Silence? Not death. Not ruin. Silence—an absence that remained.
On field and hill and glen.
Only the word “Where?” and a question mark in the margin.
A voice sounded beyond the door, lowered, cautious. Someone spoke his name, and a moment later, a tea cart was wheeled in. But the maid hesitated at the threshold, and Darcy heard the housekeeper advising her to just leave it there and not disturb the master further.
He read on.
Yet still the thorn unseen abides
Where river meets the lane;
And they who keep their plighted faith
Shall call her forth again.
The annotations grew denser toward the latter pages, as though Harrowe himself had begun to understand, too late, the shape of what he was translating. Words circled. Passages were reconsidered. One line bore three successive attempts at typesetting correction, none entirely satisfactory.
Darcy reached the end at last and remained where he was, the book open before him, his attention fixed not upon the page but upon the space just beyond it.
What lay before him was not explanation. It was corroboration without clarity—meaning dispersed across hands, centuries, and intentions, none of them sufficient alone. Harrowe had translated faithfully; that much was plain. But Harrowe had not resolved what he copied, and perhaps had not dared to.
Darcy moved around the desk and set the volume aside. The room felt smaller for having held it open so long. He stood for a moment, his hand resting against the back of the chair, and considered what remained to him.
If the ballad spoke truly, then memory alone could not answer this. If the records existed—as he had long suspected—then they would not be here. They would be in the keeping of someone who had guarded confusion as carefully as others guarded certainty.
He rang the bell.
When the servant appeared, Darcy was already reaching for his coat. “Have my carriage brought round at once,” he said. “I am going out. And tell Cook not to trouble herself over a formal supper. I will be late.”
“Yes, sir. Shall I send for some hot bricks or a basket?”
“No,” Darcy replied. “That will not be necessary where I am going.”
And with that, he left the study dark behind him, the questions he carried no longer waiting to be read, but answered—if they could be—only by those who had kept them alive.
Darcy was announced intohis uncle’s study with less ceremony than usual, for the simple reason that Lord Matlock was already crossing the space before the servant had finished speaking his name.
“Darcy?” He looked genuinely startled. “I had a letter from you scarcely a week ago. I had thought you would be in Hertfordshire through Christmas.”
“So had I,” Darcy said, stopping just inside the room. “But circumstances dictated otherwise. Has there been any further word from Richard?”
Matlock did not answer at once. He turned back to the desk, drew a letter from beneath a folio, and held it there without unfolding it. “He has arrived safely.”
Darcy’s shoulders eased by a degree. “And?”
“And he writes… cautiously,” Matlock replied. “Which is unlike him.”
Darcy crossed the room. “But he is well? Not near any fighting?”
“So far as he says. He is quartered away from the line for the present. His concern is not the enemy.”
“So why the urgency? Does he detail why he was recalled?”
Matlock took up the letter again, unfolding it at last. “When he went on leave back in September, his superiors believed the season sufficiently provisioned. There were shortages, yes, but nothing beyond the army’s ability to manage. Arrangements were made accordingly.”
“And now?”
