The Bygone Days

by phantomwriter05

In the Blitz of 1941 - Two star-crossed couples are reunited 20 years after their tragic deaths. Now, amidst a world afire they must navigate change, remarriages, and dark secrets while a long lost father attempts to help a once heroic son - haunted by his failure during the Spanish Civil War. Yet, in the shadows, a traitor deep within the House of Grantham helps plot its downfall.

1. Prologue: How the Tide Rushes In

Spring 1941

The sun was high in the blue skies above the rushing tide. It lapped with a gentle trickle of crystal glitter of foamless water that broke against bare ankles. The air was strong with the smell of salt and damp red seaweed that littered the beach, feeling rough and scratchy under tread. The air fell differently in the lungs during high Spring. Sweeping in from the west, the wind bore a strange earthy tang of sediment runoff from the rusty veins that ran through the sea cliffs and into caverns of the old mining works of ancient days. It was salt, raw metals, and earth that spiced the vast seaside landscapes that held at the edges of the world.

Lady Mary Crawley was at home in London - in the metropolis of glass, stone, and steel. She had been born to the green moors, misty woods, and rolling barrows of the Yorkshire countryside. But here, in Cornwall by the sea, she felt rather an outsider. Dozens and dozens of caves below open rocky moors of bristled heather and pocked with abandoned ivy and vine wrapped ruins of stone silos to long derelict mines. But what bothered Mary most was, indeed, the sea itself.

It wasn't that she particularly feared it, for she was, at one time, the best swimmer out of all the girls of her class and prestige. In fact, if women were allowed to compete in her youth - as they are now - Lady Grantham might have had many a trophy displayed in her sitting room of all of her highly athletic eldest child's accomplishments in riding, hunting, and swimming. No, what Lady Mary Josephine Crawley found uncomfortable about the sea was the vastness of it.

There was some strange unexplainable horror of looking upon a wide horizon and seeing nothing upon it. When she looked out at London, she saw tall grey and white buildings that housed offices and shops. She knew where "Rules" was and how to get to "Harrods". When she had once stood on Grantham Hill on the estate, Lady Mary had known where every homestead used to be, she knew where every farm had been … before the Rebellion. The only place she dared not set foot upon Grantham Land still remained "Spectacle Rock" – the lone and looming rocky and wooded hill that ever-shadowed Downton Abbey in the distance. No Grantham – except George Crawley - had set foot upon it nor in the Old Fortress at its peak for five centuries. That was a place of evil, whose superstitions even Mary acknowledged and of her son's warnings she heeded.

But here in Cornwall, there were endless secrets and abyss.

On a logical level she knew that to the Northwest was Ireland, to the south was Brittany, and to the west was America. But when you looked out from Nampara Cove, you could not see such things as you could on a map. There was nothing but endless sky above a foaming and crashing horizon that the sun sank below. Then, holes and holes, everywhere you looked. The imposing cliffs littered with smooth and jagged rock formations that formed into caverns filled with running rivers of green and red sediment that trailed into impenetrable darkness. It was either an endless horizon where she could not discern what lay at the end of it. Or it was pitch black passages made by man and sea which follow to the roots of the very earth itself. And there was no knowing what lay sleeping in that ancient darkness. Nampara was an altogether alien world to Lady Mary that she did not feel settled upon. Yet, perhaps, as Matthew pointed out many times, it was something rather snobbish about Mary.

Fore, when she first was proposed to by the man she loved, she was told that - though middle class - Matthew came with a title. He might not be Earl of Grantham anytime soon, and he would not be Lord of Downton as their child would. But he was Master of Trenwith. She could hardly believe it. Matthew Crawley had his own estate the entire time? How could she not have known this? If they were to be married, she would not be Lady Mary Crawley, Viscountess of Downton Abbey – as their daughter-in-law would be. But she would be Lady Mary Crawley, Mistress of Trenwith. And though it was an obscure manor in an undistinguished county of Cornwall, it was still a societal title.

But then Matthew took her there …

What she found of the old Poldark ancestral home was a ruin of stone with a caved in roof. Cobwebs covered the derelict wooden gallery. Stained and mildew reeking white sheets covered collapsed furniture that had not been used in close to a century. Ivy crawled unmolested over the stone, wrapping the half-collapsed staircase. Lady Mary Crawley never looked more disappointed in her entire life as she watched Matthew balance on a dining room chair as he hacked free a pair of portraits tangled in ivy that hung above the great hall and dining room fireplace. The one to the left was a young man, tall and handsome, with crystalline blue eyes, blonde locks, and Napoleonic Officer's uniform. As in all things in life - to the man's right hand was a young and fair maiden with golden sown locks, and piercing emerald eyes. There was a hint of sorrowful sternness in her countenance, but it only made her seem stronger in her beauty as she posed in a Regency evening gown. Though they looked nothing alike, together, Mary noticed that her possible intended looked rather like a perfect mixture of the two, even some sixty years since their death. She watched as Matthew apologized to Geoffrey Charles Poldark and his wife Cecily Hanson Poldark as if they could hear their great-grandson.

But when Matthew hopped down off the chair and turned with an endearing smirk … his face fell. The woman he loved looked at the ruins of the Trenwith Estate with a glare. If any other woman, Working, Middle, or Upper Middle Class, had seen this place, they might have found it all rather romantic. They might have found the fact that Matthew Crawley talked to his Great-Grandparent's portraits charming. But Lady Mary Crawley in the late spring of 1914 found it neither.

People sneered and tittered in High Society at her back then. Poor little Lady Mary had dishonored herself with a foreigner, and now was forced to wed her unremarkable middle-class cousin from an ancient and cracked legacy of failed Cornish Miners. Of course, she defended herself, saying that Matthew was very clever, and that his high marks at all the prestigious institutions of higher learning was still the talk of the academic communities in the Imperium. But standing in the rot of Trenwith, surrounded by wild overgrowth in the poverty of simple fishermen, and watching a man talk to a portrait of a long dead beauty, it all had cast doubt in her mind of marital bliss.

Then, she saw Nampara House.

The name was not unfamiliar. It came up every so often between her grandfather - 'The Old Earl' - and her father in discussion of the other side of the family. In particular, her grandfather and granny had disdain for the "lesser line" of the House of Grantham. Mary was never sure why they hated them so much, though she often took her grandparent's side in their prejudice. Perhaps it was their contentment with their everyday life in obscurity of Cornwall, their unambitious simplicity that offended the grand ruling House of Grantham. The grudge was deep and though her papa – as always – took the opposite side against his parents, even Robert found the Crawleys of Nampara to be a strange sort.

It was conditioned in Mary by her grandparents to hate them, though she did not know why. Yet, it was reason enough to be put on a list of the excuses to deny her love for Matthew, even when she had fallen from the moment that she had met him. The two lines of the House of Grantham had never gotten along. It was a century long feud that started when the second son of the Third Earl shunned a Marlborough Lady to marry the beautiful Cornflower, Clowance Poldark.

Yet, in the two years since getting to know Matthew, Mary had found herself recanting all that Granny and the Old Earl taught her about the hatred for the Nampara Crawleys. For often had Matthew talked of his childhood and youth in Cornwall, before his father died and he went to take his place at his parent's new home in Manchester. He always made it seem magical. The sea, the old Wheal Grace workings, exploring the endless shafts of Wheal Leisure – thirty fathoms below the sea line. It seemed alien, yet, oddly wholesome and enchanting. But that all went away when she saw Nampara for herself. Then, she couldn't … she couldn't understand what they had all been so proud of! In fact, a rather shameful and contrary anger boiled her blood as Matthew showed his ancestral home off with pride – actual pride.

It was a simple, unremarkable, grey stone Georgian house. It was spacious, with two stories. But it wasn't an estate house, it wasn't a manor … it wasn't even a mansion. It had four bedrooms, two toilets, and one – just one – bathroom. There was no power generator, for it had no electricity. It had modern plumping - which she accounted was a small mercy, she had guessed. There were decorative vines with white cockades that stretched randomly from top to bottom of the square rustic home. Patches of stained glass accented the Tudor style windows of the Study/Library. The property was protected by old and rotting moss and stone wall put up over a century ago and a wide-open field of blue cornflowers that led to the cove and beach beyond. There was a stable in a thatch barn that bore a visible sorted past of patch works from different generations. There was no garage, fore no Crawley of Nampara ever owned a motor before.

Lady Mary Crawley was offended in the realization that the famed Nampara was no better than a simple farmhouse that a tenant of the Grantham Estate would live in.

The inside was by no means any better. It was utterly rustic, the furniture was mostly self-made, there was no silver and no fine china, fore it was sold over the decades to stave off starvation in poverty. The floors were made of stone, the halls were of a dark wood whose finish was worn after a century. The study was filled with books upon books, bursting from the shelves, stacked on an ancient desk. There were old faded maps and blueprints of mines framed on the wall. Matthew had taken one of many ships in a bottle to show Mary, but he stopped short when he saw the snobbish and angry look on her face at the home in which he had taken much pride and love in. With dejection he placed his favorite ship back on the windowsill.

In her youth and horrid self-importance, Lady Mary was cross. Being here, in Cornwall, inside drafty old Nampara House, brought up the insecurities of the teasing and mockery that had scorned her before she left. And she was mortified to see, in that effete attitude, that they had been right. If she were to marry Matthew – this – this ramshackle 'tenant house' would be all hers. She would be mistress of a dilapidated ruin and Lady of an ugly grey cottage in the middle of nowhere at the edge of the world. And what angered her most was that she still loved Matthew so terribly much in spite of it. If it had been anyone else, she would sigh and break off any contact with such a man. To think she – eldest daughter to the Seventh Earl of Grantham - would stoop so low as to live in this 'squalor inheritance' of Poldark failings!? But it was Matthew Crawley who they belonged too, and Matthew was … was Matthew. How could she not deny the man, when she denied everything that made him whom she loved?

She did not spend the night at Nampara House. Matthew took her to Truro to stay at the "Red Lion Inn". There they supped quietly, and Matthew left her and Anna while he returned to Nampara to lick his wounds. However, in the morning, driven to prove Mary wrong, Matthew had returned to court her heart to this place that he had loved as dearly as he did her. But he was disappointed to find a note in Anna's handwriting that they had gone on to London early to help for Sybil's royal presentation and Coming Out Ball. It hurt Matthew to be so completely rejected in such a cold manner. And, indeed, such an abominable showing and cruel dismissal sat poorly in their hearts when they met again in London for Sybil's ball. They fought bitterly over Mary's horridly spoiled attitude and Matthew's dishonesty about his prospects. It was a clash of two different childhoods and lifestyles at the heart of a great love.

The Crawleys of Nampara cherished a simple life, cherished what they had, and wished for quiet and peace. Much had been lost over the years, but they had always had each other, always had a close-knit community of family and friends. They believed in the decency of common and everyday people working hard for what they had. There was value and virtue of morality in this, an unimpeachable honor in their simple ways of life.

Meanwhile, the ruling House of Grantham was a regal dynasty that was falling to ruin. Over the long decay of years since the great schisms. The First Earl and his heir dying for the Jacobite Cause, leaving the heir's pregnant fiancé to the mercy of the monstrous Georgian Second Earl. Then, later, "The Spare's" marriage to Clowance Poldark a generation later.

The line of the Lords of Downton Abbey had begun to fail.

It was not noticed, for their prestige had only grown in the Hanoverian Courts. But the degeneracy of their moral characters continued to falter in the slow decay of decades and centuries. Any House had its monsters and saints over the years, but after the childless and cruel Second Earl's influence and the splitting of the line of Lady Elfstone in the 1810's, the House of Grantham was plagued by a variety of only one type of Earl. Drunkards, gamblers, adulterers, and tyrants.

The Fourth Earl's mistress's son had an interest in water coloring in Italy, so the Earl raised the taxes four times on Grantham County just to send a stranger on a holiday - where he blew all of the tenants' slave labored money on wine and tanned men. Though never talked openly about, the rumors continued long after the Old Earl died of his fondness for young girls – especially young girls in his own family. And it was said that perhaps nightmarish memories had been why the barren Lady Rosamund Painswick fought so hard to keep her niece from the abortion table, or why Lady Mary Crawley was so cold and filled with self-hatred since she was a girl.

Each monstrous Lord passing a sickness of greed and vice from one generation to the next. They held on too long. Afraid of death - they refused to give up their power, their ancient castle, till they were feeble and unmanned. In doing so, they denied to their sons Lordship of Estate and Downton at the noontide of their youth and faculties, waiting till they were bitter, jealous, and paranoid middle-aged men. Then these veterans of evil squabbles with their siblings over an old man's scraps would sit upon their petty throne and guard their inheritance like a Dragon's hoard, denying their own children favor or single tarnished trinket from Downton's basements.

The Crawleys of Nampara warned every son of the "Grantham Blood Curse" as they called it. Fore they saw Downton Abbey as decadent and corrupting - the Grantham Lords as petty degenerates. It was these sentiments that Matthew Crawley was raised with and brought with him to Downton Abbey. He was ever afear of the corrupting nature of Downton and the effete prejudices of its masters. Though he found himself to be amazed and put in place by the graciousness of Robert, who found himself apart from the madness in the ennoblement of his true love and devotion for his wife. And he had been so immediately bewitched by the silken beauty of Lady Mary Crawley, who he knew from the moment he saw her that she was his destiny.

Yet, while Robert might have escaped the madness through Cora's love, and Matthew's rearing in Cornwall with Poldark values gave him immunity. For much of his romance with the woman he loved, he saw flashes of the sickness, the blood curse, in Mary. She would not give Downton Abbey up, not for anything. Whatever the Old Earl had done to her, it had germinated within her cold heart. Nothing seemed to matter, the betrayal of Lavinia, the honor of Matthew's convictions, and Reggie Swire's heirs. Lady Mary Crawley was going to keep Downton Abbey even if she had to forge a letter to do so. He would admit that there were times in that prolonged disagreement that Mary frightened him in her devotion to that place. And in those days, he often wondered if Mary might not slit his own throat for mastery of the house when Robert died. And it pained him to know, with all his love for Mary and who she could be …

That the foreboding gloom of that black sickness and madness lived deeply in her.

But in 1914 they were young, and both fairly foolish. Often, pragmatically, Mary thought that if they had married then, she would not have been happy. She would love him most terribly for the rest of their lives, but she would not have appreciated him nor his eccentricities. It took suffering and longing in the worst war in the history of man to realize what she had, to realize what was missing in her life. By the time of the Somme, of seeing him with Lavinia, Nampara seemed a dream home, a dream life.

But she never stayed there.

Even when they got married, the scars of her cruel and inexcusable tantrum laid upon Matthew's heart. He went once a month to Nampara to check on the house, on the land, and to clear away the ivy off Geoffrey Charles and Cecily. But he never took Mary with him. It did not matter how many times that she apologized or accused him of being a baby. He did not want her there. And it pained her so to be parted in such a way, knowing she had wronged the man she loved and that it had never been righted.

And when he was truly gone from her, she had rather stayed away, even when she was announced in society as "Mistress of Trenwith" - it was an outdated title. She was no longer the mistress. While Matthew had left her his co-ownership in the Estate, his inheritance of Wheal Grace, Wheal Leisure, Trenwith, and Nampara was all given to George by right. And for the first six months of his life, Isobel had taken him to Nampara House to give Mary some space after Matthew's death. She remembered Nanny West being angered - which puzzled Anna at the time. Surely, it made things easier taking care of only Sybbie?

She didn't remember much for the first six months after Matthew's death, only that a nurse from the hospital came and squeezed out Mary's breast milk into bottles that were sent directly to Nampara. It seemed that her baby had survived entirely on bottles of Mary's own milk and 'dry feeding' from Mamma, who also stayed at Nampara with Isobel and the baby.

Cora had tried to get her daughter to understand that the baby needed to be fed directly. Yet, Mary seemed foggy and unconcerned about the 'little orphan' and didn't see why her mamma couldn't do it. Practically, it rather didn't make a difference who fed the baby. After several dry feedings, the memory of the sensation of a baby at the breast - and the rather strong attachment to her only boy - had caused Lady Grantham to lactate once more. But while it didn't seem to matter to Mary at the time, she began to understand the costly error of letting her mother take over the feeding of the child. Fore, when she had Caroline, she understood that breastfeeding was more than just sustenance for a child. It was about connecting to the baby. There was something rather intimate and wonderful about those quiet moments in the nursery, admiring the little life created inside you. There was something indescribable of producing a nourishment, a sustenance of life, that only her baby, her creation, could live from. She had missed that with George, and it forever haunted her afterward.

Fore, she often found that for the rest of his life, she and George were always out of step. He did not look at her the way Caroline or Sybbie had. Something told her that he rather felt more comfortable with Mamma than he did with her, and it seemed that his granny was the only one he listened to ever afterward. Of course, Lady Grantham told her daughter that it was ridiculous, surely it wasn't the case that just because Cora breastfed her only grandson that he did not care for Mary. But often, while holding him in the first years of his life, he had looked at her as if she were a stranger.

He did not smile for her; he did not talk to her. She watched him climb in her mother's lap and giggle at her kisses and cuddles. She found him jabbering on about things with Isobel as they walked hand in hand from the Hospital with Dickie adding as he walked behind them beamingly. He even snuggled with Edith as she laid out on the futon in the Great Hall, her hand petting his back, kissing his curls, as they proofread Spratt's column 'together'. Yet, he never did any such thing with Mary. He did not come to her when he was afear, he did not visit her in the morning as he did with Mamma and Edith. The boy didn't even share his secrets with her, he reserved that for Thomas.

He always seemed utterly pensive for such a small child. Most of the time she wondered what he was thinking about, what – if anything – there was to think about? Mary could honestly say that she didn't think about anything when she was his age. It was all frocks, parties, French, and ice cream. Yet, George seemed so introverted, so quiet a lad, that she wasn't sure if it was normal. He was seldom in the company of other children of his ranking. Unlike Sybbie – who had always thrived among the children of privilege - George felt uncomfortable around other aristocratic children. He preferred - if any company - the children of the village and especially the tenants. He seemed to have more in common with them, the same practical tastes, than the sons and daughters of Lords and Ladies. In that way she couldn't say he was like Matthew, who was as solitary to a fault. But he was certainly unlike the Grantham's of Downton Abbey. The boy was more Nampara Crawley – exceedingly Poldark - than he was of the Earl's House.

Indeed, there was something unique about him that she couldn't quite put into words. He always seemed to have a grave and serious countenance that was wry and roguish. But he was such a beautiful boy, even with his grim demeanor. Mary had often wondered where he had gotten such a look from. Perhaps there was some memory of sadness ingrained into his soul. Or yet, more tragically, he carried the imprinting of dark heartbreak from the emotions of a mamma and grandmother whose worlds came crashing down on the very day he was new to them.

One could pick out George Crawley from a crowd, and not know why. Her boy had stood out, seemed different from the other children. It might have been his serious demeanor, his grim but handsome face. But it was more elemental than looks. 'There's a Destiny about that one', as an old Irish woman had said to Mary once on the London street. She had watched him at play and found that he rather liked to do and say what he wanted, which, in turn, set a trend among the other aristocratic children who would follow his lead. Then, he'd become very cross that everyone was copying him and would scorn them to do their own thing and leave him to do his – never understanding that those children of peerage were not taught to think for themselves as he did.

To this, her papa would laugh and say that his grandson was a leader of men … to which Mamma would undercut by reminding him of their small child's reluctance at the prospect. It had been one thing with the village children and the tenants - who the Grantham family was sure they obeyed and followed, because, George was their Lord. But when sons and daughters of Dukes and Marquesses looked to the Heir of the House of Grantham …

Well, that was something else entirely.

The boy could've done anything with that type of magnetism, clout, force of personality. Mary, at his age, might have started a cult around herself, ruled her domain as the center of attention for all time. But her son, her only boy, did not want that. He was Matthew Crawley's son, which meant that he preferred solitude. Like his father, he came to Nampara once a month, usually with Isobel. They'd stay a week and come back. Mary had no objections and neither did Mamma, though Lord Grantham had hoped that with Mary and Matthew reunifying the Grantham Bloodline that Nampara and Trenwith would be superfluous. But traditions died hard, and Isobel - as an Eyns of Killewarren - had deep roots in Cornwall that she would rather not see atrophy in her only grandchild's day. So, the Crawleys of Nampara continued on, and - much to the absolute hatred of Lady Violet - overthrew the traditions of the Grantham's of Downton Abbey and became the ruling values ever afterward of the reunified Line of Lady Elfstone.

And of such disconnect from the Grantham's aristocratic values was there no more display than George's attitude toward Mary in those early days. She remembered a beautiful small child that would simply stare at her from afar, as if trying to work out just what she was. And Mary would admit that she hated it. It seemed to her the only time she had with George was when he had nightmares. And then, he never came to her. It was Sybbie who came boldly into her and Henry's room, informing Mary that George was having another night terror. Then, she would get up, and go to him. But even as she sang the Cornish lullabies Matthew had taught her while Sybbie cuddled up to George - he never awoke. He only settled his fits in sleep and calmly returned to normal. Then, the boy would never know that it had been Mary that had settled him, relieved him of his terror, who kissed his sweated brow and nuzzled Sybbie's cheek as she curled up with her best friend protectively. Then, Henry would always ask what was wrong as she got back into bed. But she never said what it was. She would never admit it …

That she didn't know her son.

It had been a long time since she thought about that. Of George's young childhood, she tried not to reminisce. Fore, once, she could've fooled herself, could've looked back at those first six years with rose tinted glasses. He called her mummy, he ran to her arms at tea, and she knew his warmth on her skin as he slept. But now, fourteen years later, it seemed another world, something from a dream. For George Crawley was surely not that boy now, nor had he been in quite a long time … thanks to her. But now it seemed to always be on her mind, the memories, the small moments of doubt. For Lady Mary Crawley had something rather dreadful to hide, and as the year wore on, her many secrets killed her from the inside more and more.

Long chocolate brown tresses that were like yards of pure silk were held against the wind by sunglasses that were pushed up to her hairline. The fluttering locks rested lightly on a sheer white blouse which covered a shiny one-piece red swimsuit. Its smooth skintight spandex showed off a Grecian goddess like sculpted body of pale marble. Her red tinted amber eyes were drawn with a deep glance of piercing intimacy at a lone figure. Fore there, on the grey sands of the Cornish shore, she saw a man.

("An Ideal Marriage" - John Lunn)

He had neat waving blonde hair and crystalline blue eyes. The sharp features of his nose and cheekbones gave him a rather hawk like profile, predatory in seeming, but for the gentleness of his eyes – the marking of decency that was in a very look. His skin was pale, but luminous in light, giving a lacquer quality to his face and blonde hair in sunlight. Even as he sat alone his features seemed to shimmer as sunbeams off the reflection of the clear seawater of the cove. The salty air blew and fluttered a short sleeve white button-down shirt that hung off him loosely. his khaki trouser legs were rolled up to his knees as his bare feet clung to the dented and smooth rock of a large boulder that sat in the surf.

After a long pause, the pale beauty padded over to the man. The water was cool on her smooth creamy legs as she waded her way against the rushing tide. The bristles of red seaweed scratched her ankles, and the smooth feeling of shells rolled under heal as she approached the boulder. The man didn't seem to notice her, his eyes drawn outward, toward that endless horizon that had frightened her so. She made some effort climbing the boulder, her delicate feet were not made from such treks without shoe, her foot slipping on the sea smoothed indentions and eroding stone. But it was a small inconvenience to get to what she had really wanted.

And that was to be near him again.

The moment she made it to the top, she felt herself go faint. For she thought, made peace, that she would never – never - see him again. Yet, there he was, sitting there, staring out at the endless golden sky, pensive as he used to be. The salty wind caressing his cheek, the smell of the musty scent of cologne and shampoo – God did he always smell so divine … she had forgotten that. For a long time, Mary stood atop the boulder, waiting for him to say something, to turn, yet he didn't. She was entranced by the sheer sight of him again. It had been half a year now, and she still hadn't gotten over it. Sometimes it felt like yesterday, and other times – like right now – it was like straying into a dream.

Eventually, out of instinct that was sheer personality, Mary Crawley didn't wait for an invitation. Somewhere in her heart she scolded herself for even entertaining the idea. Silently she slipped down and slid onto the spot next to the man. She took a moment to grimace and shift. When she had bought her shiny swimsuit some years ago, it had been done to be provocative, to prove Sybbie wrong. 'Mamma, aren't you a little too respectable, to be wearing such things?' Her girl … her poor little girl … had put her teasing delicately. But Mary had known what she had meant. She was implying that perhaps Lady Mary had been too old to wear such a swimsuit. It certainly pushed the boundaries of decency. But Mary Crawley had always been bold, and she would not deny the relishing of a challenge of not only wearing it but pulling it off.

But she was not at the beaches of their holiday house in Brighton, or the tile poolside's of Bath - where men of every age cherished the sight of her sculpted body in sleek and revealing spandex. Here she found her pale - yet exceptional - bum being impaled by jagged rock. It was then that it occurred to her that perhaps high-class posh shop sold red spandex was not the greatest material for protecting one's hind end in rural and rugged Cornwall. Her annoyance was rewarded with a private smirk from the figure next to her as she removed her blouse. Folding it, she slid it underneath her reddened cheeks and found a tolerant relief.

When she turned in pained grimace, she caught his sly grin which caused her to glare with a smirk. She might have chastised, claiming that she had come all the way up here for him, and the least he could do was show a little sympathy for the red marks on her usually worshipped bum. But to see the smirk, the old teasing slyness of his little joys in her annoyance – her humanity – made her forget a reaction of yesterday and relish the moment of today.

There was a long silence as he looked out toward the sea again, while she looked over him. When the wind blew, he closed his eyes, letting the salty spray of foam against the rock drizzle over him. It seemed a baptism, a rebirth of some sort, something missed, something forgotten. He took a deep breath, and exhaled. There was a slight emotion in red tinted eyes, remembering his face, the little detail of serenity in his relaxed countenance. The last time she had seen it was before Scotland, before Duneagle.

The last time they made love.

It was the face he made every time he would first enter her warm embrace. A moment of pleasure, a rush of sensation, and an unquantifiable feeling of knowing what it was to be home. Not a million, billion, women in the world could ever make Matthew Reginald Crawley feel the way Mary Josephine Crawley did upon that first moment in the act of making love. Now, to see it again, after so long, awoke a fire, a desperation inside of her. She wanted, needed, that look, that feeling again.

It was only then, that she realized just how lost she had been without it.

"I thought it would be different."

He had finally said after a longtime. Mary stared at Matthew as he continued to sit with a knee pulled up to his breast. His eyes were closed as he listened to the muttering of the Cornish sea about Nampara Cove. She relished the vibration of his soft and gentle voice. It was not always such a way, he was rather moody, prone to anger – especially around her – but he always spoke softly and gently … till he didn't. There was a grid behind his emotions, a base in his voice, and it always reminded her of freshly laundered muslin.

"What would?" Mary asked inquisitively.

"Coming back …" He said opening his eyes.

He finally turned and looked fearlessly into the woman he love's intimate and deep gaze. Suddenly, he was lost, lost in them, in the memories of everything so hard fought, so dearly won, and so easily lost in a split second of distraction. Mary's face was unreadable when he blinked, intent, hooked upon every word he spoke. It was then that he gave that familiar roguish side smirk that he and his son were famous for as he looked away.

"I thought that there would be more too it, a lingering sense of …" He drew off.

"Of what?" She asked.

"You know, funny enough …" He frowned in puzzlement. "I don't know really." He shrugged. "I don't feel any different." He looked at his hands. "I don't look any different." He examined them. "You …" He looked to Mary. And for the first time, in the pause, she shrank slightly away from his scrutiny. But he pursued her, his hand reaching out and touching her freckled cheek. Suddenly, as if coming to an amazing realization, he stroked it tenderly.

"You haven't aged a day." He said quietly, looking down at her body in red spandex.

Indeed, Lady Mary Crawley was as she had been twenty-one years ago, in the birthing bed of the Downton Hospital. Not a spot, wrinkle, or line marred her beautiful pale and freckled countenance. Of why this was, George Crawley suspected, but only Lady Cora Crawley knew for certain – but of such things do not come into this tale.

Mary placed her hand over his, pressing it to her cheek. She squeezed her eyes shut, and felt every moment of his touch, every sensation, and the very warmth of it. It was there that Matthew saw that though Mary in face and body had not aged, there was a burden so heavy upon her soul. He did not see it, but he felt the twenty years of his absence, the twenty years of tragedy, and the twenty years of soul crushing heartache that had defined her life without him.

The emotions of the moment, of the unburdening of the love of his life before his very eyes, crushed him. And inside came a sudden and terrible shame. It was how he imagined the poor devils felt on the Somme, when they were accused and arrested for cowardice. He saw the look in those chaps' eyes, the shame, the regret, and yet the helplessness of not being able to control those emotions. They knew that they had let their mates down, their country down, and yet, they didn't know how to control it, to do it differently. And it tore Matthew up to feel that way. He knew nothing of this new world at war with the same names and places. But he knew that his absence from it had done a great deal of ill. And the one who had suffered the most was the woman he loved.

"I'm sorry, Mary …" He whispered under the rush of the tide. "God, I'm so sorry." His crystalline eyes grew glassy in sight of such pain in his wife's face. "I should've been more …" He shook his head. "I should've been so much more careful." He chastised himself.

"Yes …" Mary nodded. "I dare say you should've." She hissed angrily; frustration voiced in the surrender of tears. "And you'll spend every waking moment of the rest of our lives making it up to me." She scolded, holding his hand to her cheek as she nuzzled into it.

There was just a slight smirk on his face at the sight of an emotional Mary. "What did you have in mind?" He asked moving in closer with a shake of his head.

"Never you mind …" Mary's authoritative voice got quieter in distraction as their noses touched. "I'm sure …" She broke off as they came closer. "I'll think of something, rather." She said before they captured each other's lips.

The smell of her perfume was carried by the whip of the wind that tossed her smooth glossy hair. Its sweet nectary intoxication mixed with the earthy tang of the sea that sloshed and lapped against their bolder. And in this mixing and crafting was a heady rush of emotion and affection that seemed tailored to a sentimental weakness that was overwhelming under a weight of love that Matthew Crawley thought would crush him. The sound of the waves, the golden light of afternoon, the soft pale skin of his wife's exposed bareback, and the familiar wetness of fresh washed cherry of her kisses. His eyes watered with tears that he didn't try to hold back. One moment he was the happiest he had ever been, the next, he was told that it had to wait, that he had missed it by twenty years. But in this moment, in the feeling of the love of his life in his arms, he was allowed to touch it again, the moment of pure happiness in the seconds before it was all snatched away on a country road. With such a heart aglow - lodged in his throat - he thought he could reach down and use it as a lantern in the abandoned shafts of Wheal Grace or Leisure.

Everything held back, everything unsaid, was unleashed in a torrent of six months of pent up emotions and lonesome night's longing. Lady Mary – standing outside Matthew's room in the witching hour, placing her ear to the door, caressing the white wood, her eyes squeezed shut as she listened to him sleep. She needed it out of her, these last twenty years of grief, loss, and rage … the rage of being left behind. Now she only wanted passion, the heat, the fire of their unquenchable love to burn it all out of her till she was free of so many demons. The mistakes, the selfishness, and the evils of the past would be effigies on the bonfire of their reunion. Then, at the end, there would only be them, Mary and Matthew Crawley, two people whose love was deathless. She had fallen into his arms, her head laying on his shoulder as they folded together - their reunion was so emotional, so intense …

They almost didn't hear it.

Over the lapping of the afternoon tide, the greenish blue water bubbling as it burrowed deeper into the cracks and crevasses of the ancient bolder – there was a noise in the distance. As the two lovers surrendered to everything that they had been holding onto for six months, it came closer and closer. Their blood boiled as if one heart was pumping molten fire through two bodies. But in the roaring rush of adrenaline that coursed through them, an old instinct, an experience soldier's senses, overtook Matthew Crawley's body. It was the same instinct that made him shield an open flame with his palm, who heard the tiniest noises in the dark, and who knew that danger had a certain must in the air before it finds you. Slowly, he broke apart from his passionate and soul encompassing kiss.

"Matthew …" Mary gasped. "Matthew please …" She begged him to return, cupping his cheek.

"Mary …" He said suddenly, finally hearing it on the horizon. "What is that?" He asked alertly.

For a long moment the love of is life stroked his cheek. "What is wha …?" She suddenly cut herself off when she heard it.

Slowly, Mary pulled herself off his shoulder and concentrated. Their hands still intertwined, his other over her silky sleek covered waist, her grip balling the shoulder of his white shirt. For a long time, they sat entirely still as the coming noise was picked up by the acoustics of the cliffs, ravines, and caverns upon the stony walls of the Cornish shore. It was an angry droning whine of working machinery.

The last time Mary had heard anything like it was when she and the family had gone to watch Henry race at Brookland's – the day that Charlie Rogers died. It was of the same intensity of angry running engines coming at a brilliant lit, but much more powerful and quite a bit faster than the fastest cars on that awful day. Both Mary and Matthew looked about cliffs and caverns, looking to find a motor. Then, as if sharing the same thoughts, they looked to one another for a shared confirmation before they turned their site toward the ocean horizon.

There, closing faster than they thought possible from the sea, came four dark shapes flying in a tight formation that broke cloud cover. At first, they were dark as shadows, blurs, specs that could've been mistaken as sunspots. But as the noise of reverberation intensified, they could start to make out the shapes. They were rectangular, with straight wings. Their box like cockpits shimmered and glinted in the sun of high spring. They had descended their altitude slowly at first, cautiously, not breaking formation. But when one of the pilots caught sight of dotted figures below, their descent began to grow rapidly. One spec was wearing white and khaki, and the other was wearing a glistening ruby red. They were people. In that moment, it was unknown if the planes thought that the two were RAF spotters, or simply lovers on a beach holiday.

Either way they would not live long enough to warn anyone of their coming when they broke formation.

PHEMPH! PHEMPH! PHEMPH! PHEMPH!

Matthew, instinctually, tackled Mary to the boulder, protecting her with his body and soul as the German ME-109 Fighter Plane dove at the specs that were becoming a blonde man and a beautiful woman in a swimsuit. Jets of sea water exploded at the strafing trail of the large shells of 20 Millimeter Anti-Aircraft cannons that ripped Nampara Cove's waterline. Luckily the diving German pilot was off, and the trailing run of cannon missed the boulder by some twenty yards. Mary covered her ears under Matthew as the Messerschmitt buzzed overhead, climbing just above the cliff face. When it was gone, the man pulled his wife up by her shoulders.

"Are you alright?!" He shouted over the noise of plane engines. Mary nodded; her mouth open to speak comfort to him … till she looked up.

"Matthew, look out!" She cried pointing.

Just then, another 109 came baring down on them. This time it leveled out and both husband and wife saw its nose - which had a hypnotizing swirling color pattern painted behind its propellers - pitch down at the perfect angle. This time it was Mary who reacted. She grabbed Matthew's breast pocket and his collar and used all of her weight behind survivalist adrenaline to pushed both of them off the side of the boulder. A tangle of limbs made a loud splash as they fell into the sea. Both, now soaking wet, gasped and struggled to get free of one another. Just as they both touched feet in the chest deep seawater another explosion of cannon fire rented the air.

PHEMPH! PHEMPH! PHEMPH! PHEMPH!

Mary pulled Matthew against her, pushing herself back first as tight to the boulder as she could. They both ducked underwater in mutual protective embrace as the German plane's strafing run shot columns of water, before a painfully hollow ricocheting noise echoed shrilly about them when the hot shells riddled across the boulder. When they resurfaced, gulping the salty air, a rain of sediment showered over them. Then, slowly, what was left of Mary sheer white blouse floated as soft as flower pollen in tatters about them.

"We need to get out of here!" Matthew exclaimed, holding Mary by her pale shoulders, her hands resting on his chest, feeling anxiety in the beating of his heart throbbing through her palm and up her forearm. They both looked around a moment.

"The cave!"

Matthew looked out to where Mary pointed. In the distance he saw a boulder-strewn part of the cove. In the distance was the mouth of a half sunken rock formation that was oddly shaped, like curdled porridge that had seeped down a bowl and made a twisted archway. Matthew knew it to be the old back entrance that led to the derelict workings of Wheal Grace. In the old days, before the Napoleonic Wars, smugglers and free traders used it to store goods, before his Great-Great-Grandfather Ross Poldark revived the mine. It was a long way, especially in chest deep water - but it was better than being sitting ducks.

"Come on!" Matthew took Mary's hand when they heard another plane coming.

There were patterns, lay-lines in battle, that Matthew discovered as a veteran of the Great War. Moments that could be used for advantage if you were dialed into the fight. He saw their chance to move, when he heard the next German plane commit to his dive. It was slow going, for the tide was not up far enough for he and Mary to swim. But they moved fast enough to get out of the way of the latest strafing trail. Another hollow whining of shells off boulder echoed through cavernous surroundings. Pushing and wading as quick as they could, spitting out sea water that rushed in the surf against them, Mary and Matthew fled for the cave. Not once, did they let go of the other's hand as they raced as painfully slow as they feared for cover.

"Hurry, Matthew!" Mary pleaded.

When he looked up, he saw that the last German fighter was bearing down on them. This time, this one - the leader of the raiding party - was angling to lead them.

This had gone on far too long. They were sent here on a mission. It was for certain that they couldn't let anyone know that they were here, or that they were coming. But they had been sent to find the RAF's Airdrome in the sector. They had heard that sabotage had damaged the British's radar tower, leaving the area undetected. But they could not waist the opportunity by playing games with their prey. Especially with the knowledge that he was on the prowl somewhere out here - hunting. Too quickly did the commander hear his men turn this into a game, a competition, over the radio. They had bets on who would hit who. Someone was willing to pay double for whoever hit the "Dish" in the sexy swimsuit. This the German Officer could not abide. If they were to die, then it must not be done this way.

He would kill them quickly and honorably.

"Just a bit more …" Matthew gritted, pulling Mary along as she continued to look back over her shoulder at the coming fighter.

"Please, Matthew, hurry!" She exclaimed in fear as the grey bodied 109 with yellow highlighting on wing tips and tail rudder began to pitch down.

She didn't want it to happen again. She didn't want to lose him. It was all she kept thinking, her hand on his back, pushing him forward as he pulled her along. Mary Crawley was ready to die – she had been for fourteen years. But it couldn't be Matthew, not again. She was sure that the world could go on without her – in fact, after all the evil she had done, Mary was sure many would prefer a world without her in it. But they had just got Matthew back - he, their boy, just got his father back … after what he sacrificed to get him here, get all of those they lost back to their loved ones. It would be cruel for it to be all taken away, for so many years of their boy's suffering to mean nothing. That was what she thought as she found herself clinging to Matthew suddenly, knowing that they could not escape the angle the fighter was taking. For an instant she thought about a six-year-old boy, how he called her mummy, and ran to her at tea … she had felt his warmth against her skin as he slept.

RUDATATATA! RUDATATATA! RUDTATATA!

The sound of something unfamiliar ripped at a frightening high velocity - not as powerful as the anti-aircraft weapons of the Messerschmitt, but more rapid and just as devastating. Mary cringed and waited for the searing pain, holding onto Matthew desperately. She heard her father's words to Mamma from an ill-fated dinner party long ago. "If this is it – Just know that I have loved you very, very, much." She had never felt a sentiment more in her life, clinging to Matthew with all of herself given to him. But the white flash and serenity never came.

Instead she heard a hiccupped noise of mechanized failure. When she and Matthew looked up, they saw that the grey and gold plane that had them both dead-to-rights was now billowing smoke. It was still pitched down toward them, but now they saw that the cockpit of the German fighter had combusted into flame.

"Watch out!"

Matthew ducked both Mary and him underwater as the flaming 109 whistled its falling death rattle, buzzing too closely over their heads. When they reemerged, they saw the half canvas plane splinter and disintegrate into the ocean, leaving open flames floating on oil slicks and debris like lit candles at an altar for the fallen. Both husband and wife watched in amazement and wonder at the destruction of what was supposed to have been their death. Just then, they flinched when something fast - much faster than the German planes - buzzed to make sure that his foe was finished.

("The Cliffs of Dover" - Eric Johnson)

As it passed overhead the noise it made chilled both Mary and Matthew's blood, sending a painful corkscrewing down to the spine. It was a strange high whistling like the thunderous wings of a hurricane that added and gave a new roaring noise to an engine that made it seem beastly. Indeed, for a moment, Matthew could've sworn, as it passed overhead, that it was a dragon – a real dragon – disturbed from slumber from the foundations of the earth. A beast of the ancient world that had clawed its way free from the mine shafts below. But as the shadow passed over them, his horror filled imagination was stilled by the sight of another plane that had entered into the fray.

But instead of the Nazi Swastika or the Iron Cross of the Luftwaffe, the "Dragon" had the Roundel of the Allies.

It had the look of a RAF Spitfire, but there was something different about it. Matthew didn't know anything about airplanes in his own days, much less about these futuristic fighters of this brave new world of tomorrow. But he knew what a Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane looked like - at least enough of an idea to know that the plane was unlike any of the other two. The metal fighter had the patina of sable chrome. But in front of the cockpit on both sides was nose art of a celestial comet, its trailing stream was painted a navy blue whose cosmic streaks ran down the body of the plane and over the rounded wings whose tips were flat bent. The plane's tail rudder was completely blue but resembled a sleek batwing rather than the usual rectangle of RAF fighters. Also, unlike the normal armament of a Spitfire - which carried two thirty-caliber Browning machine guns - the new prototype or custom fighter bore six fifty-caliber cannons evenly spaced, three per its long wingspan. The rivets on the plane were smoothed down and slippery – so clean it could kill bacteria - making the fighter with its flat bent wings and tail fin completely aero-dynamic. If seemed more an elegant racing plane, sleek and futuristic, than a machine of war.

As it passed overhead, Matthew and Mary saw row markings on the blue streak under the rounded Plexiglas cockpit. There was fifteen Iron Crosses of confirmed German squadron leaders killed personally. Ten black swastikas underneath the crosses represented Luftwaffe Aces the pilot had shot down. But at the bottom of the first two rows there were five golden swastikas, each representing confirmed kills of double or triple Nazi Aces – those of the inner-circle to Goering and their Fuhrer - that the Allied Pilot had shot down personally. Prized scalps on a Lance meant to intimidate and menace the highest to the lowest in the German Airforce. Fore it was Matthew who observed to himself that the tally marks were just special cases … and, indeed, there was no telling how many normal rank and file German pilots had died at his hand since France.

It buzzed over the lovers' head from the cliff face. The chrome off its shimmering alloy glimmered in the sunlight's dazzling like the shine off the helm of a valiant knight charging to battle. The fighter's reflection sparkled atop the Cornish waters calm surface as it went full throttle at the other three German 109s. One could almost feel their panic and amazement of the loss of their leader so suddenly. It threw them off, and they suddenly scrambled to regroup, seeing the enemy pilot charge at them full tilt.

Call it nerves, call it fatigue, call it fear – all of it wrapped into a word growing more and more common every day – "Kanalkrankheit" – "Channel Sickness". It was an ominous feeling of anxiety and doom that was overcoming every German Pilot after a year of war over the skies of the British Imperium. Even the best of them was eaten by doubt as they flew over the English Channel, fore, every time they saw her white cliffs and shore, they felt the fear of it being the last thing they would ever see. But today It was an ill omen or a cruel fate that cornered them so when they saw the glint of chrome and the blue cosmic streaks from the nose art.

Everyone at the airdrome in Brittany told them that they'd sooner see Himmler play football than to 'run into him'.

He was a myth propagated by Allied Propaganda; dreamed up by the Marchioness of Hexham to sell magazines. If anything, he was a phantasm that haunted Colonel Frandral Von Beck within the walls of his castle in the Austrian mountains. Most German pilots didn't think he even existed. The men and women of the Luftwaffe had running bets from Brest, to Paris, all the way to Calais of if this dark avenger of Churchill's was real or just a story to frighten new pilots on their first raids over England. But today could've been someone's lucky day, and those experienced German pilots would fully expect Heinrich Himmler to be juggling a football with his knees. For it was over the Channel, in sight of the cliffs of Cornwall, and at Nampara Cove – they ran right into him …

"The Comet"

Red tracer fire from the sleek plane erupted, echoing around Mary and Matthew from the hollow Cornish cliffs. They watched the red lights arc at the German planes as they tried to get back into formation. They evaded fifty-caliber cannons that would tear their mostly canvas bodies to shreds easier than a hatchet to rotten wood. Like frightened pigeons on a London crosswalk, they broke the rushed and panicked formation. Two of the planes banking right, the third to the left. The chrome and navy fighter flashed like lightning right where they had been. With a twisting barrel roll, the customized fighter banked left in pursuit of the lone Messerschmitt. Meanwhile the other two began to loop around in order to get behind the lone allied pilot as he gave chase.

"Come on!" Matthew said, suddenly realizing that their savior had bought them time to escape.

The man tugged on his wife's hand, but she did not budge. When he turned back, he found that Mary was paralyzed. A countenance of absolute terror was awash over her soaked pale face. Her mouth hung open, her eyes gazing intensely in the distance where the dogfight was drifting down the shore toward the old Grambler Mine. He gave only a quick glance at the sight of the sleek Allied fighter break off his assault and bank quickly, as the other two Nazi fighters tried to get behind him. Trails of white streaked behind his wings from air brakes when he made a smooth, seamless, maneuver. Out turning the pursuing Germans, he zigzagged back into a yawing bank and then reengaged the lone 109 as the other two had to reposition while the hunt of their comrade resumed.

Mary's red tinted amber eyes were completely enthralled to the fight. The roaring of the engines prickled her skin, her body tensed at each rattle of the green tracer fire of Anti-Aircraft guns that chased after white streaks from the Comet's folded wing tips. Just for a beat - disregarding the usual explanations of hesitancy in near death - the man could not shake the feeling that there was something else about this moment that frightened Mary, that kept her enthralled to the action. He began to wonder if she knew something that he did not about what was going on …

Or perhaps she knew the pilot that had saved their lives.

"Mary …!" Matthew shouted, turning her shoulders to face him. "Mary, we have to go!" He said, threading her long soaked chocolate locks back. The sensation of the man she love's hands through her hair brought a sense of comfort enough for her to regain herself to at least speak.

"He's alone, Matthew … he, he's alone! We can't leave him!" She shook her head in panic.

"Mary … Mary, listen to me!"

"No, we, we can't leave him, Matthew!

"Mary!"

"He's alone!"

"Listen to me!"

He shook her by her shoulders. The violent action, the rattle of it, quieted her momentarily. She was stricken sober while the man she loved took a deep breath, taking her face in his hands.

"We can worry about him later. Right now, he is buying us time to get to safety. Do you understand? We must get to safety first!" He nodded.

"Right …" Mary replied, hooking herself like a bridle to the assurance of Matthew's cool collection and experience under fire.

Once again, Matthew took his wife's hand and led her onward. He felt the resistance in Mary's legs while they struggled through the rising tide toward Wheal Grace's cavern. With every aggressive noise of plane engines or spray of fire, he felt Mary stop and wheel back around to see what had happened. But she responded to Matthew's tugs as they battled into shoulder deep water that lapped against them. Both began to kick, having just enough room to begin to swim. The sloshing of their arms was serene compared to the angry echo of the dogfight that was drifting out to sea, then closing right back to Nampara Cove.

The boulders were slippery with moss and runoff on Matthew's hand as he leaned against one of them. The back entrance to Grace's lower levels were guarded by old mossy boulders that seemed like bulky and moldy columns that lead to the deformed gates of some long lost dwarven kingdom of the Elder Days. He had never been inside this way before. Often times as a boy he had interest, but his father warned against it. If he went into "Grace" the proper way, there was a chance they could find him if he got lost. But if he went through the "back gates" of her, there was no knowing where he might end up. Since the mine's closure before Waterloo, no one had been that far below. The prospect of being lost in the dark, of falling through a forgotten or unknown chamber into an inky black pool of water in a thousand foot well – like their ancestor Francis Poldark - chilled the youth's blood and gave him nightmares for months. Mother had been fairly unhappy with his father for introducing such vivid images. But Reginald was unapologetic if it deterred their only child from doing reckless or stupid things in dangerous places.

Even as a man grown, who had been through the worst war in human history – and who died twenty years ago – still anchored himself to a rock. The impulse of childhood fears of that dark entrance caused him to reach out and pull Mary behind one of the tall boulders at the entrance. She was transfixed on the battle offshore and allowed herself to be gently glided through the sloshing water and against Matthew soaked broad chest. She took comfort in his arms that wrapped around her protectively from behind as they both looked out from behind their boulder at what was going on by the long derelict Grambler Mine. For now, Matthew's hesitation to go into Grace and Mary's grave reluctance to leave the aerial battlefield had halted their tracks to the dark cavern some thirty yards away.

In the distance red tracers whistled and rattled the tail and wings of the ME 109 that was being hunted. The disadvantage of the bulky Messerschmitt versus the RAF fighters was its low maneuverability. All veteran Allied Pilots knew how to outturn the foe, to throttle their superior speed and hairpin, forcing the German plane to break off and reposition. Or – if the German was a rookie – he would try to turn with you and cause his fighter to stall out in the strain on the bulky machine. None of these men of the Luftwaffe were rookies – but the modifications and customizations to this chrome Allied prototype maximized these advantages against the 109s. Thus, though trailed by two enemy fighters, the highly skilled Allied Ace was simultaneously able to evade the foe and run down his prey in this deadly race.

Hunter green and gold pieces of the Messerschmitt were torn off its mauled carcass by fifty caliber cannons. Mary and Matthew watched as finally the entire right wing of the German fighter was sawed off. Smoke billowed from the plane as flames exploded from its side. Even before it hit the ground, the 109 began to break apart, twisting and spinning violently among its own falling debris. A volcanic eruption of sea water exploded as high as thirty feet into the air when what was left of the main body slammed onto the cove's shore. Flaming debris rained down for long moment's afterward, sizzling and smoking when it emerged bobbing from the sea.

They watched from behind their new boulder as retaliatory green tracers fired by the lead 109 hissed with ear shattering noise. They arced behind the Allied plane as the pilot began to turn smoothly. The tracer rounds followed but did not touch the chrome body of the Comet's fighter. Quickly, the lead plane broke off his pursuit as a warning light on his dash began to slightly flicker - a needle on a gage ticking dangerously to red. However, the German's wingman, working in tandem, had already repositioned. The experienced two-man team had fought together in Poland, Holland, France, and through "Eagle Day". After a year of air battles over the Channel they knew most RAF tricks employed by both British and disguised American pilots. It was a seamless handoff as one Messerschmitt broke off and the other began its part of the race.

For a moment, in a swell of anticipated glory, the German thought he had the Comet, appearing to cut him off. But the green tracer lights of Anti-Aircraft rounds arced in front of the Allied fighter instead of tearing into him as he passed. At the last second, the RAF ace went off-speed, breaking rather than throttling. Thus, the green lit rounds went too far in front in anticipation. Then, with a flip of switches on his dash, the pulling back of the throttle, and the jerk of the jock stick, the proto-type fighter went into an evasive diving barrel roll.

Out of instinct Matthew pulled Mary closer to him as the German planes gave pursuit, falling further and further toward the earth. The shrill cry of the diving planes pained both of the spectators, and they covered their ears. Mary shrugged out of her lover's arms as she floated herself around the rock as the three planes suddenly disappeared behind the distant cliffs near Grambler. Her breath was uneven in the limbo of what was happening, or what had happened. They heard the German 20-millimeter cannons in the distance, the angry humming of aviator engines, but they could not see what was happening.

"Blast it!" Matthew felt a wave of frightened frustration in a strange explosion of a sixth sense of concern for the Allied Ace that had already crippled Mary. "Why is he out here alone?!" The man growled under his breath looking back over his shoulder to the cliffs, hoping to see Spitfires or Hawker Hurricanes in the distance.

"Where are the others?!" Mary shared his anger, holding onto his emotion, his personality, like a life-raft. Nothing brought two people together, gave them more common ground, than the grousing and complaining of another's follies and problems.

VRRRRRMMMM …

The Allied fighter was flying now at a dangerously low altitude, its chrome underside skirting the rocky shores precariously, some jagged edges of ship breakers just barely missing the fuselage. There seemed to be an instinctual gut sense that the Allied pilot had for the terrain and topography of Nampara Cove that was deeply ingrained. For the past few moments, Matthew had watched wing and under carriage barely clear over rock and cliff, leaving paper slip separation between machine and sediment. It seemed to him that the pilot knew the area, where everything was, and how to use it to his advantage.

This was never more apparent when a trail of thick inky smoke began to be excreted from the lead German plane.

SHRRRROMMMPH!

Both floating figures gripping the submerged rock were startled by teeth chattering noises of bending and scraping alloy. Before the noise sent odd and painful sensations down their spine, they saw the ending of the hunt. The Nazi fighter had flown too close to the Allied pilot, who had suddenly throttled down. Seeing the slowing down of the much faster RAF plane, the lead German thought he had the Comet dead-to-rights. But just as the dot on his crosshairs were about to line up, the Allied Ace took a dip up and over a jagged rock at the mouth of Nampara Cove.

Below the waves, one might have found a graveyard of dozens of shipwrecks from the days of Charlemagne to the Napoleonic Wars. Many a fine vessel since the ancient days of Tintagel had broken herself upon that rock. Now it appeared that a Nazi Leftenant would be one of those. The metal fuselage of the Messerschmitt was knifed like tinfoil on the ancient rocks. Quickly, without warning, the damaged plane – already bleeding fuel – peeled off the chase. In his rush to retreat, the pilot cut off his fellow wingman, causing a great confusion. And Matthew and Mary saw the results of it.

In a flustered moment of trying to make up ground, the trailing Messerschmitt poured on speed to take up his partner's chase and angled for attack. But clearing the black obscurity of his comrade's smoke trail, he found the Comet was flying through a grooved slit in the cliff side of Nampara Cove. There, on the far end of the beach, part of a black cliff, topped with mossy grass and boulders, had been split in twine by centuries of erosion. In the old days many a villager and pilchard fisher had used the gap of rock on the Poldark and Crawley beach as a shortcut. And it was that over the many millennia the gap had grown wider, the cliff bluff but a shrinking island that would eventually become a shipbreaker surrounded by the sea. But in Spring of 1941, the space between the small beach valley of rock was large enough for a snub fighter to sidle through on its side. And with a smooth and daredevil valiantry the Allied Ace swept untouched through the gap in a half roll. Clearing to the other side with a vortex of water trailing his tail in extremely low altitude.

But due to the black smoke, the German pilot saw it all too late.

Mary immediately leapt upon Matthew in protection, covering him defensively when a sudden and blinding flash of flames exploded near Wheal Grace's cavern back entrance. The body of a ME 109 spurted out of the gap near the cave, it's propeller still at full tilt – but both its wings were completely torn off. The married couple watched in muted horror as the wingless body of the German fighter skidded and rolled atop the lapping crystal waters of the cove like a skipping flat rock. Each time the mangled and twisted plane touch the surface, canvas, metal, and parts of the tail were sheared off. In the end all that was left was the cockpit and bent propellers which tumbled violently till they smashed apart with a queasy crunch into a jagged rock formation on the opposite cliff side.

The custom RAF fighter's engine made a great noise like a victorious roar of a dragon at the sight of his foe's ruin. In that moment, Matthew felt Mary untense and let out a long sigh. The beauty's hand reached out and touched her husband's chest as if finding a solid place to lean upon emotionally. The man took his wife's hand and pressed it against him as he looked out over the horizon. There, in the distance, the smoke trail of the retreating Messerschmitt could still be seen as it limped away back to Brittany.

The battle was over.

Once more, checking to confirm his kill … or perhaps to see if Mary and Matthew were okay - the Comet buzzed overhead at a reduced speed. Watching him, Matthew couldn't help but feel a sudden explosion of some sort of primal exhilaration of a deeply welled pride. He couldn't say it was Patriotic rightly - it was something else, something closer to the heart than the national pride of being an Englishman. He was grateful for the man rescuing them – of course. But Matthew was surprised how suddenly emotional he became over the daring victory, a more primal … one might dare say more paternal connection than all of that. There was something frustrating about not being able to quite put his finger on it, only that it was there, this fervent glow in his heart for the deeds of the mysterious pilot this day. It was four against one, and he had come out victorious. Indeed, in Matthew Reginald Crawley's mind there was not a braver man to ever fly a fighter, who swashed such a daring buckle. His exemplary flying was audacity and dash to the definition.

There was a branded smile of a deeply held masculine admiration on Matthew's face as he watched the fighter buzz overhead. He found himself waving to the pilot who he could almost make out through the bubbled cockpit as he craned down to glance the couple below. But the plane passed too quickly to see if the pilot had waved back or had even saw them.

But it was then that he felt Mary go rigid against him. He wanted to ask what was wrong when he sensed it himself. They both felt the temperature change, the mood turned suddenly, and something had become very icy and cold. It seemed that the woman he loved felt it first as she looked out on the horizon toward the distancing smoke trail of the wounded 109.

Then, startling the blonde figure, there came a dragon like roar of the RAF fighter's engine that echoed with a thunderous wrath through the hollow caverns and cliffs of the cove. Matthew's head snapped up as the couple watched the Allied Ace yaw like a slingshot around Nampara House. The plane gave a tight barrel roll to pick up speed as it throttled across the shore, sea water trailed in parting vortex behind its tail as it skimmed the surface. They watched in amazement as the plane cut through the air as if it was an arrow shot by a Yorkist's yew longbow.

It only took Matthew Crawley a moment to realize what was happening.

"No! Darling, no!"

Mary had taken him by surprise when she called out for restraint to the pilot with a deep personal familiarity. Immediately, with concern, she began swimming out to sea in pursuit of the fighter in swift and sharp strokes into the open shore. In a sudden anxiety, Matthew went after his much more athletic and statuesque wife, panting hard to catch her. He was nearly out of breath when he bumped into the mermaid quick Lady Mary after she had given up the chase. Her deep and intimate amber eyes pierced the sky as she floated in the surf, the ripples of the tide gently lapping against her pink lips that were nearly washed of her ruby lipstick. She shuttered, helpless horror frozen on her pale and freckled countenance. Matthew paddled to the spot next to her, his right side pressed up behind her as they shared the vision.

He could hear the sputter of the ME's engine, the coughing wheeze of its mechanical parts. The grey plane with yellow highlighting tilted heavily on one wing. There was a knowledge, unspoken – even among amateurs like Mary and Matthew – that it was clear that the German fighter wasn't going to make it back to France. But their blood ran colder than death itself as they watched the chrome Allied plane flying with a hurricane wind after the wounded Pheasant, like a hunting dog bounding after his master's kill at a countryside shoot. The German plane tried to bank, yet, failing to accomplish any maneuvers, instead, he climbed to a higher altitude in helpless escape.

The Messerschmitt was rickety and straining, smoke belching from its tail. The fair faced son of Hanoverian merchants had soot caked on his cheek as he lifted his goggles. His gages were shot, the power on his dashboard was flickering in an out. All he had was his radio which hissed and crackled on the empty channel that had none on it now but himself. He saw that he was leaking fuel and was in the middle of trying to calculate on a clipboard how much he would need to make it to the nearest French Port … when he heard it coming behind him.

In the clouds, in the endless skies, every man was an island. Every pilot was within his own small world in a rattling glass case surrounded by machinery and engine noise. Somedays - most days - there was a peace and serenity in a truly unique view of the world. But when that isolation was broken, there came a special fear in the unknown, so removed from anything normal that a human being clings too in the face of danger. And it was here, that the horror stories and the mystic of one's foe was heightened. The whistle of the air currents through the folded wing tips that made an eerie noise in the sky. The roaring muffle of an engine that was unlike anything even the most experienced German veteran ever heard. Together they created a wall of odd noises that unnerved and disarmed many Luftwaffe pilot in the empty isolation of the blue yonder.

His legend fed off the stories that they told in the German Airdromes throughout France and Denmark – As well as the private rooms of the "Eagles Nest" in Austria. Stories from Condor Legionnaires who fought in Spain, who told of the one-man terror that flew an all-black Sopwith Dragon that the Nationalists and Republicans alike called in fear "El Dragón Negro" – "The Black Dragon". The man whose deeds at "The Battle of Ras Al-Rhune" in North Africa were famed – whose blade stained red with Nazi and Muslim blood when he stormed the ancient desert palace alone with a rapier saber in one hand and his famed revolver in the other. It is said that the Arabs of Palestine still flinch at shadows in the Old Quarter of Jerusalem. The Fedayeen dare not wear openly their green headbands – always afear of him and his Rangers who ever blew in from the deep desert with Bedouin tribes to take Jihadi scalps during their failed rebellion. There were many more stories of this young man that do not come into this tale. But all of them support but one universal truth that was evident. By the third year of the war – in Spring of 1941 …

The Comet had become more than just a man in the mind of the Nazis.

The wounded 109 buzzed and growled as her desperate pilot climbed higher and higher in altitude. He looked left, then right, and finally behind him. But the cloud of smoke that billowed forth was so thick that his vision was severely limited. Yet, still, closing faster and faster was the whistling wings and roaring of "El Dragón Negro". The worst of it was that the young man – barely out of his teens – could not see where he was, or where he was coming from. All he heard was the deep growling noise of the dark avenger of the English Skies.

He had shot down too many of his countrymen since the war had begun. His last stand on the French Coast, was a thing of legend among pilots of both sides – shooting down six German Planes in defense of the last frigate out of Dunkirk on that final evening. They say he and his men held the Island of Guernsey against the Nazi Blitz till a frustrated Goering sent the full weight of the Luftwaffe against them. And still the rag-tag RAF detachment contested every inch of air space foot by foot, even with the whole of the German Airforce swarming against them. He shot down many veteran pilots during "The Battle of Britain", depleting their ranks of experienced officers needed for the war and training of others. Then, there were the 'Heroes of the Reich' - the favored of the Fuhrer. Each Aristocratic and fancy pilot of the inner-circle - claiming to defend the honor of the Reich or to prove Aryan Superiority against the hated "Sky Pirate" - had each challenged The Comet to aerial duels over Guernsey, the Channel, and London. Now, each of their fate was immortalized by the emblazoned golden Swastikas under his cockpit.

It occurred to the young German pilot at that moment that he was exceedingly ordinary. Long forgotten now were dreams of glory, of being awarded a shining medal at a banquet at the Reichstag Hall, getting an approving smile from the enchanting and mysterious Celtic beauty – Lady Von Beck. It didn't matter how much Goering and Himmler were willing to pay in reward for the Comet's death. At this point the price on his head was as high as Churchill's himself. And still there was no expense too steep for those like the mutilated and horribly scarred Colonel Von Beck. But after so many lost battles and deadly duels that demoralized the Luftwaffe's reputation, the young German pilot knew that most of the enlisted pilots like him fled from the rumors of the Comet rather than rush to face him in battle.

He was an affluent schoolboy from Hanover - enamored with sharp brown uniforms and Olympic spectacles during the Berlin Games of 1936 - his death, like most enlisted pilots before him, would not even be worthy to etch upon The Comet's tally. Thus, it was, In the echo of the unnerving and frightening noises that he could not see, a thrill of anxiety welled in his gut that was wholly without pride.

The young German opened his cockpit, sliding the cracked rectangular glass case back. The wind whipped and slashed about his face, causing him to cry out. But eventually, lowering his goggles, the blonde youth unwound his soot stained white aviator's scarf from around his neck. The fur on the lining of his leather coat collar tickled his skin as he leaned out of his seat. He did not know where the Comet was, but he was sure that he was close enough to see what he was doing. The truth was that he would not make it back to Brittany in the torn-up plane, and he would rather spend the rest of the war in a British Stockade than be lost somewhere at the edge of the English Channel.

With a shout over the gargling engine, the German pilot began to yaw back toward the Cornish Coastline.

"Ich gebe auf!" The young pilot waved his white scarf wildly. "Bitte, ich ziehe mich zurück!" He screamed at the top of his lungs, moving from left to right, showing the scarf in every direction as flag of surrender.

Something stirred darkly in the air as a cold and grim countenance watched a white scarf being bandied about. The swashbuckler, the dashing hero swinging from the chandelier with his sword - from ship mast to ship mast - had disappeared. Cold and wrathful cerulean eyes of a dark rage was shown as he slowly turned his sharp elemental gaze toward the limping German fighter. The echoes of a demon curdled his blood and hardened his heart in wroth. The Comet's fist in long leather gauntlet grabbed the stick in vice, his jaw clenched, and a hateful malice took hold as the old scar – a memento of one awful night long ago – turned black.

The swastika on the grey field with golden outlining flashed in his sight. And it was in this very symbol that he saw her again. The glossy raven tresses, her luminous sorrowful blue eyes, and pale unblemished face of the greatest beauty. He could see the plump and full pouty pink lips that were covered in the same ruby lipstick their mother favored. He saw her smile, perfectly lilted, soft and gentle with just a tilt of her head. The way she took in a breath before she spoke, always with a soft toothy grin. Her voice velvety and elegant with a regal accent and manner of a Princess of old. He saw her in her evening finery - silk evening gown, caped back, white opera gloves, and a hand on her hip as she looked over her shoulder with unshakable confidence in such uncontested beauty, elegance, and genius.

But what he remembered most was how much he loved her.

RUDATATATA! RUDATATATA! RUDTATATA!

The young German pilot did not have time to cry out in pain. When red tracer lights of a fifty-caliber cannon tore the waving arm from his shoulder, his eyes only glazed over in shock. Arcing lights sheered and ripped the wounded Nazi plane mercilessly. Even as it began to fall to the earth, the Allied fighter chased after it, tearing and ripping the alloy and canvas from it's body like a mauling wild animal. The firing of the deadly cannons did not stop till there was only small bits of chopped debris floating in the ocean. Then, and only then, did the Ace pull away.

"Nazi Animal."

Matthew Crawley's face was shocked in an expression of disbelief when he saw the RAF Ace, the man he once thought in only the noblest terms – like a knight of old – swoop down from the sun and open fire on the crippled German plane. It was then that a chilling image took ahold in Matthew's mind. It was of a man, a German soldier – as he remembered them from his time in the Trenches – throwing away his pointed helmet, his harness, and his Mauser. He was screaming, begging for mercy, as he fled from a fully armored knight in black plate with glinting and bloody broadsword as he rode the unarmed man down.

Mary squeezed her eyes shut and turned away from the savagery. She was neither shocked nor horrified at the action. There was only a look of defeat and deeply ingrained sorrow that was borne with a tormented intimacy to her very soul. She laid her head against Matthew's shoulder, burying her face into the crook of his neck as the sound of the brutal execution echoed behind her. She felt Matthew wrap her in his arms in utter shock and lack of expression at the horrible sight. And in their comfort had she felt a deep guilt in all that her beloved didn't know yet, all that has happened in twenty years since his death. In her heart, the love of Matthew Crawley's life knew, with unimpeachable assurance, that the merciless savagery that had just been committed in front of them had been entirely her own fault …

Fore, it was the sins of Lady Mary Crawley that had made their only child capable of such things.

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Entr'acte Music

"The Bygone Days" – Joe Hisaishi

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Disclaimer

This story is a work of fiction that is not meant to accurately depict historical events to the teeth. Much like the show, this story exists in a fictional version of historical events that will be deviated from. Its roots anchored in Downton Abbey cannon that is wed to Early 20th Century Pulp Adventure Stories and Action and Adventure Movie Serials of the 1930s/1940s. (think of "Indiana Jones", "Sky Captain: And the World of Tomorrow", and "The Adventures of Tintin")

This story, though echoing and including real historical events, will be depicting a slightly altered and fictionalized version of World War II (like "Captain America: The First Avenger") no disrespect is intended to those who are stickler for these details and authentic recreations of the technology and military in remembrance to those family members who fought in the war.

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Editorial Note

This story is a soft reboot of an already existing story series. However, the other four prequels are not required to read this one. This story is written with new readers in mind. But If you're interested in the backstory the other four stories are labeled in order if you wish to read more.

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Author's Notes

Yeah, So I was looking at all the stuff I needed to rewrite and update and I was like … "FUCK IT! JUST FUCK IT! WE'LL DO IT LIVE! FUCK IT! WE'LL DO IT LIVE!

So, for the last month I've been just writing this story and have three chapters ready to go. I know this is basically skipping to the end, but I need to know where I'm going first, before I finish reediting and rewriting the whole story series.

So, everyone who got mad at me (rightfully so) if you ever read this, here's the final story after all these years. I mean this story Universe has been planned out from like 1927 – 2045 in terms of a continuous narrative spanning many generations of the Crawley family from Mary and Matthew's wedding all the way to the adventures of Jason Roth Crawley, 12th Earl of Grantham born in December 2020 in Croft Manor, Guildford, Surrey, England to archeologist Lady Lara Croft and American Adventurer Ryan Crawley, 11th Earl of Grantham.

But I think you guys would be satisfied just finding out how Matthew tries to heal his broken family.