Mr. Darcy's Great Escape (30 page)

He did not break his stare, so it just hung in the air like a stale thing; the silence that followed it was unbearable as Elizabeth covered her mouth to hide her sob. Darcy's expression softened when he heard it, and he rose, came around the desk, and held her hands, which was as close as he'd come to voluntarily touching her in days, despite their sharing a bed. “Lizzy.” But his eyes were still unreadable. They were not soft or hard. “Just—no more talk of this. Please.”

The way he said it, she could not deny him. Very uncomfortably, she said, “All right.”

She dealt with Georgiana's tears later, in privacy, while her husband slept. In the morning, they departed for Pemberley.

***

The Bingleys were set to depart for Chatton but were delayed slightly by Bingley's delicate head injury, as a carriage ride was not immediately recommended. As Dr. Maddox recovered, Brian Maddox spent much of his time at the Bingley townhouse. “We're going into business together,” he said to his brother in Dr. Maddox's study. Brian still refused, except when invited to dine at the Bingleys', to dress like a civilized man and was walking around in his silk pleated pants and robe. He was totally unconcerned about the opinion of the Town passing in the streets. His wife did not go out much, but when she did, it was with Mugin, who was even more of a spectacle.

“There's really no need for the armed procession,” Dr. Maddox said. “We
are
in England.”

His brother, with two swords in his belt, merely said, “I promised to carry these swords, and I will. As for Mugin, I don't recommend asking him to leave his sword behind unless you want a sandal to your head.” He added with a smile, “He will do it. I've seen him do it.” He reached into the folds of his robe and removed an envelope, which he passed over the desk. “I know this is little consolation for my absence when you needed me, but I did write when I was in Japan. There was no post at all, but I wrote to you, in hopes of someday delivering it. Some of it may sound like nonsense, but it is all true. Except, of course, the things I left out.”

Dr. Maddox nodded. “Thank you.” Brian bowed and left.

Dr. Maddox was not heard from for several hours, until it was nearly time for dinner, and Caroline knocked on the door. “Come.”

“Your presence is required for dinner, Dr. Maddox,” she said, her eyes passing over the pile of rice paper letters in tiny handwriting. “What in the world is that?”

“Brian's journal, in the form of letters to me,” he said. “It's really quite fascinating.”

“Oh God,” she said. “First my brother with India, and now
your
brother with the Orient. Am I to have any
normal
dinner table discussions ever again?”

He passed her one of the piles. “Here. So you can at least contribute to the conversation.”

Caroline gave him an indignant look. She did, however, take the letters—not returning them until late the next day, when she requested to see the rest.

Brian's Story, Part 3

1810

The peace was positively beautiful. The chirping of unfamiliar birds, the sound of cooking and rustling outside, the sounds of the ocean not far away… Was he in Brighton? No, it was too bright for that. And his surroundings too wooden, too square; the woman facing him was not a proper English nurse. She forced broth down his throat, salty and fishy, then bowed and disappeared, leaving him on the white mattress on the floor.

He was vaguely aware that he was alone, and from the windows, that it was daylight. He was stripped of everything but his undergarments and shirt, but he was not chained down. They must have made a guess that he was incapable of movement, much less escape.

There he lay for he knew not how long. Slowly it came to him.
Nadezhda!
If they'd done anything to her, they would pay. Surely they realized she was his wife? What had he done, to throw her alone among such savages? He had to get up, he had to recover his strength, and he had to save her.

He sat up only with great dizziness and sat there until it passed. When he finally managed to get to his feet, Brian could only stay upright with the help of the wall, which seemed to be made of bound stalks. His limp was more pronounced than usual as every part of his body screamed out. He slowly shambled over to the doorway, where he found a richly colored silk robe more ornate than anything he had ever worn in his life and a pair of sandals made from the same grass-like stalk.

There was no guard outside. He wandered onto the porch, grasping the railing for support. Several times the world went into a haze, but then refocused, and he continued down the porch looking for another room, maybe containing his beloved.

There was a man around the corner, dressed differently, and obviously Oriental. He was wearing a black robe, pants that were wide enough to resemble a skirt, and sandals, and his head was curiously shaved like a balding person, with long hair in the back tied up in a knot above it. He seemed to pay little attention to the limping figure of Brian Maddox, looking out at the ocean instead, resting his hands within the folds of his robe. Then, from nowhere, he said something in quite a forceful voice to Brian and walked away.

Brian could not go on. He knew that much. He rested, if only for a moment, on the wooden steps, warming himself in the sunlight. The world went out again, or almost. He must have nodded off, because the man in front of him had appeared out of nowhere and was poking him awake with a stick tied up with gourds. This man was different—paler, with a long white beard and truncated pants like breeches but no proper shoes, just wooden sandals on stilts.

“Speak—speak Russian?” Brian finally murmured.

“Yes. A little,” he answered.

“Where is Nadezhda?” It was then that Brian noted that the man had not one but three curved swords in his rope belt, one hanging on one side and two on the other. He said a bit less forcefully, “My wife. Please.”

“Not Russian,
gaijin
?”

“I ask again,” he said in his own semi-broken Russian. “Where is Nadezhda?”

The man hit him on the shoulder. Right on that injured nerve that went all the way down to his leg. He must have known—but he could not have known. The man only smiled and walked away with his stick rattling from the various implements tied to it, leaving Brian to writhe in pain.

“You should have known better,” said the man next to him, a man dressed similarly to the old man, but younger, his Russian perfectly fluent. “You cannot make empty threats.”

“It was not empty,” Brian growled.

“You have no force. You are injured and sick. And you have no respect for Kayano, who declared that your life be spared.”

“I—apologize,” Brian said, trying to remember his Russian in an agitated state. “Sorry.”

“
Gomen nasai
.”

“What?”

“Sorry.
Gomen nasai
,” he said more clearly.

Brian understood. He knew enough smatterings of languages to understand when he was being taught one even if he didn't know which one it was. “
Gomen nasai
.”

“Good.” The man offered his own hand and helped Brian to his very shaky feet. “She is your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Not your lover? Running away?”

“No. But we are—run away,” Brian said. He should have learned more Russian. Nadezhda was so much better. “Where is she?”

“
Doko
. Where.”

“
Doko
,” Brian said, it coming out more impatiently than he would have liked.

“Follow,” said the man. “I am Tahkonanna.”

“Brian Maddox.” He reached out to shake hands, but apparently, the man didn't know what that meant so he retracted it. “Where am I?”

“Otasuh.”

“Cathay?”

“Nippon.”

Did he mean the Japans? How did they ever get here? It must have been closer than Brian imagined. Or they had been truly lost at sea for longer than they thought. He forgot all that when he was helped into the next room and found his wife on a similar bed being attended to by the woman in the tightly wrapped silk robe. She scampered out, bowing stiffly, like a man, to Brian and Tahkonanna. Brian would have run in, if he could walk without the Oriental's help. But Tahkonanna stopped him. “Shoes.”

“What?”

“Your shoes. Please.” For the man had already slipped his off.

Brian did so, treading barefoot to his wife's side. “Nadezhda.” Whether the Oriental took his leave or not, Brian paid no attention as he cupped her cheek. “Nady?”

This seemed to jostle her awake. “Brian,” she said, her voice weak but less clouded than his, possibly because she had the sensibility to be resting when they were both obviously still weakened. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Brian said in Romanian, kissing her hand. “Now.”

“Your color—you should lie down. Now.”

He was happy to oblige. He was feeling drained and if in this strange country it was terrible for a husband and wife to lie together, then they would have to suffer the embarrassment. “I love you,” he whispered, nestling his head into the crook of her neck, and then his strength was truly and wholly gone again.

***

Now that the immediate problem of locating his wife and seeing that she was being cared for was solved, Brian did not attempt the same feat of moving about again for some time. Nor did they interrogate their hosts, whom they saw little of except for the old woman with the food who spoke no Russian. They barely moved at all beyond the basic necessities of life.

“Do you know where we are?”

“Japan, I think. We must have been driven south by the currents.”

“Japan is not so far south from Russia.”

“No?” To be honest, his non-Western geography was not particularly well-researched. “I suppose not.”

They eventually learned Kayano was the head of the village, and Tahkonanna his son, who was fluent from some trade with the Russians. They had every intention of forcing their guests to learn their language. Instruction began immediately, but it was so foreign (and Brian's Russian not so perfectly fluent to begin with) in nature that they could barely pronounce it.

The days fell into a familiar routine. In their weakness they spent much time sitting on steps of the porch of their hut, watching the villagers go to and fro, and listening to their conversations.

There was one ritual that was never altered, not even for Sundays, whenever Sundays were here and if they even existed. Every morning, the man in the blue pants and black shirt would fight Kayano in the sort of town center in front of them. They had determined that he was from a different tribe because he dressed and acted differently, and seemed most aloof and unhappy to be there. Every day he took up a wooden sword and charged at Kayano with fury. Every day Kayano fought him off with only his staff, without drawing any one of his three swords. Despite his advanced age, Kayano was wiry and seemed impossibly accomplished at not only walking on those wooden stilt shoes but also fighting in them. Once, they even saw him block the wooden blade with his own shoe, balancing on the other leg, to which the man in black threw down his sword in frustration, bowed, and walked away.

“His name is Miyoshi,” said Tahkonanna.

“He is not from here?” Nadezhda said in Russian.

“No. He is
ronin
.” When they looked at him, he shook his head. “Warrior is the best similar word, but not the same. He is not Ainu.”

“Ainu?”

“Us. Not Japanese.”

Brian decided to hold back his remark that they seemed similar enough. “What is he doing here?”

For this, Tahkonanna had to switch to Russian. “Father took away his swords, and he cannot leave until he gets them back.”

“Why?”

“He insulted his honor. By law, Father had every right to take his head. He chose this way instead. Now the stupid samurai will win his swords back and take his own head over the shame.” He shook his head.

Brian looked at his wife; they decided to interpret that as a mistranslation because it made no sense and they did not want to offend their hosts. Instead, Brian changed the subject as Miyoshi was knocked off his feet yet again. “Miyoshi keeps saying something to me. I don't understand it.” He attempted to repeat the Nipponese phrase to the best of his ability.

“‘In the land of the Rising Sun, even if dogs, cats, and bugs can live, there is no law that Westerners can live,'” Tahkonanna said.

“Is that true?”

“By law we should have killed you on sight, Madokusu-san.”

Brian wondered if they were saving it up.

When he procured a pen—more of a brush—some ink and paper, Brian “Madokusu” began to write. Specifically, he was writing to his brother, but the utter lack of mail service prevented him from sending anything. That did not discourage him from pouring out every fascinating detail onto the page. It was also nice to write in English again, a language he'd used only to mutter to himself in the last year. He also ticked off the days as soon as he became aware enough of their passing. They had been in Otasuh nearly a month now. As unlikely as it was that any of his posts from Russia had made it to England, he had literally dropped off the map, and he doubted if he could find where he was on a map.

It was also a comfort. They were gone beyond the known world and certainly beyond the count's now terribly extensive reach. They had found shelter at last. Maybe they could, somehow, return to England. Brian knew that the Dutch East India Company stopped in Japan for the silk trade. When he inquired where, Kayano said, “To the south.”

“How far?” he asked.

“Very far.”

In the evenings, most of the men smoked long, wooden pipes in front of the fire, where their language skills increased tremendously. Brian brought up again the most important subject to Tahkonanna, switching back and forth between Japanese and Russian when needed.

“You have discovered you cannot stay here,” his host said, and Brian nodded. “If the authorities find you, they will execute you.”

“And you, for taking us in?”

Tahkonanna nodded.

“Where should we go? Back to Russia?”

“Can you travel to your home from there?”

“No. We cannot go the way we came. We must go to Cathay.”

“The Middle Kingdom does not tolerate
gaijin
much more than we do.”

Brian sighed.

“Miyoshi-san says there is a port for foreigners. Nagasaki. From there, you could ride a ship to the west.”

“How far is Nagasaki? Did he say?”

“It is the length of Japan. Very far.”

“How would we get there?”

Tahkonanna seemed surprised by the question. “How else? You walk.”

“But—we cannot travel in Japan. As
gaijin
.”

“No.” The Ainu blew a ring of smoke. “I will ask Kayano-sama.”

Later that night, Brian retired with his wife. No one had any opposition to their sleeping arrangements, or if they did, they expressed none. Tonight, they did not do much sleeping. Brian propped himself up, and they spoke in hushed tones, even though they doubted anyone spoke a word of Romanian. “We cannot stay.”

“I know,” Nadezhda said. “But Lord Kayano is thinking of a plan.”

He rolled onto his back. “I don't know why he's being so kind to us.”

“I don't think the Ainu like the Japanese, or the other way around, or both,” she said. “Miyoshi looks down on all of them. Haven't you noticed?”

“I have. But he looks down on us too, so it's hard to tell if that's not just his general disposition.”

“But he has not betrayed us.”

“That we know of.”

There was a call at the door. It was not possible to knock with the paper sliding doors. Brian had accidentally destroyed his twice already.

“Coming,” he said in Russian, as he closed his sash and went to the door. It was Kayano. “
Nani
?” (What?)

“
Kinasai
,” (Come!) Kayano said, with a little urgency in his voice. Brian nodded to his wife, slipped on his sandals, followed the old man out the door and out into the woods surrounding the forest. Kayano stopped in front of an old lantern and a statue of some sort. It seemed to be a sort of shrine. “Now,” he said. “Take this.” He passed him a wooden sword. Brian held it in his hands in confusion. “Now. Defend!”

As slow of an attack as it was, he was not ready for it. He barely got the sword up in time to block the staff from hitting him, and the force of it threw the sword right out of his hands.

“Get it!” Kayano demanded, and Brian scrambled to the wooden sword. This time, he took a proper stance against him, holding it up in his right hand. “Stupid
gaijin
! Reverse!”