The Avenger:
Thomas Bennet and a Father’s Lament
By
Don Jacobson
A Pride and Prejudice Variation
© 2018 by Donald P. Jacobson. All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced by any means—electronic or mechanical—without the expressed written consent of the holder of this copyright except for brief excerpts for review purposes. Published in the United States of America.
Cover image: Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935), Fifth Avenue Nocturne (1895) Oil on canvas. Original is found in Cleveland Museum of Art. This is a faithful reproduction of a two-dimensional public domain work of art. The work of art is in the public domain itself because the author of the work died in 1935 in the country of its origin and in other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 80 years or less. Accessed from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Childe_hassam,_notturno_sulla_fifth_avenue,_1895_ca.jpg
Cover design by Janet Taylor. JT Originals.
All characters, real or imaginary, are treated as fiction and may have been altered for literary purposes. The author apologizes in advance for any inconvenience or discomfort that may be caused by fictional characters’ resemblance to persons living or dead.
Works by Don Jacobson
The Bennet Wardrobe Stories
Miss Bennet’s First Christmas
The Bennet Wardrobe: Origins
The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey
Henry Fitzwilliam’s War
The Exile (Pt. 1): Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque
Lizzy Bennet Meets the Countess
The Exile (Pt. 2): The Countess Visits Longbourn
The Avenger: Thomas Bennet and a Father’s Lament
Other Pride and Prejudice Variations
Lessers and Betters Stories
Of Fortune’s Reversal
The Maid and The Footman
Lessers and Betters
Table of Contents
Dedication
Preface
Cast of Characters
Gibbons Rules of the Wardrobe
Bennets of Longbourn
Biographical Note
Book One: Prelude
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Book Two: Pastorale
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Book Three: Adagio, Pas de Deux
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Book Four: Intermezzo
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Book Five: Denouement
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII
Chapter XLVIII
Chapter XLIX
Chapter L
Chapter LI
Chapter LII
Chapter LIII
Book Six: Finale
Chapter LIV
Chapter LV
Chapter LVI
Afterword
About the Author
Other Works by the Author
End Notes
Dedication
There has always been one force that has driven me to try to become the best version of myself. That is the woman who has shared my joys and sorrows for decades.
I would be less than half a whole without you, Pam. Thank you for finding that wonderful goldfish pond in a hotel lobby all those years ago. You are the mermaid who lifts me above the waves.
Preface
The Avenger: Thomas Bennet and a Father’s Lament explores the story of the pater familias of the Longbourn clan immortalized by Jane Austen in her magisterial work Pride and Prejudice. His Wardrobe-determined journey will pass through the timelines of all five of his daughters…sometimes more than once.
While the structure of this novel is generally linear, readers will notice some scenes and allusions to other books in the Series which themselves explore the comings and goings of the Bennet users of the Wardrobe in different or similar timeframes. While these references are not intended to confuse first-time readers of a Bennet Wardrobe story, it is possible that a very normal “Wha….?” May be uttered from time-to-time.
This is in no way intended to dissuade you from carrying on to the subsequent pages herein, however, a more rewarding experience may be found through reading the novels and novellas in the following sequence.
The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey
Henry Fitzwilliam’s War
The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque
Lizzy Bennet Meets the Countess
The Exile: The Countess Visits Longbourn
The Avenger: Thomas Bennet and a Father’s Lament
I assure you that there is madness to the method employed. As a writer, I seek to bring you, dear reader, to a deeper understanding of the persons behind the plot. In many cases, characters reach crises offstage that will be discussed in a later offering. I only ask that you be patient. All will be revealed in due time.
Dramatis Personae
The Bennets of Longbourn
Mr. Thomas Michael Bennet, Master of Longbourn Estate
Mrs. Frances Lorinda Bennet, Mistress of Longbourn Estate
The Fitzwilliams and Darcys of Matlock House and Pemberley
Thomas Fitzwilliam, 12th Earl of Matlock and “M”
Anne Reynolds Fitzwilliam, Countess (12th) of Matlock
Richard Edward Fitzwilliam, Viscount of Matlock, “Preacher”
Eileen Mary Nearne, MBE, Viscountess of Matlock, “Rose”
Georgiana Catherine “Kitty” Cecil-Darcy, 4th Countess of Pemberley
Lord David Cecil-Darcy, Lady Georgiana’s husband
Elizabeth “Lizzy” Schiller, daughter of the 4th Countess of Pemberley
Graf Alois von Schiller, Lady Elizabeth’s husband, Hauptmann von
der Fernspäher (German Special Forces) (detached duty)
Dr. Henry Wilson, physician, expert in infectious diseases
Mrs. Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, A Life Director of the Bennet Family
Trust and her Daughter, Elizabeth, Woman’s Auxiliary
Territorial Service Truck Mechanic #230873
Edward Crawley, a barrister at Wilson and Hunters
Michael Tomkins, retired chief mechanic of the Matlock properties
The Beach House at Deauville
Letitia (Letty) Villet Robard, Housekeeper of the Beach House
Denis Robard, Letty’s husband, Capitaine de le 1RPMIa
(1er Regiment Parachutiste D'Infanterie de Marine) (French
Special Forces) (detached duty)
&n
bsp; Eloise Fitzwilliam Robard, the 12th Earl of Matlock’s sister
Feldwebel (ret) Manfred Liebermann, a Schiller family retainer
Madame Claudia Liebermann, formerly the Widow Villet
Richard W. Leopold, PhD, American academic
The Villain
Freiherr Marius von Winterlich, a former Standartenführer of the SS
The Crime Lord
William “Billy” Hill, a gangster
The Sword of Israel
Isser Harel, Second Director of the Mossad (1953-63)
C.S. Lewis in his 1958 lectures on the BBC
identified four types of
love governing positive human interactions:
Storge: Empathy Bond
Philia: Friend Bond
Eros: Erotic Bond
Agape: Unconditional Love.
I have discovered that the Bennet Wardrobe
operates in the service of a Fifth Love:
Exagoras Agapis: Redemptive Love.
This is the love which drives us to become better
versions of ourselves.
Yet, t’was Niebuhr who identified
The ultimate and Sixth Love:
That which forgives
Such love makes all human life possible.
May we all find
Synchotikí agape
Don Jacobson, 2018
Gibbons’ Rules of The Wardrobe
Only blood descendants of Christopher Bennet of Longbourn Estate, Meryton, Hertfordshire will be able to utilize the Cabinet to visit the future. No other person will be able to activate the forces channeled by the Wardrobe.
Time transit will be accomplished from the Wardrobe in the present to the Wardrobe in the future. If the Wardrobe is altered, damaged or destroyed in the future, travel beyond that point in time will be impossible.
Each time voyage is a cycle that must be completed. A cycle is one trip to the future accompanied by a return trip to moment of departure. The Bennet cannot use the Wardrobe to jump to one future and then jump to another future beyond.
Time travel will only be undertaken based upon the expressed desire of the Bennet. However, the Wardrobe will interpret that desire and ascertain what is best for the Bennet, the Bennet family, and the Wardrobe itself.
Travel forward in time does not stop the progression of time in the Universe. If the Bennet spends a year in the future and uses the Wardrobe to return, the Bennet will have aged one year.
No travel to any past before the immediate present is possible.
No male Bennet will be able to sire offspring in the future having travelled to that future through the Wardrobe in order to prevent improper relations. No female Bennet can increase in the future and then return to the past while awaiting confinement. Bennet children born in the future will not be able to return to the past with their parent.
Other rules may be discovered that will modify these strictures.
Destiny once composed cannot be undone (C. Bennet, 1697)
9. Under no circumstances should an increasing woman, be she a Bennet or a non-Bennet carrying a Bennet babe, touch the wardrobe lest both be transported because of the closeness of their bond. (S. Bennet, 1760)
10. All traveling Bennets must immediately contact the head offices of the Bennet Family Trust in London using whatever means fitting for the epoch. (T. Bennet, 1812)
11. A non-Bennet may travel if in close contact with a Bennet when the Wardrobe is activated. However, that non-Bennet cannot complete the cycle without the assistance of the original Bennet. (T. Bennet, 1814)
12. Upon arrival, traveling Bennets must ascertain the correct date and location prior to leaving the vicinity of the Wardrobe. Under no circumstances shall the Bennet leave the vicinity of the Wardrobe until personal security is established lest the Wardrobe be compromised. (M. Benton, E. Benton, 1816)
13. The most senior Bennet Keeper in any timeframe may, at his or her individual discretion, determine to alter any Keeper-derived Rules of The Wardrobe that were created by men to govern the behavior of men. All changes will be made only with the advice and consent of the Life Directors of the Bennet Family Trust. (T. Bennet, 1947)
14. The Wardrobe may determine that two Bennets, one already having traveled forward but not yet having completed the cycle, may both move forward if they are in skin-to-skin contact when the cabinet is activated by the untraveled Bennet. (M. Benton, 2009)
The Bennets of Longbourn
A Biographical Note
Many readers of The Bennet Wardrobe audiobooks are by now familiar with my use of both fictional and historical characters in these stories. My intention is to create an interesting context for the characters and the plotlines.
While many (Sherlock Holmes, Pierre Auguste and Aline Charigot Renoir, and Sigmund Freud) are familiar, I rise here to introduce you to an historic personage with whom you are, in all probability, thoroughly unfamiliar.
Eileen Mary Nearne, MBE, Croix de Guerre (1921-2010) was a legendary British SOE field agent in the later years of WWII. She was inserted into Occupied France in early March 1944 in preparation for Operation Overlord. After sending well over 100 messages back to London, she was captured by the Germans in July 1944. She survived interrogation by the Gestapo and was later transferred first to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and then to a labor camp in Silesia.
She escaped from the camp in April 1945 and was captured by the SS, only to convince the black helmets that she and her companions were harmless. They were hidden by a priest in Leipzig until liberated by American forces at the end of the war.
While her life read like a work of highly imaginative fiction, scant notice was ever paid to Nearne and her role in the war. She lived out her life in relative anonymity, suffering the effects of what we now refer to as PTSD. Her war record and honors remained generally unknown until her flat in Torbay was searched after her death.[i]
Her codename was “Rose.”
O Röschen rot!
Der Mensch liegt in größter Not!
Der Mensch liegt in größter Pein!
Je lieber möcht' ich im Himmel sein.
Da kam ich auf einen breiten Weg:
Da kam ein Engelein und wollt' mich abweisen.
Ach nein! Ich ließ mich nicht abweisen!
Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott!
Der liebe Gott wird mir ein Lichtchen geben,
Wird leuchten mir bis in das ewig selig Leben!
O little red rose!
Man lies in greatest need!
Man lies in greatest pain!
How I would rather be in heaven.
There came I upon a broad path
when came a little angel and wanted to turn me away.
Ah no! I would not let myself be turned away!
I am from God and shall return to God!
The loving God will grant me a little light,
Which will light me into that eternal blissful life![ii]
Gustav Mahler
Book One
Prelude
(The Preacher and The Rose)
accelerando
(gradually increasing in speed)
I am a rose of Sharon,
a lily of the valleys
Song of Solomon, 2:1
Chapter I
A concrete blockhouse in the Black Forest, Summer of 1945
The bare bulb hung limply at the end of a long wire: the cable’s poorly made fabric insulation frayed by years of indifferently sealed gaskets unable to exclude the extremes of the trans-Alpine weather. The cord dropped down from a ceiling rimed with limey stalactites of varying lengths, leached from its surface; bearing silent testimony to the hurried and haphazard nature of the entire structure’s construction.
Despite whatever long-forgotten reason for its erection—surely an odd word given that the only evidence of its existence was a poorly mortared casement protruding above the brush-covered hillside—the sub
terranean building served one remaining purpose. T’was a place of confinement; a last stop at the end of a long track across Central Europe which led from the catchments of now-leveled camps and Gestapo basements ever deeper into the bowels of a corpse that no longer was bloated, but rather subsiding into the final corruption of decomposition.
That the blood supply so necessary for political movements —money, weapons, willing accomplices, and a compliant population—had long since ceased to flow through withered arteries since the Slavic hordes and the khaki-green wave had collided at the Elbe mattered little. The ideological blindness that had powered the multi-generational hatred still blinkered the soul of the one who held the key to the rust-rimed door that locked away a heart of singular nobility.
That single lamp pitched her nakedness into a pastiche of light and dark planes; those inky patches relieved by a whiteness of skin, pale to near translucence, transected by a network of bluish blood vessels, gently throbbing, the only other evidence of life beyond the tortured movements of her ribcage as she raggedly inhaled and then released in a tremulous sigh.
The stress position that had been her norm for days, if not weeks, had her crouched, kneeling, and barely able to support her withered haunches upon her heels. The bindings at her ankles prevented any attempt to stand. Her arms were manacled behind her back and hoisted to a near-impossible angle by a rope running through a pulley mounted on the ceiling and tied off on a cleat adjacent to an unseen and doorless portal. Her head hung between hunched shoulders, her once-blond hair draping toward the rough concrete floor, no less greasy with bodily waste than the ancient pavement upon which she knelt.