Chapter One #3
That, at least, was true. The dull ache that had begun during tea with Anne had intensified into something demanding and insistent, a pulsing pain that seemed to originate behind her eyes and radiate outward in waves. Each heartbeat sent a fresh throb through her skull.
“You should lie down,” Charlotte said, her voice seeming to come from very far away despite her proximity. “Let me help you upstairs.”
Elizabeth wanted to protest that she could manage alone, that Charlotte need not trouble herself, but the words tangled in her mouth and would not come out properly. She found herself accepting Charlotte’s offered arm, grateful for the support as they moved toward the stairs.
The staircase presented an unexpected challenge.
The steps seemed to multiply before her eyes, each one requiring tremendous concentration to navigate.
Her boots felt heavy, as though weighted with lead, and her legs responded sluggishly to her commands.
Once, her foot caught on the edge of a riser, and only Charlotte’s firm grip prevented her from stumbling.
“Perhaps we should call for the apothecary,” Charlotte said, her concern evident in the tightening of her fingers on Elizabeth’s arm.
“No.” The word came out more forcefully than Elizabeth intended. “No apothecary. Simply a headache. I require only rest.”
But even as she spoke, Elizabeth knew this was no ordinary headache.
She had suffered headaches before; from eyestrain after reading too long in poor light, from the stuffiness of overheated rooms, from the tension of particularly trying social occasions.
This felt different. This felt wrong in a way she could not quite articulate.
They reached the landing, and Elizabeth’s bedchamber door seemed impossibly distant down the corridor.
Each step required conscious effort, her body growing heavier and less responsive with each passing moment.
The floor tilted beneath her feet, first one direction and then another, as though she stood on the deck of a ship in rough seas.
The afternoon light streaming through the corridor windows hurt her eyes, making them water. She squinted against the glare, but that only made the throbbing in her head worse. Nausea rose in her throat, bitter and acidic.
Finally, blessedly, they reached her room. Charlotte guided her to the bed, and Elizabeth sank onto it with a groan she could not suppress. The mattress seemed to undulate beneath her, rising and falling in slow, sickening waves.
“Let me help you with your boots,” Charlotte said, already kneeling to unlace them.
Elizabeth tried to protest, to insist she could manage, but her tongue would not cooperate.
She lay back against the pillows, closing her eyes against the spinning room.
But darkness brought no relief; behind her closed lids, patterns swirled and shifted, making her feel as though she were falling through endless space.
She opened her eyes again, fixing her gaze on the ceiling beam as an anchor. The wood grain seemed to writhe and flow like water, the knots transforming into eyes that stared back at her. She blinked hard, and the illusion dissolved, but the sense of wrongness remained.
Charlotte’s hands were cool against Elizabeth’s ankles as she removed the boots, then drew a blanket over Elizabeth’s legs. Her face hovered in Elizabeth’s narrowing field of vision, creased with worry.
“I shall tell Lady Catherine that you are unwell, and give your apologies for missing dinner,” Charlotte said. “She will understand, I am sure. And I shall have cook prepare some broth for you, something light that might sit well.”
Elizabeth tried to nod, but the movement sent fresh agony lancing through her skull.
“Try to rest,” Charlotte urged, already moving toward the door. “I shall check on you in a little while.”
The door clicked shut, and Elizabeth was alone.
The room settled into oppressive silence, broken only by her own laboured breathing and the relentless ticking of the small clock on the mantelpiece.
Each tick seemed unnaturally loud, each tock reverberating through her aching head like a hammer blow.
She should rest. Charlotte was right, rest would help.
Rest would clear whatever affliction had seized her so suddenly.
She tried to relax, to let her muscles soften into the mattress, but tension gripped her entire body.
Her hands clenched into fists at her sides, her jaw remained tight, her shoulders drawn up toward her ears.
The afternoon light through the window cast long shadows across the floor, shapes that seemed to creep and lengthen as she watched. The sprigged wallpaper appeared to shimmer, the small flowers detaching from their printed stems to float through the air like dying moths.
Elizabeth squeezed her eyes shut again, trying to block out the disturbing visions. This was wrong. This was all wrong. Headaches did not do this, did not steal one’s coordination, did not make solid walls ripple like fabric, did not transform familiar objects into nightmare versions of themselves.
Fear crept through her confusion, cold and insidious. What was happening to her?
The tea. The thought surfaced through her fragmenting consciousness with sudden clarity. Something in the tea. Anne’s careful pouring, her deliberate movements, the way she had watched Elizabeth drink…
But that was madness. Why would Anne de Bourgh poison her? They were barely acquainted. The notion was ridiculous, a product of her illness-addled mind seeking patterns where none existed.
Yet the conviction remained, settling into her bones with terrible certainty. Something had been in the tea.
Elizabeth tried to rise, some desperate instinct urging her to seek help, to tell someone of her suspicions. Her arms would not obey. She managed to lift her head from the pillow, but the effort cost her dearly. The room spun violently, and bile rose in her throat.
She collapsed back, gasping. Her limbs felt disconnected from her body, as though they belonged to someone else entirely. When she tried to move her right hand, her left twitched instead – or did neither move at all? She could no longer tell where her body ended and the bed began.
The throbbing in her head had become a roar, drowning out thought, drowning out everything. Pain and pressure, building and building until she thought her skull might split open to release it.
Darkness crept in at the edges of her vision, not the soft darkness of closing one’s eyes but something absolute and hungry. It spread inward like spilled ink on parchment, consuming the room piece by piece. The window vanished. The wardrobe dissolved. The ceiling above her ceased to exist.
Elizabeth tried to fight it, clinging to consciousness with desperate determination. She had to stay awake. Had to tell someone. Had to…
But the darkness would not be denied. It wrapped around her like thick velvet, stifling and complete. Her last conscious thought was a fragmented confusion; why was this happening? Why did it hurt so terribly? Why had Anne de Bourgh’s pale eyes glittered with such satisfaction?
Then even confusion faded, and there was only blackness, deep and absolute, pulling her down into depths from which she might never surface. Her body went slack against the mattress, her breathing slowing to shallow whispers.
In the stillness of the room, the clock continued its relentless ticking, marking the passage of time that Elizabeth Bennet could no longer perceive.
Somewhere in the house below, Charlotte moved through her domestic duties, unaware that her guest lay unconscious upstairs, trapped in a darkness that was not natural sleep but something far more sinister.
The shadows lengthened across the floor, reaching toward the bed with grasping fingers. And Elizabeth, lost in the void, could not see them coming.