Page 19 of A Debt Inherited

The flies had returned. One settled on the rim of the inkwell.

Bennet did not drive them away.

* * *

Bridgetown Garrison, Barbados, August 1785

The mail was late again. When it came, the bag was lighter than usual, as though the sea had taken its share. Bennet broke the wax and drew out a single folded sheet, addressed in an unfamiliar hand. The paper smelled of England.

It was brief, the diction correct to the point of offence:

Mr Edmund Darcy requests that no further correspondence be attempted. All matters arising from past acquaintance are considered closed. Mr Henry Wray, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, acts with full authority in the matter.

The formality was perfect; the world had done its duty. He folded it again and placed it upon the desk beside the dead ledger, where names faded faster than ink.

He turned the letter over. The hand was fine, London-trained. Wray—he had heard the name once, perhaps in Cambridge days, whispered among the sons of men with influence. The law was always tidy when it wished to be cruel.

He let the page fall open upon the desk, where a fly had already settled near the fold. Bennet brushed it aside without care. The gesture left a faint print of sweat on the paper.

He rose and crossed to the window. The sea burned white to the horizon, too bright to look upon. Somewhere across it lay England, folded neat as the letter itself—cold, sealed, and indifferent.

Outside, men drilled as the surf broke against the quay.

* * *

One month later, the packet came in under a sluggish wind. The mailbag was small, the leather stiff with salt. Only one letter bore his name, written in a hand he had not seen since Cambridge. Bennet turned it over once before opening it. The seal was cracked, the paper limp, as though the sea itself had already read it.

My dear Bennet,

I write only to acknowledge a debt of honour. I would not have you suppose that silence or delegation arose from indifference. There are obligations a man must own, even when he cannot name them aloud.

May Providence keep you.

ED

Meministi, amice

He traced the sweep of the hand that had once filled pages of Latin beside his own. No clerk would have written that last line, nor known the words. The Latin was proof enough. Darcy had written it, and meant him to know.

There was no date, no address—nothing by which a reply might follow. The restraint was absolute, the mercy implicit, yet it restored something the solicitor’s letter had tried to remove.

He looked about for a place worthy of it. The letter did not belong among ledgers or orders. His hand rested upon the narrow volume that had travelled with him through fever, rain, and loneliness—Cowper’s The Task. The spine was split; the edges darkened by years of heat and handling.

He set the volume on the shelf above his desk. Outside, the sun had dropped behind the harbour wall, leaving a pale light over the sea. The flies returned, patient as ever.

Bennet did not drive them away.

Chapter 8

Bridgetown Arsenal, July 27, 1787

The air had no kindness in July. It pressed upon skin and cloth until both felt damp and heavy, and every breath brought with it the taste of salt and iron. Bennet crossed the yard with his hat in hand and his coat thrown over his arm; his shirt clung at the back, and the neckcloth he had tied with care at noon was dark at the edge. The sentry at the angle of the wall shifted his musket and touched the brim; his face shone in the falling light.

“Any trouble?” Bennet said.

“No, sir. Only the thunder walking round the horizon.”

Bennet looked beyond the palisade where the harbour lay, a scatter of masts set close like reeds, and the water dull beneath them. A low bank of cloud as hard as slate had gathered to the west; from within it there came, at intervals, a blade of light with no heat yet, only the promise. Farther off, the church bell tolled once.