The new Bennets and the Gardiner are at Pemberley. Dinner time and story time.
Chapter 24: Pemberley Dinner
Derbyshire, Pemberley, Sunday evening.
The greetings between Mrs. Gardiner and the Gardiner children was as excited and loud as their first encounter with their father.
Even Mrs. Bennet's cries of joy while she was embracing her --oh, so lucky-- daughter were covered by the shrieks of pleasure four very relieved young children could utter when they were, finally, reunited with both their parents.
Elizabeth was more than a little embarrassed by all this noise and she was glad that Fitzwilliam has chosen to discreetly vanish.
She would have to talk to her mother but right now she really couldn't help herself just to be happy to see that she and Kittie nd the kids were all sound an safely arrived in Pemberley.
After a few minutes turmoil, Mrs. Gardiner gained the upper hand and was able to calm her brood enough to make them say goodnight to every body.
They would eat in their room and Mrs. Gardiner was resolute to be with them until the last of her darlings was fallen asleep.
While the family gathering was taking place in the hall, Fitzwilliam has shown Kennedy and his men where they could spend the night. The horses had already been taken away and led to the stables.
"Here," said Darcy showing Kennedy a suite of five rooms of the basement which were furnished in order to host servants of guests who came with a greater retinue. "The linens have been changed and you are welcome to use the bathrooms at the end of the hall. Please do not carry weapons while walking around within the house. My staff has not yet an habit of seeing armed men on my grounds. It will perhaps have to change but I don't believe that time is upon us, yet..."
"We'll store our weapons in the central room, Sir," said Kennedy. "And they will be under constant guard. There will be no accident there..."
"Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. Please don't take it as a mark of mistrust but armed followers are really not common on this estate."
"No offense taken, Sir. Weapons are bad enough, we won't take a risk of injuring any one."
"Thanks again, Mr. Kennedy."
Fitzwilliam showed him to a room.
"This is your room. As you see there are clothes on the bed. They should be the right size. If it pleases you, I'd like to welcome you at my dinner table. My guests and I will probably have lots of questions to ask you about the situation in and around London. If you'd be kind enough to accept to submit yourself to a hail of questions, we would be vary glad."
"It will be my pleasure, Sir. I hope you'll forgive me if my words or tone are a little rough. I'm more in the habit of eating in military camps than at tables of large estates..."
"If you take care not to shock the ladies, we will be lenient about any hoarse language you' d use..."
He bowed and went to the door.
"We eat at eight fifteen. I'll send you a footman. Your men can eat in the servant lobby whenever they want from seven on."
Kennedy bowed and accompanied the master of the house the whole way to the entrance of the little suite of rooms.
When he came back, he spoke Gaelic.
"Be careful of what you say, men. In those houses servants listen and report. And if this Darcy is half as prudent as ours, he will listen to what his servants have to say. So, not a word about what we are or what we did. Speak only of the journey from Hertfortshire to here. That should be safe. The rest does not exist, do we agree?"
"We agree," said O'Donnel. "And we won't speak, we will sleep." He pushed the mattress on the bed and a smile came on his face. "After a week sleeping in the saddle we will use each minute of these beds, you can count on it. No reason to fear a false word. I'll set the guard schedule, go eat something and then I'll jump into these marvelous sheets..."
"Take a bath, all of you," ordered Kennedy. "It's not every day that you have such an opportunity. Use it lavishly, next one is in the far future..."
He turned.
"I'm on my way to the bath tube. Back in half an hour..."
He went to the door when O'Donnel called him back.
"Be careful with the brandy, sarge, you know, when drunk, you talk..."
"I'll be cautious! I won't drink too much..."
His men looked at each other. He always believed it... Before and till the second glass...
As soon as Kennedy was out of the room, Doolittle jumped on the bed he had chosen.
"Let's get as much sleep as possible! If Joss blabbers too much, it could be that we're out of here before midnight... Personally, I wouldn't bet on a whole night's sleep..."
The dinner was a joyous and happy affair. Even if some of the guests were still worried with what could happened to the rest of the family, most of the time there was laughter and merriment.
Even Kennedy was able to contribute to the merriment with anecdotes of his time in the army.
Soon the gentlemen went to the billiard room and serious talk could begin.
"How's the situation in the south?"
It was Bingley who asked.
He would quit Pemberley in the next days and he wanted to know what was awaiting him.
"How far south?"
"London and surroundings..."
Kennedy took a deep breath of his cigar --a very good one-- and blew a few circles in the sky.
"I don't want to scare you but it was rather..." he hesitated. "Exciting. Lots of people on the move and quite a few who were looking for a way to get away quickly. And it is more than probable that this exact situation will happen here in the North within a few week. The French came ashore with a lot of troops and under a very good commanding staff. Some people say that they are under the command of Buonaparte himself. And I'm sure you know that we have no one able to stop him here in Great Britain. And I really hope, the King won't give this responsibility to Freddy..."
Bingley could help but approve.
The Holland campaign of Prince Frederick had been a failure and had brought nothing but a pamphlet praising "merry prince Freddy" and his famous soldiering skills.
"I would like to go back to London," said Mr. Gardiner. "Would it be possible to hire you as an escort?"
"When all is said, that's where we want to return. That's where there will be money to be made. We would escort you to London and since Mr. Darcy gave us quite a juicy bonus, we will be very sound in our demands. We'll plenty opportunities to make money when back in London. I'm sure there are a lot of potential patrons waiting for us..."
Darcy looked at him and frowned.
"Would you be interested in a more secure job? Even if the French do not slip into marauding ad pillaging, there will be quite a few opportunists who will test the ground and try to rob estates and villages. A few experienced soldiers could be a very welcome adjunct to an estate..."
"No doubt to that," answered Kennedy, "and if at our next journey North, your proposition is still hanging, we'll probably accept. I must, of course, ask my men but I'm sure they are interested. If only because of the beds... But with the situation as it is, it would be loosing a great deal of money not going back. And with these Sirs having a use for an escort, I can say that they have a deal!"
Darcy looked at him with frowning eyes.
"Why not use the opportunity to pillage?"
"No," answered Kennedy. "We did it for Freddy in Holland and we spoke about doing it on our behalf, but the men voted against. Too risky and not enough profit. The receiver takes always the greatest part..."
"Is there experience speaking?"
"Indeed. We did it for a time, but, as said, it was too risky for too little a profit. We agreed on using our skills on other fields."
He sucked delicately at his cigar.
"And what we did in Holland is not our best memory. Looting estates and burning them down to cover the traces of our robbery is definitively not something we learned to like. Each time I saw such a splendid house crashing under the burning timber of its roof, my heart was crying. We were destroying a home not only for the master's family but for dozens of servants who would, if they had survived the passage of war, starve to death..."
He looked up.
"Because, of course, we also burned the crops."
He let out a long breath.
"War's not a pretty thing, Mr. Darcy, and we got more than our share of it. Now we are "free traders" who rent out their work force to wealthy people who want to be protected while in trouble. From time to time we are hired by creditors to get back their money."
He looked up and a happy smile covered his lips.
"And we quite enjoy squeezing the Englishman to make him spit out his money..."
He looked Darcy in the eyes.
"But we no longer accept to rob poor people. We let this job to politicians, aristocrats and land owners who get their riches by exploiting their tenants..."
Darcy refused to fall to the bait.
Pemberley was a great estate but his tenants were no longer exploited.
More than a quarter of what the tenants gave to the Darcy family was reinvested in communal work. He had six estate granaries were he was hoarding enough corn to fed his people for two years without a harvest. Twenty carpenters were on the loose in his half of Derbyshire to repair and maintain houses and barns. A squad of workers was repairing the roads and bridges of the Estate day and night. A doctor, paid by Darcy, was at the call of everyone of his tenants if the need arose. And the day after his marriage he would hire a second one, a specialist of women ailments and birth. Both his parents have died because the town apothecary was not able to see what was happening to his mother. He could not --he would not-- accept that Elizabeth could die because of the inexperience of a doctor...
His sons would have their mother till they grow old and senile.
Not like him.
The very day he became the Master of Pemberley he had written to an old Cambridge friend who lived a difficult life in London with his wife and two children. He was a doctor, one of these rare professionals who were looking after the symptoms with cures and drugs and not killing the patients with enemas and bleedings.
Of course he came immediately and since then Pemberley hasn't lost a single soul but of old age or accident. And even for those, the doctor had been able to save more than his share who would have died without him.
He changed the line of the discussion.
"And on the road, how was it?"
"Strangely calm! As if nobody knew what was happening in the South. There were a lot of people on the roads but since we never did it normally I'm unable to say if there was heavy traffic or normal traffic. We got through without a problem..."
He smiled.
"We were quite impressing, I must confess. We even shot a few Highwaymen who attacked a carriage in front of us. It was none of our business, I know, but those guys tend to believe they can do everything once they had a success. They could have decided that another robbery was the smart move of the day. We convinced them to change trade..."
His smile became frightening.
"Very easy convincing..."
"No preparations? No where?"
"Before Derby not a hint of a preparation. As if people did not know what to do. As if they did not know that an invading army was on English soil."
"And in Derby?"
Kennedy nodded.
"Not the same, there. Boys on the outlook on roofs. Carts with timber at every crossroad. And lots of water tanks everywhere. They know something's coming and they are ready."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"As ready as they can be without proper fortifications..."
Bingley came nearer.
"You seem unconvinced that it will have a use..."
"It will and it won't..." answered Kennedy. "It will because between a ready town and an undefended one, a clever commander will always chose the undefended one, letting the other in peace. But it will last only so long. When every other town in the vicinity has surrendered, they will come and look you nevertheless. Than it's time to put the white flag out of storage and begin the negotiations..."
He looked at Darcy.
"That's also true for your Estate. Good thing to look tough in the beginning. Stragglers and looters will went elsewhere. But as soon as the main army shows its vanguard, get your linen on a rod and go discuss with the enemy commander. Those officers are all the same, they like their comfort and they love to live in fancy estates with lots of beautiful things surrounding them. They won't burn down the manor where they eat and sleep... Only problem, when comes the time to retreat. Then it had happened that some turned arsonist all the same. But it is rather rare. One becomes accustomed to one's environment and one does not burn a building where there are good memories..."
He looked at the gentlemen with a knowing smile.
"It's even better if the mistress has been very open to the desires of said invaders. Never saw a lover burn down the house of his paramour before quiting. People are so easy to manipulate..."
Darcy could not help but nod.
Pemberley was no medieval castle. And even would he have been, it would not have had the capability to withstand to modern artillery.
"Nothing to do, then, that's what you are saying..."
Kennedy lost his smile.
"Never said that. Depends on what you are ready to lose. It's of no use to defend yourself here. Let it be occupied. But if you want to fight, go into the woods and the hills. Go and fight where the enemy does not know how to find you. Hide in holes like rats and come out at night to slit the throats of sleeping soldiers. Next day they will swarm all over the country and you'll have plenty of opportunities to kill more of them... Without great risk for yourself or your men... They'll never find you. They don't know the lay of the Land..."
"What about the villages and towns?" asked Bingley.
Kennedy's smile was back.
"What about them? They'll pay for you. Why not? These cowards choose not to fight, not to defend their country. What happens to them is their fault. The enemy will shoot a few --or a lot-- of villagers. They will burn a few --or a lot-- houses and they will rape a few --or a lot-- women. And in the end you'll have plenty of new volunteers to fight with you. New rats in the holes to slit more enemy throats."
He laughed and it was a joyless and icy laugh.
"And one day some of said villagers will turn against you and show your holes to the enemy and they will get you while you sleep. And then you'll die, sooner or later..."
His shark smile was back.
"You can postpone this unhappy ending. If you have time to prepare send far far away those you know will not have the courage to fight. If you don't have the time or if you don't care, kill all those who won't be fighting with you and who know where to find you. And forget none or you're dead..."
He looked at his glass.
"But even so you'll get caught in the end. Because they will know who you are and they will strike those you love. They will kill parents, rape and mutilate sisters and brothers, hang old friends. And you'll become angry. Very, very angry... And an angry man makes mistakes. And one day there will be your last mistake and they'll catch you. And then you're in for a few very vexing months..."
Darcy went around Kennedy and sat in front of him.
"You seem to speak out of experience..."
Kennedy couldn't help bu laugh.
"What do you think? I'm Irish and soldier and son of soldier... We know of such things. They British did it to us and we did it to those poor souls who had the bad idea not to welcome the English rule with flowers and hurrays... Yes, I speak out of experience..."
Darcy took a long breath. Time to verify Elizabeth's theory.
"Where were you in ninety eight?"
Kennedy raised his eyes to the ceiling. A few seconds passed. That he looked directly at Darcy.
"Kilkerny..."
Darcy nodded.
"And not on the English side of the fighting..."
Kennedy shook his head.
"Not on the English side of the fighting."
Their eyes locked and a lot of time passed.
Darcy had had access to the reports of the Irish insurrection of 98. And what had happened there was nothing England could be proud of. What was worst, what the English soldiers had done was something that could never be forgiven. Never ever would the Irish and the English e able to live in peace within the same realm. That fairy tale had been buried with the thousands of Irish insurgents the British troops had killed, maimed and shot.
"And you weren't caught?"
It was Bingley who came to Darcy's rescue.
Kennedy loosened his glance and looked at the red hair.
There was Irish blood running in this one. No doubt about it. And his smile was that of an honest and frank lad. Kennedy liked him a lot. He was as the Irish lads were a few years ago. Smiling, happy and open hearted.
That was ell in the past now.
"Oh, yes, I was caught! And I spent nine months in Raghlar. Those months were hell on earth..."
"Raghlar," Bingley looked at Mr. Gardiner. "Wasn't there a giant prison break in ninety nine?"
"Indeed, there was," agreed Mr. Gardiner. "Thousands of insurgents broke out. But they were all recaptured."
Kennedy shook his head.
"Not all. Only those who choose to stay in Ireland. Those of us who choose to go with our rescuer are still alive and very much satisfied with what they are doing just now..."
"Your rescuer? You had outside help? Nothing ever was said or written that such was the case."
Kennedy turned back toward Darcy.
"We had, Mr. Darcy. We had. And if you never heard of his exploits, it's because he is much smarter than the whole of English aristocracy. He came all the way from France to get us out of this Hell. And he killed half of the jailers before they even knew he was inside. Then he let us finish the job. We were very grateful that he did... He provided us with a sort of redemption. It was very nasty but it did us all a hell of good."
He looked at Darcy.
"And then he gave us the choice. Go with him and prepare the liberation of Ireland from outside or stay to prepare it from the inside. Most choose to stay but five hundred choose to go with him. And each and everyone of us will thank him to the end of our life for what he gave us that day."
He eyes sparkled and his smile came back. But it was a smile full of admiration and worship.
"Because, gentlemen, for us, d'Arcy is a god..."
Next chapter: Pemberley Ballad