Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Elizabeth surfaced slowly, as though the effort of waking required negotiation. The room tilted when she opened her eyes; the ceiling drifted, then cleared, then drifted again. She closed them at once and lay very still, counting the spaces between her breaths until the motion eased.
She had not slept so much as surrendered to exhaustion. Her mind had skidded all night between half-dreams and wakefulness, her body never quite relinquishing its vigilance. Now, in the thin grey of morning, that vigilance felt like lead in her limbs.
When she tried to sit up, the world lurched. Not pain—at least not the familiar one—but a sudden, sickening sense that her body had lost its agreement with the ground. She pressed a hand to the mattress and waited for the floor to remember where it belonged.
Voices drifted up from below. Outside, surely.
At first, she thought she was imagining them.
The house had its own language—fire popping in the grate, boards, the distant murmur of servants beginning their day—and this sounded like that, indistinct and shapeless.
But the sound did not fade when she concentrated on it.
It gathered instead, threading through the quiet with an urgency that set her nerves on edge.
Men’s voices. More than one. Raised—not in argument exactly, but in insistence. A sharper note cut through them, followed by another. The cadence was wrong for the yard, wrong for the house.
Elizabeth swung her legs over the side of the bed despite the protest that rippled through her. The floor felt oddly far away beneath her bare feet. She stood, gripping the bedpost until the spinning slowed enough to risk a step toward the window.
She had just reached the chair when the glass exploded.
The sound came first—a crack like a musket shot—then the rain of shards across the floor.
Elizabeth cried out and threw her arms over her face as a stone struck the far wall and dropped, skittering across the boards.
Cold air rushed in through the broken pane, sharp and immediate, carrying with it the roar of voices now unmistakably outside.
“Traitor. He’s hoarding!”
“We know he’s got it. Look at the bins!”
“—children are starving—”
Elizabeth staggered back, her heart hammering so violently she felt it in her throat. She pressed a hand to her mouth, breathing through her nose, the taste of fear metallic on her tongue. Below, the shouting swelled, no longer scattered but unified, as though a single will had found its voice.
She forced herself to the window again, keeping well back from the jagged edges.
The yard was in chaos. Men crowded the gates—a few farmers she recognised, most others she did not.
Faces red with cold and fury. Someone brandished a stick; another had climbed onto the low wall, shouting down at the rest.
“Bring it out!”
“Sell it fair!”
“You can’t keep it while we starve!”
A door slammed somewhere below. She heard her mother’s voice—high, alarmed—cut off abruptly. Then her father’s, raised for once not in irony but command.
Elizabeth’s knees weakened. She gripped the back of the chair, her vision narrowing as though the world were pulling away from its edges.
The noise pressed in on her from all sides, each shout landing like a blow.
She became acutely aware of her own body—how light it felt, how insubstantial, as though it might simply tip over and be done.
Another stone struck the house, lower this time. She flinched as the impact shuddered through the frame.
She turned from the window, meaning to go to her family, but the floor rolled beneath her again, violently enough that she had to catch the bedpost to remain standing.
A wave of vertigo swept through her, blotting out sound and sight alike for a terrifying instant.
When it passed, she was left shaking, her breath coming in shallow pulls.
From below came a new sound: the tramp of boots. Ordered. Rhythmic. Someone shouted commands, the ordering of muskets, and the crowd’s noise shifted—still angry, but checked, redirected.
Jane was at the door before Elizabeth had time to draw a proper breath.
“Lizzy!” She stopped short at the sight of the broken glass. “Oh—oh my goodness.” She rushed across the room to her, careful of the shards, her hands already reaching. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Elizabeth said, though the word wavered. She tried to rise and failed, the floor pitching treacherously beneath her. “Jane—wait—I am very dizzy. I cannot stand.”
Jane’s face paled, but she did not try to force her to her feet. She slipped an arm behind Elizabeth’s shoulders, supporting her where she sat. “Then do not move. Sit quite still. I heard the glass and—”
Lydia burst in behind her, skirts gathered, her face awash with alarm and excitement in equal measure. “Oh! I told you it was the officers—did you see them? There are ever so many—Jane, move, you’re blocking the view!”
“Lydia!” Jane cried sharply. “You nearly stepped on Lizzy’s hand!”
But Lydia was already at the window, leaning far too close to the jagged frame.
“Well, good heavens, Jane, Lizzy is trying to keep Town hours now. What is she doing still abed? She’s missing all the fun.
Oh, they’ve formed a line—look! That one with the dark coat is giving orders—oh, and there’s Wickham, I am certain it’s him, just there—no, wait—yes, it is, I know the way he stands—”
Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly, the rush of Lydia’s words making the room sway again. “What is happening?” she demanded. “Why are they here?”
Lydia barely heard her. “Papa’s in the yard now—Mr Hill, too, oh goodness—Papa is shouting! Have you ever heard—oh, the officers are lowering their muskets. I do believe they mean to fire! Oh, now they’re pushing them back from the gate—”
“Girls! All of you—away from the windows at once!” Mama appeared in the doorway, pale and quaking, her cap askew with her hair unordered beneath it. “I will not have you pressed up like spectacles at a fair! You will all be shot! Come along—back of the house, every one of you. This instant!”
Kitty hovered behind her, wide-eyed. Mary followed more slowly, clutching her book to her chest as though it might serve as protection.
“But Mama!” Lydia protested, craning for one last look. “They’re only just—”
“Now, Lydia! You shall be the death of us all, standing at that window!”
Jane did not argue. She bent at once and slipped Elizabeth’s arm over her shoulder. “Slowly,” she murmured. “Lean on me.”
Elizabeth managed to nod. The noise from outside surged in through the broken window—shouts, boots, the sharp bark of command—but Jane’s presence anchored her just enough to move. As they turned toward the door, Lydia was still talking, breathless and unstoppable.
“I told you it was exciting—terrifying, yes, but exciting. Kitty, did you see how fine they looked when they marched up to the house? Mama, do you think they’ll stay long? Do you think there will be arrests?”
Mama ushered them into the corridor. “Oh, Lydia, I’m sure I don’t know, but hurry before another window is broken!”
The door to Elizabeth’s room was pulled shut behind them, cutting off the view—and the cold—but not the sense of it.
Mary pointed them all, very practically, to the small storage room off the back passage—the one that usually held extra linens and preserves when the house was full.
It had no windows, only thick walls and the faint, comforting smell of starch and dried lavender.
Someone shut the door. The noise from outside dulled at once, not gone but blunted, like thunder heard through earth.
Mama sank onto a stool as though her legs had been cut from beneath her.
“This is insupportable!” she cried. “Absolutely intolerable. To be attacked in one’s own home!
Mr Bennet will be killed, I know it—killed outright—and then where shall we all be?
Turned out! Beggared! What a good thing Mary had caught Mr Collins, or I do not know where we would be. Oh, Mr Bennet, my poor nerves!”
Jane was beside her instantly, drawing her back, murmuring soothing. “Mama, you must sit quite still. You will make yourself ill. Here—close your eyes. Mary, the salts.”
Elizabeth was guided down against a crate by Kitty’s anxious hands. The floor tilted alarmingly, but she clenched her teeth and waited for it to right itself. She refused to close her eyes.
“What is happening?” she demanded. “No one has told me anything that makes sense.”
Kitty was the only one who had both leisure and sense to make an answer. “It—it began early, Lizzy. Before breakfast. How did you not know? Why, it is nearly midday! I would have thought—”
Jane glanced up. “Hush, Kitty. Lizzy, two of the tenants came first, from the lower farms. They said their bins had been broken into overnight. Grain taken, sacks split. Not by wild deer, but by people. Everything taken, they said. It was only a mercy there was no violence, for everyone was asleep. Mr Hill rode off that instant to fetch the militia, and thank Heaven he did, for he had only just returned when two more tenants arrived, and they did carry reports of violence.”
“And then more people came,” Kitty added quickly, as though afraid the words might escape her if she did not seize them at once.
“Strangers, I mean. They were already on the road when the bells began ringing. Some had carts—real carriages, Lizzy, not farm wagons—and some were strangers entirely. No one knew them.”
“From London,” she said, without quite meaning to speak aloud. “Their stores have run low, and they’ve heard we had more than we could eat.”
Kitty nodded. “Papa thought so, too. He tried to reason with them. He said he would sell if he could, but that the grain was spoiling, that he did not know how much would keep. They would not hear it. Someone even cried that mouldy grain was better than none at all.”