They'll Do What They Were Gonna Do Anyway
Thomas was in the front area of the house when the procession of cars arrived. He had been standing around waiting for the duke to come back in, eager to dress him for the late dinner, but the duke had been dawdling outside with seemingly no intention of reentering the house. Thomas wouldn't have explained his presence in the front of the house to anyone who asked, but it did allow him to be the first to notice the unexpected arrivals, their headlights piercing right through the gauzy curtains and striking his shadow back on the walls of the foyer.
It didn't take a genius to know that this was bad news, and Thomas knew exactly who it was bad news for. Although the cars were barely marked, they certainly weren't regular municipal police, and that meant that they were military. Everyone had heard stories of the military police, operating as more of an independent secret police, moving without oversight and snatching up anyone they deemed a target. At best, those people were quietly killed. At worst, well, it was hard to tell what was overactive imagination and what was true.
Whoever the military police decided to take into their clutches would be a dead man. And they were unlikely to leave the Grantham estate empty handed.
The cars came to a halt, and Thomas pulled back the curtain to watch the scene unfold. Matthew von Crawley and most of the rest of the group who had been outside approached the officers at a jog before they could even knock on the doors.
He did not want to be the one to open the main door to let them in, so Thomas swiftly turned and headed into the house. He wasn't sure where he was intending to go, but as he turned towards the servants' hall, he had a flash of insight. Whatever was happening here may very well ruin the Grantham family's reputation, but Thomas thought he might be able to turn the situation to his advantage. He hustled downstairs and found Tom loitering in the kitchen, pestering Frau Patmore in his teasing way for a cup of coffee and some of the leftover biscuits.
"Tom," Thomas said, getting his attention.
Tom looked up, mouth full of biscuit that Frau Patmore had passed him, and the expression on Thomas's face startled him. He nodded and quickly left the kitchen, ignoring Frau Patmore's confusion. Thomas pulled in into the room where they kept all the livery, and shut the door tight behind them.
"There's military police outside," he said quickly. "Herr Crawley's stalling them, but they'll be in here poking around any second."
Tom blanched. "What for?"
"For you, I'd think," Thomas said. "Not like the rest of us belong to any terrorist groups."
"I don't-"
"You don't have to explain that to me," Thomas said, and jerked his head in the vague direction of the cars outside. "It's them that's the problem."
"Could I run?" Tom asked. "Is there time?"
"Do you have anything incriminating in your room?"
Tom's sullen silence told Thomas everything he needed to know.
"Look- I assume your group or whoever you belonged to didn't have your name written down plain anywhere. Maybe they don't know it's you they're looking for, or they would have just brought one or two cars to grab you, not a whole line full to search the house."
"What are you saying?"
"Maybe, as long as we can get rid of the evidence, they won't be able to pin it on you."
"Right," Tom said. "Right."
"Tell me where all of it is," Thomas said. "I'll get rid of it for you. You go pretend everything's normal, so you won't be suspected."
"Why would you do that for me?" Tom asked. "What if you get caught with it?"
"I won't," Thomas said. "And I owe you." This was, of course, nowhere close to the reason that Thomas wanted to deal with the incriminating material, but it made Tom look at him with a serious expression and nod.
"Pull out the middle drawer in my dresser. It's all taped in a pack on the back."
That was all Thomas needed. He nodded, let them both out of the livery closet, and made his way up the back stairs to the narrow suite of attic bedrooms in doubletime.
None of the rooms locked, so it was easy enough to get into Tom's. It was neat, with a picture of Tom's family on the desk and a few torn magazine pictures from a car magazine taped to the walls. The narrow window looked out over the top of the house, and Thomas peeked out of it to see that Count Lohengramm was still delaying the military police from getting inside the house.
Thomas pulled open Tom's sock drawer, and reached far back into it, fishing his hand around until his fingers brushed the incriminating envelope, stuffed thick with papers. He pulled it out and rifled through them out of a vague curiosity, but all of them were crammed dense with text that he didn't have time to read. He just put the drawer back, then left Tom's room, shutting the door behind him.
Just down the hall, Bates's room was silent and empty. Thomas left the door ajar so that he could more easily hear anyone coming and got to work, lifting up Bates's thin mattress so he could tuck the sheaf of papers underneath it. He removed them from the envelope and stuffed it in his pocket, and made sure to only touch the papers with his gloved left hand, not wanting to leave his prints on them.
He had just arranged them convincingly when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Alarmed, Thomas hastily dropped the mattress and exited Bates's room. He wasn't quite fast enough in getting away from the room.
"Thomas?" the man coming up the stairs asked. Thomas turned quickly towards the familiar voice, trying to wipe the fear of being caught off his face. He was startled to see Siegfried- no, he shouldn't call him that. He was dressed in a fleet uniform, a captain's uniform. No longer could Thomas mistake him for a servant- or delude himself into thinking he was one, that they were equals somehow.
"Can I help you, Captain Kircheis?" Thomas asked, keeping his voice neutral. He was still standing in front of Bates's door, and it was very obvious that it was a room he had just left.
"I'm looking for Tom Branson," Kircheis said. His voice was even, but the sheer force of his regard made Thomas want to squirm away.
"He's out by the garage, I expect," Thomas said. "Not up here, anyway. What do you need him for?"
"What were you doing in Herr Bates's room?" He read the small copper plaque on the wall next to the door.
"Putting some things away for him," Thomas said.
"May I?" Kircheis asked. Although it was delivered in his usual, quiet tone, it was not a request, but a command. Thomas stood aside. He was half-tempted to protest that Bates wouldn't like him snooping as Kircheis pushed open the door, but he kept silent. There was something in Kircheis's manner that made Thomas want to obey him, even when it was against his own best interests.
Kircheis took in Bates's tidy room, including the bedsheets that were hanging untucked and loose from where Thomas had lifted the mattress and had not had time to remake the bed. Thomas was sure that no one else would have noticed, but Kircheis did, and he lifted up the mattress without hesitation and scooped up the papers that Thomas had left there.
"Is this everything from Herr Branson's room?" he asked, looking through them.
"Yes," Thomas said.
Kircheis wasn't looking at him at all, and the expression on his face was one of deliberate neutrality. It made Thomas feel so pitiful that he was tempted to break out in a blubbering explanation of what he had been doing, but he just stood there in silence until Kircheis finished flipping through the bundle of papers.
"If you would like to say goodbye to the Duke of Crowsburg," Kircheis finally said as he tucked the sheaf of papers inside the breast of his uniform, "I suggest you do so now. I suspect he is going to leave as soon as possible, and I doubt he is going to come back."
Thomas's heart gave an odd twist, but he ignored it to ask, "What are you going to do with those?"
"Destroy them," he said. "But no one will search my person, if I don't get a chance to do so immediately. Lord Reinhard and all of the other guests are not implicated. I'm sure we will be allowed to leave without issue."
"Are you going?"
"Lord Reinhard will want to stay to ensure the MPs don't cause Lord Grantham too much trouble," he said. "But we will not stay long after that. I expect you will be needed to show the MPs around the house. You should do what you need to do before then."
"Yes, sir."
Kircheis gave him one long look, one that revealed nothing about what he was thinking or feeling, but left Thomas feeling far too exposed, then nodded and headed back down the narrow stairs without another word.
Quickly, Thomas made Bates's bed so that he wouldn't suspect anyone of rifling through his room, then rushed down the stairs and out of the house, into the cold night air.
The fire that had been burning on the lawn was no longer a bonfire, and was now tame and dimming with every passing second. The duke stood in front of it, alone, watching the driveway as the line of MPs exited their cars and walked up into the Grantham house.
He didn't notice Thomas coming until he called out, softly, "Philip-"
The duke turned to look at him. He was quite handsome, with the firelight in his eyes. "I thought you would be busy in there," he said, nodding to the house. "I'm sure Lord Grantham doesn't want MPs robbing him of house and home while they turn every one of his silverware drawers inside out."
"I'll go back in a second," Thomas said. "I wanted to see you."
"Well, you've seen me," Philip said.
"Are you leaving?"
"As soon as my driver tells me that he's gotten the car out past all of that." He gestured at the mass of military police cars, all their headlights still on and burning across the cold lawn.
"I wish there could have been a better end to the night."
"We can't all have our druthers," Philip said. "I'm just glad it's not a trouble I'm involved in." He cast a look at Thomas. "You aren't involved in this at all, are you?"
"No," Thomas said. "Nobody's out to arrest me."
"That's good. Though I realize that if I were you, I wouldn't tell the truth when asked that question." He chuckled.
"You're in an odd mood."
"It's been an odd night."
"I hope this all doesn't spoil you courting Lady Mary."
The duke looked down into the fire. "Did you know that there is no fortune for Lady Mary to inherit on Phezzan?"
"What?" Thomas asked.
"It all belongs to Matthew von Crawley. Or will, once Count Grantham dies. It's tied to the estate, somehow. More the fool was I for not asking about it clearly sooner."
"So, what does this mean?"
"It means that, having wasted half the season, I'm going to go back to Phezzan with my hat in my hands, and hope that things don't go so belly-up here that I will be utterly destitute in a foreign land." He shook his head. "I played the wrong hand, Thomas."
"You're not going to court Lady Mary, then?" He knew that was already clear, but he couldn't stop himself from asking, half-disbelieving it, even still.
"It's not like I was courting her for love," he said. His attention was caught by someone striding across the grass towards them. "Ah, that's my driver. He's gotten the car out. I think it'd be better if I left before anything else goes wrong. Please give Lord Grantham and Lady Mary my regards, if they ask after me, though I rather doubt they will."
"Philip-"
But the duke just shook his head, and strode across the grass towards his approaching driver, leaving Thomas alone before the dying fire.
The inside of the house was massively chaotic when Thomas finally slipped back inside. There were uniformed MPs rushing every which way, and Lord Grantham was standing in the foyer with a look of utter despair on his face, shoulders slumped. Beside him, Lady Sybil was chewing her nails. Lady Grantham was following the captain in charge of the MPs around, an indignant response on her tongue for everything he said, even orders to his own men. Lady Edith and Lady Mary were nowhere to be found.
The only people who appeared even remotely calm were Count Lohengramm and his men, distinguishable from the military police easily by their different uniforms, the sleek silver across the chest and shoulders that marked him as an admiral standing out against the drab plain black of the MPs. Count Lohengramm stood in the foyer in front of Lord Grantham, and whenever any of the MPs looked about to approach and say something, Count Lohengramm's presence seemed to ward them off.
Although it was well known that the military police had the authority to do as they liked, even going as far as investigating, accusing, or arresting high ranking nobles or fleet officials, Count Lohengramm's favor from the Kaiser, or at least his sister's favor, seemed to grant him a small measure of immunity. If he had been the one actively under attack by the whole secret police apparatus, Thomas doubted it would have saved him, but here in Lord Grantham's house, as a somewhat neutral party, he had some amount of power that he could employ.
Unlike Kircheis, he probably wasn't protecting Lord Grantham out of the kindness of his heart. The sneer in his expression when he looked at any of the military police, like they were insects beneath him, made it clear that he was remaining in the Grantham house because he hated the intrusion on some kind of aesthetic or moral principle.
Carson spotted Thomas as soon as he stuck his head into the foyer. He looked on the verge of a heart attack, beet-red face and sweat pooling on his brow. "Where the devil have you been?" he demanded of Thomas.
"I was making sure the Duke of Crowsburg got off safely," Thomas said.
"He's gone?"
"He got in his car with his driver."
"One less problem to worry about, then." Carson said. He seemed about to say something else, but one of the MPs came over.
"We need to search upstairs bedrooms," the MP said. "If you could tell your staff to stand aside—"
"You absolutely do not," Carson spluttered. "This is beyond unreasonable."
"If you do not tell your staff to stand aside, we will be forced to remove them."
Carson looked at the gun on the MP's hip, and at the defeated face of Lord Grantham, and the swarm of invaders already turning the house upside down. He didn't have a leg to stand on. "This way," he choked out, and led the MP up the main staircase towards the bedrooms. Thomas followed, hanging back a way, but taking some enjoyment out of Carson being brought low.
At the front of the hall that led to the family's bedrooms, Anna and O'brien stood in unison, blocking the way. Thomas gave O'brien an amused look, but she didn't acknowledge him. Funny, she seemed to have some sort of real loyalty to Lady Grantham, when it came down to it.
"Thank you, Anna, O'brien," Carson said with great difficulty. "That will be all."
Before the MPs could push through into the hallway, Carson stepped through and knocked on the first door, Lady Edith's. She opened it, looking nervously at the MPs.
"I'm sorry, Lady Edith," Carson said. "They're demanding to search your room."
"What in the world are they expecting to find?" Her voice was shrill.
"Excuse me," the leading MP said, and pushed past her to get inside. Edith covered her mouth with her hand, pressing back against the wall, watching with horror as the police began turning her room upside down. They stripped her bed of all its sheets, overturned the mattress and checked it for hidden compartments, pulled out the drawers of her dresser and desk and dumped them on the bed, pushed furniture away from the walls to check for hidden compartments. A tornado passing through would have done less damage. It was remarkable that she didn't cry, though tears glistened in her eyes.
Watching the scene made Thomas feel odd. An involuntary pity, which he sharply rebuked with reason. If there was any satisfaction in having the Grantham family reduced to powerlessness, it vanished under the realization that even now, their nobility carried weight. Edith would survive this indignity. If the MPs had come for someone in a family without a noble name, he doubted the treatment would have been half as gentle as this. And he doubted that whoever was searching the servants' quarters was sparing any thought to their personal belongings- and there was certainly no one blockading the door like Anna or O'brien had for the Grantham family.
The search concluded in Edith's room, and they moved on to the next door: Mary's room. Carson knocked. "Lady Mary," he called.
There was a prolonged moment of silence. It stretched on so long that the leader of the MPs made a move to open the door himself, but that turned out to be unnecessary. The door opened, and one of Count Lohengramm's staff exited the room, the rear admiral with the dark hair whose name Thomas had forgotten. He tugged on the bottom of his uniform jacket to straighten it, gave a nod to all the people standing in the hallway, and pushed his way out past the gaggle of MPs and servants and down the stairs.
Inside the room, Lady Mary was at least dressed, but she was completely disheveled, her hair loose and her face beet red. She was standing at her dressing table, and she turned away from the onlookers, standing silently as the MPs entered the room and began tearing it apart. Carson abruptly seemed to realize that Thomas, Anna, and O'brien were still standing around, each staring at the scene with the feeling that the normal world was crashing down around their ears, though that clear expression showed on their faces in different ways.
Carson ordered them all to leave and make themselves useful. Thomas got out of there in a hurry.
The search of the house lasted until well past midnight. Every inch of the place was turned over, with the MPs growing bolder and more desperate to uncover anything the longer the search went on. Thomas was sure that they were going to snatch one of the servants up at random, make an accusation just to have someone to take away and make an example of, but in the end, they found nothing, and with Count Lohengramm's watchful eye upon them, they were taking fewer risks.
It was almost certain that they would be back, someday soon. Or maybe long enough from today that the household had relaxed, and the terror of the search would be fresh again.
Count Lohengramm's assistance at keeping the MPs from completely running wild was likely the only thing that stopped Lord Grantham from expelling him and all his staff from the house directly, after Carson whispered in his ear about what had happened in Lady Mary's room.
When the military police finally cleared out, it left the house suddenly silent, with no more crashing sounds of silverware drawers being dumped on the floor to check for hidden compartments, or doors being slammed open and shut, or furniture scraped across the floors. Lord Grantham assembled the staff in the foyer, the room that was least ransacked, and bit out a grudging thanks to Count Lohengramm.
"I appreciate you staying," Lord Grantham said. "You were under no obligation to."
"There is a deep rot in this country," Count Lohengramm said. "I would find it difficult to stand by and let it consume someone, while I had some power to stop it. Do you know what brought this down on you?"
"No," Lord Grantham said, though even Thomas, standing at attention and not watching his face, could tell that he was lying. "They must just have been mistaken about whatever evidence they found."
Count Lohengramm nodded. "I hope this does not happen again."
"I hope so as well. Goodnight, Count Lohengramm."
That was a clear dismissal, and the count and his staff walked out of the house without another word. It was eerie to feel them go. The presence of strangers in the house was the one thing that kept the lid on the pressure vessel that was Carson.
Lord Grantham turned to the staff, once Count Lohengramm was well outside the building. His voice was brutally cold and exhausted, and he looked at the staff with an expression both haunted and furious. "Tonight, this house, my family, has suffered a humiliation beyond what I ever imagined was possible. One of you brought this upon my family, whom I have spent my entire life protecting. One of you brought shame on this house. If I knew who it was-" He stopped and took a deep breath, wincing in some kind of pain. "If I hear one single breath of anything approaching treason, or anything that even comes close, you can rest assured that I will not tolerate it in my house!" He yelled the last words, then sagged, all of the energy he had gathered gone in an instant. "Carson-"
"Yes, m'lord."
And then Lord Grantham left the foyer, supported on one side by Lady Grantham, his other hand gripping the bannister on the stairs with painfully white knuckles.
Carson was alone in the foyer with the rest of the staff. Daisy was quivering, and all the maids looked shell shocked. Thomas stared Carson down. Bates looked straight ahead at nothing. Tom, on the far end of the line of staff, had his hands clenched into fists.
"Lord Grantham may have been content with just firing anyone he suspects of treason," Carson said finally. "I would not be. Not after tonight." He glared at each one of the staff in turn, looking into their eyes. "I suggest the person who is responsible for this leave, immediately. Or if you know who is responsible, speak now."
A deadly silence stretched across the foyer. Thomas resisted the urge to look at Bates, wondering if he would make an accusation of Thomas. But he was quiet as the grave, and Thomas also kept his mouth shut. Carson let the moment stretch for almost a full minute.
"Lord and Lady Grantham, as well as the young ladies, will be staying in the capital with Lady Rosamund for the next several days while we return this house to the proper order." He finally said. Although his face was still red with anger, the false normalcy in his voice was worse. "We will begin early."
Author's Note
when i started planning out this story, i had a whole laundry list of themes and ideas that I wanted this fic to be About, like "what does it feel like to live in a totally decaying empire" and "uh oh there's gender in there" and "jesus every able man in this country for the past more than a hundred years has been conscripted into an endless, horrific, unwinnable war that exists solely to grind people up and spit them back out, everybody must have just absolutely fucking awful PTSD, if they survive" and various other things. but while some of those have been nodded at, what this fic has really ended up being about, more than anything else, is class.
i guess that was somewhat inevitable. LOGH is absolutely /obsessed/ with like what does it mean to be someone's superior or inferior versus being their equal. it's a theme that almost every character wrestles with at some point, and it's probably the most central part of reinhard's arc in the show. if you don't mind spoilers/aren't ever planning to watch LOGH, this theme is best summed up in this clip from e72 [warning: contains the death of a major character] www. youtube watch?v=BX12NVUhceI
but logh addresses this concept of class in a weirdly abstract way- "democracy" as a country of equals vs "autocracy" of masters and servants- despite having a rich worldbuilding background to tie into. it's one of the things that makes me like rattle the bars of my cage and shriek.
and of course downton abbey is Like That. i don't think you need me to go into how DA addresses class lmao.
but anyway- where was i trying to go with this note? i guess Thomas is just always acutely aware of how these divides work, and even at the lowest moment, the Granthams still have more ability to stay safe in this society than Thomas ever will.
in other news: we do love a classic "thomas tries to frame bates for something" scheme. too bad kircheis is there being a goody-two-shoes about it lmao. he was obviously sent up there on sybil's behest to warn tom what was going on after reinhard sent them both inside.
fucking reuenthal doing his absolute best to ruin the lives of everyone he encounters. i love him but he is a bastard for sure. i was tempted, while planning this story, to make reuenthal duel somebody, but then i couldn't figure out who to make him duel or how to get that to work plot wise, so i had to drop it. reuenthal duel scene coming... sometime during Silent Spiral in WIAW if i'm remembering my plan correctly
maybe if i was ever going to write a draft 2 of this story (i'm not likely ever going to do that) i would try to work all those other ideas i missed out on into here haha. i do worry that this story is a bit underwritten- everything happens very fast and a lot happens off screen. but i hope you're enjoying despite that haha. i'd love to hear what you think.
anyway the title of this chapter does come from 'last gasp at calama' (the Mountain Goats song)
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