Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

CHAPTER 10

THE STRANGER’S AIR of chilly calm seemed to help everyone recover their nerve—at least enough to stop throwing up or hiding in the shrubbery. Even the dogs settled down, though this was more because the dreadful had been dispensed with and an attempt to catch another scent (with Emily Ward’s fresh-severed arm) had come to naught.

There were no more unmentionables near Netherfield Park—at least not any that smelled like Mr. Ford or Miss Ward.

“Oakham Mount might be a good spot to try for the scent again,” Mr. Bennet suggested. “Perhaps it would be wise to carry on the search from there . . . this time with a little less pomp and a little more firepower.”

Lord Lumpley kept sneaking nervous peeks both at the body lying in the shallows of the lake and at Jane on the shore, splattered with its blood. Elizabeth supposed he was trying to decide which sight he found more monstrous.

“Yes . . . yes, I see your point,” he said. “We should proceed more in the manner of . . . a grouse hunt. I shall return to the house and see that the gun room is opened . . . for those who wish to continue.”

He shuffled away listlessly, and before long he and his dogs (both of the hound and lap variety) were gone, with the Reverend Mr. Cummings trailing after them in the interests of “ministering to the sorry stricken.” Mr. Bennet and the stranger had volunteered to attend to Emily Ward “in the necessary way,” and no one seemed anxious to stay and see just what that meant.

After cutting the dead girl free from her drowning stone, the men carried her body a short distance into the woods. As they settled it down in a small, rocky clearing, Elizabeth steeled herself, walked back to the water, and collected Emily’s head. She grasped it by the hair as she brought it to her father, holding it far out before her, like Diogenes with his lantern.

Jane turned her back as she went by.

“So . . .,” Elizabeth said once head and body were reunited. She had to lick her lips and swallow hard before she could go on. “What happens next?”

The stranger narrowed his dark eyes, squinting at her as if she were a pane of frosted glass he was trying to peer through.

Her father spoke up before the other man could.

“If you will permit it, sir, I would like to spare my daughter this one, last thing.”

It disturbed Elizabeth to hear her father deferring to such a far younger man, yet it bothered her even more that she might be dismissed—as indeed she was.

“You have spared your daughters too much already, Oscar Bennet,” the stranger said. “A final indulgence would be but a pebble atop Mount Fuji.” He looked at Elizabeth and gave a brusque wave toward the lake. “Go. Wait.”

Elizabeth held his gaze a moment, not moving, before choosing to do as he said.

“What will become of Emily’s body?” Jane asked as her sister rejoined her by the water.

“I don’t know. Something Papa did not want me to see.”

Together, they watched their father and the stranger. But the men were shrouded in the shadows of the forest, and all they could discern was a flurry of movement, a ray of stray sunlight flashing off a raised blade, and then, a moment later, flames and smoke that rose high like a pyre before dying out with surprising speed.

When Mr. Bennet came to collect the girls, he looked as grim as Elizabeth had ever seen him.

“Come,” he said. “We return to Longbourn.”

“All of us?” Elizabeth asked.

The stranger was striding in the opposite direction, toward a large, black horse—practically a Clydesdale, it was so big. It stamped a huge hoof with impatience as it waited for its master, its reins wrapped around a low-hanging branch.

“Yes,” Mr. Bennet said. “All of us.”

During the ride back, Elizabeth had her best chance yet to make a thorough study of the mysterious young man from “the Order” (whatever that was). She and Jane were riding behind him and their father, yet she didn’t need to look the stranger in the face to read his character. The stiffness of his bearing, the long straight line of his broad shoulders, the stern snap of his tone when speaking to Mr. Bennet, even the peculiar way he wore his long, thick, shiny-black hair, pulled up in a queue that sprouted from just below his crown—all spoke of discipline and strength of will. And haughtiness and pride, as well.

Elizabeth knew she should resent his arrogance, especially his condescension to her father, yet she found she couldn’t. It was because he represented hope, she told herself. If, as Mr. Bennet insisted, she and her sisters needed to be molded into warriors, here might be the man to do it. After all, one doesn’t forge a sword on a blancmange. It takes an anvil of iron. And this young man certainly seemed hard and cold enough to pass for one.

Upon reaching Longbourn, they found the rest of the girls engaged in proper-ish ladylike pursuits under the unenthused tutelage of Mrs. Hill the housekeeper, who’d been temporarily drafted into service as a reluctant replacement for Miss Chiselwood. Mary was hunched over a book (her history of The Troubles, Elizabeth was pleased to see); Kitty was working on her poise by toying with nunchucks while the etiquette guide she was supposed to be reading sat balanced atop her head. Lydia, meanwhile, was honing her embroidery skills with a needlepoint portrait of Mary, complete with halo, pimples, fangs, and the words OUR LITTLE ANGEL—MAY GOD TAKE HER BACK SOON floating over her wispy hair. All were shocked into silence when the stranger marched in, boomed “To the dojo—now!” and immediately marched back out.

“Come along, girls, come along,” Mr. Bennet said, waving them toward the door.

“Who was that?” Lydia asked.

“Our new master of the deadly arts, apparently,” Elizabeth said.

“Our new—?” Kitty began. She looked over at Lydia, broke into giggles, and then both girls raced for the dojo with idiotic grins on their faces.

Even Mrs. Bennet was charmed by the stranger despite his best efforts to the contrary, asking “Who is that rude, handsome man?” after he brushed past her in the foyer.

He lost some of his comeliness, if not his rudeness, once he was in the dojo, for the state of the place puckered his perfect features into a prodigious grimace.

“Are those daffodils?”

Mr. Bennet peeped over at Elizabeth and jerked his head at the flower pots crammed into the corner.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone from the Order quite so soon,” he said as his daughter hustled the flowers out and tossed them over the nearest hedge.

The stranger let his scowl reply for him. When Elizabeth was back inside, he nodded at the floor and said, “Sit.”

Mr. Bennet and the girls seated themselves in the warrior way—legs crossed, spines straight—and though the stranger didn’t compliment them on it, he did allow his glower to fade.

“My name,” he said, “is Geoffrey Hawksworth. You will call me ‘Master Hawksworth’ or simply ‘Master.’ I have been sent by a party whose name your ears are, as yet, unfit to hear. Suffice it to say, I represent a fellowship to which your father, Oscar Bennet, once belonged—a secret league of warriors sworn to eternal vigilance and readiness. As part of his oath of fealty to the Order, he swore to raise all his progeny in the warrior way. But he broke that vow. He chose to live as a gentleman and bring you up to be ladies . . . and now you find yourselves helpless at the very hour The Enemy returns.”

The young man pointed a redoubled frown at Mr. Bennet.

It pained Elizabeth to see her father bow his head, looking cowed.

“I have been tasked with setting right your father’s failing,” Master Hawksworth went on. “You will become warriors. I will make you so through exacting instruction, unremitting discipline, and a complete and utter absence of mercy. Do not mistake any of this for cruelty. It is a mercy to you, one for which you should be thankful, for it might save your lives. You will show your gratitude—and your devotion to your training—through absolute obedience. Anything I say, you must do without question. This is the first step on the path to preparedness, and you must take it with me now.”

The young man paused then, and when he spoke again his voice was so soft it sounded almost tender.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the girls said.

“Yes, what?” Hawksworth prompted them gently.

“Yes, Master,” Elizabeth said.

The Master nodded and almost—almost—smiled.

“Good,” he said. And then suddenly he was spinning on his heel and stabbing at Kitty with an outstretched arm and a pointing finger, and everything mild or kindly or human about him was lost behind a mask of raw contempt. “YOU! Jump through the ceiling and catch me a swallow!”

Kitty blinked at him. “Ummm . . . Papa hasn’t taught us how to do that yet . . . Master.”

“I did not ask what Papa has taught you,” Master Hawksworth snapped back. “I told you to jump—and you did not.” He pointed at the floor now. “Fifty dand-baithaks.”

“Dandy-whats? Uhhh . . . Father hasn’t taught us about those, either.”

Master Hawksworth threw a quick, cold glare at Mr. Bennet, then shrugged off his coat and began unbuttoning his vest.

“Then I must demonstrate.”

His vest joined his coat on the floor. When he began untying his cravat, Elizabeth could actually feel the burn of the blush on her cheeks. For a moment, it looked as though he meant to take off his shirt, as well. He was merely loosening it, though, giving his broad chest room to do its work.

When he was ready, he threw himself facedown. Then he pushed up with his arms, and his body lifted, all his weight suspended on his palms and toes.

“One,” he said.

He lowered himself until his nose touched the floor, then pushed up again.

“Two.”

And so it went, all the way to fifty. It took him no more than half a minute.

He stood up again and looked at Kitty.

“Now you.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Kitty stretched out on the floor and attempted her first dand-baithak. Her arms shook under the strain of her weight, and by the time she could say “One” her face was as red as a beet.

“YOU!” Master Hawksworth barked, pointing at Mary this time. “Jump through the ceiling and catch me a swallow.”

It had always been one of Mary’s pleasures to learn from the mistakes of others, and this she tried to do again. She promptly got to her feet, stretched her arms out toward the ceiling, and hopped straight up with all her might.

Her feet made it all of four inches off the ground.

“I’m sorry, Master Hawksworth,” she said. “I missed.”

Master Hawksworth nodded. “But you did as I said without question.”

Mary smiled primly and began to sit down.

“And you failed!” Master Hawksworth snapped. “Fifty dand-baithaks.”

“But—”

“Sixty!”

“But—”

“Seventy!”

“But—”

“Eighty!”

Mary finally learned from her own mistake and got down on the floor.

“Master Hawksworth,” Lydia said, “before you ask, I can’t jump through the ceiling and catch you a swallow, either.”

“So I would assume.”

The Master stalked over to one of the weapons racks, pulled down a dagger, and held it out toward Lydia.

“You will kill that,” he jerked his head at a fly buzzing around where the daffodils used to be, “then skin it before it hits the ground.”

“You want me to skin a fly?”

“A novitiate never questions the master’s orders! Fifty dand-baithaks!”

Lydia stretched out beside her huffing, puffing sisters.

Elizabeth saw where all this was heading: Within a minute, Jane was doing dand-baithaks, too, for though she attacked the fly without question, she missed it with every slice of the knife.

Then it was Elizabeth’s turn.

“HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-IIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” she cried, lunging at the fly.

It weaved under her first swipe. It danced around her second.

The third—to Elizabeth’s own amazement—sent it dropping to the floor. Dead.

“Not bad, Elizabeth Bennet,” the Master said. Yet his eyes said something more: When Elizabeth looked his way, she found him peering at her with what looked like naked—almost awestruck—fascination.

Master Hawksworth knelt down to inspect the fly lying before her.

“As at the lake, your zeal does you credit,” he said, his tone warming for a moment before freezing back into brittle ice. “A pity your skills do not. This fly has not been skinned—it has merely lost a wing.” He stood up with one hand held out. “Fifty dand-baithaks.”

Elizabeth gave him back the dagger and went to the floor at his feet.

“You look displeased, Oscar Bennet,” she heard Master Hawksworth say over her own panting and the roar of blood rushing in her ears. (The dand-baithaks were even more difficult than they looked.) “Do you wish to complain? If so, go ahead. I grant you dispensation this once.”

“Yes, I am displeased,” Mr. Bennet said. “It pains me to see my daughters so roughly treated.” Elizabeth caught the faint, familiar sound of one of her father’s sighs. “But no . . . I will not complain. We have been weak. I have been weak. I pray you will help us find our strength before it is too late.”

“I do, as well, Oscar Bennet. I do, as well. Now—there is a beetle in that corner. Behead it!”

Elizabeth heard the ka-chunk of a blade striking wood and holding fast. Then Master Hawksworth grunted.

“Not bad. You haven’t lost your old skills entirely, I see. But I told you to behead the beetle, not cut it in two.”

“Fifty dand-baithaks, Master?”

“For you, Oscar Bennet?” the young man said. “One hundred.”