The Creggan White Hare

by phantomwriter05

PROLOGUE - in 1935, Haunted by a tragedy of which he was blamed, a young adventurer searches an abandoned Gilded Age Manor in Newport, Rhode Island for a precious heirloom of the once Levinson family. But danger lurks around every corner as he is hunted by Mercenaries hired by a former Ottoman Noblewoman to avenge her son who died long ago in Lady Mary's bed. COMPLETE!

11. Head Games - Part II

'Wait!'

Jack Barber called after George Crawley, giving a double take at a coldly furious Lady Mary Talbot – the woman that had single handedly saved his career.

'Yeah, pal, by all means, try to salvage this.' George mocked in annoyance.

'I just wanted to talk to you, that is all.' There was a pleading in his voice. At his insistence, the youth turned about lazily, annoyance in his glare, as he put his hands in his jacket pockets.

'About what? A historical consultant? A tour of your studio?' he motioned his head at Sybbie who was watching on pins and needles. 'I know, how bout a cameo in one of your movies? I could be discovered by a talent scout!' the sarcasm dripping off the kid's voice was venomous. 'Give the white knight stuff a rest, Mr. Director.' He sneered. 'You got nothing to say to me.' The youth said in a growing anger as he turned to leave once more.

'Just listen, for a moment …' The man pursued a few steps. 'I'm just trying to help.' He pleaded. The youth snorted, turning to look over his shoulder at the movie man with bemusement.

'Good job.' He gave him a mocking thumbs-up

'I love her.'

George stopped at the admission … as did everyone else. When the young kid turned back, he found that he shared the view with the rest of his estranged family. Everyone seemed, not so much shocked – everyone could see it since they got back – but rather surprised that someone, anyone, would blurt such things out in front of everyone. In these matters of the heart, a good Englishman would ask for privacy or invite Lady Mary out for a walk and wait till they were alone. Suffice to say that Jack Barber did not do such things. Perhaps, he had spent too many years among Americans, or his pictures – after so many years of selling romance and drama – rubbed off upon him. But at such an occasion, when he found himself with his back against the wall, having errored so grievously in this matter, the usually competent and prudent man of artistic commerce found himself in need of Moseley to feed him lines.

Fore he dared not, yet, look to Mary.

'I do, I love your mother. I don't think I've ever met anyone like her. And I just want to do right by her. To earn her love. She's clever, witty, beautiful, and has more talent in her little finger than anyone I've ever met.'

It came spilling out of him, in front of everyone, his actors, producers, her family, even the servants of the castle – his extras. It was then that he felt that he had no choice. Having made the biggest mistake he could possibly make, overstepping to a dangerous degree, the man so completely in love, after so long, knew that he had to confess. This was not in his nature, they had to understand that. They had to understand, she had to understand, that he wouldn't stick his nose in other people's business. This was just supposed to be a job.

But the more he saw Lady Mary, the more he spent time with her, the more he got to know her so intimately as they cobbled the film together piece by piece, the more he loved her. He was taken by her strength, her teasing and effetely charming nature. But he found the sadness, the tragedy, alluring in a way he couldn't help but be drawn toward. Lady Mary Talbot had an otherworldly appeal – a 'Woman in White", a sorrow laden phantom, a heroine in a Gothic Romance Novel. It was this place, this setting in the grandeur of this exquisite castle, and the distant sadness of a woman with a shattered marriage and a broken family life. Yet, she still held it all together, kept everything running, and smiled that little sad smirk despite it all.

He wasn't sure why, or when it happened, but he was overcome with a terribly irresistible drive to help her, to protect her, to make everything right.

When he turned back to Lady Mary Talbot – neigh a month away from finalizing her divorce and return to the name Crawley – it was pleading. He knew he had messed up, that he had done something that she would find hard to forgive. He hadn't known, hadn't imagined, that her relationship with her son – someone he didn't even know was her own child till yesterday – was so troubled, so dark and filled with wild and dangerous anger that was most likely never to be resolved between them.

With all his soul he wanted to tell her that he didn't know and that he was sorry. It was just a drive to be near her, to hear her laugh, to see that smile - the small one, the wilting one, in the dark of the cinema when it was just the two of them, when he shared his love, his passion. And – despite everything – she had reciprocated that feeling, allowed herself to see it, the wonder, the magic, the immortality of all he was trying to capture in his cameras and actors … in her golden voice.

The man, in that moment, baring his soul in a look, lowered his head and exposed his neck to her lioness jaws. But even as he humbled himself, he snuck a glance and saw the conflict in her beautiful countenance. Everything that was unsaid, everything felt jointly between them, in this once in a lifetime experience that they shared together, was clear and plain. She wanted what he was offering – he knew it. This was some rebirth, a new era, they all felt it. He wasn't offering her a happily ever after, a solution to her problems – as evidence of his failure at the moment. He was only offering her an escape, a chance at a new life, a new path. And Lady Mary stood there, awash in a thousand different emotions.

'Hey, Barber, you know your girl Friday is standing right there, right?'

George broke the tensions and longing in a look between Jack and Mary, motioning with his head to Myrna Dalgleish behind him who was so terribly and suddenly wroth – once more – at Mary and their director.

'That's not important.' Barber started, pointing at the youth for poignancy while glancing back, trying to keep open a through line to the woman he wanted with all his soul.

'It's gonna seem pretty important when you want to make your next garbage movie and all you got is twinkle toes back there.' George lifted his eyebrows, the nickname startling both Guy Dexter … and Thomas.

'She's unhappy.' The Director tried to multi-task in restarting his talk with Mary's son and also recalibrate the point.

George snorted. 'I mean, I would be too. look at her, a bullet couldn't get through that platinum helmet …'

'What did you say?!' Myrna Dalgleish was sharp.

'I said, Al Capone could bust your head with a bat and the wood would splinter first.' There was a casualness to his belligerence, only giving a glance back at the glamorous silent film star that grew from indignant to absolutely, five-alarm, furious.

'Get rought fucked ya lit'al punk!' She snarled in outrage with the most grating of accents the youth ever heard.

'With a voice like that? Not even in your heyday, Lady Peroxide!' He shot back – the insult of her accent, hair … and the veiled shot at her age, nearly caused Dalgleish to combust into flame. The multipronged assault on all her insecurities at once virtually undid all of Anna and Daisy's good work in a single moment.

Barber wasn't even paying attention to his once star actress any longer.

'No, your mother! Your mother is unhappy!' He tried to get everything back on track – this talk he had planned out in his head from the moment he saw Mary's smile in that silent cinema.

George gave a furrowed brow of confusion.

'What, you mean her?' He jerked his head at Mary.

'Yes!' Barber sighed – finally back on track.

'Really? How can you tell?' The youth snorted in disinterest. 'She always looks that way.' His flippant and sarcastic wit was causing his mamma to seethe – almost audibly now.

'Haven't you stopped and asked why?' There was a true attempt to connect with the youth that seemed to be endlessly taking the piss out of everything the director was trying to convey to him.

'Why Lady Mary Crawley …?'

'Talbot.'

'Her too … is the way she is?' George asked rhetorically as if someone had posed to him an atomic theory of splitting an atom.

'Yes!'

'My brother in Christ, there isn't enough hours in a day ...'

'Enough!'

Lady Mary Talbot was at the very end of her rope. Never once, in all her life, had anyone come at her in so many ways, testing her patience and authority like George did. No longer was there a small boy that was led by Nanny to where she sat on the sofa so he might sit by her, or on her knee. Now, after nearly two years since Caroline … died, it was either silence or all-out war. They could pass each other on the village street and not give a penny of notice to each other. And by some unhappy incident when they were forced to interact, the insults never stopped flying. There was never a point in which the kid would let pass a chance to belittle or undermine her. Many times, she went back at him, like she would Edith, only to get her eye blackened verbally. Somewhere down the line – in his training and on his adventures – someone had taught a once slow and quiet George how to fence with rapier wit. Now, he didn't stop – especially when it came to taking the piss out of Lady Mary.

Looking as far back as she could, there was never a time in which she had ever been teased, bullied, or was mocked with any effectiveness. Yet, it was as if George was making up lost time. There was no reverence, no restraint, and no affection in his body blows and slaps to her hands and face in the way he talked, in the way he beheld Lady Mary Talbot. He didn't see her as his mother, as someone he cared for … someone he loved. And that was – truly – what bothered Mary the most, what haunted and sent her into a rage. When would come the time when she wasn't waiting for it to get better? For him to move on from her heart. When will it get easier to live down all the things she did and gave up on that terrible day long ago? When will she see him from afar and not get that pit in her belly, that rise in her heart, and not want to go to him and tell him that she … that she still –

Always.

But she was dragged back from all her wants, all her desires, the longing to breath the free air and see the sun. Fore, there he was, the phantasm, the specter, the looming thunder clouds of an oncoming storm on the horizon of her kingdom. George "The Comet" Crawley, 38th Lord of Downton, Heir to the Earl of Grantham and Royal House of York – her son. She lay awake many a night afear of him, what he was, and what he will become. A rebel, a traitor to his class and his House. He was the lynch pin, the beacon of the county. The tenants, the farm hands, and the villagers had already began following him, holding to his word, taking his commands as if they were law … heeding not Mary in any way.

Often had her granny told her that women like them could only be seen as two things: 'Dragons or Fools', and they must be dragons. However, while the words often heartened Mary in her doubts, the practice of such philosophy and values was being proven as the complete opposite of how one leads men. Fore, increasingly, she was finding that such things were only losing her respect amongst those who were all quickly gathering around her son. The youth was everything that Mary was not as a manager of the estate. George "The Comet" Crawley – even at a young age – was a leader of men.

When he wasn't away on his adventures, he was out and about in the county. He paid calls to farmers and plantation managers on the estate. He heard tenant complaints and found solutions. Due to his extensive travels and experiences abroad – revealing to him much in the hearts of men of every race and creed – he had taken his lessons from adventures and battles and applied them to his understanding, his empathy, in treating every man and woman equally.

Often George could be found eating among them, drinking – cider – with them at the pub many a night. The young Lord joined them in their great merriment, divisive squabbles, and greater sorrows. He toiled and sweated beside them in their work when help was needed. And even if it was a job of which a child couldn't do, then he strove to remain useful in alternative means that heartened the men in their struggle. The result was that in a few short years, the young Lord of Downton – excommunicated and ignored by the Ruling House of Grantham – was now worshipped and beloved. The Granthams' men - tenant, laborer, business owner, and county soldier - had all become fiercely loyal to the young Lord.

The same could not be said for Lady Mary Talbot.

She was often seen as an anachronistic debutant of whom refused to even engage directly with the farmers and tenants who broke their backs for her and Downton Abbey. The woman would stand imperious and grand next to Tom Branson, and if she had a question, if she had a concern, she would simply give the man a side-eye to make a comment on her behalf to a figure standing right in front of her. No one under her own purview conversed with Lady Mary Talbot. There was always a middleman, an unbroken sanctity of her being above everything and everyone. It was the way that things had always been done at Downton, in her father and grandmother's day. But now, with the advent of George Crawley's familiarity and his accessibility to the men and women of the county - of leading from the front – the 'Dragon's' aloofness was marked … and not kindly.

It was unspoken but known that Lady Mary Talbot did not care for the troubles of others, especially those upon her own land. Downton Abbey was the sole goal and purpose of her dreams and wants. Every penny went to the house, to maintaining its opulence and grandeur as a beacon and center piece of the county. If it was in trouble, if there was a need, then she simply signed a paper, made a phone call … and they doubled timed at the plantations. The labor, the sweat, blood, and exhaustion, of men were but numbers on a paper, time tables that Lady Violet's 'Dragon' looked upon at a glance and found it all acceptable – but she had to run, mamma was throwing a cocktail party tonight and she had to get dressed.

Resentment grew, hate began to fester, as calls for wage increases for Lady Mary's 'standards' and long hours with an undermanned work force was met with an indignant – 'I cannot conjure money from tree's, sir!' - as Mary planned a lavished bridal shower for Ms. Lucy Smith. It had nearly boiled over in a strike, a near riot, when an over excess of grain and oats was sold off by the estate to pay for repairs at Downton Abbey. As a consequence, there came a troubling shortage of food for the county in the mid-winter.

It had only been by George's own 'fences' in the Cornish free trading circles that he brought much of the grain that helped feed many. The young man would forever claim that the lifesaving bags just simply 'washed up' on Hendrawna Beach one day. And, as for the coincidental ransacking of the royal estate's storehouse as wells as how the Duke of Connaught was found stripped to his shorts and tied to a pole? George couldn't imagine what any of that had to do with him.

The Duke was just 'an odd sort', that one.

The boy's nick of time rescue of the County Grantham was but one more boon in the young master's cap and a black eye to Lady Mary – who had dipped into the food supply purposefully, knowing full well what might happen. The results were that mother and son had come dangerously close to blows and that both Lord Grantham and Tom were fiercely angry with Mary when they found out about her 'creative accounting' – Mr. Branson tendering his resignation as agent in protest over his best friend and co-parent's actions. Though they did not fall out over this, it would create a rift for many years between Mary and Tom – his reputation as being on the farmer's and worker's side would be forever tarnished by her greed.

In the meanwhile, George Crawley and Lady Merton had begun to work on a solution of ways to help the county as Mary refused to back-down of 'the need' for the over sale of grain. And the answer came when the estate of Duneagle fell once more - the principle land sold piecemeal by the owners that had bought it from Lord Flintshire. However, in the nightmarish scenario in which they were to turn the Highland estate into a golfing resort for the aristocracy and tourist trade, there was found the perfect opportunity to solve serval problems.

Lady Mary Talbot was furious when it was decided - without her consent or leave - that the County Grantham would take in many of the displaced Scottish Highland farmers and absorb them into the Estate scheme. Though being from the far north of Scotland, the Highlanders and the Northern Yorkshiremen had many things in common. They were both tough, resilient, hard-working, hard drinking, grim, and overwhelmingly Catholic. There were cultural differences, a certain prejudice, ancient rivalries – but George promised Lord Grantham and Lady Hexham that he would make it work – even as Lady Mary decried it as lunacy. But beyond the extra workforce … the deciding factor was the sales pitch of them needing not to raise wages. Also, more mouths to feed meant that Lady Mary Talbot could never 'fudge' grain numbers again to plug a leak in Downton's roof.

At the beginning was there long foreseen mistrust and animosity between the Downton locals and the new Scots that arrived. The Grantham denizens afear of a cheaper workforce that would run them out of their jobs. While the Highlanders were still reeling, sore, of their displacement by bad management of estates like Downton. This was made immensely more difficult by the fact that Lady Mary refused to meet with the Highland community leaders, telling Papa at dinner that since he and Edith decided to put their trust in a young boy … it was now a young boy's problem.

Yet, once more, the difference of style and education - Lady Violet whispering in Mary's ear put against the worldly travels and hard lessons that Georg learned on his adventures - had grew to the disadvantage of the House of Grantham, of whom had backed Mary. The Highlanders, though suspicious and cynical - certainly at the idea of a kid taking point on their transition – began to show positive signs toward the lad with the most peculiar style and personality. Enlisting the help of Mrs. Hughes, the boy oversaw the integration and assimilation – though, it was far from being easy.

Often Mrs. Hughes, Lady Merton, and Mr. Branson had to make sure that there weren't parallel communities, divided loyalties, and cultural suppression nor preference in the day to day life of village and hamlets. They found that George showed a mettle that was unlooked for as he was forced to grow in mind and body at a faster rate. Many times had the boy been forced to fight physically both sons and fathers, to show and maintain his authority over hard men … and he rarely won the fights against grown men.

But even in loss, picking himself off the ground – spitting out blood – the youth looked the ginger Highland bruiser in the eye and reiterated his original order to the man, giving him no alternative but to follow it. And even in victory, one who fought a young boy, who pounded him into the cobbled stone, hadn't felt great about it. Always among the other Scots had there been a look of silent judgement, of distaste, and embarrassment that such an unruly savage was among their kin. Yet, though setting arms back into socket, suturing cheek, and icing knuckles, the young lord earned the respect of the Highland community.

The boy showed great valiantry in never ever backing down from a fight. He took every blow as a man does. And he never complained of a fight nor taking revenge in its loss. But what they admired most about the lad was that no matter how badly he took a hit, he always – always – got back up. There were moral victories in the boy's stalwartness of never losing the air of authority that he was the lord of these lands, even when he didn't win a fight. Thus, it was, that the Highlanders had begun calling the youth 'Mac-Dubh' – Son of the Black One.

At first, it had been a rather derogatory nickname. The young Crawley's speech, style, and clothing had been like nothing they had ever witnessed from the upper classes, of which they were still not convinced he was born from. With a sharp wit, even sharper tongue, and a Poldark's temper, many Scottish wives thought the odd lad must be the spawn of Lucifer himself. This was corrected by the Yorkshiremen by saying that he was not the son of Satan but Lady Mary Talbot – though one could sympathize with the confusion. But after a while, the name slowly turned into something of endearment the more they grew to trust the boy. And finally, in the end, it was said ever afterward in affection and respect – alluding to the valiantry and stalwartness of the 'mad lad who fought like ten men'. Thus, was George Crawley know by both Highlander and Yorkshiremen as "Mac-Dubh".

And it is so here marked that the boy liked it much better than "The Comet", for one was a jab at Lady Mary, while the other … was a reminder of his greatest failure.

This turn around was helped immensely by the aid of the Yorkshiremen and local population which grew to accept the determination of the young master to improve these newcomers' lives. Though they balked at first, believing – as Mary had – the venture would fail. They stood by and watched the lad get his head kicked in time and time again with shakes of their own at what they perceived as his ideals being fanciful non-sense that came from living with Lady Merton. They pondered why the lad and the estate builders worked through the night to renovate and add onto the cottages that the boy's father Matthew Crawley had saved years prior. But eventually, the denizens were forced to acknowledge the iron will of the young lord at work and knew of his character that he would do it on his own if he must. It was a mixture of shame and loyalty that many in the county reluctantly decided to follow the master's lead. Thus, by such of his examples, had the locals began mingling, then accepting, and finally befriending the Highlanders. In time, the rest of the county came together to build an integrated community.

And this began with their common background as Catholics.

The news was met with great anger and outrage by Lord Grantham and the Dowager when they learned that their very heir - in a show of solidarity with both his men and the merging community - decided to convert to Catholicism. The scandal of such a thing was taken as an insult by Tom Branson – reminding them that Sybbie and himself were Catholic, 'thank you very much'. But Robert wouldn't be abated. He ranted that there hadn't been a Catholic Crawley since the Reformation … of which was a known lie in itself.

The First Earl of Grantham and his heir, the 30th Lord of Downton, were both Catholic and Jacobites who had died on Culloden's Field in 1746. The Second Earl – the nephew of the First Earl – who had been a Protestant and Georgian, had taken his cousin's Irish fiancé to wife by force and claimed her and the Lord of Downton's unborn son – the 3rd Earl – as his own. Even though it was widely known that the Second Earl was entirely infertile. Thus, upon ascending to Downton Abbey upon the death of his Uncle and Cousin, the new Earl had went about hiding much of the House of Grantham's history and concocting fictions that were fashionable at the time to gain a place in the Hanoverian Court. And it was this vile man's narrative that had survived nearly two centuries and made the lion's share of the House of Grantham's traditions of which Lady Violet Crawley, Robert Crawley, and Lady Mary Talbot built their entire lives about. However, within the very year, these lies had finally been unearthed as fiction by George Crawley himself. Now, the House of Grantham was faced with an identity crisis as their true history as rebels, traitors, and secret Catholics was now public knowledge, published in "The Court Circular".

Yet, still, Robert Crawley wished to hold to the fiction, feeling that any admittance would be condoning the idea of their great house 'going backward'. But George told his grandfather in a wroth confrontation that he didn't need his permission for anything – 'I don't take your orders, old man!' Lady Grantham had to separate them as the boy had given the incensed Lord Grantham a shove out of his personal space. He told the ailing Dowager Countess and her son that he wouldn't maintain lies concocted by a sadistic, effete, and foppish, fat man whose wife committed suicide rather than be raped one more time. And all just to save the House of Grantham's reputation in the eyes of a 'German Tyrant' and his 'corrupt Court of bleeders'. The Grantham family had abandoned the county, let Lady Mary Talbot run amuck – put the needs of a crumbling gothic castle ahead of the lives of the people that depend on them. So, if him returning the ancestral mantel of Catholicism to the House of Grantham united the people around something, anything, he would do so without hesitation.

Months later, George and Sybbie both were confirmed together at the Catholic Church in Ripon. Their ceremony and mass attended by his grandmother Isobel, his step-grandfather Dickie, his Uncles Tom and Bertie, along with his aunt, godmother, and legal guardian, Lady Edith. Even Thomas Barrow, their butler, attended – given a special seat of honor as requested by both George and Sybbie. However, neither Lord and Lady Grantham, the Dowager, nor Lady Mary Talbot attended. Though all four would've gladly came for Sybbie, the sight of the 38th Lord of Downton officially a 'left-footer' was treated as a day to be remembered in infamy in the two-hundred-year traditions of the House of Grantham. And it is so here marked that both Mr. Matthew Crawley and Lady Mary Crawley would be the last Protestant Granthams from that day forward.

The divide, the schism, of the House of Grantham was felt bitterly that day.

("Us and Them" – John Lunn)

The entire house rallied to Ms. Sybbie upon her return. Lord Grantham giving gift and love freely, Lady Mary and Tom giving speeches, and Ms. Lucy Smith – who came too late to attend the ceremony – gave Sybbie a ring that the girl loved so very much. Both downstairs and upstairs attended the party in the Great Hall, with guests attending a dinner that Sybbie was allowed to attend herself – her very first family dinner. She was nearly bouncing off the walls, giggles echoing down the gallery, as she and Marigold got but a taste of the ceremony of what it was to dress for dinner every night at Downton Abbey. Lucy was all smiles as Sybbie was sat at her mamma's vanity so that she could be dressed for her dinner. There, with Marigold, Aunt Edith, Granny, and Mamma in attendance, her 'Aunt Lucy' did her hair, fitted her into a brand-new frock that Lady Mary had chosen specifically for the night, and, for the first time, she received just a touch of make-up. Of this, Tom was not overly pleased. However, both Mary and Lucy advised him not to spoil the affect for Sybbie who was absolutely preening, hugging and kissing with Marigold in absolute joy of how beautiful she looked – the excitement of the dawn tide into womanhood.

When Thomas introduced Sybbie into the Small Library, her entrance, along with Lucy's professional transformation of the girl into an absolute princess, was met with a great adoration from all that attended the dinner that night. And, in particular, was Lord Grantham overcome with emotions at her reveal. It was her stance with fists upon her hips, her blazing smile, and her little greeting of 'Evening everyone'. Never had she known, the beautiful young girl, how so very much she was like to her mummy, the ghost of Sybil and her pantaloons. Lord Grantham could not help but take the girl in his arms – even when she protested that he was ruining her 'big entrance'.

At dinner there was more speeches, this time from Lord Grantham and even the Dowager. The girl relished the candlelight, the clinking of glasses, and so many grown-up conversations that she – honestly – didn't quite understand. Yet, either way, the girl felt that she had truly made it, that she was one of the family. Perhaps someday she wouldn't even notice the mundanity of dressing so glamorously for dinner - find it even taxing to continue the show of glistering frocks and ruby lips just to eat fish and guzzle down white wine. But for now, in that moment, it was all Sybbie Branson ever wanted.

The gathering in George's post confirmation was non-existent. There were no speeches, no proud grandfather, nor attendance of servants and important Peers of the county. There was only a young kid who sprang up the steps of Crawley House to get out of the 'bastard costume' which got him a chastisement from Lady Merton that followed him up the stairs for his 'language'. Afterward, the boy spent the balance of the afternoon looking up what the words in Latin that he had to say meant, then why he had to say them, and finally what their origin was.

By the time that Lord Merton came to fetch his step-grandson for dinner, there were open tomes – some incredibly ancient - all over Matthew Crawley's bedroom desk. It was then that the youth informed Dickie of the debate over Transubstantiation between the Orthodox and Monophysite sects of the original church. Of which Lord Merton replied that he was simply happy to pay the Anglican tithe and let the King-Emperor sort all of that out for him and the rest of the Protestants.

Isobel raised a glass and was about to give a speech before dinner, till she noticed that George was looking around. When he asked why she was standing, why she was raising her voice, and who she was talking too … the old woman simply shrugged and sat back down. So, there was no speeches – though, Dickie informed his wife that he was sure it would've been marvelous, absolutely life-changing. But as the old woman watched her grandson cycle from eating his chicken with one bare hand and the bread that he ripped off the fresh loath with the other … she rather felt it would've gone over his head all the same. A dessert of apple topped honey cake was relished while a young boy informed his grandparents of the "Council of Nicaea". The history of The Emperor Constantine's canonization of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire was only interrupted sporadically by Isobel informing 'the professor' that brave Cro-Magnons didn't leave their caves just for him to shun basic table manners.

("Hundred Pipers" - The Good Tune)

However, as dinner was being served at Downton Abbey, there was a commotion through the village that grew closer and closer to the gates of Crawley House. It was accented by laughter, hollering, and the ever-audible noise of jovial fiddles that played both Scot and Yorkshire reels and airs. Soon, there was gathered a growing crowd of people that were calling for "Mac-Dubh" to come out and face them. But when George looked to Isobel in confusion, the strict old woman only gave an enduring sigh and the slightest of nods that hid a smirk that he didn't understand. Shoving the rest of the cake in his mouth – earning an endearingly reproachful snap of a napkin by his grams - the boy stepped out of his front door. Still eating his special cake, the boy was ready for a fight with whatever 'tinker' had a problem with him this time. But from the moment that the young kid confronted the rowdy crowd in front of his father's house, he was snatched and hoisted up by strong men.

With loud cheers of the celebratory crowd clapping to fiddlers playing "Hundred Pipers", they carried their young lordship through the cobbled streets of the Village of Downton on their shoulders. Some of the older residents – loyal to the Granthams of Downton Abbey – peered out from the windows at the racket and merriment in wonder and amazement, Mr. Carson amongst them. When they reached "The Grantham Arms" the boy was placed atop the bar. The same priest who had gave the conformation in official setting – now much more loose and human - gave an ancient blessing that was once given to both Downton Lord and Knight of whom took the holy vows in ages of Arthur and Chivalry. And the occasion was not missed, nor the sanctity of the ancient ceremony that was unseen on Grantham lands in centuries abused by the young Lord of Downton. George knelt and was gravely serious and sincere in the holy words and vows spoken in front of his men who bore witness. However, when 'Amen' was uttered by the priest and the youth was bidden to rise as '38th of his name, Lord of Downton, Defender of the Faith and Last of the Romans' there came a rousing and heartfelt cheer that went up from tavern and street outside. But it got even louder after George proclaimed to all who witnessed the Church's acknowledgment and blessing of his title, 'There will now be celebration and contentment in this tavern and these streets of the like never before seen!', and with a nod to the fiddlers, the largest party ever seen in the County Grantham had begun.

"Mac-Dubh" was now 'part of the tribe'.

("Hobbit Drinking Songs" – Colm McGuinness)

Echoing faintly from the doors of Downton Abbey, growing stronger the closer and closer one got to the village, was the sound of pounding fists and tankards on the tables and bar of "The Grantham Arms". On the wind came the loud and boisterous singing of a large group of people, whose merry making spilled out into the street as if a carnival was in town. Inside, the drumming beat of cups and fists that kept time with drinking songs and shanties rang off the wooden beams of the old medieval tavern's roof, causing the floorboards of the inn to jump and stamp from below. Men and women, their young lads and lasses, old farmers and new tenants, they were all there.

Inside "The Grantham Arms", between songs, George Crawley sat upon the bar and told tales of his adventures with "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". The young lads and their fathers gathered about thickly to hear of his – now famed - battle against "The Ape Men" upon the unexplored headwaters of the Nile. They bent intently at the descriptions of the untold treasures and reeled back at the terrors found in equity within the unquiet sanctum of the sorcerer supreme of the 'Sea Peoples' of the Bronze Age. The boy's audience enraptured at the descriptions and unmatched tales of the many harrowing illusions and magical traps found in the ancient labyrinth at the heart of the sorcerer's island tomb hidden deep within the ancient Aegean.

The speeches given were not from members of his family, but testimonials from tenants, bakers, and even men who he had fought once. They claimed that George Crawley was the toughest and most naturally heroic son of a bitch they ever knew – with an enthesis on the word 'bitch' in relation to the boy's mamma. They all raised a beer, an ale, and cider to "Mac-Dubh" … once abandoned by all them toffs up the road, now he will always be one of us!

But they were deceived, fore such a day - a momentous occasion for some and day of infamy for others - was not so wholly discarded by all within Downton Abbey. Disguised by the distraction of merriment, music, and much drinking, had Lady Mary Talbot come to investigate what was happening. By the end of dinner, when they all left to congregate in the drawing room, they could hear the celebration echoing in the stereo reverberation of the Great Hall's acoustics. The sound of reels, cheering, and singing echoed more than faintly but less than crystal clear. They were all quite shocked and confused about what on earth could be happening down in the village, till – as a reliable spy as there ever was for the House of Grantham – Mr. Carson came to call. There they were informed of the 'absolute anarchy' going on … having something to do with some folk figure called "Mac-Dubh".

Despite their retired butler's discomfort of what might get out of hand from the county wide festival that came unannounced and unplanned, Mary – knowing full well who "Mac-Dubh" was – told Carson that she'd look into it later. And when Sybbie had tired herself out, found snoozing on Lucy's shoulder – despite sleepily arguing that she wasn't tired as Tom order her to bed – Mary decided to go down and check with Carson. And what she found was what was advertised. The workers, tenants, shop owners, and smaller farmers – Highlanders and Yorkshiremen – were all well on their way.

She watched from the window of "The Grantham Arms" as the boy that she had cast out, worked against, begrudged with all her heart some nights, was up on one of the tables. A pretty young girl, barely a few years his elder, with shining red curls and a plaid skirt, had been doing 'The White Sergeant' for a crowd of onlookers who clapped with her precise Sword Dancing feet. But all of the sudden, at the lifting and tossing of a group of young lads of George's age, her boy was forced toward the girl. After a moment of trying to get back down, of which his friends and men would not allow, the pretty Scottish girl began dancing about the youth, circling him in a teasing and flirtatious way.

A chant in Gaelic of which Mary did not understand started going up to match with the fiddles and dancing girl. Then, with a sigh of slump shoulders, the young lad in Henley and scuffed leather shoes, squared up the Highland rose, and with a cheer from the crowd – and to the surprise of his own mamma – the boy began to dance a jig. As the crowd clapped and the Celtic music got louder, the two came together atop the table to give a show. Neither were dancing the same steps, but somehow, they went together, making it up as they went to the delight of the crowd. And somewhere in Lady Mary's mind, remembering her last night with Matthew at Duneagle, reeling themselves …

A smile of the purest love came over her beautiful and sorrowed countenance.

'What a revelation, a Lord from the House of Grantham who works, fights, eats, drinks, laughs, and even dances, with his own men – whatever will they think of next?'

When Mary startled and whirled about, she found that Isobel was standing behind her, sharing the view of their boy dancing with the pretty young redheaded Celt. There was chastisement, bitter and facetious, in her sarcasm as her eyes languidly met the glamorous younger woman under the cover of nightshade and in the anonymity of celebration. She felt trapped under the gaze of her former mother-in-law of whom refused to speak to her - who cut off all contact with the adults of their family but for Granny, Mamma, Bertie, and Tom. In her words, there was chastisement – heavy and prosecuting – that Mary could not deny nor shrug off like others. This was Matthew's mother, the woman who raised and shaped the love of her life – who made him the very man she loved with every fiber of her being.

After a moment, with a little noise of hostile quandary, the dignified old woman moved along – simply coming to check on George. Mary found herself speechless in her wake as she ponderously wandered away, disappearing into the festive crowd about the street. Perhaps Granny would have some witty come back, some line to feed to her best friend. But Mary always took with reverence and scorn what Isobel said. Fore, deep down, she ever felt that such things, instincts and rhetoric, could've come from Matthew himself. And indeed, the draw, that feeling of his presence so near, caused her to look back at their boy.

The manager of "The Grantham Arms" was attempting to close up the pub. However, in light of the protest of the crowd, he had made a cavoite. If his young lordship could recite the entirety – the whole song – of "The Rattlin' Bog" without skipping or faltering, then the next round would be on the house. The boy, now breathless, on his third cider – needing to pee – argued that it was an 'impossible task'. He told them that they all need sleep – especially the priest who was drunkenly promising entry into heaven to the innkeeper's wife if she told him where they got such 'divine' whiskey from. But when his manhood was questioned, the figure who rescued Lord and Lady Hexham – the Prince of Wales himself - from "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed". The bold youth who matched wits in deadly riddles with Sphinxes. And of whom has lived so long without being devoured by Lady Mary – who obviously eats her young. This person, so-called 'hero', was surely not afraid of a little old Irish folk song?

Yet, playful mockery melted into a sudden rousing cheer when the boy mounted the bar once more.

Under the fiddles and Bouzouki, the pounding of mugs and fists, the entire street, the entire village – the entire bloody county – sung along with the Irish folk tune. She had never seen such joy and celebration in her life. When Mary was wed both times, When Edith and Bertie were married, they had all came out to cheer and wave the flags. But it was nothing like this. In truth, Lady Mary had never seen such loyalty nor devotion of any kind to Grandfather, Granny, Papa, Matthew, and certainly never to her.

In a navy gown with silver roundels upon the bust and in swirls upon the skirt, covered by a velvet cloak, and a black beaded circlet fit over her glamorously styled hair of Anna's perfect touch, Lady Mary Talbot looked like a princess. But among her own men, her tenants, her employees, she looked poorer than a pauper. For her finery could not match the kingly elation of contentment and safety found in the company and cause of the night. Fore, now, after great labors, did Lady Mary look upon the joint community that she railed, snarked, and even spoke against as impossible. Scots and Yorkshiremen drank, sang, and danced together to reels from the Highlands, East Riding, and even Ireland. And all of this was possible by one – just one – young lad's iron will and determination … her lad's.

As George got closer and closer, nerves of steel, concentration on his memory of lyrics that Tom had taught Sybbie and him when they were little, Mary watched on in conflict. She could hear him, could hear Matthew, telling her to embrace this, embrace him – their boy. That this was all he wanted for him. Not a lordship, not an estate, not a terribly grand title, and not prestige from a Royal and Imperial Court of an Empire of which the sun could not set upon. Matthew wanted George to live a simple and peaceful life, to give duty to a community, to engage without thought to the simplest acts of kindness and decency. Their boy knew untold dangers, strife and horror, battle and wonder, but he always came home to this.

The feelings that swirled about her, the laughter and loyalty, this was the destiny that Matthew envisioned, dreamed, and wanted for their boy. He had known somehow, without ever meeting him, that George would be no Grantham of the Ruling House at Downton Abbey. He would not be the great-grandson of Violet Crawley, the heir of the Earl of Grantham. In his heart, like his father before him, George was and remained a Crawley of Nampara, a Poldark. That the boy atop the bar, cheered on, loved, by the middle- and working-class people – the backbone of their estate, their county – was who he will ever be. Brawling, free-trading, and uncompromising in what he believed was right. Always saying what he believed and doing only what he wished.

But Matthew did not understand. He, like mamma, Edith, and Tom, could never understand. Downton Abbey, the House of Grantham, was not just important, it was more important than anything else – even life itself. It was their heritage, their legacy. They were the caretakers of great sires whose life work was this house, it's estate. Did they think that Mary did not want to do something else with her life? That she had wanted this for herself? That being chained this estate, this destiny, this legacy – the leaking roof, the piping issues, and dwindling staff - was what she dreamt of? Mary could've been a model, a singer, an actress. Yet, the love of her life had died, leaving her with this dream, their dream, to safeguard.

Now, after everything, watching a young boy stamping his foot, mounted on a tavern bar, as drunken men and women gathered about singing and laughing … what was it all for? The heir, the continuation of this line of nobility, was not one of them. Could Matthew not see that they two, 'The Lady and the Lawyer', had moved heaven and earth only to see the destruction of the Grantham line and their way of life. That their star-crossed love had produced the very end of centuries of traditions and heritage. How could he not see that there was now to be no more Earls of Grantham as they should be. Now, all that was left, all they created in their need for one another … was him –

The Wizard's Pupil.

The very sight of George in that late hour, and now in the small library, filled Mary with both a desperation of want for the embodiment of her and Matthew's great and true love made flesh, and a hatred for what he now represented. Fore, Mary perceived and was convinced that all of this had been her fault. It had been Lady Mary that had driven him away, made him who he was, what Matthew wanted him to be rather than what his family needed him to be. One mistake, made in despair, in delusion, had not only ruined a young boy's life, but the future of her family.

Now, when the name George Crawley is uttered, it was not as the Lord of Downton, the Heir of the Earl of Grantham – destined for Eton, Oxford, Sandhurst, and the Royal Court. It was as "The Comet", "Mac-Dubh", the slayer of the "Man-Ape", assistant to Dr. Mina Murray, Batman to Allan Quartermain, and apprentice to a Sikh Science Pirate of the ocean depths. He calls the King-Emperor a 'Hanoverian Tyrant' and the Prince of Wales a 'sad fop who cries during sex'. Everything that she held dear, that their family believed and made them noble, he despised … as he despised them.

'He did it!'

She heard the priest cry as the entire crowd roared inside and about her as the tavern keeper just shook his head at the youth who raised his cider tankard in the air in triumph and made a strange tribal ululating cry. But her son's wild noise was not taken as a victory by Lady Mary Talbot. Instead, it was the cheer of the foe, of the enemy, who burnt to the ground all that she loved, saw the end of all the values and traditions that had been entrusted to her. Indeed, mingled with love for Matthew and his dreams was now disappointment, weakness, when she looked upon their son. He was a monster of her own creation, a triumphant symbol of her utter and humiliating failure of continuing the line of Grantham, of living up to her granny's expectations as the new matriarch of the Grantham Line.

Each time that she saw Lady Violet Crawley look upon her boy – The little animal – she felt the pang of deep hurt, of shame, to see the loathing, the bile. For Lady Violet, forty years as Countess of Grantham, was to die knowing that her line, her life's work, was for naught. That a barbarian, an uncivilized and uncultured rebel would destroy everything she worked for and built. That all their traditions and legacy would be lost forever, that their great house would be sent centuries in the wrong direction. And all because of Mary Crawley in her weakness, in her failures, loved a man that did not understand their way of life. That her selfishness in her love for him, in the softening of her heart by his devotion to all of her, was made flesh in the very vessel that would end it all. She watched the vulgars hoist him on high, claimed him as their own. She saw him swagger into this library and disrupt, insult, and belittle everything that she held dear. Hatred, deep and existential, was internalized by Mary against herself. It rose in a perilous toxicity when she glanced at the very figure in the small library of whom she loved so much …

That she hated him.

'I want you out of this library, out of this house, and off this Estate!'

It was rare, so rare that very few could remember the last time that Lady Mary Talbot had a face so intense in anger that she looked almost possessed. She strode forward, pushing Jack Barber out of her way. When she was toe to toe, face to face, with this embodiment of her weakness and failure, she pointed with a stern finger at the young kid. Her voice was snarling and wrathful in a hissed quiet like a coiling cobra about to strike.

Yet, even towering over him, at her most perilous, George Crawley wouldn't move – not an inch.

'Or what?!'

There was a flash of darkness in his eyes.

Forgotten, or perhaps buried deep in the subconscious, had been the incident - the gravest of mistakes ever made in the entire House of Grantham. Pale, a face covered in shadowy blue and purple veins, and fading into darker realms, had they expelled an unconscious young boy from Downton Abbey to die alone in his father's house, in his very room. They had taken all his things, clothes, books, toys, pictures, and documentation, threw them in chests and crates and piled them in the study of Crawley House – like it was the boy's own burial chamber of his tomb. George had no memory of it, unconscious, floating in the ether between death and life, lost in the shadows of an evil curse place upon him. But he was told later, saw for himself, what they had done when he found his things about him, piled like unwanted chaff – like him.

The words, the angry demands, for him to leave and never come back – that this was Mary's house – awoke fierce and fiery emotions that filled him. There was potency in the bitter anger and rage that had been fermented in the dark cellars of a grudge that was yet to be settled between him and those who had cast him from these halls. So deep and reckless was the sudden hatred in his heart for the woman, her words, and the look she ever fixed to him of despairing failure, that there was no telling how they would manifest when poked, prodded, or this dangerous emotion's strength tested by anyone in that library. They all saw it in him – cerulean eyes flashing like sparks of an exposed wire that dangles ever closer to an open pool of water that they were all swimming within.

'Mary …' Tom sighed, anxiety in his face as his best friend, sister, and co-parent stood toe to toe with her disowned child – their eyes locked and contested together like the horns of two fighting bulls.

'No one asked you!' The woman snapped without breaking eye contact. The tone, the danger, of this sudden showdown stopped Tom cold, and he suddenly looked to Edith in alarm.

"Your Lordship …'

There was a solid timber to Mr. Carson's amenable but strict voice as he moved himself from his post by the Dowager. It had been Lady Violet that motioned for him to intervene in this strange and potentially embarrassing episode in front of guests who make half their living gossiping to and about each other. The man had the airs and dignity about him that gave a credence to the ease and effortlessness of the authority in which he assumed. But deep down it was a want, a necessity, to always remove any and all obstacles for Lady Mary to maintain her rightful mastery of the house.

'I do believe it past time that you were elsewhere …' He cleared his throat, giving a soft threat within his deep voice and hard suggestion to the youth he was approaching. But he was halted when George - staring Mary down to the roots of her soul – pointed warningly at the man without looking.

'You take one more step closer and I'll bust that parrot nose, old man!' He warned him, the aggression was felt audibly in a vicious snarl, like the sudden alarming growl of a hidden wolverine.

Mr. Carson fell back, shocked, surprised. There was a completely different gear to the lad's voice that he had never – perhaps in his entire life – heard before. People had anger, had fury, there was even rage. He had worked for Lord Grantham long enough to know it when he heard it. But there was something different about the voice, the danger, in the young master. This went beyond rage, beyond boisterous defensiveness of the town drunk that believed he could fight everyone he came across.

This was the voice of a young man that had so freshly dueled Alexander Grayson – known by other and older names in his home of Wallachia. This was a lad that had stood in the mirror death trap of a Minoan labyrinth at the heart of a sorcerer supreme of the ancient world's sanctum with Ms. Mina Murray. Crystal spikes that were hidden in the reflective surfaces, unknowingly inching closer and closer to the beautiful heroine and her young assistant as they stood back to back. The voice that was used was one that had been forged in combat and peril that Charlie Carson, nor very few in the Library of Downton Abbey, could fathom. Perhaps he was too young to know it, but it was far too late to rewrite history and all the wrongs that led him to becoming familiar with it.

George Crawley's size was hardly cause for intimidation, but his eyes, his voice, remained a promise of sincerity in every word and threat spoken.

'George!' Lady Grantham called out in maternal scorn that she knew was a very real threat lobbed at the House of Grantham's long-time butler.

'Stay out of this, Mamma!' Mary snapped at Cora angrily.

The dismissive tone, the ire, shocked and startled Lady Grantham, whose eyes went wide at her slapping down - the hubris of a daughter to talk to her own mother in such a way.

'Mr. Carson …' For the first time, Mr. Barrow, the current but departing butler of Downton Abbey, broke his silence. There was a steel behind cordialness that was deftly learned from the best … the very man of whom he addressed. 'I don't believe that this quarrel is any of our business, do you?' He asked, his suggestion hiding some looming double meaning.

'I believe, Thomas …'

'Mr. Barrow.'

'Very well, Mr. Barrow, that it is our duty …'

'To let these things settle themselves, don't you agree?'

'I certainly do not!'

'Well, I would say 'let us agree to disagree', except that you might return as butler next week, to train up young Andy … but for this week, I am still butler here. And I say that if you do not step back and let the cards fall as they may … you might live to regret it.'

The smile never left Thomas's pleasant and fair countenance, despite his eyes portraying a shark like predatory nature. Always, in the past, there was something oily, even nasty, about Thomas's attempts of veiled threats in his airs of concerns, gratitude, and masked jovial poignancy. But now, three years later, it was hard to read into the fountain of meaning of what the butler was trying to convey. One interpretation was a warning of the true authenticity of the young lordling's promise to break the large man's nose if he were to come closer - something he surely did not want. The other interpretation was that if Mr. Carson chose to manhandle or otherwise lay a hand on the young master, then it was Thomas Barrow's solemn promise to give Mr. Carson all that had been back building for nearly twenty years … and shove it straight down his throat. Or perhaps it was both warning and threat all at once, which for Thomas Barrow was quite on brand. Furthermore, no matter where he was in life, Thomas was always on the side of the children.

Either way, the retired butler, matching glares with his icily pleasant replacement, backed away.

The tension was painful to family and torturously awkward for the guests as both mother and son remained squared up against one another. Neither was willing to give ground, give in inch. All at once was it made so painfully clear to anyone whoever quarried and or wondered why no one spoke of George Crawley at Downton Abbey - why he was treated as if he didn't exist. How on their first night, at dinner, Guy Dexter's casual question about him was met with a cold glare by his hosts with only Lady Edith replying – 'He's quite the handful, I assure you.' – with a weak and timid smile that was the social signal to change the subject. But of all who watched on, it was Jack Barber – the damned fool – who saw what his interference brought on. Never before, in his house, or any other he had been to, had he seen such a dangerous flashpoint of emotions and hurt between two people like it was between the woman he loved and her estranged son.

If it could be categorized as a wound, then it could be said that by one massive blunder from the director and producer had he clipped an artery that spewed not blood but venom that burned like acid all that its sinew touched. The mingling of love and hate, the resentment clashing with a longing that tethered two souls together, exploded in a dangerous volatility whose alchemy had no antidote nor neutralizing agent.

'Darling …'

Edith's voice was soft, motherly, and almost emotional as she spoke out to George, walking toward him as she began to see the cracking of emotion in him.

'Darling …' Her voice was calming and quiet. 'let it go.' She advised.

George shook his head, teeth clenched, eyes burning fiercely, meeting Mary's frigid look of frozen anger.

'Let it go, darling … let go.' Softly, she placed a hand on his shoulder in maternal warmth.

When she glanced up, she was unsurprised to see a brand-new outrage on Mary's face. Whatever could be said of their shifting and changing relationship from moment to moment - sisters, friends, rivals, and antagonists – they found peace in their distance from one another, of living completely different lives. But when their priorities tangled, when they got involved in one another's troubles, peace would never be an option between Ladies Mary and Edith. And forever would there remain hostility, both hot and cold, but ever there, when it came to George.

In an irrational rush of emotions and despair had Mary Crawley signed over her parental rights to Edith when George was gone. But now, nearly two years later, had the very idea that Edith was the legal guardian, the mother, to her child, to Matthew's son, drove Mary nearly mad. Perhaps she thought of him as a failure, as something good and innocent that she had ruined. But that did not mean that Edith could just swoop in - as she always did - to take what Mary discarded. It was nearly violence inducing to watch the milk baby, Mamma's afterthought, touch, caress, kiss, and hug, Mary's own baby! Perhaps she wanted to keep George at arms-length, but that did not mean that either her sister or Lucy got to have him.

Edith knelt in front of the boy, turning her back to Mary and Jack, and grasped George's hand. 'I'm not saying to forget it …' she touched his cheek. 'But I'm saying – for now – let it go, my darling.' She shook his arm gently to make her point.

If anyone knew what it was to feel like a drudge, a disappointment, in and to their family, it had been Edith. All of her life she had been the spare that no one wanted. She was supposed to be a boy, an heir. Instead, she was another girl. Growing up, she was neither the eldest – who got the most attention. Yet, nor was she the youngest – who got the most love. No one seemed to know just what to do with Lady Edith Crawley. No one really got the point of her. She couldn't dance right, she was not particularly witty in conversation, and it took her a long time to find her look, her own fashion, to grow into and find her beauty. All she could say for herself for many years was that people enjoyed her letters – which so few wanted from her – and that both men and some of Granny's friends enjoyed, salivated, over her goddess like breasts. Thus, had she spent a good deal of her time, hidden away, writing of her own world and buying frocks that had plunging necklines that showed off her ample cleavage.

Lady Edith knew the pain, the feeling of anger, of helplessness, that her nephew, her ward, her boy, must always have felt now. And God help her did she not want anyone - especially those of whom she loved most in the world - to feel the way she had most of her life, before Matthew, before Tom and Michael, before Marigold and Bertie. She wanted to be the aunt to George that their Aunt Rosamund had always been for her. She wanted to be to Matthew's boy what he had been for her. The first person in the house - taking all their slings and arrows - to support Edith, to truly believe in everything she did and desired to do. He might not have fell in love with her as she had wished, but he was one of her truest friends. And she would not forget it, not as long as she lived. For Matthew's generosity and brotherly love, even if George had been the worst sort of rogue – more Mary than Matthew - he would've still always had a home wherever Edith was. Yet, his look was all Sybil, his instinct all Mary, but his heart was fully Matthew. And such a combination within a single soul ensured that Lady Hexham would love that boy forever.

George gave a long sigh, battling his instinct to give not an inch to the very woman who bequiffed such an instinct to him. But in his conflict, he turned and glanced to his compass in these trying matters of the heart. And there, without having to search, he found young Marigold. There was a sorrow on her elven fair countenance as she watched on. She was not scared like Sybbie, concerned like their Uncle Tom, nor angered like their Donk. She was only ever sad at these occasions when the ugliness, the bitterness, came out like the fire of dragon's breath exhaled over the matchstick foundation of peace within the House of Grantham.

The little golden-haired angel knew deeply what was in George's heart - the pain, the sadness, and the confusion - fore he often told all of it to her in the privacy of their time together. And though young and innocent of many evils of the world, the girl often said that perhaps acting upon these vengeful notions would hurt worse than he felt now. Maybe – if she was right – that he should instead find acceptance in himself and from those around him that did want him … which was much more people than he realized. Then, she'd lean over and kiss his brow softly, throwing her arms about his neck and holding him tightly, trying to give to him all the love she possessed. And though the girl could not hug nor kiss him now, she still conveyed her love in a glance of teary eyes.

Ms. Marigold Drewe, in a shared glance, made sure that George Crawley knew that her love for him was so great that it would forever make up for all that was missing in this room.

With one last defiant glare at Lady Mary Talbot, the boy slackened his posture. Rudely, though not intended to harm, he shrugged away from Edith's grip. It was the last thing he wanted his mamma to think, that he needed other's comforts to protect him, to hide him, from her. Edith knew the instinct and did not grudge him as she stood and paced away. She glanced at Bertie, wordlessly conveying to her husband that she would walk back with him to Crawley House – see George safely away from this tinderbox. Mary disliked the angry snort and sniff that the boy gave her, sizing her up and down with a glance of arrogance and resentment.

'She's all yours, Scab.'

He addressed Jack Barber with a new and cutting nickname that he would forever bear from George Crawley that day forward. Scab – something that goes over an open wound, easily picked off … a superficial replacement in time of healing. The youth gave a dismissive wave off at the angry and imperious great lady as if he was throwing away trash.

But he scoffed in mirthful amusement, catching the still bitter and angry look of the woman in front of the director. And perhaps sleeping dogs might have been left to lie had Mary Talbot - now convinced that she got everything she wanted out of the encounter - lifted her eyebrows and bobbed her head side to side making an arrogant show of impatience of him leaving 'her' library. In antagonization did she act as if she had bested him, that he was not worth the time she already spent simply thinking of him.

'You'll have no time adapting her to Hollywood …' George said backing away. 'She is as fake as Peroxide here's career and Twinkle Toes over there's manhood.' He said with jovial insult.

Dalgleish's eyes nearly vomited from their sockets and Guy Dexter took a revulsive step forward of sudden panic and fear of what the implications of the youth's comment meant. He turned back quickly to Thomas and caught the butler squeezing his eyes shut. Unlike everyone else, there was no grudge in him. Fore, more than anyone else in the entire world, he knew the instinct of an anger so encompassing and constant that you just want to burn the world to the ground. And, perhaps, after spending his entire life around him … that maybe his beloved young master had learned the instinct from Thomas himself, the only father figure in his life.

'Just stay out of her bed there, Scab … that Dirt Freckle Vampire's got a kill record that rivals 'The Red Baron'.'

He gave a parting shot that made Lady Mary Talbot see absolutely nothing but a flash strobe of crimson.

CRALCP!

The boy had been walking away, trading a fencing glare with Guy Dexter who looked suddenly heavy on his feet and anxious at the youth who had nearly blew the whistle on him – potentially ending his career. But before he could address him, before anyone could do anything, a hand shot out and seized George Crawley by his jacket collar. With a twist and turn, a straightened hand flashed and caught the youth across the face. The force of which Lady Mary Talbot had slapped her child was harder than she had ever hit anything or anyone in all of her life. The boy's head turned as there was a sinew of red that flew onto Thomas's shoes that made the butler startle back – it was blood.

The rage that overwhelmed Lady Mary's reason and sanctity fell like a wave and when it receded back into the ocean, clearing the beach, she found herself suddenly horrified. George, who had stumbled back from the strike's impact, did not cry, he did not even look shocked. He kept his head turned, tasting the iron tang of blood in his mouth. There, on his cheek, was a dark spot of a forming bruise that was accented by a cut at its apex from one of Mary's rings. The boy didn't say anything, he only spat the taste of blood from his mouth at Myrna Dalgleish, who sprang back in offense at the action.

Slowly, the youth straightened, turning his head dangerously to glance back up at a mortified Lady Mary. She watched the boy – who was clearly no stranger of getting hit in the face – rub a thumb over his cut lip. He stared at the blood on his thumb as he rotated his jaw. Then, he quietly rubbed the film of liquid on the finger joint of a closed fist. When his eyes found his mamma, the woman was absolutely speechless, finding that she had no recourse nor the words to express what she did. She opened her mouth, yet not a sound came out. After floundering her first attempt to explain, she closed her eyes and sighed. With a haughty and imperious look to cover a great remorse and insecurity, she opened her mouth again to either walk back or justify what she did. But of which had it been … no one would ever know –

Nor would she remember later.

THUMPHWIP!

The world spun and went black for a moment as something hard and foreign hit Lady Mary Talbot's jaw with cold impact.

The world of chivalry and the belief of action without consequence for Violet Crawley's 'Dragon' went right out the window the moment that George struck back at Mary with a smack straight to the jaw. The woman backed peddled, stumbling, reeling. The refreshment table rattled violently when Mary backed into it, caught steady by Jack Barber and Mr. Carson. In all of her life had Lady Mary never been hit before and the breaking of that seal had caught her out completely. She was yet to even feel the pain, still shocked and dazed at the surprise, the suddenness, and the force of the blow. She couldn't hear their worried voices over the ringing in her ears and …

The sudden violent commotion that was a blur over Carson and Jack's shoulder.

The instinct to move in immediately was the worst decision that Guy Dexter had ever made – and that included taking on that RKO mad scientist horror script. For when he decided to play hero in reality, rather than his gallantry done in front of a camera for lump sum upfront and peridium, the leading man got all two years of martial training from the very best at what they do in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'.

His swipe to seize George Crawley in reproach was turned away by a lad who heard him coming. He twisted with an upraised elbow, blocking the hand away with the sweep and pivoting. His underestimating of the youth's trained reflexes earned him a beauty to the solar plexus from an upper-cut counter that was followed with a blizzard of jabbing punches that felt like lightning strikes that were going to explode his gut. Another upper cut to his jaw nearly finished him with the snap of his head back so violently he was sure his neck broke. Before he knew it, the movie star was back at the yard of his old school, getting his lunch money stolen.

The man's head turned left and then right, left and right, in rhythm with each haymaker that backed him off. His chin felt like a cracked egg when a heel kick to his diaphragm sent him stumbling backward. Myrna screamed, tripping over to get out of their way. Catching his fleeing co-star's ankle, Dexter hit the floor and ate dog flavored library rug. He felt someone trap his leg and right arm so he couldn't find leverage to get up nor hit back with his dominate hand. It was then that he was suddenly aware that someone was beating him repeatedly with a hammer. On his back, getting his million-dollar face stove in, all Dexter could think was that this was what he gets for being chivalrous to women and up-front to beautiful men back home in Jolly Old England.

George Crawley had fought his fair share of big men – Arab Slavers, Ape-Men Degradations, Amahaggar Tribesmen, and Szekely fanatics sworn to the House of Tepes through century old blood oaths to their Prince. All of them twice or thrice his size, harder than stone, and ruthless in a fight. It had become George's job to watch Dr. Murray, Mr. Quartermain, and Captain Nemo's backs in a fight - to make sure that those they fell stayed down, so they didn't get up again to stab them in the back. This was especially true for Mina, who could hardly handle one man without another coming behind her. There were always higher stakes when they saw that look in hard men's eyes at the beautiful woman and knew immediately what their intentions were when they got ahold of her. Thus, it was that George's habit, learned from many fights from the streets of both Alexandra Egypt and the Village of Downton in Yorkshire, was to hit hard and fast. Shock them and then find a way to get them off their feet. Once they were down, their size meant nothing.

And it was a failing of the young heir of the House of Grantham - one that he would never truly rectify - that he never matched intensity to a situation. George Crawley, when his blood was up, hit a man as hard in a bare-knuckle prize fight as he did in a street fight in a Hong Kong back alley with Mina Murray's virtue at stake. He never once regulated or withheld the force of his aggression nor the killer instinct learned in battle and duels with death on the line. He lived by a code of do or die, never giving up, never surrendering. It was what made the boy a hero to many … but it was also what made him dangerous when the darkness was put upon him. Thus, it was, when Lady Mary slapped her son, all that anger and rage of their relationship, the trauma of the haunted castle in the Wallachian mountains, and the horrors in Alexander Grayson's evil stone halls, came over him once more. And it was Guy Dexter that was the unfortunate first victim of a boy who would never learn to pull a punch.

But Thomas Barrow knew that it was more than that. He had told Master George yesterday that he was leaving. Off to Hollywood to be valet and butler to the famous leading man of cinema, Guy Dexter. The youth, fairly battered and bruised, still lagged from a long adventure that had taken him from the Ethiopian Frontier all the way to Transylvania - fighting a running battle the entire way with the full tilt of Alexander Grayson's henchmen and mercenaries. But perhaps it was not the right time. Beaten, battered, and wounded, the boy was not emotionally prepared for the news.

Thomas knew that he was exhausted, vulnerable, and had many things to work through – needing time to heal both physically and emotionally. Yet, though he was happy for him, shaking his hand and wishing him well – leaving Lady Merton to congratulate him on 'the big step up' in his career. But when he watched the young master limp back up the stairs, he saw his shadow brace itself on the wall when he thought Thomas couldn't see him. Seeing the devastation in a silhouette took everything in the man's power not to shed tears in front of Lady Merton.

They had been friends all of the boy's life. There was no one that both Master George and Ms. Sybbie trusted more than Thomas. He had always been there when they needed him, and he had become essential to George as the only consistent male figure in his life – more than Lord Grantham or Mr. Branson – especially after what happened to the poor baby. Now, he was going away too, just like Lady Edith and Ms. Marigold, Mr. Branson and Ms. Sybbie. All these years, Mr. Barrow had looked after him, protected him, made sure that none of the staff complied with Lord Grantham and Lady Mary's attempted bans of him from the house after he was excommunicated.

Thomas was the last true link to the house, to the way things were before, to a childhood that was slowly evaporating with every adventure and conflict abroad and at home. He knew that Mr. Carson would not allow the boy anywhere near the estate, to see Anna and Bates, to converse with Mrs. Baxter, nor to even see Lady Grantham unannounced. When Thomas was gone, the boy wouldn't only lose a friend and confidant, a father figure that truly cared … he'd lose access to his childhood home for good.

Thus, as he watched George pummel Thomas's future employer – lover? – on the rug between sofa serving table, the butler wondered how much of it was the boy's instinct as a natural fighter and how much was because Guy was taking him away?

The flurry of punches was halted when the hand of Andy Parker, First Footman of Downton Abbey, caught the elbow of the young master and yanked him off. A lad from the streets of London - he knew a thing or two about pulling two blokes apart before one killed the other. But he felt that he had tried to restrain a sack filled with feral pups as he held George by the chest, lifting him off his feet. The youth squirmed and kicked violently, his blood afire now – still unquenched since leaving Wallachia. And it was then that a promise was bloodily fulfilled. Fore, in outrage and anger, Mr. Carson came rushing forward to help poor Mr. Parker wrangle the scrapping prize fighter. Yet, this was not George Crawley's first rodeo in this position.

There was a sickening crunch that echoed in the library when the youth used his leverage and Andy's stabilizing weight to lift up his legs. When Carson got close, the youth snapped out a heel kick, catching the man's most distinguished of English noses. The boy pushed through till he felt the cartilage give way. When he recoiled the springing foot, the former butler let out a roaring muffled cry of pain, staggering away at a hunch, covering his nose. He wandered blindly with watering eyes and traumatized senses. He nearly knocked over Lucy till Lady Bagshaw guided him to her, trying to help him as blood poured out of his nostrils.

'Told ya!'

With Andy now on his own, the young master began twisting, moving back and forth. It was then that the youth lived up to the name given by the foul and terrible hulking alter ego of the honorable Dr. Jekyll. 'Butcher' was what the large and vile beast, Mr. Hyde, called the boy whom he threatened to rip to pieces for always staring him down – protected only because 'The Swordfighter' was held in the deepest affection of his beloved Ms. Murray. As to why George was called 'Butcher' by the degenerate monster was because he and the butchers on Fleet Street have something in common – 'Like serv'in up 'em ribs'.

It was a sentiment that poor Mr. Parker would agree with if he had known, fore George elbowed the footman's ribs hard in a back and forth of his twisting torso. Eventually, feeling the footman's grip loosen, George threw his head back and felt something in Andy's nose snap. When he dropped the young master, the boy ducked and sleekly swept the young man's leg. With a crash, the first footman of Downton Abbey hit the floor, cradling his nose and wheezing for the air that was knocked out of him.

Lady Grantham betrayed her granddaughter who was suddenly filled with an Irishman's rage. He was ruining everything! The girl, angrily, feeling her acting career, her future, that happiness only yesterday, slipping away. Lady Edith was helping Myrna Dalgleish to safety while she limped on a twisted ankle, Lady Bagshaw was trying to stem the blood of Mr. Carson's broken nose, Andy was writhing on the floor, and Thomas was trying to help Guy Dexter up. But most of all, she was mad that she couldn't belong to a normal family. Why couldn't George and Mamma – the two people she loved most in the entire world – just get along? Why must she always be stuck between them, between their two worlds? Why couldn't they just let her be happy for five minutes?!

To George's credit, the boy did not strike nor harm the girl he loved. When he heard their granny call Sybbie's name and felt the alarm in his trained senses that someone was coming up from behind fast, the boy pivoted and stuck a back foot out. The charging beauty - filled with all the piss and vinegar of the family Branson with the smell of a fight in the air - tripped on her cousin and adopted brother's foot. But before she could hit the ground, the boy hooked the girl under arm and tossed her over his head in one smooth motion. A flailing limbed tweeny - giving a good look at her white stocking tops and the poshest of satin knickers for young girls – collided with Mr. Barrow and what was left of Guy Dexter. The three came together like bowling ball to pins, knocking them to the floor. Sybbie came off without a nick, Thomas with a slight bump on the head, and Guy Dexter – who took the brunt of it - wished someone would shoot him already and put him out of his misery.

Lucy, frustratedly tried to keep Tom out of it, but when Sybbie went flying, parental instincts could not be avoided. The only difference was that Tom Branson knew from the outset, unlike everyone else, that confronting his nephew now was going to hurt. George and Tom knew one another very well, too well, and the boy had been keeping his eye on his uncle since the fight started. He knew that Tom would try to get involved, especially after Mary got clapped back. And Tom Branson knew that his nephew was keeping the angle open, planning, in case the largest threat in the room tried to come at him. And from the very moment that Tom made an aggressive movement in George's direction, the boy took his shot.

Lady Bagshaw was dabbing at Mr. Carson's nose, Marigold helping her, when they were startled – no one more than Carson himself – when George sprang at them. The boy leapt up on top of Carson's hunched over back like he was a pommel horse for gymnastics. One handed, balancing his entire body on the side, George shout out both his feet in a two heeled kick that slammed into Tom right in the chest. The man backed off, taking the hit, but needing much more force in a blow to knock the hardiest of Irishmen down. Contorting his body and legs like a gymnast in competition, the youth vaulted off the old butler's massive hunched shoulders and landed in a summersault that rolled under a swiping arm of his uncle. Low to the ground, he broke out of his roll and threw a kick behind him that caught Tom in the back of the knee. The man let out a grunt of surprise when it locked up and gave out – feeling no pain. It was then that he felt the youth climb up his back quickly. From Tom Branson's shoulder, George Crawley leapt off with fist drawn back.

The gallant Mr. Jack Barber - determined to avenge the honor of his stricken Lady Mary – turned to assist Tom Branson only to eat the flying punch of George Crawley. Assisted by the vaulting off of his uncle's massive shoulders, there was a hard and ugly noise to the sound of the boy's knuckles contacting the director's jaw. He back peddled, knocking Lord Grantham and Lady Mary backward in hard stumble. However, years in an abusive home of a beautiful aunt that liked to drink when her stage career ended with the rise of the moving picture business, taught Jack Barber how to take a hit. But when he squared up to George Crawley, when he made the huge mistake of putting his hands up to box, nothing about an abusive aunt that threw bottles and forced him to make love to her, prepared him for this kind of anarchy.

Mary could only watch in deflation and defeat as her gallant hero, the dashing director, and probably a very good man, was toyed with. He was an artist, in the business of beauty and imagination. There was nothing whatsoever that told her that Jack Barber was a fighter of any sort. Yet, there he was, trying to defend her honor … but only getting punched in the face. George didn't even attack, he countered and parried, laying hit after hit. He blocked and redirected, before unleashing a flurry of punches that rung the movie man's head like a bell. Soon, the boy didn't stop, and the director – the people pleaser – was consumed in a lightning storm that ended with George hitting home a haymaker that bounced the man's head off the gilded column next to Papa's letter writing desk.

Staggered, the director let loose a blind haymaker which the youth blocked and trapped. Twisting it at an on angle, Mary watched stone faced as this man she could've loved made hick-upped noises as he was punched in the kidney. Then, the boy he tried to reason with and then lecture on Mary's behalf was kicked in his knee from behind. Once knelt, his face was rammed downward into George's knee that jerked up to meet it. Finally, folding his captured arm back and driving it up painfully into his back, the youth slammed Barber face first onto the serving table with a violent rattle. A bandaged hand grabbed ahold his curls and pinned him hard onto the surface, his face smeared on spilled grape marmalade.

Lucy had helped an unharmed Tom back to his feet and the door had just opened to reveal Mr. Bates and Albert, the second footman, who had come to help when the maids alerted everyone downstairs that 'Mac-Dubh, is fighting the entire library, quick!' With the last of the antagonists bent on avenging Lady Mary disposed of, George surveyed the room. The only males that did not engage had been Thomas, Lord Grantham, and Bertie. Lord Grantham remained restrained by a promise of Lady Grantham that she would divorce him if he ever laid a hand on their boy in anger. Thomas Barrow was straightening Ms. Sybbie's skirt and tending to Guy Dexter. And Lord Hexham only watched the commotion, making sure to keep the Dowager Countess and Lady Painswick well out of the way. Bertie credited himself as being 'far too smart' to get in a tussle with someone of whom he was well aware of what they were capable of in combat – plus, he was not entirely sure his nephew was in the wrong.

The "Teatime Massacre" – long remembered afterward in the County Grantham and the lore of the Crawley family – came to an end when George stemmed the advance of Mr. Bates and Tom when he drew out a sugar dusted cake cutting knife. 'Get Back!' he cried wrathfully; his eyes crazed in violence. With an inhale of fear from many onlookers, George took the knife and slid the point inside Mr. Barber's nostril. For a long moment the director's seeming fate was held in limbo as George lifted his head up by his hair. And it was then that he found Lady Mary in that instant. Hatred, rage, and a burning black resentment for everything she was and stood for could be found in his look as he showed her what was left of her potential love. Beaten to a pulp, humiliated, and now a flick of a wrist from permanent maiming, he held Jack to her as he might have the man's severed head – a trophy taken right from her heart to mount on his wall.

Nothing about Lady Mary Talbot cracked, she remained emotionless, cold, and unflappable. But he could feel it coming off her, the anxiety, the anger, and the fear. There was a part of her that wondered if he would do it. How far had he fallen? How much of a savage had he become? Was there anything left of the boy that she knew and loved inside the rugged youth that had taken his place in the world. Just to spite her, would he maim a man, a good and decent man, for having the temerity to fall in love with her? It was a true moment of cold dread in the not knowing, perhaps never knowing, who the boy was truly.

A mother, a good mother – even a decent one – knew at all times what their child was capable of. But the hard lesson that came on one fateful Christmas Eve was that Lady Mary Talbot only knew what she had hoped, wished, he had been capable of. Now, after everything, she was blind, unknowing how deep the hatred for her ran inside him. Yet, whatever it was that would happen next, she would not look to Mamma, to Edith, to even Bertie, to guess from their knowledge – more intimate than her own – of what her own child would do.

Just like Mary before the fight, she saw that George got everything he wanted out of this interaction, from the ambiguity of the moment. George Crawley played into his family's fears, their prejudiced ideas of who he was now, what they thought he would do if given a chance. It was a deterrent to their bullying, their assumed authority. No one would push around, belittle, nor openly insult someone who would pound their servants into the floor and notch their guests' noses at the slightest reproach. Indeed, was George different than his Aunt Edith, fore, perhaps, Lady Edith Crawley would not have been stepped and dumped upon by the members of her family if they believed that she would burn the whole place down around them at even a whiff of their imperiousness.

Yet, the truth of the thing, of George's capabilities, was that he might have been the most natural fighter that Allan Quartermain had ever come across on all his adventures. But all of George's teachers, Captain Nemo, Sir Quartermain, and Dr. Murray, grounded his training in ethics and morals. Given a chance to pass on their knowledge, their experiences, they did so with the want of their apprentice and assistant not to repeat the mistakes they made. They wished to ennoble themselves and their darker past and deeds by teaching what was right, tempering restraint, in all they knew of a darker world. The boy they trained did not fight without reason, did not look for conflict, and did not do cruelty for no purpose. Someday George Crawley would be them - those first teachers and mentors that helped him take his first step in a larger, older, and more dangerous world. He would be harder than iron, his mercy would come at a price to monsters and monstrous men alike - forced to remember their encounter with "The Comet Crawley" by the maiming he would leave as a warning.

But that was not the boy standing in the small library of Downton Abbey that day – not yet.

'I catch you or any of your 'adult-pretenders' on my land again, you'll have more than a broken nose to explain at your next premiere.'

'Broken wha-?'

THUMPHK!

Jack Barber let out a pained grown, when George removed the knife point from inside his nose and then bounced the director's face off the surface as hard as he could. With a loud shake of the serving table, he fell onto his back at Lady Mary's feet, holding his nose as he rocked back and forth on the floor. It was the period to the end of the conflict. All those who had rushed to defend a mother who had been retaliated against for slapping her child, had been felled.

Perhaps, had there been any in the library that had experience in combat – among those who chose to fight – the battle would've been longer and a closer thing. But Bertie Pelham, the only experienced modern soldier, rarely took against George Crawley. He especially wouldn't do so after the boy had saved Edith, himself, and many others from enslavement by 'She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed' in the ruined Kingdom of Kor less than a year past during the Prince of Wale's African Tour. After a daring and incredibly perilous rescue of Lord and Lady Hexham, at great personal risk to himself, it would seem rather unlikely that the Marquess of Hexham would ever raise a hand against the Lord of Downton.

THUMPHK!

The library startled – all but Mary – when George expertly twirled the cake cutting knife through his fingers and - looking right into the Dowager Countess's eyes - drove the knife into the polished finish of the serving table. The violence and anger in the force of the strike drove the blade deep into the surface of a piece of furniture that had been a part of Lady Violet's dowry and in her family for nearly two-hundred years. When the boy let it go, it remained pegged within, it's hilt rocking back and forth in vibration. It was a symbol of poignancy, a warning, a promise, and sign that was directed at one – and only one – person in the room.

The old woman, matching glance with her great-grandson, did not say a word, did not even glare. There was resignation, bitterness of a greater sorrow. Concession was not a word or instinct she knew, yet, there was no use in fighting it. Here, in her last interaction with the heir of her family, was she consigned to let go. It was not frustration, anger, nor even hatred any longer at a glance of Cora and Isobel's vulgar, rustic, little animal with his barbaric and alien ways. It was simply a want not to live any longer. There was nothing more to see, fore all it would do was give her remorse and regret when she swore long ago not to feel any of such emotions. Let it end with Mary. As for Violet, she wanted something hot and soothing, then, let her die in peace.

That day would be the last that Violet Crawley ever left her room again.

George, after giving the last full measure of his intentions, turned and strode away. He fixed his collar, aired out his jacket, and had a face made of stone with a hardened glare. He bumped Mary out of his way, matched a glare with Lord Grantham who was so angered and riled that he could not express any civilized emotion. He stopped only once, and that had been to help Albert get Andy up, taking one of the man's outstretched hands. There was no apology, but once the young man was on his feet, the boy gave a clap to the footman's arm who was a bit sore but not in any bad shape. In fact, with the exception of Carson, Jack Barber, and Guy Dexter, there was no one from the Downton Staff nor Grantham family that had any injuries that wouldn't heal by morning – except Mary. Later, Bertie would admit while in line at the craft service buffet dinner, that in his experience of seeing their nephew in action before in Africa … it could've been a lot worse for all of them. It was the only conciliation they'd have in the whole incident.

The fight was still coursing through George's veins and his senses were still acutely aware of his surroundings. He was waiting any moment for Tom or Lord Grantham to come at him. But they were grounded by their wives. A simple and dominate look from Lady Grantham by the fireplace mantel held her husband in vise. Meanwhile, Lucy Branson was leading Tom so they might check on Sybbie who looked rather hot - tears brimming after what she felt was being humiliated in front of everyone. Her new step-mamma, unfamiliar with the dynamics of the House of Grantham with George Crawley in the mix, found that she was not wholly on their family's side. While her husband wanted to play his role as peacemaker, Mrs. Branson guided him toward the avenue of letting Mary clean up her own messes, for once.

'Hey!'

The boy's walking out of the library, unmolested - some even backing away at his approach - was suddenly halted by a snatching of his sleeve. When he whirled around, fist raised, he held back his trained instinct to strike. Lady Grantham had stridden across the library purposefully, wrathfully, and intercepted the youth while in front of Lucy, Tom, and Thomas. Her usually pleasant, amenable, and thoughtful, handsome countenance was marred by an anger that showed every line of her true age. There was paternal scorn and strong emotions that she hid from the rest of the world but for two people – Robert and the boy in her grasp.

The always reliable friend and confidant, the giver of hugs and kisses, the soft smiles and whispers of cooing affection as she looked into your eyes – everything that Cora Crawley's granddaughters conjure to mind. That Granny did not exist for George Crawley. Edith was the official legal guardian of George, his godmother and manager of his affairs. Isobel was their grandson's benefactor, she housed him, fed him, and – in theory – clothed him. Isobel was the maternal influence in the boy's life, lecturing and cultivating his day to day. Yet, however unlikely it seemed to her family ...

The judge, jury, and executioner, of all George Crawley's deeds and words was the role of Lady Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham.

A disciplinarian was not what one thought of when they looked upon Cora, nor would anyone be ridiculed in thinking that George "The Comet" Crawley would chew up and spit out the beautiful and girlish older woman. Yet, there remained a steel and hardness in the once American princess that few, even among her own children, had ever seen. She could and had matched her grandson shout for shout. Her point and snarl of 'sit down!' was met with an angry thump of weight and the squeak of a chair's legs moving. No meant no. 'Now!' was to be taken at double time. And one more foul word would get his mouth sewn shut with Baxter's machine. Isobel was old and tired … and perhaps sick – very sick. She could not keep an eye nor up with a grandson that she stubbornly and spitefully insisted she could raise on her own with Dickie. George would not be run out of town by Mary and Robert – though Edith insisted that he come and live with her, Bertie, and Marigold. Thus, it came down to Cora to be the magistrate and high court.

'You and I are gonna have long conversation later that you're not going to enjoy!' She said strictly, pulling him against her in reproach and pointing a chastising finger at his chest between clenched teeth that held back a fierce paternal temper.

'I'll call ahead and make the usual reservations.' George snapped back coolly, yanking his sleeve from her grip.

The same matching eyes of cerulean glared deeply in contest between granny and grandson, parent and child, in the pause between the exchange. Eventually, she let him side-step her and leave. But her glare followed him, and she let him feel all ten-thousand degrees of the lasers that barely scratched that thick head of his. It surprised her how quickly she found more of Martha Levinson in her so late in life than she ever thought possible. Nor was she prepared for how surly and tired one becomes when your word was all that kept chaos at bay when there was no nanny or governess in sight.

Half the time, Cora was not sure if George heeded a word she said – fore it never felt like it. She found parenting a boy to be like constantly interacting with a foreigner that refused to learn English. There was a lot of raising one's voice, enunciating crossly, and pointing strictly, till they got the general idea. Then, all of that would be followed by even louder shouting till what was ordered was done properly – or at least within approximation when it came to 'that one'. By the end of it, the daily struggle of eating habits had been tackled with about two dozen more problems about to come down like an avalanche.

Yet, she never once thought of why she bothered, nor defeatedly wondered what she had been doing, fore it was simple. Without being asked, without thinking twice, and not a shred out of obligation nor duty, had Lady Grantham done everything in the last two years. Love, a deep, frustrating, and endless love, was the only reason she needed. George was her child, her boy, no more or less than Mary, Edith, Sybil, Sybbie, Marigold, and their poor Caroline. She cared about him, worried about him, cried often of what his fate could be far off in places unknown. It was why she was harder on George than she had ever been on anyone else in her entire life. When there were no nannies, no governesses, and nothing in between your baby and disaster but you and your force of personality, anything and everything could go wrong. There was fear now, fear she never quite felt before. With Mary and Edith, Cora gave an order to nannies and a governess and it was heeded. With Sybil, she spent every waking hour with her, teaching her, caring for her, playing with her. But with George, with his life now, any moment could be his last … her last.

Now that she was sick, probably dying, there was no peace, no acceptance. All she thought of was George, of what might happen if she wasn't there to guide him, to make sure he lived and acted like a civilized human being. Edith was settled and going back to what she loved, Rose was happy in New York, and Mary … Mary didn't need her anymore. Sybbie had a new life, a new family that was growing – if Maude's smile since France was what Cora thought it meant. Both Edith and Bertie worshiped Marigold, the time growing closer and closer when she'd be old enough to know the truth about her true identity and parentage. Yet, there remained George - cast out, vilified, and so very angry all the time. All her hot chastisements, steely reproaches, and coming down hard on him, had all been motivated by fear. A fear that someday soon – perhaps sooner than even she was ready for – Cora wouldn't be there to guard him, steer him … and love him.

What would he do without her? Who would look after him? Edith, in London and Brancaster? Isobel, who was sinking - slower than her potentially - but still sinking? Robert, who grudges their boy everything because of his own guilt? Mary, who could not stand that she still loved her son more than anything? In all reality, with Cora gone, there would be nothing that kept him here, kept him from coming back home at all. It was by sheer force of will that Cora anchored her grandson, forever convinced that someday they would need him. With all her heart, had Cora not wanted to lose him –

For him to be lost forever.

After the commotion, the violence, everyone flinched when the library door slammed, shaking the entire room with the force. The crack upon the doorcase, like a pistol shot, seemed to signal Lady Mary Talbot's temper like a greyhound at the start of a race. Something about it, the force, the sound, the vexing last word on the subject of this conflict, aroused her anger. Her heels clicked and clacked at a purposeful and nearly possessed pace as she stepped over Jack Barber upon the floor and power walked in hot pursuit. As to what she planned to do, say, or even think, when she caught up with George, Mary didn't know. There was only instinct, only a fierceness at the way the whole incident had shaken out. They had been happy, so very happy.

Just like her son, however, Mary's progress was impeded, halted, by the same hand that grasped the boy's sleeve. This time, Cora had her eldest child by the arm. Her look grave and her anger unsated by her interaction with George. Surprised, shocked, and not wholly acquiescing to being restrained, Mary turned to her mamma who was – as Grandmamma liked to say – 'spitting mad'. It had not been forgotten, nor was it justified in her mamma's eyes, that Mary had slapped her child. Violence was something that Lady Grantham did not approve of between her children, and it was something that she would not tolerate between a mother and her child in any circumstance.

'You better think long and hard, my darling girl, about what you do when you walk out that door. Cause your future in this house depends on it!' She said with burning cerulean eyes, her voice cold and hard.

The subject of whom this house belonged too had never been breached. It had been Mary's home since she was sixteen years old. It had been promised to her through advantageous marital matches throughout her adult life, since Granny presented her to King Edward and Queen Alexandra at eighteen. It went without saying that Mary was to be destined as the Countess of Grantham no matter whom she married. And when Matthew died and the estate – at least half of it – went to her, she was anointed as perhaps co-bread winner of the family. Now, years later, mamma and papa were allowed to retire, handing off the house and estate's running to her.

Yet, it was not often that Lady Grantham forced her daughter to remember that Downton Abbey was not Mary's house, yet. And no matter how much money is sank annually into this gothic castle, or that her daughter's sole focus was to keep it running, Lady Cora Crawley was its mistress. And while she wouldn't dream of her daughter running the estate all the way down from London, there was no law that said that she had to live in Downton Abbey. With Violet moved back into the house in her final months, the Dower House was open, unoccupied, and so very close to the Estate Office. How fitting it could be as a permanent residence for Lady Mary Talbot.

No one – no one – dares lay a hand on Cora's babies … not even one of her own.

There was no snide, arrogant, nor dismissive look of superiority in Lady Mary then. Her eyes were wide, perhaps even demure, at her mother's chastisement. She was self-aware enough to know that she had been in the wrong, that she had no excuse for what she had done. She was mortified by both action and the scolding from her mother. For one that had always prided herself on being the model of an English Great Lady, that never put a foot out wrong, to be taken to task was no small thing. But the worst of all insecurities within her came from when it was Mamma that personally scolded her. For it was then that she knew, truly, that she had done something wrong.

She said not a word, did not struggle, and waited till Lady Grantham unhanded her. Then, and only then, seeming twelve years old again, she waited till she was allowed permission to leave. And when she was finally released, her head was slightly lowered in self-penance as she quickly walked out the door. Then, her anger, the flash of emotion that set her out in pursuit was tempered with a pervasive want, a driving need … for George. It was unknown to her what exactly she would do when she caught up to him. There were no words, no actions, not even a semblance of thought of a why. It was only a driving need, a want to be near him, to see him, to … him. She couldn't explain it, not if she tried. All she knew is that she had transgressed against a greater and holy tenant of motherhood, and while she had always played that such things did not matter to her anymore – nothing further could be the truth.

When the library door opened, she lowered her head slightly, awkwardly, to find the full complement of their staff and movie crew standing by the library doors. It seemed the commotion and fight had stirred up more than just the tea. Everyone from Mrs. Hughes and Daisy, all the way to the Craft Services woman and the Key Grip had come to see what was happening. Mary suddenly felt self-conscious at the black and blue bruise on her jaw that her pearly complexion amplified in the contrasting coloring. They all gawked and whispered among themselves, her marking giving truth to what must have blown up into a rumor of a full-scale brawl in which even Granny was duel wielding knives. They all made way for Lady Mary who ignored something that Moseley had said to her when he and Baxter came rushing up.

Her attention was drawn to the foyer. There, Anna was in the middle of trying to hold up George. The woman, frightened, perhaps more confused, demanded to know what happened, where he got 'that' from. And Mary felt a rather shade of shame come over her when she pointed to the fresh injury that Mary had gave him. She sucked in a breath of air from the sudden and mind-numbing pain when she touched her own jaw in empathy, feeling a deep horror of the knowledge that same pain would be felt by her child because of her. It motivated Mary to stride forward, telling Baxter 'not now' when she offered to look after the bruise. The sound of her voice echoing in the Great Hall caught both George and Anna's attention.

'Mi'lady? Oh, my-god, Mi'lady! Tell me it didn't happen like they said it did!' Anna said in alarm when she caught a glance of her mistress.

Quickly, her best friend since they both were twelve, rushed up to aid her. It must have been a lot worse looking than Mary realized when she heard her lady's maid react to seeing the bruise. Indeed, long would Lady Mary remember this day. And it is so here marked that this was certainly not the last fight that Mary and George would have. In fact, this would remain a rather tame outing in terms of rancorous and terrible blow ups and outs between the two in which much cruelty and painful things would be said, shouted, and screamed at one another by the end. But in all the conflicts to follow between mother and son, never again would Lady Mary Crawley lay a hand upon her son in anger. For the loss of control, the violence of the action against one that she loved above all else – though she hid it from him - had traumatized the woman. Later that night would she make a vow to Anna on pain of death that she would never do such a thing again.

But an even greater deterrent would remain the swelling and ugly bruise that she would wear for nearly a month afterward. Unlike the provocations against Edith that her sister left unavenged throughout their life, George would not let such things pass. Mary knew, from that day on, that like any insult or aggression against him, a physical strike would earn her a world of pain in retaliation – and the boy was only going to get bigger and stronger. She knew that if she did not learn her lesson now, someday, she would mourn bitterly for her missing teeth after giving an errant blow in anger at something that George will say in rancor.

But when Anna reached out to touch the injury with ginger but experienced hands, Mary pushed them aside and strode forward. Her gaze was upon George who had stood near the glass doors of the entry way just beyond the great doors of the ancient Gothic castle. For some reason, him standing there, reminded Mary suddenly of Matthew. Many years ago, she stood where she was now, turning to look over her shoulder and saw him standing right where George was. He had needed to speak to Papa, alone, without Granny knowing. Mary had promised to help him, to sneak him in, and throw the shade over her grandmother till their talk was over.

But Matthew wasn't looking at her the way his son, their son, was now. Matthew had been looking at her from the spot as if she had hung the moon, as if she had been the most important, the most beautiful thing in the world. She'd dare say now that many men had looked at her that way … but no one had the sincerity, the very meaning, that Matthew had that night. That was the moment that she knew that he loved her, and by the time that he had taken her hand in parting that night, in a pause of formality, she knew that she loved him just as much. Yet, oh, had she fought it tooth and nail, her own happiness.

But standing there now, was not Matthew Crawley. His son looked nothing like him. He was all Sybil and Mamma – Levinson by look and Poldark by temper. It was then that Lady Mary saw only the last visage of a great and true love of which was corrupted and tainted by her failings, her weakness – a tormented and slow death of loving to the very soul what could only be God's own punishment for her hubris. While the boy's resentment and anger grew in peril at the knowledge that his mother looked upon him as a failure, a misnomer, the wish upon a falling star that never came true. He said he didn't care, said that someday he'd stake her in the heart and seal her in 'this crypt' as her tomb. Yet, of course, he cared - what child, any young child, did not care for the opinion, for the acceptance, of a parent – their only parent left?

And the reminders in her eyes when she glanced upon him, to see her disappointment, to know that she blamed herself, that she hated herself, for who he was, for not being able to produce an heir that fit her granny's mold and her Papa's dreams. This, in themselves, were bitter and hateful inditements upon all he was and had ever been. She saw him as a curse, a weakness, unworthy – and he couldn't understand it. How much more was needed to be done? How many more death traps, rescued damsels, great treasures, daring duels, and valiantry in the face of incredible odds did he need to face to prove to her that she was wrong?

Why didn't she want him?

'Now you know what it feels like!'

George pointed at the ugly and swelling bruise on Lady Mary Talbot's jaw. For many it was the most superficial of comments. A simple conveying of what it was to be slapped, the pain, the humiliation. Perhaps, it was a commentary on, for the first time, Lady Mary getting hit in the face. Yet, no. It was, beyond all other interpretations, the one that his reluctant mamma knew to be the absolute truth of his words. It had both nothing and everything to do with the slap. Fore, he spoke not of the action in itself. But of everything that came with it, all the emotions, connotations, and pain – mostly the pain. Indeed, what lay in the words of 'Now you know what it feels like!' struck at the very core of the woman's blackening heart. She now knew not what it was to be slapped … but what it felt like at all times and in every way to be George "The Comet" Crawley -

To have Lady Mary Talbot as a mother.

Backing away slowly out into the afternoon, George Crawley, filled with a great and terrible pain, captured Lady Mary Talbot in a hateful look that was afire. And It was in that moment, in one last confrontation shared between them, that Lady Mary saw the rest of her life. In his glare, in her defeated champions all about them, was what would happen to all that she fancied - her suitors, her distractions that she deemed to use against him. She could've had the director. Mary could've taken everything he offered her and been happy – far away from everything. But she chose this, chose to antagonize George, to cast him off, leave him to die.

Now, he'd be there for the rest of her life, making sure that she never forgot what she took from him – his home, his family, his childhood, and his honor. Jack Barber was the warning, the message, that this grudge, this rivalry, only ends when she was dead. And even then, there was no nimbus of heaven nor circle of Hell that she could flee to that he would not chase her. Lady Mary Talbot could ignore the boy that faded into and disappeared among the shadows of sunlight cast upon the house. She could belittle him, deny him, tell everyone he was not her son – an illegitimate child of Sybil that no one talked about – but in the end it would not matter –

Fore, Lady Mary Crawley would never be rid of him.

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Entr'acte Music

"Head Games" - Foreigner

(The Quintessential Mary & George song for this era)

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The Rivalry between Lady Mary Crawley and George "The Comet" Crawley continues and reaches critical mass in the prequel story

"Medhel an Gwyns"