Chapter 30 The Events of the Night of 21 May, 18--
It was some months ago, now. May. The days were lengthening, and the nights growing too short for my purposes.
Ostensibly, things went on as usual in Meryton. There was the occasional ball and far too many garden parties. People gossiped and flirted and gossiped about the flirtations. Morning visits, afternoon cards, evening parties.
Beneath it all, though, there was a current of fear.
No one talked of it except in hushed tones. Not in our circles, anyway. How could they, when they had no idea what was going on? This was the Home Counties in the nineteenth century, not some medieval forest teeming with savage beasts.
However, it did seem that there was a savage beast about.
Farm animals were found mauled to death. There were the fires, the beatings. The mothers of young men begged them not to go out alone at night, and I suspected that most young men, however they might protest, were secretly relieved to oblige.
Gossip strove to account for it. It was a bear, escaped from its owner.
No, a wolf. No, a mad dog—how could a bear or wolf hide itself in the scant, genteel woods that Meryton had to offer?
No, a highwayman—how could a dog have done that to the pay wagon?
No, a gang of highwaymen… no, an ape… no, the devil himself.
It was at that point that the conversation usually fell still. Meryton folk were good, respectable people, who thought no more about God and the devil than was decent.
And over everything hung Miss Charing’s strange death, a reminder of just how little we knew about what roamed our countryside at night.
Mr. Pike was often applied to for his opinion.
He had traveled, seen much of the world, come back rich—his opinion was now greatly valued.
(Besides, it gave them an excuse to talk to him.) He was now a more sought-after guest than ever—a demonstration of the maxim that absence makes the heart grow fonder, for he accepted no more than one invitation in four, and then only appeared for an hour or so.
If any other young man had come to a ball for only an hour, he would have been considered abominably poor spirited—but in Mr. Pike’s case it seemed only to add to his mystique.
Appearing rarely, saying little, and being rich seemed enough to raise him to demigod status.
Hence their turning to him for his opinion on the beast. The first time this happened in my hearing, I nearly choked on my biscuit. Imagine applying to the monster himself for solutions to its brutality.
He was well able, though, to dispel such inquiries with soft-spoken civilities about nothing.
I had to stop him. I knew it was only a matter of time before he killed again. Before I killed again, really. He was my creation.
His eyes were always on me in public, but I could never steal a moment to speak to him alone, not now that he was the bachelor of Meryton.
Even when I danced with him, someone was always watching and listening.
In the old days the piano would have been safe, but now there was always some young lady or other draping herself across the instrument in an artistic attitude, attempting to catch his eye.
Silently, I cursed my looks. If I had been beautiful, they might have regarded him as my property, given the marked partiality he showed.
However, because I was just plain, awkward Mary Bennet, most ambitious young ladies chose not to believe in his attachment and threw themselves in his path.
Of course, if I had been beautiful, none of this would have happened at all.
Just once, he managed to speak of it. A servant on the other side of the ballroom dropped a platter with an immense crash; while the whole room turned its attention to the luckless fellow, Pike leaned toward my ear and whispered, “It’s getting worse. Help. ”
“ How? ” I whispered back.
“Red,” he whispered. “Black. Please ,” and then the young Miss Long, who’d attached herself to him, resumed fluttering her fingers against his arm and giggling, and he was forced to turn away.
Red. Black. I began to make my preparations.
That is when I wrote the first letter, Harry, that was so full of despair. I meant it when I said I was prepared to kill him if it came to that—even if it meant losing my own life.
Here is something, Harry, that I believe I am the sole inventor of.
Perhaps it will be my legacy. (I have invented other things, I know, such as the resurrection of the dead, but I am not sure I will be eager to claim those.) We have long used leeches to extract blood; I have discovered that we can also use them to do the reverse—to insert blood into a subject.
Blood or, in fact, another substance.
I knew that Pike had been hunting near our house. Dead animals had been found in the woods, and one of our lambs got its throat torn out. On the next clear night, I set about to lure him closer yet.
The woods do not look like much by day. Just a few acres of trees and a few winding paths.
You can scarcely lose sight of the road behind you before you are glimpsing it on the other side.
But the trees are ancient and close, and what seems quite tame and manageable by day is far more frightening at night.
The trees closed over my head, blocking out the moon and stars.
I had too much to carry to bring a lantern, so I had to trust my feet to stay on the path, though the well-known way seemed utterly foreign now.
My heart was pounding in my ears. I adjusted the sack over my shoulders, ignoring the protesting squawk from within. My other hand trembled around the handle of the large knife I’d borrowed from the kitchen. I’d have to clean it well. I knew well, now, the power of other people’s blood.
I reached what I judged to be the center of the forest. I drew out the trembling little bundle from the sack.
The poor little thing scrambled to get away.
I had certainly put her through enough already—the bald patches in her feathers attested to that.
Grimly I ignored her scratches and pecks and tied a string around her neck.
The other end went securely around a low branch.
Then I climbed the tree and settled down to wait.
It could have been five minutes or an hour, I’ve no idea. Time does funny things out in the wild. I became nothing but a set of eyes and ears, watching, waiting, waiting—
And he came.
The little chicken’s complaints became frantic, then hysterical. Then the rustling and crying ceased. I crept down.
Pike hardly looked human now. His hair and beard were long and unkempt, his clothes muddy and torn. The black streaks had taken over half his face—or maybe that was the chicken’s blood, smeared across his mouth and jaw, black in the moonlight.
I stared, willing my eyes to use every scrap of moonlight as I strained to see the truth. I’d fed three leeches on serum. When they were gorged and fat and tight as drums, I’d attached them to the little chicken, squeezing gently, forcing them to regurgitate the serum back into her veins.
Pike ought to have received a massive dose.
He raised his face. His veins were as black as ever.
I closed my eyes in disappointment. I had failed. Nothing for it. I clutched the knife. Before I could make a move, Pike saw me.
Faster than ought to be possible, he came swarming up the tree. I tried to get away, but he grabbed my ankle. I choked out a scream as my body scraped helplessly down the trunk, my fingernails scrabbling uselessly for purchase, the bark scraping against my cheek.
Somehow, my hand managed to keep hold of the knife.
I twisted so that I landed on top of Pike and drove the knife into his shoulder.
He roared, and I pulled it back to strike again, but he was too fast. He grabbed my wrist and twisted the knife away.
Good lord, he was strong . Luckily he was too far gone to think of picking it up—I seized his moment of distraction to scrabble backward.
Before I could get far he lunged after me, grabbing my left leg.
I tried to kick him away, but he ignored my blows.
He sank his teeth into my calf, and a scream ripped out of me.
The agony was like nothing I had ever known.
There was none of the pinprick precision of the leech—he was worrying at me.
The teakettle scream he elicited would have seemed to come from a stranger, but that I felt it tearing at my own throat.
Surely my leg would never be the same. He bit down harder, clamping it in place against the ground to still my struggles, and I sobbed in pain and despair.
Still, my hands were questing for the knife. I did not find it, but my fingers closed over a large stone. With a roar of my own, I swung it as hard as I could at his skull.
He fell back. Not dead, but stunned, momentarily. Ignoring the bloody mess of my leg, I patted at the ground until I finally managed to find the knife. I clamped both hands over the handle and lunged.
He was still disoriented, shaking his head, and I was able to drive him onto his back.
Looking into his pale face, I raised the blade—
“Miss Bennet?”
I gave a little jerk—opposing impulses screaming Hold on, something’s happening and Finish him off! in my head, not to mention Oh, the world’s gone wobbly —and he managed to roll me off him. I scrambled to my feet, holding the knife in front of me.
He stood up, too—slowly now, wincing. When his face hit a patch of moonlight, I saw that the black lines were receding.
“Good heavens, Miss Bennet,” he said. “I declare you practically dashed my brains out.”
“P-Pike?”
“Yes, it’s me.” He made a face, and then spat. “Though I don’t imagine I look the gentleman at the moment. Good Lord, what have I been eating?”
“Chicken,” I managed. “Serum… and…” It was no good. The world began to swim before my eyes, and then everything went dim.