Chapter Seventeen
You may well imagine what chills, what frightened shivers I felt as I looked upon the veil.
Yet I could not explain what had happened to myself.
For the woman who I had seen did not exist. It must merely be a dream. And yet… here was the proof. The veil was torn.
Perhaps I had done the damage in some strange sleepwalking state. But such a theory did not ring true.
Almost as if I was hiding a crime, I furtively repacked the veil in its two parts into the box it had come in, and I hid the box away before going downstairs to breakfast. I was determined to say nothing of the matter to Georgiana or Mrs. Reynolds but only to relay it to Mr. Darcy when he returned home in the evening.
When I told the tale to Mr. Darcy that night, he threw his arms around me, as though in terror, and he held me tight. "Thank God, thank God, that whatever danger had come upon you, did not strike at aught but your veil!"
And he held me tight to him. But when I begged him to explain who the person might have been, what his theory as to what had happened was, Mr. Darcy's face became clouded once more, and he ventured forth no words. He only squeezed me tighter.
Then he insisted that I sleep that night in Georgiana's room, and that we keep the lock bolted tight. And so I did, and then I woke that morning, the last morning in which I was to be a maiden, an unmarried woman.
But rather than joy, I spasmed with terror from the event of the previous day, as though the ripped veil was an omen that signified that Darcy and I would be ripped apart.
I went down to breakfast, dressed for the walk to the church with Mr. Darcy. But I could not eat a bite, and neither could Mr. Darcy. Catching our mood Georgiana likewise picked at her food, barely touching it.
Rather than a celebratory moment of happiness before we united our lives before God and the law, the three of us were morose and entirely silent.
When we set forth on the walk, the hard wind blew strong, billowing my dress around, and sought to steal Mr. Darcy's tall hat from his head. He held me by my hand as we walked, and he squeezed so tight that my hand was bruised.
"Softer," cried I. "Hold me softer."
But he made no reply, as we hurried through the land and the village to the parish church. Though the day was bright and summery, the air seemed pale, unreal. As though I walked through a land of dreams, filled with dark phantasms, rather than a real place filled with true people.
The church steeple was high. The building was made of red brick. The tall doors gaped cavernously open for us.
In the church yard we paused, for I was out of breath. The sun was bright, the sky blue. The wind gusting. I remember looking upon the flowers blown about, growing around the mossy headstones in the churchyard cemetery.
We entered the house of God.
The vicar waited for us in his green formal robes of office, a smile on his face at seeing our tiny wedding party enter. "Mr. Darcy, Miss Bennet, welcome."
"Just begin your office," Darcy said as we came to stand before him at the front of the church. He spoke almost harshly. "We can chatter after."
My stomach was gripped tight with anxiety.
Darcy's grip on me did not ease at all. Georgiana sat to watch us in the first pew, along with Mr. Darcy's valet. They were to sign the register as witnesses. There were two strangers in the church who studied a painting in one of the alcoves in the far corner of the church. A servant and a frail old lady who leaned upon her cane. They did not turn to look at us, and we could not see their faces, nor see them clearly.
Even at this moment, I had some terror given to me from Mr. Darcy's manner that some strange circumstance, some unforeseeable fact would yet tear us apart and prevent the wedding.
The dust glittered, floating softly in the sunlight beaming through the windows.
The vicar began to speak the ancient, oh so familiar words of the ceremony for the solemnization of marriage. Every girl has dreamed a hundred times of hearing these words spoken while she stands next to the handsome man she adores and with whom she has chosen to join her life with.
As he spoke, I heard the sound of footsteps. The strangers in the back of the room had been drawn by the spectacle of the wedding.
After explaining the purposes for which marriage had been established, the vicar spoke the ritualistic words: "I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured, that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's Word doth allow are not joined together by God; neither is their Matrimony lawful."
These words are merely a formality; the vicar does not even pause to allow an answer to the question, before he begins to speak the next lines of the old, familiar wedding vows.
I would assess that it is not much more than twice or thrice in a century that any response is made to that question.
A strong raspy voice filled with peculiar agony cried out. "I object! I object! This marriage cannot continue. I declare the existence of an impediment."
We turned in shock to see her standing erect in the middle of the aisle. Darcy's aunt, the mother of his deceased wife, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
Georgiana gasped and shrieked to see her.
And what did I feel in my silence?
Lady Catherine was sick.
That much was clear in the ravaged lines of her face, a gaunt face, the skin hanging loose that had been ruddy and plump only a few months before. There was that peculiar look in her eyes. That look of wildness found in ascetics, or in those who have been condemned to death by hanging when they expected acquittal.
Mr. Darcy looked at her. His face went white. But yet he bore up under whatever blow his knowledge of her purpose gave to him.
His face, hard, cold — and with that dread in his eyes I'd seen in him before, he snarled at Lady Catherine, and he turned to the vicar. "Carry on, Clarke. Carry on. Ignore her, she is mad."
The vicar palely alternated between Mr. Darcy, Lady Catherine, and my face — I cannot guess what image I must have produced, in my silver silk dress, my face white and pale, and the jewels Mr. Darcy had draped me with glittering upon my neck and ears. The strand that held the sword of Damocles suspended over my happy head had snapped. The blade now fell sharply upon my head to part the hair, and pierce through the skull and into the brain.
"I cannot continue, sir," Mr. Clarke at last stammered. "I must investigate the nature of this objection."
Lady Catherine joined us before the altar.
She leaned heavily on her cane, while before she had an erect posture, and only pretended to need it for support. There was a sickly sweet smell about her as she came near, one which I thought was of the decay that would end in an open grave.
"Madam," the vicar asked her. "What is the nature of this objection to the wedding that you provide."
Darcy glared at her, hatred glittering in his eyes.
"Bigamy," she cried out, "bigamy. Mr. Darcy is possessed by another wife who is yet living."
Darcy gripped my hand so tight I moaned in pain, but he did not hear my moan. He looked as though he wished to grab at a sword with his other hand and use it to strike his aunt dead.
"This is a most serious accusation," Mr. Clarke said, wiping his forehead. "Have you any proof as to the truth of this claim."
"My daughter, Anne Darcy, who was married solemnly to Mr. Darcy in Kympton Parish in the year 18— was yet alive when I visited Pemberley this April."
"The previous Mrs. Darcy!" the vicar exclaimed, visibly relieved. "Madam, I believe you have taken leave of your senses, as those of advanced age and those suffering from an illness often do. It pains me to remind you, and you like will not believe me, but Anne Darcy died in the childbed these six years, and—"
"I am dying, Clarke. Not mad. Dying. I am perfectly in possession of all my good senses, and will be for another month or two until the Lord deigns to drag me to hell, where I deserve to be placed for what I have done to my daughter, and for what I have allowed Mr. Darcy to do with her."
The vicar shuddered.
Lady Catherine spoke like her old self, confident and full of power. But then she seemed to weaken, and her legs collapsed under her as though they could not support her, and her companion helped her to sit down. She coughed hackingly; blood blackened the cloth she coughed into.
"Madam. Why are you here? Why now? You chose this path." Mr. Darcy spoke, harsh, unsympathetic.
It was clear in his face, she may be the grandmother of his possible daughter, and the sister of his mother, but Fitzwilliam Darcy did not mourn, not with a second's sadness, to see her in such a state.
"I was wrong! Wrong! And now that I am dying, I cannot see her left so — cannot see her place taken by this unworthy creature. I cannot go to hell, where you'll be taken as well, with this upon my conscience. We must—" Her hacking coughs interrupted whatever further statement she was to make.
"Ha! Hahahaha!" Darcy laughed cold and angry. A harsher, harder laugh has never been heard — certainly not in a house of God. And there was a crazed cackling edge in his laugh as well. "You have found your conscience now? And this is what it declares must be done? Well! — Call it off, Clarke! You may call it all off. There will be no wedding today. We must instead go to call upon my wife. But come. Come. You can see as well what has become of Mrs. Darcy. You can all see. Come! Come!"
He dragged me, gripping my hand so tight I feared the bones might bruise and break.
We stumbled into the hatefully clear day.
You might well ask what I felt at this moment, what emotions went through my head at this revelation of a second wife.
I might ask as well. I cannot remember.
I stumbled along behind my Mr. Darcy — but alas, mine no more. Never mine. He never had been mine.
I think I was like those men, pierced through the heart by knife, but who can yet live, and walk, and feel nothing whilst the knife is lodged deep, but pull it out, and they will gush forth the blood, and die from the agony of it.
We walked at a fierce speed, but entirely quiet.
Lady Catherine could not keep up, but one of her footmen who had waited with her large carriage picked her up at a sharp command and carried her following in Darcy's angry pace.
At the door we met Mrs. Reynolds who looked surprised to see us back so quick, and with no smiles, but she exclaimed, "Congrat—"
"No! No! Hell and damnation no! No congratulations, no wedding! No happiness! Nothing. Nothing but her! — to the tower. To the damn tower. Have you the keys?"
Mrs. Reynolds jumped and whitened. She saw Lady Catherine, in her sick state amongst the rest of us. She had been set down on her feet, but she needed her footman's help to continue forward. "Oh — so it was true."
"I do not ask my servant's commentary. The damned keys, or I'll bash the door in with bare palms."
We went to the tower.
That mysterious booming laugh sounded, and even in my numb state, it chilled me, coldened me, caught me in the gut.
A metallic clinking. The door was opened, the unoiled hinges creaked wildly.
The spiral tower staircase, plain stone steps. Before me, echoing up, feeling more like the descent to hell in a mad painter's imagination than rising to be closer to the clouds and the heavens.
We climbed up. One leaden step after another.
My heart hammered.
Lady Catherine's breathing was harsh and labored; with each step her cane clacked on the stone. She struggled to pull her weight up with her weakened arms to the next step. Mr. Clarke helped her, though Darcy sneered.
We reached the top, where there was another heavy door, locked as well.
Darcy knocked three times, and called through the keyhole, "How does she today, Mrs. Poole?"
"Quieter than usual. Do be careful. She's dangerous."
"Ha!" Darcy laughed bitterly.
And then the door was unlocked and opened from inside by Grace Poole, the older roughened woman with her sleeves bunched up around her spotted elbows.
And there she was.
I could not help but stare, white faced at this creature.
She was creature, not woman.
Small of form, with a face that in the daylight was clearly recognizable from the portrait of Mrs. Darcy, but scarred, peculiarly, as though she'd clawed at her own face repeatedly till it bled. Her hair was long and ragged, falling out in wild unwashed tangles to her waist. She wore a simple smock that was food spotted, and she was bare footed, with an obese stomach protruding in a mockery of pregnancy.
Her nails were all long, and appeared more like the claws of a dangerous creature than the hands of a distinguished lady, the daughter of a baronet.
I felt pity and sadness.
And then she spoke.
"You bring the it to me? The little snick that takes my home. I'll kill her. I'll kill her. Like you killed mine. I'll scratch her. I'll scratch you. And Mama! I'll scratch you too. Till you die."
"Oh, Annie. Annie." Lady Catherine moaned.
"Hehehehehe. You had the physicians bleed me. I'll bleed you. I'll bleed you till you are bloodless, and there is no juice left to drink."
She cackled.
Lady Catherine looked at her daughter with sad, despairing eyes. "Take care of her, Fitzwilliam. You swore — for better or worse, in sickness and in health, and that—"
"Damn you, woman. Damn you. And damn you all. I do my duty."
The creature, she hissed. Slashing towards Mr. Darcy with her claws.
He did not even flinch back, and Mrs. Poole, attentive and watching, caught her and held her back from doing any damage.
She tore herself away and stood deeper in the back of the room.
"I'll cut her heart out! Crack the bones! Drink the marrow, drain the blood." She cackled. And then that sound, now heard clearly, without anything to obscure the manic echoing tone. That familiar booming laugh.
She leapt towards me, the long clawed fingernails out, leaping past Mrs. Poole, her fingers out to claw away my eyes, and my sight.
I screamed, startling back, covering my face.
Mr. Darcy grabbed her, and held her firmly away from him by her arms, as she jerked this way and that, trying to reach his neck with her teeth.
"Here she is!" Darcy exclaimed to us as he prevented her from violence. "Here is my bride! The woman whose loving embrace I am expected to find satisfaction in. My prize! Look at her. Look at her in her madness."