Page 35 of Losing Lizzy
Looking out the small window in the rear of the coach, she asked in anxiousness, “A highwayman?”
Sheffield had released the latch for the side window. With his head out the opening, he said in a loud voice, “I do not think so. The rider has a red scarf about his neck, the agreed upon signal from Mr. Darcy.”
“Then stop the coach!” Elizabeth ordered. “Mayhap William has found our Lizzy.”
Chapter Twelve
“Mr. Darcy,” his coachmanpleaded. “This is a dangerous endeavor. I must advise you against entering the well.”
Darcy continued to release the buttons on his waistcoat. His greatcoat, dress coat, and hat rested upon the ground near where his carriage sat ready. “I did not realize the well had collapsed further,” he admitted. “I know my efforts are likely futile, but I cannot walk away until I attempt to discover for certain whether my daughter is lying at the bottom. Even if she has not survived this abuse exacted against her, Elizabeth Anne should look down from heaven and know her father loved her enough to enact the impossible in her name.”
Both his coachman and footman nodded sharply, tears evident in their eyes. “We will support you, sir.” Jasper said. “Do what you must. We will not abandon you.”
Mr. Farrin backed the coach close to where the Queenborough Castle well once stood. Traces of the bricks and the hole were all any of them could see: A gaping hole—one reportedly more than a hundred feet deep.
Darcy tied the rope about his waist as Jasper placed a three-inch wide tree limb through the back wheels of the carriage to keep it from rolling. They had tied the other end of the rope to the carriage’s chassis. Mr. Farrin stood at the head, holding the horses in place, prepared to pull Darcy out if he encountereddifficulties.
“We only have fifty feet of rope, sir. Not enough to reach the bottom,” Jasper cautioned.
“I understand.” If Elizabeth Anne was alive at the bottom of the well, Darcy would purchase every length of rope in Kent in order to reach her, and if she died at the hands of Townsend, he would pay to have an expert climber retrieve his child’s body, see her buried properly, and, then, personally hunt down Townsend and exact his own revenge. UponThe Lost Sparrow,Darcy had learned several unique methods of torture, and he would see each performed on Townsend before the man died. “Perhaps there is enough to learn the truth. That is all I ask.”
He tied a lantern to the rope about his waist before moving to the edge of the opening to kneel down and yell into the black opening. “Elizabeth Anne, if you hear me, darling, please answer me. I know you are frightened, but I am here to see you returned to your mother’s arms. Please answer me.”
He listened with his whole self, but there was not even a whimper. Disheartened, Darcy swallowed his sorrow and turned where he could drop himself into the abyss. Inching downward, the rope sliding through his hand burned, but the pain was familiar, one he had experienced often in his years aboardThe Lost Sparrow.Odd how those years of drudgery and bottomless hopes allowed him the confidence to search for his daughter.
“A little more,” he called as he permitted himself to slide into the darkness, the air in the well colder than he had expected. He shivered, but rather his reaction came from the cold or from the dread of the unknown, he could not say.
“Only ten more feet of rope, sir,” Jasper called from above, and Darcy slowed his descent. Releasing the lantern, with trembling fingers he finally managed to light the candle within and then close the latch. The lantern offered only a weak flicker of light, barely cutting through the thick blackness of the expanse below him. “Elizabeth Anne,” he called his voice bouncing off what remained of the walls. “Fine eyes!” Yet, there was no response.
He lifted the light away from his body, calling out. “Look up, sweetheart. Do you see the light? Call out if you do!” He listened with all his heart, but there was nothing. “Fine eyes!” he called once again on a watery plea. The silence that followed nearly had him releasing the knot in the rope about his waist and permitting his earthly body to join what he imagined to be the broken body of his child at the bottom of the pit. “I wish I knew for certain,” he whispered. “I wish I knew if you are below, my child. Dear God, am I to know more hardship? How might I support Elizabeth when I feel as if all I wish to do is to abandon this world?”
He bowed his head then and wept. His heart breaking. At length, he murmured a passage he recalled from the book ofRevelation, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” He sighed heavily and waited for God’s answer.
* * *
“There!” Elizabeth pointed as Mr. Sheffield’s carriage bounced through yet another rut in the road. Mr. Jacobsen had permitted the horses their heads.
Mr. Sheffield held onto the strap to keep himself upright, pounding on the roof to signal for Jacobsen to stop.
The messenger had indeed been sent from Mr. Darcy, stating the gentleman had learned that Townsend meant to take Lizzy to the Queenborough Castle’s abandoned well.“What Townsend plans to do at that point, I cannot say,” read his message.
It was then that they—she and Sheffield—had set off on a mad dash across Kent. “Fitzwilliam will go to great lengths to learn if Lizzy has been placed in the well when Mr. Collins says otherwise. I cannot lose him, Albert,” she had said, at least, a dozen times over their thirty miles’ journey.
At length, the carriage slowed and the spectacle before them had unfolded. Albert beat her to the door this time, crawling down awkwardly, before turning to lift her from the opening. As quickly as her feet hit the ground, she was calling his name. “Fitzwilliam! Dear God, Fitzwilliam! She is not in the well! Do you hear me, William? Lizzy is not in the well!”
* * *
Darcy’s tears flowed easily, and his body shook from the despair filling every part of him. Reluctantly, he blew out the candle and resigned himself to the barren existence awaiting him. He reattached the lantern to his person and prepared himself to be pulled to the surface when he heard what he thought was Elizabeth calling his name. Had she found their child at Rosings? He lifted himself up to climb up the rope if necessary.
She was nearer now. “She is not in the well. Do you hear me, William? Lizzy is not in the well!”
Hope bloomed in his heart again. “Thank you, God,” he whispered before he called to those at the surface. “Pull me up!” He could feel the slight tug on the rope as Jasper steadied the rope attached to the brace under his carriage.
“Pull him out!” Elizabeth’s frantic pleas filled the air above his head. “Mr. Sheffield,” she ordered, “assist me with the rope while Jasper removes the limb blocking the wheels!”
Although Darcy doubted her and Sheffield’s combined strength was strong enough to pull him out without the assistance of his coach and his servants, the fact Elizabeth Bennet would risk her life to save him healed another fissure of his bruised existence.
“William?” she called in a strained voice.
