Page 52 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"You branded me with your initial," she said. "You are not convenient, Lord Braithwaite. You are guilty."

He had a reply ready. She saw it arrive at his mouth, and she watched it die there. The silence had the chamber now, all of it, from the woolsacks to the highest gallery. He stood a moment in a quiet he had not chosen. Then he bowed, with beautiful correctness, and sat down.

The Attorney General rose once more. "A final question, madam. The mark of which you speak. Does it exist upon your person to this day, as physical evidence of what was done?"

Elizabeth turned from the Attorney General to the Lord High Steward, because the answer belonged to the court itself, and she gave it slowly, so that the clerks could write every word. "I bear his mark, my lord. The letter B, burned into my skin with a branding iron, where it will remain until I die."

She did not offer to show it. She let the offer hang in the enormous room, unspoken. Every man present knew it could be made, and her face told them she was not afraid to make it. The brand had been put on her in the dark, with her face to a wall; she would show it to all England before she let him walk free.

The Lord High Steward inclined his head. "The witness may stand down."

Thirty paces back. She counted them again, and each one came easier than the last. In the gallery Fitzwilliam sat with his hands white on the rail and his eyes bright. Richard beside him sat very still. And her father, at the end of the row, was cleaning his spectacles.

She sat down beside her husband. The next witness was being called somewhere far away, in another country.

Fitzwilliam's hand found hers. "How do you feel?" he said, very low.

Elizabeth considered the question honestly. The mist was nowhere. The chamber was only a room. The man in the dock was only a man, and the mark on her back was only a scar, hers now, part of her own skin. "Taller," she said.

CHAPTER 18

The room was too big. Alban had seen big rooms. The Netherfield ballroom was big, and the church was big. The home farm barn was so big that swallows lived in the top of it and never came down. This room was bigger than every one of them! Where had so many old men in red come from? There were hundreds of them, more people than Meryton on market day. It smelled of old wood, candle wax, and too many people at once.

Mrs. Darcy knelt down in front of him in the little room outside, where they had waited all morning. She was wearing her gray dress. She took both his hands. "Tell them what you told me," she said. "Just that."

"What if they ask me things I dinna know?"

"Then you say, 'I do not know.' That is a true answer, and true answers are all anyone may ask of you."

"Mr. Pratt has my broom. In the coach."

"I know." Her mouth went funny. She wanted to smile and cry at the same time, which grown people did more than they thought children noticed. "You will not need it. I did not need mine. Words are better than brooms in this place. Now go and use yours."

A man in black took him in. The walk was long. Alban kept one hand in his coat pocket, curled around his wooden duck. Somebody had put a step in the witness place so he could see over the rail, and Alban stood on it. The man with the white staff leaned forward and asked if he knew what an oath was.

Alban did. Mrs. Darcy had shown him. "It means God is listening," he said, "and you have to say what is true."

Some of the red old men smiled. The man with the white staff nodded. Alban put his hand on the Book and swore. He looked out at all the red old men looking back at him.

Then he looked at the box where the prisoner stood. That was the thing he had come to do, and everyone knew it. Why be slow about it? "That is Lord Bee," Alban said.

All the old men in red made a noise at once, low and long. The man with the white staff knocked it quiet.

The lawyer for the King asked him questions in a slow, kind voice, and Alban answered them. "I lived at the cottage. At Hastingleigh. My mam and my pa kept it." He knew now what they had kept it for. He had known it in bits for a long time, and he had never let himself look at it. The ladies who cried downstairs. That was why he had taken them water. Nobody had asked him about the water yet, but Mrs. Darcy said they might, and he was ready. "There were ladies kept in the cellar sometimes. I took them water in the night. Through the slats of the cellar door. Mam would've hided me for it, so I dinna tell her."

"And in the spring, Alban. Tell their lordships what happened in the spring."

Alban held on to the rail. He had told it to Mrs. Darcy in the stable, with Miss Maisie breathing on his neck. He had told it to the constable with Mr. Darcy's hand on his shoulder. Each time, it got a little smaller and a little harder.

He told it now. "A man came. Him." He did not point, because pointing was rude, but he looked at Lord Bee so the lords would know. "There were six others with him, strangers. It was nearly dark. I was hid in the roots of the old oak. Mam and Pa were shouting inside. Pa's voice went high. Pa's voice never went high." His hands were tight on the rail. In the gallery he could see Mr. Darcy sitting very still. "Then the men came out and Mam and Pa dinna come out, and there was smoke under the door. When they went, I ran for the old stones. I looked back one time. The house was bright."

Nobody in the whole big room made any sound at all.

"He stood by the gate and watched it," Alban said. "Lord Bee. He wore a red ring. He called me Tobin, after, when he came to the stables to take me. He called me Tobin at the cottage too, I heard him. He never knew my name at all." Alban straightened his back the way Mr. Darcy straightened his. "My name is Alban."

The man with the white staff let the quiet sit for a moment before anyone else was allowed to talk.

Then Lord Bee stood up, and Alban made his hands stay still on the rail.