Zombie Abbey

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  Chapter

  Forty

  Daniel wanted, wished he could go to Grace.

  She stood there alone, tears falling down her cheeks, gently sobbing at the sight of what had become of her friend.

  “Fidelia!” the dowager countess said in a peremptory fashion. “What do you think you are doing?”

  Daniel couldn’t blame the dowager countess for her reaction. In all his years in service at Porthampton Abbey, he’d never known the earl’s wife to be anything other than a wife: a benevolent presence who wanted nothing more dearly than for each meal to pass successfully with nothing unpleasant said. Who in their right mind would have ever suspected her capable of something like this? But then, Daniel figured, you never really did know what people were capable of until pushed, did you?

  “Well, someone had to save them,” Lady Clarke said, then she let fall her weapon, putting out her arms to embrace her youngest daughter.

  “Lizzy!” a voice called, and Daniel looked up to see Will Harvey racing down the grand staircase.

  “I’m fine, Will,” Lady Elizabeth said from her mother’s arms. “There’s no need to worry.”

  “What is the stable boy doing here, will someone tell me, please?” His Lordship said again in a booming voice. “And why is he calling my daughter ‘Lizzy’?”

  Daniel saw Will freeze, on one of the steps near the bottom, at this.

  “He’s my friend,” Lady Elizabeth said, gently pushing her mother away.

  “Your friend?” Lady Katherine said with some emotion Daniel couldn’t quite identify. Was it scorn? Or was it jealousy?

  And was it just him, or did Will suddenly look like he felt guilty?

  Lady Elizabeth ignored her eldest sister, adding to her father, “He’s here because I invited him. I invited him to come stay with us.”

  “You did what?”

  “What choice did I have? No one else was taking the threat seriously. He was the only other person who appeared to, the only one who seemed to know what was going on. He even gave me a pistol—”

  “So that’s where that came from,” Lady Katherine said coolly.

  Again, Daniel noted the guilt in Will’s expression. But why should he feel guilty? By giving Lady Elizabeth that pistol, he’d no doubt saved all their lives back at the churchyard or, at the very least, some of them.

  “I don’t care what he gave you or what choices you thought you had or didn’t have,” His Lordship said heatedly, “one of them was not to invite someone—a stable boy, no less!—to come stay in my house.”

  “It’s just the attic,” Lady Elizabeth said in a small but defiant voice.

  “I don’t care if it’s the rooftop! Is this or is this not still my house?”

  “Yes, Fa—” she started to say, but he wouldn’t let her finish.

  “You!” His Lordship waved his hand dismissively in the direction of Will Harvey. “Be gone. Get out of here now.”

  “Where do you propose he go?” Lady Elizabeth asked.

  “Why, outside, of course,” His Lordship said. “He certainly can’t stay here.”

  “And you can’t send him out there, either,” Lady Elizabeth said with steely resolve, hands going to hips. “No one knows exactly what’s out there anymore—none of us do, and it wouldn’t be right.”

  “I’m not sure,” Lady Katherine said, “that in the entire history of the universe, anyone has ever uttered the sentence ‘Lizzy is right.’ I’m afraid, though, I’m going to have to be the first, because she is. Father, you can’t send him out there. You couldn’t send a dog out there now.”

  His Lordship pursed his lips together for a long moment, before announcing with no small degree of exasperation, “Fine.” Then he waved his hand at Will Harvey again. “But you, go back upstairs or to wherever you’ve been hiding, and don’t let me see you again until morning. Once it’s daylight, we can decide what to do about you.”

  “Thank you, Father,” Lady Elizabeth said, and with only one backward glance—did his eyes linger longer over Lady Elizabeth or Lady Katherine?—Will Harvey went.

  Daniel looked over and saw that Grace was no longer sobbing but that tears were still falling from her eyes.

  He wanted to go to her—someone should—but he couldn’t, of course.

  And earlier, just a short time ago, when the threat had come among them, he hadn’t been able to do anything about that, either.

  He couldn’t believe he hadn’t done anything. Even just moving from his position at the back, holding his tray, would have at least been something.

  And yet he hadn’t. He’d been frozen. Even in war, that had never happened to him. So why now? Of course, in war, action had been obvious. Someone else, on the other side, is trying to kill you, and so you must kill that person first if you possibly can, and the reason that you are fighting in the first place is because people who are far more powerful than you have decided that it is a good idea for you to do so for some reason. All right, so maybe that wasn’t necessarily understandable, either, but this? Nothing he’d ever seen before, not even in war, had prepared him, could have prepared anyone for this.

  The sight of someone who’d been alive, then dead, still capable of movement without pause even after an arm had been severed, only stopping once the head had been removed. And then even that was not enough. It wasn’t until the blade had penetrated the skull that the teeth had finally stopped their awful snapping.

  And yet Raymond Allen—the duke, of all people!—had managed to act, bravely trying to draw Mr. Young’s grasping hand and snapping teeth away from Lady Elizabeth.

  Before tonight, Daniel wouldn’t have imagined the duke to have it in him. And yet he had, when no one else did.

  Daniel promised himself, if he had another chance…

  But now, Daniel saw, the duke was bent over, hands on his knees, breathing in and out rapidly as though his heart might explode within his chest at any moment. Daniel didn’t know what to call that, medically, or if there was even a name for it, but he’d seen it happen in the war. A man might act bravely in the moment, but then, as soon as the dangerous moment had passed, this would happen, as though the man were now experiencing all at once the crashing fear of everything that might have gone wrong.

  He was about to go to the duke and offer assistance when old Wright instructed, “Fanny! Can’t you see that His Lordship the duke is struggling? Fetch him something to drink!”

  “We have some tea right here, Mr. Wright,” Fanny said.

  “No,” Mr. Wright said firmly, “that’s probably gone cold by now. And anyway, water would be better. If you don’t have any plain water here, then fetch some from the kitchen.”

  Before she could move, before any of them could, there came a knocking at the front door to Porthampton Abbey.

  Everyone jumped a little at that, even Daniel.

  Who could it be?

  The earl looked all about, as though perhaps they had somehow lost one of their party and that person was now outside, but no one was missing.

  “I don’t think we’re expecting anyone else this evening, are we, dear?” the earl finally said, turning to his wife, who shrugged.

  Now the pounding came louder, more insistent.

  “Well, Wright?” the earl said. “Open the door.”

  “But Your Lordship…”

  The pounding increased yet further, as though a barrage of fists were attacking the door now.

  “Do you not hear me, Wright?” the earl said in a voice that would brook no arguments. “Answer the door. That is what we do in this household, and it is still my household: when someone knocks at the door, we answer.”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  With a stiff bow, Wright obeyed.

  Once the door had been opened, the barrage of pounding fists was replaced with a barrage of voices, as people Daniel recognized without necessarily having spoken to them before—farmers, their wives and children, even a few villagers—shouted things like, “Let us in!�
�� and “You don’t know what it’s like!” and “You must let us in!”

  Daniel couldn’t help it. At the sound of the panic in their voices, he felt panic rise in him. It was like something contagious.

  And yet old Wright never wavered. Standing there in the doorway, a bulwark against disaster, barring their entry. They could have gone around him, of course they could have, and yet they didn’t.

  Daniel couldn’t blame them. For all his referring to him, at least in his own head, as “old Wright,” the butler was a formidable man.

  And now that formidable man was telling the crowd outside in a calm but firm voice, “No, I’m afraid you can’t come in. Now, go back to your homes. You’ll be safe inside there. Run along now. In the morning we’ll sort this all out. Run along.”

  A part of Daniel was surprised to see them turn away from the door. Wouldn’t people fight more, struggle? Wouldn’t he fight more? And yet the other part of him wasn’t surprised. He’d seen things like this in the war, too. If a commanding officer were commanding enough, no matter how ridiculous or dangerous the order given, most people tended to obey the voice of authority. Even if it meant going to their own deaths.

  And as old Wright not only closed the door now but drew the bar down across it, the other door, too, Daniel couldn’t help but think that old Wright had been correct in his decision.

  Because now, you just never knew any longer with people, did you?

  “Anything for me to worry about, Wright?” the earl asked.

  “I don’t think so, Your Lordship,” Wright said, back on an even keel as he brushed one white-gloved hand against the other as though the act of barring the door might have gotten some dust on it.

  “Very good,” the earl said. “Now, shall we have our refreshments?”

  “Refreshments, my lord?”

  “Yes! Refreshments! Surely everyone still needs sustenance?”

  “But what should we do about…?” Old Wright indicated the headless body and the bodiless pieces of head with a sidewise gesture of his own noggin.

  “Oh, we can worry about that in the morning. After all, it’s not like the poor man can hurt us anymore now, can he?” As he said this last, the earl waved his hand once more, before realizing it was the hand that still held the lemon. He made a face of disgust at it before holding it out with two fingers in the direction of Wright. “Please do something about this,” he said, dropping the useless fruit into the butler’s waiting hands. Then, to family and guests at large, and with a two-handed invitation gesture toward the back parlor now that both hands were finally free, “Come? Shall we?”

  Old Wright, lemon now in his hand, turned to Fanny.

  “Fanny! What are you still doing here? Didn’t you hear me tell you? Go fetch His Lordship the duke a glass of water!”

  “Right away, Mr. Wright.”

  Fanny departed quickly. But then, a moment later: “You know,” the duke said, “maybe it’ll be quicker if I just go with her—you know, get the water in me faster.”

  Daniel watched everyone disperse—family, guests, staff—then he straightened his back, assumed his role, and bore his tray into the back parlor.

  Once there, seeing Grace, he wished again that he could just set his tray down, go to her, and comfort her.

  But he couldn’t do the latter two.

  Well, at last and at least, he was finally able to put the tray down.

  Chapter

  Forty-One

  Grace stood apart from the others in the back parlor, half listening, half grieving.

  “You know, Fidelia,” Grandmama was saying, “I could have done that, too, if I’d only gotten to the ax first.”

  “But you didn’t,” Grandfather said, sounding smugly satisfied, “because you didn’t think of it first, and even if you had, you wouldn’t have been quick enough. You probably couldn’t even lift it.”

  “Harrumph. I’ll have you know…”

  Grace couldn’t believe they were bickering over this.

  “Oh, who cares who got there first?” Mother said. “So long as one of us did what had to be done. Now who wants tea? Something a little stronger? I know I would like both.”

  Tea? Something stronger? Grace had only had sips of “something stronger” a few times in her short life and while she could see where some might find it fortifying, she didn’t think anything could fortify her now.

  Did no one care that Merry was dead? No one but her?

  Kate was flirting with Benedict, which was in no way surprising. With Merry dead and the duke gone to the kitchen with Fanny to get a glass of water, who was there left for Kate to flirt with?

  Even Lizzy, who had come so close to being attacked herself, was behaving as though nothing of great import had happened. Or, at least, nothing that couldn’t be dealt with as a matter of practicality.

  “No, Father,” Lizzy said, “I won’t explain again what the stable boy is doing here, in this house, in your house. As you said, let’s handle that in the morning. Now, the way I see it…”

  And here Lizzy launched into a long speech about people getting somehow infected when bitten, so it was vitally important to avoid getting bitten, and, of course, if someone was bitten, he would then get sick and die, as Merry had done, at which point, you had to be sure to cut off his head but be sure to penetrate the skull, too, or shoot him there, so maybe, if you knew someone had been infected, you should just go ahead and cut off his head and deliver a final cut to the skull or shoot him right away, because you were only going to have to do it later anyway, it was just a matter of time and who knew how much time you really had, so why not do it first and remove all threat?

  “Listen to Lizzy,” Kate said. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear she fancies herself some sort of doctor now!”

  “I do not!” Lizzy said. “It’s just—”

  Grace stopped listening, so now she was no longer half listening, half grieving. She was all grieving.

  At the church, she’d cradled Merry’s head after he’d been injured. And later, she’d held his body as he died. But what was there for her to hold on to now?

  Father had said they could worry in the morning about what to do about what was left of Merry, but she knew that wouldn’t be the case. He couldn’t be allowed to remain out there like that. You could hardly get from one place to the other downstairs without passing over the marble floor beneath the gallery; you couldn’t even come down or go up the grand staircase without seeing what was left of him there. While they were in here, enjoying their refreshments, Mr. Wright would no doubt slip away at some point and see to the disposal. He’d probably enlist one of the footmen, possibly Jonathan, to help him.

  And that would be that.

  The servants.

  When they’d first adjourned to the back parlor and all had been set up, Father had urged the servants to partake. He said it was what he had intended all along.

  The servants had looked reluctant at first, but eventually, under Mother’s gentle entreaties, most had been persuaded. Mrs. Owen looked perfectly thrilled to be eating rather than cooking for once. The maids had said yes to Mother’s offer of something stronger, Agnes and Becky giggling all the while. Even Mr. Wright had accepted a cup of tea, although she noticed he just stood there, uncomfortably holding the saucer and cup. Mr. Wright would no doubt rather die of thirst than run the risk, however small, of dribbling a drop of tea on his pristine uniform while in the presence of the family.

  Grace looked around some more and saw that one servant still had not partaken of anything, preferring to stay where he was accustomed, his back to the wall, eyes staring at some invisible point in the middle distance: Daniel.

  But when she took in his face, she saw that rather than adopting his typical eyes-straight-ahead posture, his face was slightly turned in her direction. And when she looked specifically at his eyes, his gaze met hers completely and he smiled a sad smile.

  Well, Grace thought, at least one person cares.


  Chapter

  Forty-Two

  Fanny knew she had to hurry.

  While those who lived their lives upstairs, their guests—well, the ones who were still alive—and even the rest of the staff had retired to the back parlor, Fanny knew she had little time to get done what she needed to get done before some of the latter group began to straggle down and back again, returning to the kitchen.

  For all she knew, Mrs. Owen or Mrs. Murphy was making her way there now. Or—heaven forbid—Mr. Wright.