This chapter is brand new material and wasn't supposed to be nearly this long. I had no idea about most of it until Lady Catherine laid it all out there and it will definitely have an effect on the future plot of her part of the story. This one is a tear jerker. I don't want to give away what happens (you can pm me if you need specifics to decide whether to read it) but if you are feeling especially vulnerable given the current state of the world, you might want to skip reading this for now.

Interlude 3: Lady Catherine: Anne's Birds

When I retired for the evening, I gave myself up to Parker's ministrations. The familiarity of all she did left me free to think. As she unbuttoned the many buttons on my dress, I let my thoughts drift.

As usual, I was almost immediately caught up in thinking about my daughter Anne and what would become of her. Although she was a woman, in many important ways she was like a child, impulsive, easily angered, selfish. Mrs. Jenkinson was more nurse or governess than companion. I trusted her with Anne, but Mrs. Jenkinson focused each time on just getting through the day with Anne and seemed to have no notion of how to ever make things better. In truth I should have found someone else to tend to Anne, especially after Mrs. Jenkinson's apoplectic fit.

I still remembered hearing Anne's shrill screams a few months earlier, which had made a passing maid run to fetch me. I hurried as fast as I could, convinced by the sounds she made which I could already hear when we were only halfway to her chambers, that some horrible calamity had befallen her. I imagined that Anne had broken a limb or had some other sort of awful accident and was gory with her own blood.

Anne, when about two and three years of age, loved nothing better than to play upon the stairs, she would go up and down (walking, crawling, bumping down upon her bottom) for hours on end. It used to always be the back staircase by the nursery, but I made the mistake one time of taking her to the grand staircase in the front of the house and she could not have liked it better.

Perhaps she liked the grand staircase upon every other staircase at Rosings (and she had become well acquainted with all of them) because it was the tallest one and one half of it was blocked off from the air with only a banister and many spindles. This staircase was most impressive, it was the thing that stuck in my mind the first time I saw my new abode. It was made of some dark wood which gleamed (I later learned it was damp polished each day, and washed each week by a set of two maids who took turns holding the trough-shaped bucket, specially constructed to sit upon each riser, between them).

When Anne was a little older, she became enchanted with the balcony area just above the stairs, which was enclosed by spindles topped by a smooth rail. This high point was perhaps twenty-five feet above the ground below. She would push anything she could find between the spindle and watch it fall to the ground.

Anne did not talk then, she only screamed, but I knew what each scream meant: delight, anger, fear, pain and more I am sure. She would scream a scream of delight to see her hairbrush fall and clatter (it was a higher pitched scream of shorter duration) but was not as impressed when soft things fell (which only merited a short, almost indifferent scream). As the falling objects could bounce quite wide, we had to have all breakable objects moved far away.

If anyone tried to take something away from Anne, or retrieve the object from below, she would scream angrily about that. She wanted things to pile up down below, to hit the previous things she had dropped. She enjoyed seeing things break and shatter, but naturally the shards would spread out widely and take some effort to clean up. Through trial and error, we learned that books made a sufficiently loud sound to impress her, but they were sometimes damaged with her efforts.

Lewis of course was not impressed. He used to tell me, "Lady Catherine, why can Anne not stay in the nursery like all other children her age? It is not seemly, not seemly at all." However, it did not appear to me that he would ever do anything about it; because she was only a girl child and not his son, he considered her my domain.

However, at some point Lewis must have listened to my brother as he came back from London after seeing him with a stern nurse for Anne. Her name was Mrs. Hatchet. She thought it her duty to break Anne of her amusement. She would pick up Anne and haul her away. When she did so, Anne would scream as someone else might, if someone was being murdered. It was the loudest, most piercing, horrid tone that caused any within earshot to cover their ears. However, it seemed to have no effect on Mrs. Hatchet except to make her grimace as she carried Anne bodily off to the nursery.

Anne was beside herself and in addition to screaming she struggled, hit, kicked, scratched and bit like a wild animal and Mrs. Hatchet soon bore bruises, angry red scratches and other marks. In the first week of this new regime, Anne managed to escape from the nursery at least once a day and soon Mrs. Hatchet brought a blanket to wrap Anne tightly in, a sort of swaddling. Anne would grow red from her screaming once it was applied. Mrs. Hatchet did not last long, she departed less than ten days after she started of her own accord, not even requesting a letter of reference. But Lewis (or perhaps my brother for him), kept finding others of her ilk.

The way Anne screamed while hauled away from the grand staircase by Mrs. Hatchet, was a very like scream to the one Anne used when Mrs. Jenkinson collapsed. I recalled being fetched to my daughter's rooms by a maid, "Lady Catherine, you must come quick, Miss de Bourgh needs you so. Mrs. Jenkinson is ill and already Mr. Cranks is fetching the apothecary, but Anne is screaming as if her companion is already dead and she will not let us move her to her bed."

I recalled how I ran, hearing Anne's screams grow louder the closer I came to her. When I finally reached her side, she seemed insensible to the world, but gripped Mrs. Jenkinson's limp hands all the harder when I tried to pry her fingers away. I wondered how Anne would react if something similar happened to me.

"Lady Catherine?" I snapped back to myself. I was nude and expected that Parker was waiting for me to bend my arm so that it could easily be slipped into the sleeve of my nightgown in which she was attempting to dress me.

But that was not what the question in her voice was about. I could tell when I saw where her eyes were focused. Automatically I said, "It is fine."

"Are you sure Ma'am? Is not the discoloration a little bigger now?"

I wondered how Parker thought she could see anything by the candlelight. I glanced down at the purplish mark upon my left breast. Perhaps it was bigger; perhaps it was only a trick of the lighting. Parker was the one who had spotted it first, a couple of months earlier.

"Leave it be!" I told her a little too sharply.

I bent my arm and Parker slid the sleeve on it before moving behind me to do the same thing with my other arm. Then she began buttoning my nightgown up.

"Will you let the surgeon try?" Parker asked, her eyes focused on her task and, I felt, avoiding looking at me in the face.

"No," I told her.

She looked sad, but perhaps none but I would have known it. Her jaw was dropped a little, her eyelids a little softer and then an obvious swallow. But Parker did not try to argue with me. She knows her place, after all, even after all the years we have spent together.

I had seen a surgeon of course. I went to town for just a few days, stayed with my brother the Earl, made a vague complaint about "female problems" and went to see the doctor he recommended. The doctor listened to my description of the how my breast had altered, feeling vaguely heavier than the other one, the slight discoloration. He opined, "Likely it is cancer," and sent me to a surgeon.

The surgeon, a man with bushy salt and pepper hair and large caterpillar-like black eyebrows, offered, "I have seen this sort of growth before; it will get worse. I suppose I could try to cut the whole thing off," he made a slicing motion with his finger at the base, against my ribs, "but I do not advise it."

Usually surgeons are only too eager to lop things off that project from the body, so naturally I asked, "Why ever not?"

He hesitated. I noticed that his thick eyebrows, which had formerly punctuated his every word with a little wriggle or sometimes an up and down swoop when he spoke earlier, suddenly stilled and smushed into a super caterpillar as he drew his brows together and that his shoulders rose. I could tell he was tense as he considered what to reveal. "It is quite a painful operation no matter how quickly I wield my blade and most do not survive long enough to heal. Better to let it take its course; you may still have some good time yet." That was when I knew for sure I was going to die.

I went back to my brother's house. I told him, "All is well; it is much as I expected." He nodded, but even as he nodded, I could see him searching my face for the truth. Still, at least he asked no questions.

Later I spoke with the Earl's son, Edwin Fitzwilliam, my favorite among his sons, and told him, "I need your help. On your Easter trip you must persuade Darcy to marry Anne."

He gave a little sigh, ran his hand through his sandy hair and replied, "Lady Catherine, you have tried this before. I know that this is your preference and what my father desires as well, but Darcy is an obstinate fellow and unlikely to be persuaded."

"Perhaps, but I want you to try just the same."

He raised an eyebrow and asked, "Why are you so eager for it to happen now?"

"A mother wants to see her child properly settled before she dies." I tried to keep my tone light, kept any quaver from my voice.

"Why so melodramatic? You may be my elder, but are hardly old," he declared, looking at me intently. His eyes were fixed upon me, much as his father's had been. But unlike his father, he probably had even less of an idea of why I was in town. Still, Fitzwilliam continued to search my face for a hint of what was different now.

"Still, it is past time now." I considered telling him everything, but I knew if I did, I would cry, and if I began to cry, I doubted I could stop. It was important to me to keep my dignity, to not become a hysterical woman. I had faced death before, many, many times, just not my own for a long while. Death is normal, natural; it happens all the time.

Fitzwilliam nodded a little and then said, "You may have your secrets, Lady Catherine. I will do what I can. Perhaps if we act as if it is a foregone conclusion Darcy may go along."

I had to be content with that. I did not cry that night in London and left early the next day with Parker. I did not cry during the carriage ride back, or when I returned to Rosings, or when I saw Anne. I covered my feelings with normalcy and routine. But that night, when finally, I was alone save for Parker, who was readying me for bed, the tears began to fall, quickly going from a sprinkle to a torrent. When it was just a few tears, Parker ignored it, but when it became a flood, she held me in an embrace and cried too.

When we both settled a bit, I told her then what the surgeon had told me. She was the only one in whom I confided, and I bound her to secrecy.

Parker said, "I hope he is wrong and that you may still live for many years, but regardless I will be with you always." She seemed so sincere that I was ready to start crying again.

I looked down and told her, "I have never doubted your loyalty, Parker."

She responded, "It has always been my honor to serve you, Lady Catherine."

I glanced at Parker now, tying the ribbon at my neck, and felt my eyes grow wet in recalling her loyalty. Rather than letting myself cry tonight, I forced my thoughts on a new path.

I recalled reading an account of eunuchs who believed that they needed to keep their severed cods with them so that when they died, they might be buried with that part of themselves so that they could be whole in the afterlife. I imagined having my breast handed to me after the surgery, wrapped in a handkerchief. I might tuck it in my reticule so that I could keep it with me always. It would fill my reticule to bursting at first but perhaps it might eventually mummify and eventually turn to dust. Parker might ensure that it went with me in the end, if someone else did not mistake it for trash and throw it away.

Somehow it was easier to play out such ridiculous thoughts about the surgery than entertain macabre thoughts about my demise from the growth. I would not be spared pain in the end, but I might have enough time to arrange things so I might not fear my death.

I hemmed in my thoughts, constructed fences around the things I would not think about now. I needed to focus on Anne, to make sure she was protected.

I forced myself to consider what the new development of Georgiana and Darcy going on an outing with Anne could mean. I knew Anne was not like other women, but despite her nature, she was still beautiful with flaxen hair and a feminine figure. Perhaps Darcy had finally noticed? But what if he had? Despite my voicing that I wished for grandchildren, I could not quite imagine Anne bearing with such intimacy as is required to beget them.

Still, I could not imagine that Darcy would be the sort to force himself on anyone. He among all I knew was the least likely to impose on her. He must have the same desires as other men, but they are not as evident.

My nightclothes in place, I sat down in my chair while Parker let down my hair and brushed it. She softly hummed a hymn as the boar bristle brush slid through the strands which were more white than blonde now.

Although Anne's health had been poor since her childhood illness, and I had been told repeatedly not to expect her to reach adulthood, her majority had come and gone. She still certainly might die young, but the doctors I had consulted and the apothecary who brewed her tinctures, were more optimistic that her physical health was not as precarious as it had once seemed. Still, she was not to over-exert herself for her heart was weak. They had warned against her marry and becoming with child. Still, I thought Anne might be strong enough now to bear one.

For years I always thought I might outlive Anne, but now? Now, it seemed more likely that I would depart long before her.

It was important, vital, that suitable arrangements be made for Anne. I thought it was likely, probable even, that if left without appropriate protection that she might end up with Rosings stripped away from her and be left to die in an asylum. I could not trust my brother the Earl to safeguard her. He had always thought Anne's existence as she was to be shameful, had said such vile things about her that we never spoke of her to each other anymore. It was the only way I could bear my brother's company; I did not want to lose him, after all he is family, my only living sibling. It was this fear that he or his eldest son might take everything away from Anne that had me most eager to solidify a match between her and Darcy.

Before Darcy had arrived for his visit and I found out he wished to bring Georgiana, I tried to find hidden meaning in this decision, to find it a positive portend that now, finally, he might offer for Anne. I fed this hope daily before they arrived, but already I was almost certain that his sister joining Darcy had no significance.

Although Fitzwilliam was firmly on my side, no doubt at my brother the Earl's behest to keep all the family money in the family, even before I had confided in him, I was not sure Fitzwilliam could help me secure Darcy for Anne. Fitzwilliam did not speak falsely when he spoke of Darcy's stubbornness and I would not be all the surprised if Darcy has decided never to marry, to leave Pemberley to Georgiana and her sons one day instead.

I was roused from my reverie a bit when Parker paused, and then I heard the clunk of the wooden brush handle against the dressing table. A moment later I could feel little tugs as she worked at loosely braiding my hair to secure it for the night.

I felt confident that Darcy was the best match I could find for Anne. Although he had mostly ignored her on previous visits, he was like her, although unlike Anne he could navigate the wider world and manage the duties of his position in life. I felt only he could understand her and being a man who had come into his inheritance and successfully managed his land, no one could take it away from him. Yes, Darcy was certainly the most logical choice.

Next, Parker poured warmed water from the pitcher into the bowl, and then dipped in a cloth before she began cleansing my face and neck. She alternated between days when she used just water and days when she also used soap as this time of year soap made my face dry and itchy if used too often. It was familiar and soothing. I felt a bit of tension leave my face, felt the tightness between my brows smooth somewhat, although my shoulders were still tight with worry.

But my whole body tensed up once again when I thought of Darcy declaring that he would not marry Anne and that Fitzwilliam should do the honors instead. It was not the worst notion in the world, but I was convinced they would not be a good match. Edwin Fitzwilliam is the sort of man who wishes to go to London for the season, to attend parties, events, outings of all sorts. In his role of tending to Darcy, he has forced Darcy to live more in the world, which is not a bad thing, but it would be sheer folly to think Fitzwilliam could do the same for Anne. And there was not one of his brothers who would be preferable to him.

"Try to relax, Lady Catherine," Parker told me, momentarily pausing in humming her hymn. "Umm," I replied as I heard her rub her hands together to warm the lotion. Then she began to rub lotion on my face and neck, before moving onto my hands and feet.

I could not really relax until I could sort out Anne's future. My thoughts had a sort of urgent quality about them as I feared there was not as much time left to do so.

Fitzwilliam would be frustrated at what Anne could never, would never do. I could not imagine him content to stay at Rosings with Anne, to keep her protected from prying eyes. While he might enjoy what her inheritance could provide, I doubted (from both my observations of him and my brother's reports of his lackadaisical performance while at school), he would know how to manage the land and keep the books balanced. I certainly would never want to see Anne forced to leave her home, her inheritance lost from her husband's bumbling.

"I am finished now, and your bed is already turned down," Parker told me. "Is there anything else you would be wanting, Lady Catherine?"

"That will be all, Parker," I told her.

She waited while I climbed into my bed and then drew the blankets and counterpane over me. As was her usual practice, she blew out all the candles but for the humble one she took with her to light her way to the servants' quarters. I was left in a mostly dark room, save for the fire.

I considered Darcy's behavior from earlier in the day. I felt a bit of hope flutter in my chest like a bird fluttering its wings, considering whether to fly or remain perched. The hope was there because Darcy, perhaps, was now taking an interest in Anne by volunteering to escort her on an outing on the morrow. It would have been better if he would have ridden in a carriage with her, but I knew he always rode rather than traveled inside a conveyance, ever since his father died. Of course, rather than simply be content with this progress, a little voice in my head whispered contrary thoughts: He means nothing by it; it is a favor to his sister and nothing more.

"No," I declared aloud, sitting up in my bed and talking to myself. "Darcy must marry Anne; it is the only solution that makes sense."

He need do nothing of the sort. The whispering in my head felt louder and more malicious.

Then the imagined voice sounded more like my sister Anne. You would force him to marry without any affection, to not have love?

"No, of course not." I reasoned with myself. "Affinity can lead to love."

But my thoughts were insidious, malicious and made me question what I was trying to do. He is not meant for Anne. Anne is not fit to marry, not now, not ever. The voice was no longer my sister Anne's. It was changing into someone else's voice.

"No, that is not right. Darcy has improved, so may Anne. She has come so far from that child who would not speak, who would only scream. She reads, she writes, she retains much obscure knowledge, just as he does. In this they are equal."

Then the voice sounded like my brother's voice when Anne was but a child. I know you have affection for her, but Anne is broken, defective, cannot be mended. I made no reply to that voice, did not answer that thought, because I feared it was right.

After reflecting a while, I spoke aloud again, "Even more reason for Anne to have a protector, when I am gone." No voice answered that thought, so I lay back down on my bed.

My thoughts continued to spin and battle and sleep continued to escape me as the night wore on. Sometimes I had pleasant thoughts about Anne. I recalled how when she was about five, she lost most of her interest in throwing things down to the floor below. Instead, she became intrigued with a family of robins that built a nest close to her window. She made short screams in the rhythm (if not tone) of their calls, flapped her arms as if they were wings and picked up things in her mouth.

I hired a man skilled at working with wood to make a simulacrum of a bird and another to paint it just so. When I brought it to Anne one day, she was excited to reach out and grab it. I heard the happy scream then. But soon she was shaking it and threw it aside with frustration saying, "No, no, no." That was one of a handful of words she knew then.

Later, I tried again, with a soft bird made of cloth and felt. It looked less like the robins in my opinion, but its wings were only attached to its shoulder area and were moveable. Anne liked this one better, did not reject the "ir, ir" as she called the birds, but I could tell she was still frustrated with it. Then she began to make her imitation of their calls.

I understood now that Anne wanted their sound, but I had no idea of how it could be replicated in a bird that could be made. I found a wood whistle and tried to show her how to use it, demonstrating and then saying, "blow."

Anne tried but could not seem to figure out how to wrap her lips firmly enough around the whistle that no air would escape, or how to blow hard enough, but she seemed content to let me do it. I kept it with me. Every time I visited her, we would try again.

I would tell her "Mama blow," and then blow it, and then "Anne blow," and hold it out for her. She quickly added another word to her repertoire, "bow, bow." Whenever I would enter the nursery, Anne would look right at me, focused, waiting, and tell me, "Mama bow." She was waiting for what only I could do.

A clever, yet too forward, nursery maid suggested that we make Anne a book with pictures drawn of the birds which showed what they did to be read to her. I found a skilled woman on my staff with the necessary skills to make a series of pen and watercolor paintings. But, naturally, this woman could neither read nor write, so it was I that arranged the pictures and wrote the story in large letters.

It was a silly story, talking about the mama bird and the papa bird making the nest, the mama bird laying the eggs and sitting upon them, and then the mama bird and papa bird bringing the baby birds their food and then singing them to sleep. The painting of the baby birds with their mouths open wide as the mama bird stuffed a large insect inside one gaping, red maw, was very life-like. We bound the individual sheets together with needle and thread, with a soft cloth cover with the mama bird and her baby birds worked in embroidery on the front along with the title "Anne's Birds."

When Anne would let me, I would read the book to her. When she was especially cooperative, I would trace the print with her pointer finger and teach her the letters.

One morning in the fall, when I was not yet out of bed, I was fetched by a nursery maid and told only, "Miss de Bourgh is screaming and needs you." I rushed to the nursery in nothing but my nightclothes.

When I arrived, I only heard sobs, but that was awful enough. When Anne saw me, she quieted and allowed Mrs. Jenkinson to wipe away her tears with a handkerchief. Then she walked to the window and looked out.

I followed Anne there, but even before I could see anything around her out the window, I knew what was wrong. It was far too quiet. Yes, there was birdsong, but none of it sounded near.

I looked out the nursery window and saw that the bird nest was empty and immediately recognized my own error in not preparing Anne in some way for the fact that the fledglings would not stay in the nest forever.

Anne took me by the hand and pulled me to a chair where I often sat and read "Anne's Birds" to her. I sat down, she fetched the book and she sat upon my lap. I stroked her short flaxen hair (we had to cut it short as she could not abide combing for more than a few moments and the tangles were awful otherwise) as I read the story to her once again. I had read it so many times that I did not have to even read the words to know what to say. I was glad it was apparently giving her some measure of comfort.

After we got to the page labeled "The End" Anne flipped to the page just past it. It was not something for me to read as it had no words. There was just a painting of a tree with no birds. That painting had not fit the story, but as it was a skilled painting, I had included it, nevertheless.

"Ird? Ird?" Anne asked, first holding the book close to my face, then bringing it back down to her lap and looking at me intently with her blue eyes.

"Bye-bye birds," I told her, waving goodbye first to the illustration and then again as I turned toward the window. I had always said, "Bye-bye Anne" or "Goodbye Anne" when I left, although she had never used the word herself.

Anne seemed to understand and repeated, "Bye-bye irds."

From my bed I imagined Anne again a small child. This time she was looking for me and I could not be found, just like the birds, and she screamed and then sobbed and cried. This thought greatly troubled me and was held fast, like a bear's paw in a trap. I felt a tightness in my chest, a thickness in my throat.

What will become of my Anne, when her mama bird is gone? I wondered, jumbling up my death with the birds growing up and leaving the nest. I felt now that there was no possibly way to sleep. Then it occurred to me that I knew what I needed to do, even if it had been awhile since I had done so.

I undid Parker's careful work by roughly flinging back the bedding and sliding out the left side of the bed. Then gingerly, I squatted while holding onto the side of the bed and then placed one knee and then the other upon the floor. I laced my fingers together upon the mattress and bowed my head on top of them. I suppose I could have prayed in my bed, but it felt, rightly or wrongly, that He might listen more carefully if I put some effort into it. Perhaps being willing to abide the pain to my knees might show my sincerity.

First, I prayed the Lord's prayer and then before uttering the "amen" prayed my own words. "Oh God the Father, there is much suffering in the world and none of us are spared, just as you would not spare your Son. I know you have a plan for all of your children, to lead them to your kingdom, but they also need to be tended to in this life. I would pray for your healing upon me, not for my sake, but for the sake of my daughter Anne. She needs a protector and I pray you would raise one up for her. But until she has one other than me, I pray that you would spare my life. I know you have the power to make the growth depart from me, to cleanse me of my affliction. However, not my will but yours. Amen."