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Chapter Fourteen: The Prophecy

DARCY SAW THE MUSICIANS sitting motionless behind their instruments, the dancers arrested in the figures of the final set, and every guest within reach of the sideboard turning to admire the glittering ruin spread on the floor. He had encountered sieges which produced less silence. Beside him, Miss Elizabeth lowered the hand he had been holding during the dance and contemplated the bowl, which had come to rest innocently among the broken glasses.

Miss Bingley opened her eyes.

“Continue the music.” She directed two footmen to the wreckage, then confronted the assembled county before anyone could convert an accident into a public enquiry. “The glasses have suffered enough without being granted a funeral.” The jest reached the nearer guests, who obliged her with laughter.

The musicians resumed with commendable haste. Conversation returned less readily, since Mrs Bennet had begun explaining to Lady Lucas that the destruction of glass at a ball invariably foretold an engagement, a death, or an improperly secured sideboard. Mrs Hurst moved to intercept her, while Bingley clapped for the dancers to complete the figure and assured Colonel Forster that Netherfield had many more glasses. The colonel received this intelligence with relief, having evidently feared that the estate’s entire liquid prosperity had perished on the carpet.

Darcy ought to have returned Miss Elizabeth to Miss Lucas and permitted the servants to manage the disturbance. Instead, he stayed beside the sideboard because Fletcher had gone very still. Then, his valet slowly bypassed the broken glass without disturbing a fragment, stooped, and lifted the bowl into both hands. He turned his back to the ballroom, concealing it against the dark cloth of his coat, but not before Darcy glimpsed a pale light spreading around the inner rim.

Miss Elizabeth saw it as well.

“That is new.” She stepped nearer, using Darcy’s body and Fletcher’s broad shoulders as a screen from the dancers. “Unless Netherfield commonly illuminates its silver after midnight.”

“Not commonly.” Fletcher shifted the bowl when it stirred against his hands. “The plate generally confines itself to property damage.”

The light strengthened, colourless and cold, and Darcy saw the ancient authority within the vessel awaken. It was not the violent force that had struck Wickham behind the knees, nor the restless magnetism which had drawn it after Miss Elizabeth through passages and closed chambers. This power was older, deeper, and deliberate. The faint marks which had circled the rim for centuries began to move.

Darcy bent closer. What he had always taken for a decorative engraving had expanded, each stroke dividing and joining until complete characters burned against the metal. He knew the dialect; few living masters did. It appeared in the oldest records at Pemberley, in laws written before England acquired its present name and in several disputed accounts of the True Blood which scholars had dismissed because no two surviving copies agreed.

He had studied every one of them.

Fletcher’s hands tightened around it. His composure had survived Wickham’s extinction, Collins’s bloodstained linen, and the concealment of a corpse during a country dance; a piece of household silver had finally achieved what murder could not.

“Sir.” He angled the rim to Darcy while keeping it hidden from the room. “Was that writing present this morning?”

“Not in this form.”

Miss Elizabeth stood close enough that the heat of her body reached him through the sleeve of his coat. Her gaze travelled over the unfamiliar characters, then rose to his face.

“You can read it,” she stated.

Darcy straightened. Beyond Fletcher’s shoulder, Miss Bingley was guiding the final couples away from the broken glass and arranging the next piece of music through force of will. Mr Bennet had emerged from the card room and was studying the disorder from a distance, then shrugged and returned to his game.

“This is neither the place nor the time.”

Miss Elizabeth folded her fan and rested it against her wrist. “That has become your preferred translation whenever you dislike the text, Mr Darcy.”

“I have not yet determined precisely what it means.”

“You recognised the language before Fletcher finished lifting it.” She moved another half-step into the shelter formed by the two men. “You also became alarmed, which suggests that the inscription has not announced anything agreeable.”

The bowl gave a low metallic hum. Fletcher glanced down at it.

“The vessel appears to favour disclosure, sir.”

“The vessel has overturned thirty-six glasses.”

“Thirty-eight.” Miss Bingley had approached without Darcy noticing her leave the musicians. She stood at Fletcher’s shoulder, her expression polished and murderous. “Two have rolled under the sideboard, where I hope that object may join them.”

The bowl knocked sharply against Fletcher’s coat.

Miss Bingley recoiled before recovering enough dignity to pretend that she had merely chosen to stand elsewhere. “If it has developed another opinion concerning Miss Elizabeth, I beg that it express itself after the guests have departed.”

“It has developed an inscription,” Miss Elizabeth informed her.

Miss Bingley studied Darcy’s face, and her irritation vanished. “A complete one?”