Dreadfully Ever After

by Steve Hockensmith

  This proved a little too blunt, even for one as fond of plain speaking as Sir Angus. He’d laid bare their quid pro quo—the Shevingtons’ financial help for a lift to the upper crust—and his broad face flushed as he cleared his throat and turned to the driver.

  “To Westminsterrr!”

  The driver cracked his whip, and the landau rolled off through streets that were alternately deserted and crowded with roisterers, splashed with bunting flapping in the breeze and scarlet splotches drying on the cobblestones. There were long lines at all the inner gates as Londoners and tourists by the thousands wound their way south toward Westminster and St. James’s Park. Yet the checkpoints all appeared undermanned, with but a handful of sentries to watch the masses pass.

  As he had during their first carriage ride together, Sir Angus lectured the Shevingtons incessantly. But he wasn’t calling attention to points of interest this time. Instead, he seemed intent on distracting the party (or perhaps just himself) from the soldiers’ tense, sweaty expressions and the bloody Zed rods some of the hoi-polloi carried like canes and the occasional head lying on its side in the gutter. All this passed by unnoticed, or at least unremarked upon, as Sir Angus described the pomp and circumstance (and yet more pomp) to come: the coronation procession from Westminster Hall; the stately raiment of the king and Prince Regent and high steward and high constable and high this and high the other; the Ceremony of the Challenge with the king’s champion; the Ceremony of the Chop with the king’s slayer.

  “You do us a great honor by escorting us to Westminster,” Elizabeth said to Sir Angus, cutting off a lengthy discourse on the wig the king had specially made from the flowing locks of slain girl-dreadfuls. “I’m surprised you are able to do so, given your special relationship with His Majesty. Doesn’t he need you at his side?”

  “No. I was with the king all night, and when I left him this morning, I was satisfied that he was in perfect health. His recovery is complete. He stands as rrready to rule as everrr a man was.”

  “How much do we have you to thank for that?” Mr. Bennet asked. “Until only a few months ago, the king was in complete seclusion.”

  Sir Angus pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes.

  “I cannot claim sole credit for His Majesty’s recuperation,” he intoned gravely. “Though perhaps I will find, one day, that the rrresponsibility is all mine.”

  Elizabeth found the man’s words so cryptic, she wasn’t certain she’d heard them correctly. Indeed, it was becoming more difficult by the second to hear anything beyond the ringing of bells and the huzzahs of the throngs.

  The carriage was pulling up in front of the long soldier-lined walk to the abbey’s main entrance, and covering the lawn and streets around it was a vast sea of people. Many waved red and white pennants, some appeared drunk, most were grinning, and every last one of them seemed to be bellowing, “Long live the king!”

  It was a little shocking, all this enthusiasm. George III hadn’t been a particularly popular monarch, reigning as he did over the coming of the dreadfuls and the resulting isolation and chaos. England had lost its colonies, found its once-great navies unwelcome in any port, and could do nothing but watch as Napoleon Bonaparte put half the world under his little heel. The king’s one accomplishment had been siring a son—George IV, the Prince Regent—who would prove so debauched and profligate that his subjects would grow nostalgic for his father.

  It was nothing Elizabeth felt like cheering. The rest of England clearly felt otherwise, however, and as she started toward the vaunted gray arches of Westminster Abbey, with Sir Angus on one side and her father on the other, the happy roar of the crowd grew so loud she almost worried it would deafen her.

  “We must hurry,” Sir Angus said as they swept by the crimson-liveried guards keeping the mob at a respectable distance. “These accursed crrrowds have made us quite—”

  A brown blur shot past at ankle level.

  “No,” Sir Angus moaned.

  His son said the same thing, only much, much louder.

  Brummell was streaking up the red carpet toward the abbey.

  “It’s the noise!” Bunny cried as he and Kitty dashed after the rabbit. “The poor darling’s terrified!”

  “As he should be,” Sir Angus grated out, the look on his face making it plain that he was what Brummell should fear most.

  The crowd noticed the chase now, and the din grew even louder, swollen by guffaws and catcalls. The clamor disoriented Brummell all the more, and the rabbit darted left, then right, before doubling back and streaking between Bunny’s feet.

  Kitty, of course, was graced with quicker reflexes than young MacFarquhar, and she swooped down and snagged the rabbit by the tail before it could pivot and carry on again up the carpet. She promptly plopped Brummell into Bunny’s arms and then turned to beam at Sir Angus.

  “Our engagements are always so invigoratingly eventful, aren’t they? I wonder what shall happen next?”

  “Why, it can’t be!” a woman said.

  Her voice filled Elizabeth with ice-cold dread.

  A stately couple up ahead, nearly at the abbey doors, had turned to take in the confusion, and now they started back the other way, toward the Bennets and the MacFarquhars.

  Elizabeth knew with the inevitability of death what two words the lady would say next. They were, in fact, the title the woman had once hoped to gain for herself.

  “Mrs. Darcy?”

  Walking toward them were the former Miss Caroline Bingley and her husband, the earl of Cholmondeley.

  Mr. Bennet leaned in to whisper in Elizabeth’s ear.

  “Should I kill her? I know you’ve always wanted to.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Elizabeth replied. “It’s over.”

  “I almost didn’t recognize you with your hair that intriguing new shade,” Lady Cholmondeley said as she drew near. She glanced over at Kitty with the same malicious smile she’d once worn when finding every opportunity to slight Elizabeth before Darcy and her brother Charles. “There’s no mistaking your family, though. They’ve always been so very memorable. Where is your husband, pray? Escorting Lady Catherine, perhaps? Or is he still at Fernworthy, welcoming our newest niece into the world?”

  “Lady Catherine … de Bourrrgh?” Sir Angus said through teeth clenched so tightly it was a wonder they didn’t splinter.

  “You mean Mrs. Darcy hasn’t mentioned her connection to such a lofty personage as Lady Catherine the Great?” Caroline said. “That is so like her. I’ve always known her to be humble. Perhaps the result of her humble upbringing.”

  “That’s it,” Mr. Bennet growled. “I am going to kill her.”

  But it was far, far too late for that.

  “Guards!” Sir Angus stabbed a finger first at Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet and then at Kitty. “Arrest these imposterrrs in the name of the king!”

  CHAPTER 33

  “Minoru!” Darcy called out as he backed away from his cousin. “Kyabeji wo otose!”

  Drop the cabbages!

  There was a loud thunking sound as a shoot opened in the holding pen on the other side of the dojo and a load of blood-smeared cabbages dropped into the zombie trough.

  Anne’s “friends”—Romeo and Juliet and Mercury and the rest—spun around howling and began staggering across the sparring floor toward their darkened paddock, which wasn’t so darkened anymore, Darcy noticed. Something within glowed with the soft white light of a living thing. Darcy took a step toward it, drawn half by worry that one of his aunt’s ninjas had fallen down the cabbage shoot, half by a hunger that suddenly stabbed his gut.

  Anne reached out and clamped a hand to his arm.

  “It’s the cabbages,” she said. “Everyone assumes the stricken are drawn to them because they look like brains, but that’s not entirely true. You see the luminescence, don’t you? It’s the same for turnips, potatoes, and carrots, too, I’ve found. They’re not really satisfying to eat, though, and mushrooms and fruits don’t have the spark you�
�d see in a handful of sand. It’s puzzling.”

  When the last unmentionable was back in the pen, furiously stuffing cabbage into its rotting maw, a section of nearby wall rumbled and began sliding to the side. A moment later, the zombies were again sealed in their vault to await the next round of target practice or the next visit from Anne.

  Darcy could hear the ninjas outside unbolting the dojo doors. He jerked his arm free and began moving toward the nearest one.

  “I understand,” Anne said serenely. “It is a difficult thing, letting go of the past. Yet I know you will eventually come to accept the way of things. Accept yourself. And me. It is but a matter of time … and we will have all of that we need.”

  Darcy stalked out and grabbed the first ninja he saw.

  “Where is Lady Catherine?” he demanded in Japanese.

  “I do not know.”

  Darcy had a hold of the man by the tunic, and he twisted his fists into the rough black fabric and lifted with all his might. To his surprise and satisfaction, he had more of it than he thought.

  The bottoms of the ninja’s tabi boots lifted off the floor. Just an inch or so, but enough to make the right impression.

  “You fear incurring your mistress’s wrath?”

  Darcy brought his face so close that the two men were practically rubbing noses. The ninja’s life-light wasn’t just something Darcy could see now. He could almost taste it.

  He tried to ignore the fact that his mouth had begun watering.

  “Fool,” he spat, giving the ninja a shake. “Tell me what I want to know or Her Ladyship will never have the chance to punish you, for I will have already snapped your spine in two.” Darcy cocked his head to the side and leaned down toward the ninja’s neck. “Or perhaps I should simply bite you.”

  “The Highest One is hunting in the wood near Badgers Mount!” the man cried. “Please, tell her it was Yoshio who told you! He calls you ‘He-Demon’ and says we should kill the both of you.”

  His wide eyes darted toward the training hall. Toward Anne.

  With a grunt of disgust, Darcy threw the ninja aside and stomped off toward the road.

  His strength may have been returning, but the walk was still long and wearying. Badgers Mount was three miles beyond the borders of Rosings—taking his aunt far enough away, Darcy realized, to give him lots of time alone with his cousin. So it had been all week. Even with an ailing nephew to look after, Lady Catherine had been out hunting every day. Because the real game had been afoot at home.

  Normally, Darcy would have taken a horse to go look for her, but he didn’t trust himself with so much animal, so much glowing life, so close. Even the sheep grazing in the fields seemed to him like an endless buffet stretched out before a starving man, and it took a painful act of will not to stray from the path when he saw an untended chicken coop.

  Was this what he had to look forward to? Licking his lips as he thought of chomping into livestock? Pulling the wings from butterflies and befriending corpses, like Anne? With Anne, in fact … and without Elizabeth? If so, his supposed salvation had been his damnation. He would have been better off dying back at Pemberley.

  And then, just as he reached the most secluded, heavily wooded stretch of road yet, Darcy heard it: the high, breathy voice of a child singing softly. Something about it captivated him, entranced him, and he left the road and followed the sound into the forest.

  The voice grew louder as he made his way through the thicket, and it wasn’t long before Darcy saw its source. A girl, perhaps seven years of age, her golden hair in pig-tails, was singing to herself as she skipped around a flower-shrouded glade. She clutched a bouquet in one hand, and every so often she would stop and pluck another handful of dandelions or poppy blossoms, her song never faltering.

  I’m lonesome since I crossed the hill

  And o’er the moor and valley

  Such heavy thoughts my heart do fill

  Since parting from my Sally.

  I seek no more the fine and gay

  For each doth but remind me

  How swiftly passed the hours away

  With the girl I left behind me.

  Darcy stopped in the shadows, half-hidden behind a gnarly old oak, and simply watched for a while. It was the purest picture of innocence he’d ever seen. And, oh, the light of this child! It was blinding, yet he couldn’t look away. He found that he longed to be closer to it. To bask in its warmth. To take its warmth and make it his own.

  Slowly, stumblingly, almost as if sleepwalking, he stepped out from behind the tree and started toward the meadow.

  The girl stopped singing and skipping and stared into the forest. She wasn’t looking at Darcy, though; her back was to him. Whatever had silenced her was on the opposite side of the clearing.

  Darcy followed her gaze and felt, for a moment, as if someone had left a stray mirror propped up among the trees and brush. A tall dark-haired man was lurching toward the glade, eyes fixed on the little girl.

  When his doppelgänger stepped into the sunlight, Darcy could see the green tint to his skin and the bloat that was starting to swell his belly and, most notable of all, the chopping knife through his neck, the handle sticking from one side, the blade’s tip from the other.

  The zombie gurgled and loped toward the girl.

  She turned and ran … for all of three seconds. Then, inexplicably, she stopped beneath the jutting branches of a huge yew tree. A dozen more strides and the unmentionable would be on her, yet she didn’t so much as twitch, let alone scream and flee.

  The horror of what he was about to see finally snapped Darcy from his trance, and he cursed himself for having brought no weapon from the house. He frantically scanned the underbrush for a rock to throw or a fallen branch to use as a bludgeon, but there was nothing near at hand and no time to keep looking.

  He had just enough strength to lift a ninja off the ground. He had to hope that was enough to stop a hunger-crazed zombie.

  Before Darcy could take a step toward the girl, however, she shot straight up into the air, as if the Almighty Himself had finally taken mercy on one of the strange plague’s victims-to-be and plucked her from harm’s way. Her ascent to heaven ended a bit prematurely though—just beneath a particularly sturdy branch some twenty feet off the ground. Even the unmentionable looked surprised. But that didn’t stop it from positioning itself beneath the dangling girl and jumping toward her, making hopeless swipes with its stiff arms.

  The little girl began twirling in a slow circle, and Darcy finally noticed the thin rope from which she was suspended. It was secured around her chest, the line obscured by the high waistline of her dress. The rope was knotted in the back and, when slack, would have been hard to distinguish from the off-white muslin against which it hung. Darcy could see now how the other end ran down a series of ring bolts hammered into the tree and disappeared into a thick tangle of juniper bushes just beyond the trunk.

  “Looks like this one’s alone, m’lady,” the girl said. She sounded remarkably bored for someone gazing down at a leaping dreadful intent on grabbing (and eating) her feet. She amused herself by trying to drop flower petals into the creature’s upturned mouth. “No need to worry about scaring off the rest of the herd.”

  “I will be the judge of that,” the juniper bushes seemed to say. They sounded exactly like Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

  The zombie stopped its futile clawing at the air and turned toward the new voice.

  “Now look what you’ve made me do,” the juniper bushes said, and the unmentionable’s head promptly exploded, spraying bloody pulp in every direction. The rest of the body topped over backward as straight and stiff as a felled tree.

  “Oh, dear,” the little girl sighed, inspecting the gore dripping from the hem of her dress. “Those stains will never come out.”

  Lady Catherine emerged from the bushes carrying her still-smoking elephant gun.

  “You are becoming a most impudent girl. And if there’s one thing I don’t tolerate long,
I assure you, it’s impudent girls. If you want your sixpence—and you don’t want a thorough English beating—you will hold your tongue next time we have a dreadful so …”

  In one smooth swirl of motion, the lady tossed aside her rifle, drew twin flintlocks from the bandolier criss-crossing her stalking gown, and spun around toward the thick oak Darcy had been hiding behind. She kept her pistols pointed at it a full minute before the little girl spoke again.

  “Are we hunting trees now, m’lady?”

  “I thought I heard something,” Lady Catherine said, holstering her pistols. “You will now only receive a groat for the day, Miss Flynn. And when I bring you down, I shall have to clap you once upon the left ear.”

  “Yes, m’lady,” little Miss Flynn grumbled.

  Lady Catherine peered into the forest again for a long, silent moment before lowering her zombie bait back to earth. She had indeed heard something, of course. Someone who’d slipped away, bound again for Rosings.

  Darcy had changed his mind about talking to his aunt. There was nothing more to say. His reaction to Miss Flynn had shown him as much.

  Elizabeth was right. He was tainted, befouled, beyond redemption. He could never again be what he once was. And he wouldn’t allow himself to become like Anne.

  There was a special case in his aunt’s trophy room. It held two swords. One, Lady Catherine always said, she would use to disembowel herself if she were ever bitten by one of the sorry stricken. The other was for her second—whatever comrade or ninja was on hand at the time—who would use it to lop off her head, in accordance with tradition.

  Darcy would have no second. He was and would be utterly alone. That wouldn’t matter, though. He was strong enough again, both in body and in will.

  He could commit hara-kiri all by himself.

  CHAPTER 34

  Elizabeth had just been exposed as the fraud she was before what seemed like half of England, and a part of her didn’t mind. In fact, that part of her—it felt like a very large part, actually, perhaps as much as ninety-nine percent—wasn’t simply ready for the yeomen of the guard outside Westminster Abbey to throw themselves on her. It was anxious for it. Anxious to fight.