Mr. Roberts stared in frustration at the parchment, and he began to tap his quill against it. The entire London house now knew about Mr. Darcy's presence. Other families and the monarch must be learning. It would be at most a day before the information traveled to Pemberley.
Time was of the essence. His master must be in a state where he had access to all his knowledge and power. He needed to be prepared to fight whoever attacked him on that strange day those years ago when he disappeared.
Mr. Darcy sat across the desk. He did not fidget, of course, but somehow his unchanging posture conveyed a growing impatience as he waited for Mr. Roberts's judgement about whether his memory could be restored. It had been three hours, though two and a half had been dedicated to a thorough examination of the flows of potentia in Mr. Darcy's brain.
Mr. Roberts had spent the last half hour writing notes and trying to understand this strange twist of potentia that flowed between Mr. Darcy and something else.
A subtle thing, any physician who had shown less thoroughness and care in their examination, or a different physician with less of an understanding of the nuances of the interaction between the mind and the circulation of potentia, could never have seen it.
This flow was deeply tied to Mr. Darcy's most recent memories, and that tie would cause them to resist the resurgence of his old memories.
He needed to snap this string tied around Mr. Darcy's being.
Mr. Roberts did not like snapping it without understanding the strange phenomenon. But there was no time for study.
The question was if it would harm Mr. Darcy to sever this link. His memories should simply return when it was gone. Mr. Roberts frowned at the paper. In his body of knowledge, he could think of no reason why Mr. Darcy would receive harm.
Neither could he understand why such a tie existed.
Mr. Roberts absently rubbed his finger over the family ring that proclaimed his connection to the Darcy house. The ring sent a comforting stream of potentia that flowed up his arm now that he was in the same room with Mr. Darcy. The Darcy clan looked from the outside much as it always had, but within they knew a rot had set in.
Mr. Wickham ignored the core principles which made the Darcy family so great.
Until Georgiana came of age, there was no one of the blood to rule them. Everyone eagerly awaited her majority. But she was too close to Mr. Wickham, and too dependent upon him. This was a matter of gossip that could only be quietly talked about, but many of the Darcy retainers deeply worried for the future of their grand house.
Some entity outside of him. This connection seems to do no harm to him, except it is deeply tied up with the working suppressing his memories. The physician wrote in shorthand, and then glanced back up at Mr. Darcy.
Mr. Darcy casually studied the decor of the room.
Mr. Roberts remembered the day a month before Mr. Darcy disappeared when the young man made a review of the London holdings of the Darcy family. He'd sat in that same leather-bound chair and spoken to him about his work for a full twenty minutes before moving on. A great gentleman. So little about the room had changed.
Mr. Roberts was a conservative man who did not need to change the furnishings and decorations of his office every year or two like some of his colleagues. He had the same heavy walnut bookshelves, but the collection of books had many new titles.
Science advanced year by year, and a practitioner of the first order must always study the latest advances.
The change was in Mr. Darcy: His face and mannerisms were so similar. Mr. Roberts remembered how on that proud day Mr. Darcy scratched at his chin in the same manner. He made the same gestures with his hands to emphasize his words. His body was better built; he radiated more power and more strength; he had matured into a man with greater confidence and certainty.
Mr. Darcy had become the great master and gentleman they had all expected of him. Mr. Roberts sensed it.
It was time to explain matters to the patient and act. They had not leisure to wait for perfect knowledge. "Mr. Darcy, I can completely restore your memories."
"That simple? You surprise me. My reading found no information about gentlemen losing their memories."
"It is rare. I have met one gentleman who lost a week of time, and there are several stories in the literature about similar cases — though none like your case."
"Then how are you so certain you can restore my memories?"
"They are all still there, protected, but suppressed — my examination allowed me to probe the memories. They are your memories, so I could not experience them, but their presence, and the block keeping them from being accessed by your consciousness, was easily found by a man with my skills."
"If a working had been placed upon me to suppress my memories, it cannot be easy to remove such an attack."
"There is no attack." This was the first lie. That strange flow of potentia coming from outside of Mr. Darcy might be an attack. "You suppressed your own memories."
"Did I?" Mr. Darcy raised his eyebrows, and his expression clearly conveyed skepticism along with a willingness to listen.
"You experienced a period of time which was…unpleasant?"
"Deeply so. But I remember that, what I remember not was the time before. If I am suppressing unpleasant memories, would I not suppress those memories?"
"No, you protected your own sanity — I suspect you had very little stimuli, and no access to your own potentia, or ability to act."
"That was my reality." Mr. Darcy leaned forward with a thoughtful frown. "Constant pain — I speak in confidence, but my enemy knows what he did to me, and he must know that I know — I was bled of all my potentia to feed a demon. My eyes were behind a mask, I was nourished through a working that infused the necessary foodstuff. Never any change but the feel of my own breathing."
"To hear you speak of your suffering so easily. I salute you — imagine if your mind had access to all its vivid memories. You would not be able to stop thinking upon them in that state. Your mind would roll round and round in them. The past would become more real to you than the unchanging present. You would lose yourself irrecoverably in a dreamlike state. Such has happened to men imprisoned in solitude and suppression wards."
"You believe I intentionally suppressed these memories?"
"The mind protects itself. There was no intention. But to protect your sanity — that is what occurred. In every case a gentleman lost memories, the loss protected him from knowledge he did not wish to have."
"I have been at liberty for months now. If the memories had been lost to protect me from insanity in that dungeon — something different protected me from such loss of personhood — should my memories not have returned on their own? The threat is past."
"Have you really sought to know? Have you desperately tried to recall your past?"
"I now must know."
"And you wait, almost patiently, for me to inform you what method will let you recover them. Your actions do not suggest a desperate effort to recall the unrecallable."
"I often felt certain about parts of my past, without knowing how I did." Mr. Darcy looked out the window at the garden courtyard beneath them with a tall statue of a grand ancestor seated upon a horse in the middle of a fountain.
"You did?" Professional curiosity prompted Mr. Roberts to quickly ask, "Such as what? Things which it was important to know?"
"Confidence I was not a criminal running unknowingly from the crown. I knew I had not married."
"Your identity remained, though the episodes were gone. Do you see what I say?"
"I felt anxiety about knowing. I did not want to. Not until knowing became necessary. You are certain of this explanation?"
"Entirely. Your mind suppressed the memories to protect itself. That is the rational and scientific explanation. A simple working to dispel the tangles which keep you from accessing those memories will bring them back. For such a working, I will need your complete cooperation — if you resist my potentia, I would be able to do nothing. I require your trust."
"I know your reputation from Mr. Bennet. It would be exceedingly unlikely for you to wish me harm. I can feel that this house, the Darcy house. This house is not what it should be. You sense that as well. You wish me to be returned to my power so I can restore our house to the glory it ought to have."
"It is not my place to criticize the steward… but I desperately wish to be led once more by our proper master. You are my proper master, Mr. Darcy."
"I will not simply take this as a matter of trust. Explain in greater detail precisely what you intend to do. Further, how can I keep from resisting? My natural reaction shall be to resist any attempt to interfere with the potentia within my brain—"
Mr. Roberts laughed at the dry way Mr. Darcy said that.
Mr. Darcy paused and smiled in a manner that showed friendship and mutual amusement while still marking himself as above Mr. Roberts. "If I know precisely what shall happen, it will be easier."
Mr. Roberts pulled a small book from his desk, and flipped it open to a bookmarked page. He pushed the open book across the desk to Mr. Darcy. "There is no need for an exotic or experimental working. This will accomplish everything."
Mr. Darcy studied the pages.
While he did Mr. Roberts returned to the problem of Mr. Darcy's apparent connection to something outside himself. He didn't want Mr. Darcy to know that the untangling working would completely stop the flow of potentia through it. There could be an inbuilt trigger placed by an enemy.
"It is difficult." Mr. Darcy flipped a page. "I understand the spell, but I do not understand the mind. I do not like when I must trust another — I deliver no insult to you, this is an expression of my desire to control and understand anything important."
"You are a man usually in control of your destiny."
"I was not for a long time."
Mr. Darcy stared closely at the paper. But his eyes didn't move, showing that he was thinking, not reading. Without lifting his head, he said offhandedly, "Mr. Bennet thought I would be changed greatly by the recovery of the memories."
It was often the offhanded comment which reached to the core of the patient's concern.
"Changed greatly? What do you mean?"
Mr. Darcy met Mr. Roberts's eyes with his piercing gaze. Mr. Roberts looked away. "My character and nature. Time's passage — six years, that prison, what followed… I no longer am the same man."
"Nonsense. You hold yourself as Fitzwilliam Darcy. That commanding tone, the confidence in your posture. The way you have spoken to me, and the luminous fire of your mind. The way you cock your head — your father held himself the same way you do. You are unchanged in fundamentals."
Mr. Darcy placed the book down and closed it over the bookmark. "How I shall feel afterwards? I fear losing… My memories shall be vivid upon their return. I have concerns and obligations that Fitzwilliam Darcy six years before had no notion of. Might I be changed into the person I was before? Mr. Bennet thought… something terribly important might matter no more to me."
Mr. Roberts scratched the bald spot on his head. "There is no precedent. You are a new case. I cannot predict the details of what shall happen, but you shall remain in essentials the same person."
Mr. Darcy locked eyes with him. Mr. Roberts knew Mr. Darcy searched for proof in his eyes that he could trust Mr. Roberts's implied promise he would not change.
Mr. Darcy could not.
After Mr. Roberts severed the strange connection, Mr. Darcy might lose all access to his newer memories. But what mattered was restoring Fitzwilliam Darcy so that he could command Pemberley and the Darcy clan. It must be done quickly. The enemy who had betrayed Mr. Darcy was likely part of the household, and he would strike again at Mr. Darcy once it was known he had returned.
Mr. Roberts looked amiably back at Mr. Darcy. For a moment he was frightened that Mr. Darcy would refuse to allow his memories to be restored. There was some internal conflict in his eyes.
"You need not worry." Mr. Roberts spread his hands open comfortingly. "What matters to you shall not change. Mere knowledge cannot change who you are as a person, it will only make you more, not different."
Silently, Mr. Roberts begged Mr. Darcy to let him restore him. He needed his master to recover.
Patients could not judge what was best for them. Often the greatest gentlemen were the worst patients, because they did not understand that their genius for command and vast powers were no help when they were ill. Mr. Darcy's behavior and manner of holding himself showed that he was the greatest of gentlemen, despite the loss of his memory.
Mr. Roberts was proud to be this great man's cousin, and prouder to be in the service of him.
But Mr. Darcy was no doctor. He was not qualified to decide his course of treatment for himself. He did not know enough to judge the risks and the rewards.
Darcy looked into Mr. Roberts's eyes; his was a demanding and powerful gaze. Mr. Roberts had once been consulted by the king, in hopes of curing his recurrent madness. Despite his greatness, even his Majesty had not seemed so potent as Fitzwilliam Darcy.
"Reason demands my memories should be restored quickly. My enemies shall soon learn I have returned. I must know all so that I can prepare for them. Any other course of action would be unwise."
Mr. Roberts did not show it, but he felt a deep relief. He'd never felt this great nervousness since he'd been a young lad managing his first patients as an independent doctor. "I must rehearse the casting and every action I shall take, but I will be prepared within an hour."
"I understand. Do you need privacy in your office?"
"You may freely stay."
Mr. Darcy picked a book from Mr. Roberts's shelf, on the subject of the connections between the tissue of the brain and potentia.
One last time, Mr. Roberts reviewed the tools he wanted to use, and his readiness to cast those spells. He wrote out the details of the working he would enact, and he rehearsed it within his head five times, until each step was smooth, and could be done freely without reference to his notes. When he finished, Mr. Darcy had put the book aside and was frowning at the window and the new winter storm which lashed the south of England.
"Prepared, Mr. Darcy?"
A long pause. Mr. Darcy sat very still. He pulled in a long deep breath and slowly exhaled.
Mr. Darcy nodded, "Yes. Let us act."