The young officer offered Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth a bow, turned back to Jane and boldly kissed her hand, then pivoted and marched off toward the staircase.
“There goes a brave man,” Mr. Bennet said to Jane, and he continued watching her for a long moment even after she’d replied with a simple “Yes.”
“Is His Lordship ready?” he finally said.
“He should be. He asked if I could come in and help him with his stockings perhaps half an hour ago. He was almost fully dressed then.”
Mr. Bennet cocked his right eyebrow. “Almost?”
Elizabeth cocked her left. “Help him with his stockings?”
“Yes. His dressers are all downstairs guarding the . . .” Jane flushed pink again. “I said no!”
“Of course, you did,” Mr. Bennet said. “Now, perhaps we should—”
The nearest door swung open.
“Would you have a look at these breeches, Miss Bennet?” Lord Lumpley said, his attention fixated (as usual) on his own nether regions. “They seem puffy in all the wrong . . . oh. Good morning, Mr. Bennet. Miss Bennet. I didn’t realize the moment had arrived.”
“It has,” Mr. Bennet said.
“I see. You may as well step in, then. We wouldn’t want to miss it, would we?”
The baron moved back to let the Bennets into his large—and, to Elizabeth, sickeningly empty—bedchamber. Every other part of the house was packed near to bursting, yet His Lordship had been allowed to keep an entire room to himself. Elizabeth knew there was good reason: The night before, he’d complained more about the invasion of the lower classes than the damned, and concessions had to be made. Yet it still rankled that his room was now filled with nothing more than some furniture, scattered clothes, and a few poorly concealed bottles of gin.
“I drew these back a crack to have some light to see by,” the baron said, walking over to a set of long, emerald green drapes. “I wasn’t up to taking a good look out, though. Not before I’d had my morning tea and toast.”
“I’m afraid we ran out of water for tea some time ago,” Mr. Bennet said. “The food’s all gone, as well.”
“Oh?” Lord Lumpley pouted, then shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing to hold us back then, is there?”
He drew the curtains aside, revealing a pair of glass doors. Just beyond was a shallow balcony and, beyond that, Netherfield’s long front lawn bathed in the crimson light of dawn. When the baron opened the doors, a sound like a thousand moans or the lowing of a vast herd of cattle swept into the room.
The four of them stepped onto the balcony.
Scattered here and there over the grounds were dozens of ragged, staggering figures—easily two hundred in all, if not three. It was easy to tell the first wave of sorry stricken from their victim recruits. Half the dreadfuls looked moldy and rotten, and they hobbled on legs that had barely enough flesh to hold the bones together. The other half one could have almost taken for living, so natural was the pallor of their skin. Their faces were slack and often blood smeared, however, and many had gaping cavities where their organs had once been.
When they saw Lord Lumpley and the Bennets, they began drifting toward the balcony, some of them shrieking or gnashing their teeth.
“My God,” the baron gasped. “Just look what they’ve done to the topiary.”
Elizabeth tore her horrified gaze away from the unmentionables just long enough to point it at him.
“Surely, Captain Cannon doesn’t think he can just march out and kill so many unmentionables,” she said. “His men are outnumbered at least three to one.”
“The captain doesn’t intend to kill them all,” Mr. Bennet replied. “He merely seeks to distract them. He very wisely had the stables sealed last night in addition to the main house. Captain Cannon plans to draw the main horde off so that someone can get inside and—presuming the dreadfuls haven’t already broken in to feast upon the horses—saddle a mount. That someone would then ride west to look for a battalion of the king’s army on the march from Suffolk. If all goes well, a rescue party might very well reach Netherfield before we’ve either starved or been eaten.”
SCATTERED HERE AND THERE OVER THE GROUNDS WERE DOZENS OF RAGGED, STAGGERING FIGURES—EASILY TWO HUNDRED IN ALL, IF NOT THREE.
“If all goes well,” Elizabeth said.
Her father nodded. “Very, very well.”
There was a great mass of yowling dreadfuls clustered beneath the balcony now, and looking down at them Elizabeth saw a few familiar faces scowling back.
“Not Mrs. Ford!” Jane exclaimed. “And all the Elliots and Dr. Long, too? Oh! And what a beautiful child!”
Staring straight up at them with large, round, gray-rimmed eyes was a little girl not much younger than Lydia. She neither screamed nor moaned but instead merely gazed at them plaintively, as if hoping someone might come down to play with her. The blood smeared around her mouth and hands, however, made it plain the kind of games she would have preferred.
“We could only reach so many in time. And even then, some refused to come with us,” Mr. Bennet said, practically shouting now to be heard over the din of the dreadfuls.
He reached beneath his cutaway coat, produced a flintlock pistol and said something to Elizabeth she couldn’t quite hear.
“What?”
“I said, ‘The diversion for the diversion has gone on long enough!’”
He pointed the pistol at the sky but then changed his mind, leaned over the balcony, and aimed at the little girl.
“Why waste a bullet when it might offer deliverance?”
Both Elizabeth and Jane started to say something, but neither got out a full word.
Their father pulled the trigger, and the zombie child toppled over backward. For a moment, Elizabeth could still see its pure-white dress beneath the milling feet of the other dreadfuls, but before long even that was blotted out by the throng.
A flurry of movement caught Elizabeth’s eye, and she looked up to find that the front doors of the house had been opened. The soldiers were charging out through them, hurling themselves like a great red lance bound for the heart of the lawn. Lt. Tindall led the charge, while Capt. Cannon was at the center of the column, his cart swerving and tipping treacherously as the Limbs maneuvered it around and over the bloody cornucopia of body parts and well-gnawed bones left over from the night before.
With a deafening roar, the zombies turned and hurtled after them.
“Why aren’t we out there, too?” Elizabeth asked. “We should be joining the battle, not watching it.”
Her father glanced over at her and, worn and worried as he was, managed to look almost pleased at the same time.
“The deadly arts have their place, but volley fire—that’s what will do the greatest damage to a herd. Get them clumped up together on an open plain, and you can mow down dozens like so many weeds.”
The soldiers had stopped now and were trying to form themselves into a box—four lines facing outward, each two rows deep, the first kneeling, the second standing. The unmentionables gave them little time to arrange themselves, however, running in madly no matter how torn and mangled they might be, and the lines wavered and broke into chaos each time they almost seemed set.
“They can’t even get into formation to fire,” Elizabeth said. “If we were with them—”
Mr. Bennet shook his head, eyes still fixed on his daughter. “Your sisters and I are being held in reserve, at the captain’s insistence. But a volunteer did go along. . . .”
“Oh, Lizzy. Look!”
Jane thrust a finger toward the soldiers, and Elizabeth saw a swirl of black and pink twisting and twirling within their ranks. It bounced away from a break in the line straight into another before flipping itself over a dreadful’s head, spinning then springing then spinning again.
“Master Hawksworth!”
Elizabeth grabbed the balcony railing as if about to vault herself over and into the fray.