“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 presenceanchored 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.”
“Oh! I wish he would just sell it all and they would go away and leave us!” Mama cried. “That stubborn man. He had better let Colonel Forster handle it, that is what I say.”
“Mama, please,” Jane said, more firmly now, as Mama began to gasp in earnest. She pressed a cloth gently over her mother’s eyes and held the salts beneath her nose. “Breathe slowly. Slowly.”
Lydia, who had been pacing the length of the narrow room, stopped short at the sound of heightened shouting from without. She spun to look at her sisters. “What if they set the house on fire?”
No one spoke at first.
Jane glared, making a fierce expression. “Lydia!” she mouthed silently.
“They won’t,” Kitty said quickly, though her voice wavered. “The militia are here now. Right, Jane?”
“Yes,” Jane said, seizing on it. “Colonel Forster will keep matters from becoming violent.”
The reassurance had scarcely left Jane’s mouth when a sharp crack split the air outside. Not shouting. Not the crash of wood or stone.
