Chapter Seventeen
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
fitzwilliam
Oh, Lord, Rosings!
I was alive.
It had worked. I suppose I could die again and again, then. Well, that was relieving. I swung my legs out of the bed and massaged my neck.
Now, to go and find Elizabeth, I supposed.
I started across the room towards the door, and I heard the sound of very loud bangs, one after the other. It sounded rather like gunfire.
I paused, alarmed.
It sounded as if it was coming from downstairs.
But… that wasn’t right. I had lived this particular Thursday, in Rosings, ad nauseam, and this sound never happened.
I threw open the door, still in my nightclothes, and I rushed down the stairs.
When I got to the bottom, there were bodies.
Servants, slumped over, bleeding from their heads and chests and throats. I let out a cry and rushed off for the breakfast parlor. Usually, Richard was in there, reading some gossip sheet or other. Usually, I would sit down and he would tease me about sleeping late (because he got up with the dawn due to being used to being in the army and loved to rub my face in that) and then my aunt, Lady Catherine, would arrive with Anne trailing along behind her.
But when I got to the breakfast parlor, Richard wasn’t there.
I went over to his seat. The gossip sheet wasn’t there either, but there was a stack of letters sitting out on the sideboard next to some kippers and sliced bread. I sorted through them until I found the sheet.
Yes, it was Thursday, all right, not that I had come to expect anything else.
I went to the door of the breakfast parlor and thrust it open.
There was my aunt, Lady Catherine, coming down to breakfast.
Bang .
She started, blood arcing out of her forehead, her eyes going dull.
I cried out.
“Will?” said a voice.
I turned and there was George damnable Wickham, with a brace of guns over his shoulder, like one might have a brace of arrows. He was plucking one out, like one might pluck out an arrow.
“What are you doing here?” he said to me.
“What are you doing here?” I roared.
He took aim with the gun and shot my cousin Anne, who was cowering behind her dead mother, silent, though, as if she was too frightened to let out a squeak.
Anne’s head jerked back and she slumped over.
I uttered a word—a very bad and very uncouth word. “What are you doing? ” I screamed at Wickham.
He plucked out another gun. “Stop screaming, Will.”
“I will not stop screaming!” I screamed.
And then, Wickham shot me.
elizabeth
I sat up straight in my bed at Rosings, letting out a little cry.
I examined my head. I’d been shot directly between the eyes. It still smarted there.
I touched the spot, and moved my fingers down.
They were trembling.
No blood.
Letting out another cry, I vaulted out of bed and hurried over to survey myself in the mirror. I looked whole. I wheezed out several gasps. I gazed into the mirror, unsure of what to do.
I couldn’t help it.
I had to go look in on Maria!
But then, halfway to her room, I remembered that Maria was out looking for ribbons with Charlotte. I sagged into the wall in the hallway, quite distraught.
One of the servants moved past me. “Would you be needing some help, ma’am, then, this morning?” she said to me.
“Help?” I was utterly flummoxed.
“You’re not dressed,” she said to me.
I looked down at my shift. “Right,” I said in an insubstantial voice. “Not dressed.”
“I can come right by and help you into your stays if you like,” she said with a smile.
I cleared my throat. “No, I shall manage myself, thank you.” I usually used the set of stays that laced up the front today. It was easier to put on myself.
I went back, dressed myself, and presented myself to the breakfast parlor.
But it wasn’t simply Mr. Collins in there.
It was Mr. Wickham, and he had a gun.
Mr. Collins was sitting there, with his hands up, puffing in terror.
Mr. Wickham nodded at me. “Elizabeth,” he said. “Sorry about that. I shoot everyone just as they appear, and I wasn’t expecting you. You were all very late yesterday, anyway, but I think I’ve figured that out. I think, usually, you’re not here, and then, right around ten o’clock, that’s when the Collinses get themselves together to go round to Rosings and tell everyone you’re missing, well, probably to inquire if you’re there. But yesterday, no one came at ten o’clock, and I was too busy musing over the appearance of Will Darcy to think it through, but… what happened with you two?”
I licked my lips. “You shot me.”
“I did,” he said. “But I’ve apologized, haven’t I? You’re not hurt. You’re fine. It was an accident. Can we get past that?”
Mr. Collins cleared his throat. “Mr. Wickham, is it? I don’t know if we were rightly introduced, but I did see you on the streets of Meryton back in November, if you recall? I was staying with the Bennets at the time. How about you put that gun down?”
Mr. Wickham pulled the trigger.
Mr. Collins’s cheek burst out in gore and shattered bone. He fell forward into his tea cup.
I clapped both hands over my mouth and made a very small noise in the back of my throat.
Wickham rolled his eyes. “Oh, don’t be that way.” He dropped the gun. I now realized he had a number of guns, all in a sort of bucket on his back. “I have shot Darcy, though, this morning, so you’ll probably be displeased about that.”
I lowered my hands. “Why are you shooting everyone?”
“I don’t rightly have to, I suppose.” He shrugged. “But it does get annoying, you know? One day, I shot someone just because I could not bear to listen to them saying the same thing again, you know? Do you know?”
I swallowed.
“Of course you know.” He nodded at me. “It’s your fault it’s been Thursday every day for so many bloody Thursdays, isn’t it?”
“It’s not my fault,” I said.
“Well, it’s his fault, then,” said Wickham. “Willie-Will’s. Whatever the case, I’ve gotten in the habit of it. Kill everyone except anyone useful, like the cook, and then you have the whole day, full of blessed peace.”
My lips parted in shock and horror.
“Oh, come now, it’s not as if they’re really dead!” He ambled out of the breakfast parlor. “You coming, then? There’s quite a spread at Rosings if you’re hungry.”
I stared at Mr. Collins, dead, bleeding into his tea cup. I let out something like a sob. And then I went after Mr. Wickham.
“I don’t understand how you ended up here!” I called as I ran after him. “You were not here, and you should start each day in Meryton.”
“Yes, if I get myself killed, I wake up there in my tent,” he threw over his shoulder. “And if that should happen, I don’t know if I’ll come back out here or not. I was here only because I was looking for Darcy and that pocket watch, but I think I’ve gotten out of that part of it.”
I fell into step with him. “You mean the part where you try to make it stop?”
“Yes,” he said, with a nod. “I’ve accepted it mostly, now, I think. It’s not so bad, once you have everyone shot dead, anyway. Peace, like I said.”
“Mr. Wickham,” I said, “you cannot go about shooting everyone every Thursday.”
“I assure you, Elizabeth, I can and I have and I do.”
“And no one has give you leave to call me by my first name!”
He shrugged. “I don’t suppose any of that sort of thing matters.”
I might have said more, but I looked up to see that Charlotte and Maria were cresting up over the hill, coming back from town, and I didn’t wish him to see that, so I urged him on, moving ahead of him so that he would catch me up.
I don’t know what I thought to accomplish by doing this, however, for it was not as if Charlotte and Maria would not immediately discover Mr. Collins’s body, and if they did so, they would then raise the alarm, which would mean they would eventually come to Rosings, and there, Mr. Wickham would probably shoot them.
I was protecting no one.
But I did not care what he said. It did not matter if they weren’t really dead. You could not go around shooting people like this, even if they did all just reset. It was abominable.
I resolved to find some way to talk him out of it before Charlotte and Maria appeared. I was not sure what that would be, but—
“Wait, you said that you shot Will, my Will?” I said. “Mr. Darcy?”
“Mmm,” he said. “Twice now. Yesterday, well—whatever you call it, last Thursday? Anyway, he surprised me coming out of the breakfast room whilst I was taking care of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and the sickly one, Anne. I wasn’t expecting him here. He is never here. But when I arrived the first day, everyone was concerned about the absence of the two of you, obviously, because you were supposed to be here.”
“Yes, they were always searching for us, and we were always evading them,” I said.
“So, anyway, I wasn’t going to shoot him, necessarily, but he would not shut his mouth. He was just yelling at the top of his lungs. I believe I’ve mentioned how much I enjoy peace? So, I had to. The next morning, that’d be today, I first went in—as I usually do—to deal with Colonel Fitzwilliam, because he’s always the bear of the bunch. He reacts the quickest, gets a gun, starts after me. So, I just shoot him before he wakes up.”
“Oh, my Lord!” I put a hand to my chest. “How long have you been doing this?”
“I don’t know.” Wickham shrugged. “Since I decided to come to Kent, I suppose. I was looking for Darcy, as I said, but he wasn’t here, until yesterday, that is. Then I just decided to stay. It’s nice here, really, lots of nice things. A very nice house. Lydia likes it.”
“What do you mean, ‘Lydia likes it?’” I said, horror rising in my chest.
“You’re getting me distracted!” said Wickham. “I have no one but Lydia to speak to these days, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but she’s not exactly the brightest of stars in the sky, so I think my conversational ability has suffered rather a great deal.”
“Mr. Wickham, do you mean my Lydia?”
“Anyway, as I was saying, I wasn’t necessarily going to shoot Darcy yesterday, but he was squawking, so I silenced him. Then, this morning, I went in to see to Colonel Fitzwilliam, and when I get there, Darcy’s already there. I suppose he woke and directly ran for the colonel, thinking they’d make a stand against me together or something. I could not deal with that nonsense, so I had to put him down again. Anyway, perhaps that’s for the best. It’s not as if Willie and I are the fastest of friends, truly.”
“Stop dodging the question about Lydia!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, yes, your sister’s here,” said Wickham. “It’s a bit of trouble, though, keeping her here every night at midnight in addition to all of these guns.” He nodded at the buckety-thing that was strapped to his back. “I have to be holding onto everything, including her, and then she’s very confused, and screams and runs about, and it takes until nearly dinner time to convince her to let me have my way with her again.”
I stopped short, my heart in my throat. “ What? ” My voice cracked.
Mr. Wickham strolled on, oblivious. “She’s in the breakfast room, Elizabeth. Come on, then.”
I gazed after him for some moments, but then managed to make my legs work and follow him the rest of the way in. The house smelled of gunpowder and the coppery scent of blood. I picked my way around piles of bodies. He had shot everyone—shot the footmen, shot the maids, shot them all. It was horrifying.
When we arrived in the breakfast parlor, Lady Catherine and Anne were in a tangle on the floor there, bleeding out all over each other.
I let out a whimper of horror at the sight of it.
From within, I heard an answering whimper.
I stepped through the threshold, and there was my youngest sister, Lydia Bennet, who hurtled through the air to throw herself at me, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Lizzy, Lizzy, it’s you,” she sobbed.
I caught her up in my arms and tears were coming for me, too. I had missed Lydia. It had been some time since I’d seen her, since before Mr. Darcy and I had gone traveling in France, and even then, on that day, when I’d seen her, she hadn’t interacted with me much.
But it was more than missing her, it was that she was my sister, my youngest sister, the smallest and most vulnerable Bennet, the tiniest of us all, and that I remembered when she was born, when she had been but a babe in arms, and I remembered her as a small little girl dragging a dolly behind her and making pronunciations with a tilt of her little chin—an affectation that had been adorable only a few years ago but now just made her seem spoiled. And my heart went out to my sweet sister as I held onto her for dear life.
We embraced for some time, and Mr. Wickham saw fit to comment on it now and again as he went this way and that, getting breakfast from the sideboard. I had no desire to let go, and Lydia seemed to be in a worse way than I was, still sobbing loudly into my shoulder with no signs of relenting.
Eventually, it was me who pulled back. I wiped at her tears and talked to her the way I might have when she was a much smaller girl. “There, there, Lydie-loo,” I said softly. “It’s all right now. I’m here, and I shall keep him away from you.”
“He sh-shot everyone,” said Lydia, hiccuping.
“Yes, I have seen that,” I said.
“I woke up here, and this is not where I fell asleep, Lizzy!” she said. “I have no notion what has happened, but I think it must be some kind of dark magics or the like.”
“Likely,” I said. “Something of that nature. But you will be no good against it if you do not keep up your strength. Have some strong tea, then, and something to eat, hmm?” I nodded at the table.
She sniffled, and wiped at her face, nodding. She sat down.
I poured her some tea.
Mr. Wickham was eating toast, chewing.
“You brought her here?” I whispered.
“It’s not easy bringing people,” he said. “And they don’t seem to remember anything, even if you keep them from going back at midnight, like everyone else. They can be physically kept in one spot, but they can’t remember anything.”
“Right,” I said. “I suppose it’s like horses in that way. But what have you done to my sister?”
He leered at me. “About what you’d expect.”
I clenched my hands into fists.
“Nothing, Lizzy,” said Lydia with a little hiccup, reaching out for the cup of tea I’d poured for her. “He has done nothing to me. I won’t allow him to touch me, of course, the blackguard.”
“Nothing today,” said Wickham, laughing. “She lets me every day willingly, though, despite all of this.” He gestured around. “Your sister is not particularly hard to convince.”
I picked up another teacup and hurled it at his head.
It hit him, square in the middle of his nose.
He shrieked, getting up, drawing a gun and pointing it straight at me.
I cringed, bracing for the impact.
He sighed, setting the gun down. “No more of that, Elizabeth. And certainly, I’ll leave your sister to be reborn on Thursday, back in Longbourn, just as per usual, as long as you take her place. I only ever went after her because she looks the most like you of the Bennet girls, anyway. It’s always been you.”
I picked up another teacup.
“Now, now,” he said, touching the gun. “I shall shoot you, and then you will be dead, and then I shall tup your sister again, anyway.”
“You mean you shall ravish her,” I spat at him. “Because of course she acquiesces, you horrible man. You have shot everyone who isn’t inclined to do as you say, so she has no choice. That’s not a sign of being willing.”
“Well, she came with me in the first place, didn’t she?”
“You likely promised you’d marry her,” I said.
He shrugged.
“He has said that, even this morning,” said Lydia. “But I don’t want to be married to a man who’s mad, and who kills everyone. I don’t want to be the wife of a murderer!”
“Of course you don’t, Lydia,” I said. “You don’t have to marry him.”
She tilted the teacup to her mouth, her chin trembling. “Lizzy, I wish to go home to Mama and Papa.”
“Yes, I know, Lydie-loo,” I said. “I shall do my best to get you there, all right?”
“I have already told you that you hold all the power, Lizzy ,” he said, emphasizing my nickname in a way that was abominable.
I shook my head at him. “You are out of your mind, Mr. Wickham, if you think I shall ever agree to touch you.”
“I am out of my mind,” he said, nodding, giving me a smile that I could only term demented. “One goes out of one’s mind rather quickly when one is stuck living the same day over and over again. Perhaps you don’t know what it’s like, madam, since you seem to have had company, but I have been all alone.”
There could be merit in what he was saying, I supposed. I knew that Will had lost himself with some haste when he had been living the day without me. I had never been on my own, not for any meaningful amount of time. I could see how the loneliness might truly drive one batty.
“Why do you need so many guns?” I said. “Truly, could you not get by on one or two?”
“Well, they need to be reloaded,” he said. “And I find it’s just easier to load them all the night before, after I tup your sister here—”
“You are a horrible, horrible—”
“And then keep them close so that they come through midnight with me,” he said. “I have ever so many people to kill each morning, after all.”
“You really do not have to kill everyone,” I said.
“I’ve tried it other ways,” he said with a shrug. “Killing everyone turns out to be the least trouble.”
“Lizzy?” said Lydia.
I turned to my sister.
“Why does he keep saying things like that? That he is living the same day over and over? Why aren’t you reacting when he says that?”
“Never mind that, Lydia,” I said, shaking my head. “What’s important is that we keep you away from him.”
“Why?” he said. “What does it matter? She doesn’t remember it. I have taken her virtue at least twenty times, and it’s always the first time. She always bleeds.”
I got up from the table and stalked towards him. “How can you sit here and—”
“I’m only saying, Elizabeth, who is suffering here?” He gestured at Lydia. “Not her. She doesn’t even remember it.”
I turned back to look at Lydia, who was clutching her teacup, her eyes very wide. She looked as if she was frightened that someone was going to strike her.
I wanted to cry again.
“You, for instance,” he said. “You’re no better.”
I turned on him, aghast. “How could you possibly say that?”
“Well, one could say that when I shoot all these people, I am saving them from the misery of searching for you all day!”
“They are not miserable,” I said, glaring at him.
“Are they not? You are supposed to be here. You are not. They spend all day searching all over, speculating, worrying, and I can’t think—”
“It’s nothing the same,” I said, my voice breaking.
He shrugged. “Well, who shall weigh misery against other misery—”
“Don’t,” I said. “There is a reason that ravishment is a hanging offense and that… disappearing on people is not even considered a crime! It’s nothing the same.”
“So you say.” He picked up his toast and took a bite. He chewed, surveying me.
I put my hands on my hips. “You have turned this into a bloodbath, Mr. Wickham. You are a rapist and a murderer and a—”
“I’m just a madman, Lizzy,” he said, chewing, grinning at me. “Best do as I say or you’ll set me off.”
I stalked away from him and sat down next to Lydia, my heart racing. I was loath to admit that his words were unsettling me, because they had weight. True, Will and I had never harmed anyone, not physically, anyway. We had not gone about shooting people just to have peace and quiet. But we had done rather a great deal of theft, had we not? Much of it simply for our own amusement.
I recalled when I wished to stop tormenting the farmers, after all. I did not like the fact that in order for us to have merriment, we had to cause them strife.
Wickham was not entirely wrong, in truth.
For Will and I to leave Rosings was to doom every single person here to a day of terror and worry, looking for us, again and again. These people… were they real people?
If they were not, then Wickham was right. It was no crime to shoot them all.
But if they were, then… what sins did Will and I have to answer for?
I sat there contemplating this until a scream rent the air.
I recognized the voice. It was Charlotte. Yes, just as I’d predicted, it had come to pass, had it not? She and Maria were making their way through Rosings to report that they’d found Mr. Collins dead in the rectory.
Mr. Wickham rolled his head on his shoulders. “It’s all so very unpredictable with you around, Elizabeth. I’m not sure if I like that. Perhaps I should just shoot you, too, in the morning, keep things as they were. Of course, I have to say, I was getting a bit bored.” He sighed, getting up and reaching for a gun. The bucket of guns was sitting next to the table now.
I stood up. “Wait. Not Charlotte. Please.”
“What am I to do with them, then?”
“Oh, as if they will do anything at all with the threat of your guns!”
“You’d be quite surprised about that,” he said. “People really do fancy themselves fit for heroics. You shouldn’t underestimate the human desire for survival, really.”
“Please,” I said.
He shrugged. “Oh, fine.” He set the gun down.