Chapter 3
Once their fathers deemed them sufficiently punished for the incident on the green, the boys were allowed to continue their pursuits at the ruins. After breakfast one morning, young Darcy ran to his room, grabbed the wooden sword, and scurried down the stairs to catch up with Edward and Richard. In his haste, he nearly ran into his mother in the gallery.
"Fitzwilliam!" she exclaimed. "Dearest, do be careful with that stick. You are surely going to hurt someone with it."
"Yes, Mama. I shall be back later, Mama!" Darcy assured her confidently as he continued on his way.
His mother watched him, the sword flailing through the air as he went, and she hastily called after him, "And do not climb the trees!"
When the boys reached the ruins, they drew willow twigs, for whoever got the shortest twig would have to be the villain that day. Darcy, unfortunately, lost the draw and resigned himself to the odious task of portraying the Sheriff of Nottingham. He decided to fight fire with fire this time, so he ran into the wood and climbed a tree, lying in wait for the merry men.
When he saw Edward come bounding out from behind some brush, Darcy slipped his leg over the branch he was sitting on and jumped down to scare his cousin. The ploy worked and he did frighten his cousin, however, he landed hard and fell backward as his feet hit the ground. The boy reached back and his arm became pinned between a rock and his body. He yelled out as he felt a sudden pain from the twisting of his arm.
Richard and Edward ran over to him, "Wills, are you hurt?"
Edward reached for Darcy's shoulder to help the boy up, but when he touched it, young Darcy screamed out in pain, "No, no. Do not touch it!"
As swiftly as he was able Edward ran back to Pemberley house for help, and Richard stayed with his cousin until the earl, Mr. Darcy, and a few household attendants came running. They carried Master Darcy back to the house, where Lady Anne was waiting.
"Mr. Darcy, Mr. Darcy!" she exclaimed in a panic. "What has happened? Will he survive?"
"Yes, dear, he will be fine," her husband said in an attempt to console his anxious wife.
The boy looked at his mother as the attendants carried him up the stairs. She was worried beyond consolation, her face ghostly white; and he saw her grab his father's arm as she held Darcy's toy sword in her other hand.
"You know, that was the last time I remember seeing this," Darcy said as he looked at the toy sword.
Elizabeth smiled in a motherly manner. "She must have hidden it in the trunk in an attic, so that there would be no danger of you injuring yourself again."
"I suppose so." Darcy sighed and then chuckled. "All these years I thought Edward took it. I owe him an apology, I think." Darcy looked over at his wife, and saw her fatigue. It was getting late and he had kept her from their bed and much-needed rest for too long with his stories of that summer long ago.
"Elizabeth, you must go to bed now. I will take you upstairs, directly."
"Fitzwilliam, I am fine—truly," she protested halfheartedly for she was indeed quite tired. "But I must know what happened the rest of that summer."
"There was not much more to it, really," he smiled. "I spent the rest of my holiday nursing my wrenched shoulder and arm. My uncle, aunt, and cousins left a few weeks later to return to London, and my father sent me with them to go back to school. He had always taken me to London himself, though I suppose his worry for my mother was too great to leave her alone."
Darcy's happy countenance faded as he recalled that time. Was he melancholy? Elizabeth wondered. But then, she saw his features harden into the taciturn man she knew him to be when he was resolved not to let the world know of his troubles.
Darcy helped his wife up from the chair, and they slowly walked out of the library and above stairs to their chambers. Darcy left Elizabeth in the capable hands of her maid.
"I will just take a turn about the house," he said, and kissed her and she smiled wearily, putting a hand to her back and one to her side as she thought of laying her growing body down in the comfortable bed.
Darcy walked out into the hallway with a candle to commence his nightly inspection of the house. When he entered the library, he strode over and picked up the toy sword from the chair. He gave one last swipe through the air with it, and held up the candle to look at a large portrait of himself and his mother. He moved the candle to his right and illuminated a likeness of his father, painted around the same time, during young Darcy's eleventh year.
"Father," Darcy sighed loud, "why could you not have let me be a boy for just a little longer? Where is it written that a man must be so serious, when there is so much more to life?"
Darcy leaned against the desk for a time in quiet contemplation. He remembered how he had been unsure of his life after that summer, for things at Pemberley were to change. From that time on, Darcy's father had encouraged his son to be a little more serious in his studies, and when the boy was home on holiday, his father insisted that he learn how to manage the estate and affairs of business.
A baby girl had been born to the Darcy's while Fitzwilliam was at school, and Georgiana had taken the place as the child in the family. Not long after her birth, Lady Anne had become seriously ill with the fever and soon left Mr. Darcy alone with a precocious son and an infant daughter. Fitzwilliam Darcy had felt the weight of the responsibilities pressing on his father—and he had been keenly aware of his father's loneliness.
"I wish you were here now, Father," Darcy whispered as he looked back up at the likeness. "I have questions, and I could do with some advice."
Tears welled up in Darcy's eyes; tears that had not been shed when his father had died. "I fear I know nothing of how to be a father," he continued. "That was always your part. I should have paid more heed, but I was contented to simply be your boy."
Darcy breathed in deeply and collected his wits. He took one last look at the sword which had brought back so many memories, happy and sad; and he placed the sword in the top drawer of the library desk to be forgotten once again.
Elizabeth and her young daughter walked along the path to the north of the house, until they came to a clearing where the old ruins stood. They hid themselves behind a large tree and peered around the knotted trunk, quite unnoticed.
"Who goes there?" a tall, dark-haired man called down from atop the rubble.
"Tis I, Will Scarlett! I have come to pursue Robin the Hood!" a gangly boy of about seven yelled up, making his voice sound as big as he could.
The man jumped down from his perch atop an old pile of masonry rock, wielding a carved toy sword, and in pointing it at the boy, said, "No one sees Robin the Hood!"
"How are we to play, Papa, if no one can see you?" the boy threw up his hands in defeat.
"Of course you can see me, Andrew," Darcy said, "You are supposed to fight me for the right to join the merry men."
"Oh," the boy shrugged and replied matter-of-factly; a countenance to match that of his father; and then turned around and called out to his brother, "Christian! Make haste! Papa is going to challenge us to a battle!"
A very small boy, with a shock of disheveled hair and pink cheeks, came charging out on sturdy legs from behind a thicket with a wooden sword in each of his hands and a wicked grin upon his face.
"Come down and battle me, Papa!" he demanded in a high-pitched wail. "Come down now!"
With a flourish, Mr. Darcy brandished his wooden sword, pretending to fight off the advance of his each of his sons, one and then the other. He was laughing so hard he could barely catch his breath, and in leaving himself open to attack, Andrew gingerly stuck his father in the ribs with the blunt point of his sword. Mr. Darcy writhed in mock agony, hands pressed to the wound, and he fell to the ground, much to the delight of the giggling boys.
"Get up, Papa! Let's do it again!" Christian tugged on Darcy's shirt, which was a little damp and dirty with dust and sweat, and the little boy jumped up and down. "I want to do it again!"
"I am not the boy I used to be, Christian; shall we not rest here a moment?" Darcy smiled and Andrew hurried over to where his father sat on the ground, and both boys took up their places, one boy under each outstretched arm.
"Shall I tell you more of Robin Hood?" the father asked, leaning back again a smooth boulder to catch his breath in the stillness of the air of a summer afternoon; and the boys heartily agreed.
Elizabeth and her daughter laughed; "Not so loudly, Hannah; they will hear us," the mother cautioned with a kiss on the cheek of the little girl who giggled excitedly at the sport of her father and brothers.
The two were content to remain hidden behind the tree, listening to Mr. Darcy as he did recite a child's ballad:
They are all gone to London court,
Robin Hood, with all his train;
He once was there a noble peer,
And now he's there again.
Many such pranks brave Robin played
While he lived in the green wood:
Now, my friends, attend, and hear an end
Of honest Robin Hood.