disrespectful beyond imagination,” he stated before pausing.
Bennet reached in front of him and pulled a sweating crystal carafe that softly clinked as the ice cubes were stirred from their stillness. He poured a draught of the cooling liquid; water so pure that t’was near blue as it caught the morning light streaming between the drapes framing windows at the far end of the room.
He drank.
And then he continued, “Gibbons Rules are, I am convinced, meant to be a living document and, as such, was never intended to manacle Bennets as they pursued the Great Quest. Gibbons intended that our family put the Wardrobe to use. As such, the original seven Rules articulated the basic principles of the Wardrobe: its operation and so forth. However, the most important phrasing in the entire document penned by that great mystic was that simple sentence at the bottom of the page…
“Other rules may be discovered that will modify these strictures.
“Every single one of the subsequent rules, another five as of this time—some written before my birth, another by me, and one by my daughter Mary, whom you call the Great Keeper—are all rooted in experience derived from use.
“These are not laws akin to the first seven. The operation of the Wardrobe, the manipulation of the forces of time flowing through every particle, visible and invisible, will not be affected if an increasing non-Bennet woman touches the Wardrobe.
“The cabinet will operate as it always has operated. Her babe will be sent forward with the mother cradling the unborn, to protect it. However, as my father learned, t’would be best not to tempt the Fates in such a fulsome manner. Thus, that rule was composed, Thomas, after your Great-Grandmamá laid her hands upon the Wardrobe when she was carrying me.
“That was a guideline created out of experience.
“I am proposing that we implement a new instruction to allow Keepers to contravene Christopher Bennet’s promise to Grinling Gibbons.”
He reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a handwritten note written on thick cream color notepaper with the Oakham House crest atop.
He read aloud:
“The most senior Bennet Keeper in any timeframe may, at his or her individual discretion, determine to alter any Keeper-derived Rules of The Wardrobe that were created by men to govern the behavior of men. All changes will be made only with the advice and consent of the Life Directors of the Bennet Family Trust.”
“You will note that I do not say that the Senior Keeper may bring non-Bennets into the circle. I believe that the Rules require a modification that will empower the Senior Keeper to change Rules…even unwritten ones…but only upon consultation with the duly constituted members of the Board.
“What I am suggesting as necessary for my quest should not be immortalized as a Gibbons’ Rule. Assuming the Directors here today approve my proposed revision, I would advise the Board of those individuals I see as suitable candidates to be given a non-Bennet version of the Keeper’s Talk in pursuit of Lady Kate’s killer.
“Before I move the question, is there any discussion?”
Bennet was surprised by the following fifteen minutes during which many of the less exalted Board members asked prescient questions and probed the edges of his authority. However, the Queen, Princess, Countess, and Earl said nothing. That spelled the success of the proposal as members of the cadet branches took their silence as implicit approval of the Founder’s proposal.
The unanimous approval of the new Rule was anticlimactic. And, the acceptance of the three names posed by Bennet was equally without contention.
Near the end of the proceedings, Thomas ceded the chair back to the Earl with the comment that Rule 13 needed to be scribed on the document. The Earl rose and stepped over to the great portrait of a Regency gentleman staring down upon the gathering. Grasping one side of the gilt frame, he pulled the painting away from the wall, well-oiled hinges taking the weight without protest. A safe reposed in a cavity behind the picture. Working the combination lock, he opened the vault and removed a packet of documents. He looked at the Princess and smiled.
“Perhaps Miss Windsor would like to record the new Rule,” he asked.
The young lady quickly removed a Waterman fountain pen from her purse and reached for the document.
Book Three
Adagio: Pas de Deux
(Encounters: Chance and Otherwise)
piano…fortepiano…grave
(Quietly…Loudly then quietly…Very slow, solemn)
“Life is a series of meetings and separations.”
Santosh Kalwar
Chapter XX
The Beach House Library, Deauville, August 12, 1947
She loved her husband. Truly she did. But, Fanny Bennet found it difficult to tolerate, to forgive, Tom’s dry-as-dust speechifying: even if she put to work the Sixth Love,[lxii] a sentiment that argued for an emotion which forgives all transgressions. She had formulated the idea in the aftermath of her meeting Mr. Lewis. The Meryton matron had crossed paths with the English mystic at one of those stodgy Oxford—
Heavens…Oxford. Tom never had deigned to escort me to his alma mater, Cambridge, and there I was surrounded by Oxford dons in the company of not just my husband, but also my grandson and grand-daughter, an Earl and his Countess—
faculty teas to which Tom and the Earl had dragged her after she had been initiated into the Wardrobe’s Circle.
As she sat at his right hand in the elegantly-appointed bookroom, Fanny Bennet was absolutely convinced that Thomas Bennet would never threaten Mr. Churchill’s position as the pre-eminent speaker of the age.
From this droning dissertation, I believe that Tom surely would have been most satisfied if his brother had found a way to become the Master of Longbourn and had remained in Meryton instead of vanishing. Then my studious man could have spent his breath on students clustered around him in his rooms at Merton College. He can go on and on and on.
Mrs. Bennet did not begrudge Mr. Bennet’s need to impress the importance of what he was imparting to the five members who were to become the core of Detachment Anubis. Bennet had reached deeply into his bag of antiquarian symbolism to name the team; something which he explained to his wife as being essential both for security as well as operational purposes.
He had stated that the Egyptian god originally had been associated with the underworld, death, and embalming. However, he explained, these links metamorphized over time, as Egypt aged from the First Dynasty into the Middle Kingdom, to where Anubis had become the gatekeeper to the Afterlife, holding court along with the Goddess Ma’at in the Temple of Truth. There the two would weigh supplicants’ hearts against a feather. The unexpiated sins of a lifetime could tip the scales against the deceased—at which point a serpent would suddenly snap up the unfortunate one’s soul.[lxiii]
“And so, my dear, I intend that we will serve both as Anubis and the serpent,” Bennet had said to Fanny, “Our mission will be to search through the rubble left by a would-be empire, looking for those testaments the criminal left behind in this life. Then we will use those to discern how best to capture him and transport him onto the next plane of existence where he will face eternal retribution.”
Exciting as the prospect was to be able to send her daughter’s murderer to perdition, Fanny was finding that she could little maintain her focus as Thomas once again revisited information that she had known for weeks. Yet, she did endeavor to stand as the reliable helpmeet she knew herself to be, for, again, her role had been clearly laid out by the Founder. Tom had suggested that, as her need to avenge Kitty was as powerful as
his…and more so than any of the others thanks to the closeness of the maternal bond…she would take charge of the distaff members of the team. He would manage the entire group in addition to the men.
However, while Tom’s opening into the updated Keeper’s Talk held the attention of the five youngsters, Fanny’s attention began to wander.
The rest of the meeting’s attendees were:
Richard Fitzwilliam, who had arrived from Germany only this morning: he would liaise with his father and British Intelligence. Bennet accepted that the man known familiarly by his nom de guerre would be second to his prime. The Preacher had the slightly haunted look of a man who knew and had seen too much. Fanny was aware that he had spent years behind enemy lines during the late war using his wits and weapons to survive.
Letty and Dennis Robard would be the links between Denis’ father, Maxim and French Intelligence. In addition, young Mrs. Robard was the mother of a two-year-old son, un enfant terrible, who would enhance her ability to appear an unassuming, if harried, part of the background scenery allowing for up-close surveillance. Her husband was a member of an elite French unit and acknowledged as an expert in intimate wet work. The couple were perfectly formed for Anubis.
Alois and Lizzy Schiller were the other young married couple. According to the Earl, Schiller was both his and Countess Darcy’s social equivalent, holding the, sadly landless, title of Graf von Schiller. While the German refused to use his Prussian honorific, his wife was, therefore, both a German Countess as well as the daughter of another, this time British. However, all thoughts about his aristocratic antecedents were washed away by his legendary bravery.
That penchant, however, had nearly led to the young Fallschirmjäger’s death just a fortnight ago. Now, having been accompanied to Deauville by Robard and Fitzwilliam, he sat in a wheeled chair looking wan and somewhat diminished as he recuperated from his earlier wound. An anxious daughter of Pemberley tended her husband.
For her part, the former Elizabeth Darcy was acknowledged to be a true descendent of her namesake of over a century before. She was considered one of the shining intellectual lights of her generation. While not of a literary bent, she had formed fast friendships with Nigel Nicolson and his parents.[lxiv] Since the war’s end, her Darcy House salons had launched many a career. A near twin of her forebear, Lizzy Schiller would second Mr. Bennet in analyzing the tidbits gleaned from sources scattered from marbled whiteness of Washington, DC to the ashes of Berlin.
Fanny started to glance around the library, noting the cold fireplace with its freshly blacked andirons and then spying the Wardrobe in its alcove adjacent to the French doors. As her eyes slid along the wall that ran perpendicular to the veranda across which so many members of the Five Families had trod, they were arrested once again by the other dominant feature of the room—Kitty’s portrait as a young woman, painted by maître Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Fanny particularly loved the painting which was fondly transferred three times a year by the family, from Selkirk to London, from London to Deauville, and then back to Selkirk, following the Countess’ annual circuit. The canvas, she had been told by Letty’s mother, Madame Liebermann, had been missing for several years—from late 1944 through early 1947 when it had suddenly and unaccountably re-appeared overnight; hanging in its traditional place in the Beach House. Madame had tapped the side of her nose with a gnarled forefinger and simply whispered to Fanny, “Une féerie.”
The image laid down so many years ago captured Kitty, albeit slightly older than when Fanny last had seen her, in a pensive pose. The gentle fullness of her rosy lips was turned down ever so slightly, leaving a sense of a worldly sadness, something which should never have been etched upon the countenance of one so young. Try as she might, Fanny could never winkle from her husband an intimation of what had shaped their daughter in so profound a manner.
Bennet did suggest, though, that she turn to her grandson’s recently-published biography of his parents, In the Lists for Civilization. Therein she discovered the awful events which transpired during the winter of 1891. She had wept hot tears of anger as Fitzwilliam wrote about how unnamed tormentors had stolen Kitty from those who loved her and then had taken her girl’s virtue.
Thank the Lord for Denis’ grandmama and grandpapa. Without them, our Kitty would have perished.
Yet, spending time woolgathering with Kitty’s portrait as inspiration did not keep Fanny’s early morning walk along the strand—oh, how she adored the ocean—from having its way with her eyelids. The second time her chin bobbed down to meet her chest, Thomas ceased his lecture and, over her objections, gently suggested that she take a turn on the beachfront, perhaps to get some fresh air.
Slightly embarrassed—but only slightly—Fanny bade the group an adieu, grabbed her sun bonnet from the desk, and stepped through the French doors into the great brightness casting its warming arms around the Beach House.
Deauville was a study in contrasts.
The August sun bore down and beat through the cotton dress that Fanny had added to her wardrobe at the behest of the Countesses…Georgiana and Anne. While she had conceded on the thinness of the pretty printed fabric, her Regency reticence to exhibit any skin and expose it to freckle-making sunlight saw long sleeves descending in place of the more expected sundress nil or, at most, abbreviated manche corte. Her husband, though, snorted when she complained about the impropriety of the summer daywear now popular in the mid-Twentieth Century; scorching the immodesty of naked arms and legs. Most likely he was recalling her efforts to reduce the lace bodice trims on both Jane and Lydia’s gowns before the Netherfield Ball.
She did concede that the only persons to observe her on this stretch of sand, over 100 yards in length, were the children of the Five Families in attendance at the Beach House. A few of their mothers or governesses kept a watchful eye on their young charges. The children were much more interested in frolicking in the shallow water and finding treasures in the tidal boundary. Nobody paid Fanny any attention: a woman of middle years strolling barefoot in the low surf swooshing across the packed white fronting the House.
Yet, the afternoon breeze blowing in from the Channel cooled her enough so that she folded her multi-hued parasol and settled into a canvas chair strategically placed in about six inches of water, shallow enough to avoid wetting her bottom as the tide withdrew into the Atlantic. She thrilled to feel the water around her ankles as it laved her feet with the gentlest of pressures, sucking up and swirling coarse grains of bottom sand, tickling her toes.
This is what Brighton or Ramsgate must be akin to. How I wanted to show our gentility by escaping to the seaside. I would have even accepted Sanditon, although its denizens are a bit too nouveau. T’is a tragi-comedy that we needed to fly over 130 years into the future for my husband to offer me a waterfront vacation!
With these musings matching the sound of the waves making their way to the French shore, Mrs. Bennet closed her eyes: not tightly, but rather just barely so that she could sketch the scrim of delicate vessels traversing the rose petal softness of her lids.
How long she rested in this manner, she knew not. Perhaps she dozed.
Was it the increasing warmth of the sun on her arches left exposed as the water inexorably drew away from her half-buried feet that disturbed her repose? Or was it the sudden shadow that darkened her dreamtime as the sun was blotted out? Was it that darkling umbra which cast her into eclipse? Or was it the sparkling tingle that flashed along the edges of her awareness that played a greater role in her awakening?
Her rising into consciousness left her with the sense that her world would tip, and the rivers of her life would flow in different channels when, inevitably, she would open her eyes.
And, so she did.
She peered up past her bonnet’s brim to see a tall and slender figure—a woman—silhouetted against the brilliant orb, still passing through its zenith. Unlike Fanny, this lady eschewed the broad-brimmed headgear that would have disguised the w
heat-colored halo of her crowning glory, highlighted as it was from above.
Her face, however, remained obscured, as the matron’s eyes were bedazzled by the rays refracting around the other’s shape.
Then the lady spoke in a pleasant soprano that fractured Fanny’s heart, “Mrs. Bennet? Have I disturbed you?”
“Jane?” was all that the Mistress of Longbourn could utter.
If Fanny’s one-word rejoinder disquieted the lady, she did not betray such emotions. Rather she gently replied, “Oh no, Ma’am. You must have been dreaming of your family. I am Miss Nearne…Eileen Nearne. I arrived this morning with Mr. Fitzwilliam and the Schillers.”
Fanny took a moment to re-orient herself and then spoke, “Miss Nearne, forgive me. Perhaps I was back in the halls of my home. You sound remarkably like my eldest daughter, Jane, Mrs. Bingley as she is now known.”
“Bingley?” now t’was Miss Nearne’s turn to be the interlocutor.
Before she replied, Mrs. Bennet lifted her hand to the other, requesting assistance to stand. Eileen’s grasp was warm and firm as she helped Fanny out of the sling chair.
Once the sun left her eyes, Fanny nearly collapsed back into the seat so great was her shock.
For there before her stood her Jane…or at least as near a perfect duplicate that could be formed for the gentle blonde matron Fanny knew to be living at Thornhill with her husband, two youngsters, and a third babe on the way.
Miss Nearne steadied the older woman and then repeated her query, this time offering more information, “Bingley? I seem to recall my mother mentioning that name many years ago before she died.” Her hand left Fanny’s and moved of its own volition to her neckline there to grasp a locket suspended from a simple gold chain.