Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls (9 page)

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 O
UR
L
ITTLE
A
NGEL
—M
AY
G
OD
T
AKE
H
ER
B
ACK
S
OON
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.”

__________________

OVER THE NEXT TWO DAYS, the Bennet girls learned many new stances and moves and, along with their father, sparred with many new weapons.

There were, as a consequence, many, many mistakes and accidents—and many, many,
many dand-baithaks
.

Lydia titters when the Master squats, legs bent into a
U
, for “the Sumo Position”? Fifty
dand-baithaks
.

Mary accidentally knocks Kitty silly with her nunchucks? Fifty
dand-baithaks
.

Kitty un-accidentally knocks Mary silly with
her
nunchucks? Fifty
dand-baithaks
. For Mary again. For not dodging fast enough.

Mr. Bennet raises an eyebrow at Mary’s punishment? One hundred
dand-baithaks
and five laps around the grounds.

Jane quickly proved the most graceful disciple, and Mr. Bennet, of course, the most accomplished—so much so that Master Hawksworth frequently had him run his daughters through their drills while he stood back nodding gravely. Yet Elizabeth, with her piercing warrior’s cry and eagerness to try any maneuver or weapon, no matter the difficulty or danger, was without doubt the most ardent student in the dojo. Though why that should be even she couldn’t say.

Certainly, the Master never spoke of it. He rarely spoke of anything except how this is done right or this was done wrong or how many
dand-baithaks
were needed to make amends for one’s unworthiness. All the Bennets truly knew of him had to be sucked out as a leech draws blood—and there was, of course, but one leech for the job.

“A lovely English spring we’re having, is it not?” Mrs. Bennet said over dinner the day after Master Hawksworth’s arrival.

The Master didn’t even look up from his food, which he’d insisted on preparing himself. Not that it required much in the way of preparation: It was simply white rice and (to the obvious disgust of all, save Mr. Bennet) raw fish.

Up to then, Master Hawksworth had declared English cooking to be “bricks in a warrior’s stomach where fire out to be,” and at mealtimes he’d remained in the dojo to eat alone. Eventually, however, he’d been coaxed inside easily enough. All Elizabeth had to say was, “It would be an honor if you joined us this evening, Master,” and in he came.

“It’s probably been twenty years since we had so balmy an April,” Mrs. Bennet forged on.

Still Master Hawksworth said nothing.

“It was an unseasonably warm spring when The Troubles first began, as well,” Mary said. “It is my conjecture that the heat in some way accounts for the return of the dreadf
OW!”

“What of the temperatures where you come from, Mr. Hawksworth?” Mrs. Bennet said, lifting the shoe heel from her daughter’s toes. “Do they range as unseasonably high?”

“Yes,” the Master said.

He reached out with the two smooth sticks he used in lieu of a proper fork or spoon, grabbed hold of a mound of rice, and stuffed it into his mouth. Mrs. Bennet waited patiently while he finished chewing so he could finish his thought, but he simply speared a floppy pink wad of fish and stuffed it in after the rice.

Mrs. Bennet grimaced and looked away, and when she again found her voice (which, alas, was never lost for long) she abandoned warmth as both a topic of conversation and a model for her deportment.

“Well. I’m glad to see you’re enjoying your food . . . if you can call it that. You’ll find the streams of Hertfordshire overflowing with fat, juicy trout you may pluck out and tuck into at your leisure. If I may ask, where
is it that you acquired a taste for such awfully
fresh
fare?”

“Japan.”

Hawksworth shoveled in more rice.

“Japan?” Mrs. Bennet said. “That’s the little island nation down around New South Wales, is it not? Full of Orientals?”

Hawksworth finally looked up from his plate—so he could scowl at Mrs. Bennet.

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Bennet mumbled, wincing. “That is the place.”

Elizabeth and Jane shared a wide-eyed glance. Master Hawksworth—a young man scarcely older than they—had actually traveled to Japan! If only he weren’t so stern and taciturn. There were so many questions to ask!

For Mrs. Bennet, however, there was only one.

“Such a long journey would surely cost a fortune. Your family could afford such a venture?”