Darcy followed the line to its end, then to the margin, where a later hand had crowded in a correction. “And here,” he said, “the name is altered.”
“Or corrected,” Matlock replied. “That is the difficulty.”
Darcy read again, more carefully this time. “‘The hinterlands beyond Catuvellaunorum,’” he said at last. “Or—no—Catuvellani. The secondlis uncertain, but is not one the land and the other the tribe?”
“It has been read both ways,” Matlock said. “Some took it for an error and amended it. Others preserved it, believing the earlier hand knew precisely what it meant.”
Darcy leaned back, the book still open in his hands. “If it is the people, then we are speaking of the old tribal territory north of the Thames. Before Londinium mattered. Before the roads made everything tidy.”
“Quite,” Matlock said. “The country of the Catuvellauni was never a single point on a map. It was a stretch—rolling ground, river crossings, difficult hedged land. The sort of place Rome complained of for refusing to behave.”
Darcy’s mouth curved faintly. “Verulamium.”
“And its surrounds,” Matlock agreed. “What we would now call Hertfordshire, with its inconvenient borders. Close enough to the city to be useful. Far enough away to be overlooked.”
Darcy nodded slowly. How had he known that county would eventually be named here?
Matlock watched him over the rim of his glass. “A convenient coincidence? You have told me the harvest was—”
“But as you have said,” Darcy interrupted, “there is too much confusion in the text to call one lucky season proof of anything.”
His uncle nodded. “Just so. It is worth noting that some of the later translators resisted narrowing it to Kent. Kent was convenient. This”—he tapped the page—“was not.”
Darcy lowered his gaze to the text again. “And if the passage does mean the place, rather than the people—”
“Then it points not to a county,” Matlock finished, “but to a threshold. Land that has changed hands often enough to forget its first allegiance, but not often enough to lose it.”
“And so,” Darcy said, straightening, “when presented with the difficulty, my aunt choseCantium.”
Matlock inclined his head. “It was the word seen most often in certain textual copies.”
“And the one that placed authority squarely in her reach.”
Matlock did not dispute it. “She believed she was restoring coherence where your mother had subverted it.”
“I suppose that explains why she took this with her.” Darcy closed the book halfway, his fingers still holding their place. “I can hardly believe she relinquished such proof when you demanded it back.”
“Well, as to that…” Matlock paused. Cleared his throat. “She returnedavolume. It bore the same binding. The same general marks of age.”
Darcy frowned. “You speak as if she might have given you a counterfeit.”
Matlock’s mouth turned downward. “Oh, no, I believe the book is genuine, as copies go. I had no cause to suspect it. But I did not know she had obtained another copy somewhere.”
Darcy’s eyes widened. “Another complete copy?”
“She claims. I knew nothing of it until after Anne was born, when she let slip that she had obtained a manuscript that she considered to be Anne’s birthright. One she believed… truer. But I cannot be certain the one she returned to me was the same our family had kept since before memory. I compared what I knew, of course, but that, I am ashamed to say, was rather minimal.”
Darcy looked down at the closed book, at the worn cloth and softened corners. “So even this,” he said, “may not be what it claims.”
Matlock met his gaze again, his expression grave. “It may be the original. Or it may be a careful hand’s correction of something older. I cannot swear to it.”
“But Lady Catherine is convinced she has the authority.”
“Yes,” Matlock said. “And she means to break you on the wheel of your fate, my boy.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Elizabeth took the stairsslowly, one hand sliding along the banister as though it might tilt away from her if she did not keep contact with it. Her head swam when she reached the last step. She paused, counted a breath, then another, until the floor steadied enough to permit dignity.
