All's Fair in Love and War and Death

by Anne Morris

  “How far do we have to go?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I don’t know,” Fitzwilliam replied. “We’ve not seen anybody. Is that, normal?”

  “I didn’t see anyone last time, and I walked through the village. I suspect that there would only be a person out walking if it was someone…newly gone with their escort, like Mr. Darcy and his father.”

  “I see,” he remarked, with fingers tapping in distraction against his chin.

  “So if we were in London, we might see another figure or two, or a dozen, but not in the country,” Elizabeth explained.

  “I guess I’m thankful we’re in the country then.” The more Fitzwilliam thought about it, the more he did not wish to see any other dead men walking. They moved on.

  The cold was biting, painful even, and after trudging along together for about a mile, Elizabeth wished she had some means of covering her face and cheeks and chin which were all achingly chilled. Elizabeth finally brought her free hand up and placed a gloved palm alternately on one cheek and then the other in an attempt to warm them, though it brought her little relief.

  “Are you well, Miss Bennet?” asked the colonel.

  “I am cold,” she admitted. The tips of Elizabeth’s fingers had gone numb despite her gloves just like the tips of her toes had gone numb.

  The bank of the river was lined with thin trees. They looked barren and old and worn like all the growth here. They had withstood the test of time, but at their feet, there was nothing new or refreshing growing underneath—merely a dirt path which the duo followed along with the barest hope.

  “Is there not…there’s a market town,” Fitzwilliam perked up. “Hemel Hempstead, it lies north of my father’s estate.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth agreed, without any interest. He could tell that she was quite weary.

  “Miss Bennet,” Fitzwilliam declared and stopped, happy to have a reason to stop walking. “Truly should we not turn back? You are exhausted and chilled and not dressed for this…” he could not say ‘weather,’ “environment.” Fitzwilliam looked ahead and realized that they had lost sight of Darcy and his uncle.

  He wondered if this was all in vain. A futile exercise that would compound the grief that they both were experiencing and feeling.

  “No, I need to speak to him.” Elizabeth moved slightly, but then thought better of it and stood clutching his arm, taking in great breaths of air. “It is harder this time. I feel as though I am battling something. It is like climbing a snow-covered mountain.”

  Fitzwilliam wondered if he could carry her but then eschewed that thought as he was too drained already.

  “If your father’s estate lies south of Hemel Hempstead, perhaps we are getting close?” Elizabeth suggested, with a small amount of hope in her voice.

  “Perhaps we are, but it may still be many miles.” Fitzwilliam thought they had only trod just over a mile, maybe two, and it must be at least six to his father’s estate. Though if they were lucky, the destination they sought was north of his father’s estate and fewer.

  He spied a small cluster of boulders some yards away and led Elizabeth to rest on them, sitting beside her as well. They had their backs to the river and sat without speaking, looking out on the ashen landscape before them.

  It was quiet and dim as ever. Fitzwilliam felt her stir abruptly. There was movement in the field before them, though they were not fields of greenery, merely patches of dirt, open areas designated by hedges looking scrubby and lifeless. Some creature was running just at the horizon line, and Fitzwilliam merely watched it as they sat conserving their energy and their heat, pressing a little closer together than propriety customarily allowed.

  It looked as if it was a dog running in those fields, a long-legged dog—a deerhound or a wolfhound of some sort—running hell-bent after something or chasing some scent.

  “What do you suppose that is?” Fitzwilliam finally asked.

  “It’s a dog, a scenthound of some sort,” observed Elizabeth, “but why? Why there would be a dog here, I cannot fathom.”

  “I cannot either,” Fitzwilliam replied with clipped breath. “Are you ready to keep going?” he asked after the dog disappeared from their sight-line.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth answered. “I can be just as cold walking as I can sitting.”

  “Very well.” They stood and walked adjacent to the banks of the river.

  Elizabeth had a firm grip on his arm now as the two of them moved roughly south through that dismal landscape, with a perpetual twilight around them, always wishing for more light. Moving required more exertion this time than the time when Elizabeth had followed her mother. Every step was more difficult as if their bodies knew that they did not belong there. They were living creatures in a world that was meant to house only the dead—everything was against them. The air was too thin, the temperature hovering just above freezing, and the landscape adornments, everything around them was old and decrepit—nothing indicative of the life and warmth they were used to.

  A half of a mile of trudging on and the river took a little turn, bending to the left. It narrowed as it meandered. A house stood on the opposite side, and there were planks thrown over the river to create a bridge. The pair thought that whoever lived there used that makeshift bridge to cross. But they were both surprised to see a shimmering portal beckoning them, life and light called to them. ‘Come back to the living world’ it indicated as they came up on the dead side of the gateway.

  Fitzwilliam stopped to look at his shivering companion. “Miss Bennet perhaps we ought to return?”

  “No,” Elizabeth insisted. Fitzwilliam could hear the same determination and persistence in her voice that had been there from the start. “I want to carry on.”

  “It will be warm, and you can be back with your family,” he tried again.

  “I will survive,” Elizabeth said and tugged at his arm. They continued marching.

  There were more signs of human habitation as the river curved back south. Outbuildings, as if they housed animals, then small dark cottages appeared individually, all on the opposite bank of the river. The physical labor of walking and breathing meant they welcomed an excuse to stop and look; there was no sign of any mortals.

  Elizabeth felt the cold creep up from her fingertips to her fingers and into her hands; her hands now were entirely numb. Elizabeth felt the same sensation in her feet. It made her stumble more often, as her feet and ankles were ice cold. She could only put one foot down and pick another one up, working at moving forward as they kept walking.

  The area they were passing through was farmland, all tidily arranged into fields with scrubby hedges defining their boundaries. Though they were not as neatly maintained as in their world, the living world. It was as if this world only acknowledged living things from fifty years in the past or more. But they could discern a crossroads ahead of them where the houses were closer together. There was even a cottage or two on the west side of the river (their side) as they walked through this more populated area—populated in terms of houses. There still was no sign of the inhabitants.

  The exhausted pair stopped when they reached the crossroads and looked back up the river in the direction they had traversed, dispirited that they had only covered maybe a half mile, and as they considered that they had two or three miles ahead of them at least. Below them lay the market town. However, the concentration of buildings and houses which defined the town lay across the river on the east side.

  The area they now trudged through on the west side seemed to be an estate as they spied a large house which looked new among all the old and worn buildings they had seen so far. Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam stopped to look at the two-story structure, its windows looking dead and diseased despite the building looking new and out of place.

  “I understood a famous surgeon built a house here in the last year,” said the colonel.

  “I believe Papa mentioned something,” was all Elizabeth could say in reply, and they turned to march on.

  Walk
ing through the estate’s park gave them a small task to occupy their mind and feet which made that half mile’s journey pass by quicker than either had expected. They were now at another crossroads where there was another concentration of houses and what looked to be a public-house, but there were still no signs of any life.

  Their prey was gone too (not visible at all), though the view down the river was clear, and the stream banks less littered with trees. They would need to hurry if they wished to find Mr. Darcy and his father. But both Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam were exhausted and felt as if the cold added weight and dragged at them, almost pulling them backwards.

  The pair walked past a little hamlet, noticing an identical habitation on the other bank, but these clusters of cottages appeared to be all that there was to see of that market town (though it was far bigger than Meryton). In about a quarter of a mile, all signs of habitation ended, and there were only fields on either side of them again, though the areas were brown, barren, and glaring in their foul deadness. A movement out of the corner of her eye made Elizabeth turn her head.

  It was a dead world; there was no sound which hammered at their ears and called to them. No wind in the treetops, no hum of life around them. Life makes its own sort of sound, and this place did not create noise but did the opposite, it absorbed everything around them, their footsteps, the sound of their limbs moving, the swish of their clothing, their breathing. Sound was possible; they could talk, but the movement which had distracted her was that creature which they had seen before: the long-legged dog. It looked like a wolfhound, with scruffy gray fur, his back was almost as tall as man’s waist. Darker patches of fur covered the head and hindquarters. But this time it had found its prey: a man was running from the dog.

  Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth stopped to watch, fascinated and appalled at the same time. They were also grateful for a reason to stop walking, though neither of them said so.

  There was nothing special about this man; it was difficult to tell the cut of his clothes as he was so far away, but watching the condemned pair was like watching some animal hone in on its prey as the dog circled around the man. The hound appeared as if it could easily keep up the pace the man set. The man looked as if he did not have the same sort of heavy footsteps that Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth adopted. He must be dead, they both thought, though neither of them said it. They guessed that the dog was only waiting its turn to capture the man, or perhaps it was merely herding him in a particular direction.

  That creature seemed both a sighthound and herd dog in one as it circled and stared at the man, who grew more and more frantic in his efforts to evade the dog whose jaws looked deadly in this dead place. The dog was slowly herding the man towards the river. Elizabeth’s other hand came up to drag at Fitzwilliam’s arm almost as if she anticipated the kill. The man and the dog across the river from them came slowly closer and closer to the opposite bank.

  “I don’t think he has someone coming to speak to him,” asserted Elizabeth.

  “I agree,” answered Fitzwilliam. They watched, clutching at each other, unable to move.

  Then Elizabeth saw something else which made her feel sick. It made her come over so queasy that she was thankful that she had not eaten as Elizabeth would surely have been sick right there on the west side of the river. A darkness appeared underneath the river as though a cloud had passed in front of the sun and darkened the ground. Though in this place, there was no sun in the sky; there was light, but no sun shone above as a light source. There could be no clouds to darken a sun that was not there.

  That dark spot in the river grew, and then a hole appeared in the water which made her guts twist and writhe. It defied nature’s laws, for a hole, a tunnel straight down in water was not feasible, not at all possible, and Elizabeth felt her knees give way. She thought it affected the colonel just as much as his hands moved to catch and support her; Elizabeth felt his arms tremble. It was as if a well had been dug—but in water. Somehow, the water was held back as that tunnel bored straight down into inky, smoky, blackness, leading down to some undetermined depth.

  Elizabeth turned from that horrifying sight and hid her head in the colonel’s chest as Fitzwilliam held her against him. There was no purpose or reason in such a creation—it was an abomination. She shivered both from the cold and the unnaturalness of it; it was more than exotic, it was deranged and disturbing. Elizabeth turned back and saw that there was a faint, shimmering light hovering over the well, similar to the ones which had appeared bridges: a portal. Her eyes glanced up to see that hound, that hellhound, redouble its efforts, focusing them now to move the man towards the bank of the river and that pit in the water.

  The man faced the dog with; his back was to the river. He stopped running and was slowly taking smaller and smaller steps towards the bank of the river. The man’s fear was so palpable that Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam were mesmerized as they watched; they moved closer to stand directly across from the man on the river’s other side. They were about fifty feet from each other—the width of the river. The man’s clothes were of a decent cut, though torn and dirty from being chased to ground by that hellhound—just like vermin. He took tentative steps now as he backed away from that massive head, the lips curled up, the teeth bared. The spread of the dog’s jaws at its apex was massive, revealing a sizeable dark throat with spittle and foam lining the edges of the muzzle.

  But one thing that was missing was sound. The dog neither barked or growled or made any threatening noise. Its eyes, however, were one instance of color here in this dull, gray world, and were like embers, glowing and menacing, sharp and disturbing like a fire out of control as it stared at the man who took another step back towards the river bank. The stare of the dog was difficult to turn away from; it even affected the pair across the river. But the dog moved in closer—it was also a herd dog—and the man took one last step, this time off of the riverbank. There was no more dirt to step off of, but there was no water to step into, only that well in the water which led straight down into nothingness.

  Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam watched the man teeter and fall into the void there in the river, disappearing quickly as an inky black mist just below its edge hid him from view. Darkness welled up to line up with the surface of the river and then lightened and then disappeared. The surface of the river mended itself; it became a river again, whole and without blemish.

  Elizabeth turned from the sight, from the hellhound which stood looking across at them, and began to run. Despite her exhaustion, her lethargy, and the extreme cold which pulled at her body and muscles; Elizabeth ran. She ran south towards their destination, but Elizabeth ran knowing that if she stopped, she would be sick. Fitzwilliam followed her.

  That man had no escort, but had been herded to some ugly and vile final destination. Elizabeth could only theorize he was to leave this Purgatory and go on to Hell, though she had no wish to glimpse what was at the bottom of the terrifying, black well.

  Her lungs gave out as Elizabeth came to a crossroads, a little T-junction with a small bridge crossing back over the river. Fitzwilliam stopped beside her. This bridge did not have a portal shimmering over it.

  “That will be the stuff of nightmares,” Fitzwilliam declared before he looked her completely in the face. “Are you well, Miss Bennet?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth replied, as she attempted to catch her breath in the cold air. She felt she was failing to get enough air into her lungs. The sprint had warmed her a little, but the air was so accursedly thin that Elizabeth felt light-headed; she was still gasping for air, still not finding it enough. She had no breath for words.

  Elizabeth was discouraged for the first time as her strength was giving out. The cold had set into her bones now, despite the sprint warming her muscles, but the thin air, and the constant sense of being thirsty and hungry wore her down in a way she had never experienced. Perhaps the colonel was used to pushing his physical limitations, having been in battles and was more fit for this place. Elizabeth looked at him
standing before her.

  Colonel Fitzwilliam was not looking at her. His eyes were gazing down the length of the river, off towards their styled destination.

  “I believe that is the canal there,” he indicated with his chin. “It curves a little and…” Fitzwilliam stopped. Elizabeth looked at his face and then turned. The trees were the same thin, scraggy things they had seen by the river, and the area where they stood had probably been fields in their world, though even the shrubs that distinguished the hedgerows were paltry. But the river curved into a canal. It ran east-west just beyond where they stood, flowing through other barren fields. The canal then took a sharp turn to flow south, and there were the two figures they most sought: Mr. Darcy and his father.

  “We’re not too late,” Elizabeth shouted, energized by the sight of them. The two gray figures had crossed a bridge at some point and were on the east side of the river, but with the angle of their view, it allowed Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam to see them clearly for the first time in what felt like hours.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Elizabeth took a large gulp of air and let it out before she began walking, setting a faster pace, one which she usually kept when she was seeking daily exercise at home. Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam crossed over a bridge to the east side of the river and cut diagonally across a field rather than following the river. The pair turned then to follow the canal. For the first time, Elizabeth felt that they were gaining on the dark pair in front of them.

  It was encouraging—gave her enough hope—that she could keep moving her leaden feet, keep her heart pumping blood in a place where there were only dead things; keep her lungs breathing in air which barely provided enough oxygen to sustain her. The canal turned roughly south and was relatively straight as they walked its banks.

  Elizabeth started to feel anxious as there was a cluster of buildings ahead, and what looked like a little boathouse next to the canal’s banks. She thought about the story which Mr. Darcy had shared regarding his father’s death—that the senior Mr. Darcy had been taken to some outbuilding or farmstead before being brought back to his uncle’s house—and Elizabeth wondered if they were finally at their destination.