Dawn Of The Dreadfuls Part 7

"Dandy-whats? Uhhh... Father hasn't taught us about those, either."

Master Hawksworth threw a quick, cold glare at Mr. Bennet, then shrugged off his coat and began unb.u.t.toning his vest.

"Then I must demonstrate."

His vest joined his coat on the floor. When he began untying his cravat, Elizabeth could actually feel the burn of the blush on her cheeks. For a moment, it looked as though he meant to take off his shirt, as well. He was merely loosening it, though, giving his broad chest room to do its work.

When he was ready, he threw himself facedown. Then he pushed up with his arms, and his body lifted, all his weight suspended on his palms and toes.

"One," he said.

He lowered himself until his nose touched the floor, then pushed up again.

"Two."

And so it went, all the way to fifty. It took him no more than half a minute.

He stood up again and looked at Kitty.

"Now you."

Slowly, reluctantly, Kitty stretched out on the floor and attempted her first dand-baithak. Her arms shook under the strain of her weight, and by the time she could say "One" her face was as red as a beet.

"YOU!" Master Hawksworth barked, pointing at Mary this time. "Jump through the ceiling and catch me a swallow."

It had always been one of Mary's pleasures to learn from the mistakes of others, and this she tried to do again. She promptly got to her feet, stretched her arms out toward the ceiling, and hopped straight up with all her might.

Her feet made it all of four inches off the ground.

"I'm sorry, Master Hawksworth," she said. "I missed."

Master Hawksworth nodded. "But you did as I said without question."

Mary smiled primly and began to sit down.

"And you failed!" Master Hawksworth snapped. "Fifty dand-baithaks."

"But-"

"Sixty!"

"But-"

"Seventy!"

"But-"

"Eighty!"

Mary finally learned from her own mistake and got down on the floor.

"Master Hawksworth," Lydia said, "before you ask, I can't jump through the ceiling and catch you a swallow, either."

"So I would a.s.sume."

The Master stalked over to one of the weapons racks, pulled down a dagger, and held it out toward Lydia.

"You will kill that," he jerked his head at a fly buzzing around where the daffodils used to be, "then skin it before it hits the ground."

"You want me to skin a fly?"

"A novitiate never questions the master's orders! Fifty dand-baithaks!"

Lydia stretched out beside her huffing, puffing sisters.

Elizabeth saw where all this was heading: Within a minute, Jane was doing dand-baithaks, too, for though she attacked the fly without question, she missed it with every slice of the knife.

Then it was Elizabeth's turn.

"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-IIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" she cried, lunging at the fly.

It weaved under her first swipe. It danced around her second.

The third-to Elizabeth's own amazement-sent it dropping to the floor. Dead.

"Not bad, Elizabeth Bennet," the Master said. Yet his eyes said something more: When Elizabeth looked his way, she found him peering at her with what looked like naked-almost awestruck-fascination.

Master Hawksworth knelt down to inspect the fly lying before her.

"As at the lake, your zeal does you credit," he said, his tone warming for a moment before freezing back into brittle ice. "A pity your skills do not. This fly has not been skinned-it has merely lost a wing." He stood up with one hand held out. "Fifty dand-baithaks."

Elizabeth gave him back the dagger and went to the floor at his feet.

"You look displeased, Oscar Bennet," she heard Master Hawksworth say over her own panting and the roar of blood rushing in her ears. (The dand-baithaks were even more difficult than they looked.) "Do you wish to complain? If so, go ahead. I grant you dispensation this once."

"Yes, I am displeased," Mr. Bennet said. "It pains me to see my daughters so roughly treated." Elizabeth caught the faint, familiar sound of one of her father's sighs. "But no... I will not complain. We have been weak. I have been weak. I pray you will help us find our strength before it is too late."

"I do, as well, Oscar Bennet. I do, as well. Now-there is a beetle in that corner. Behead it!"

Elizabeth heard the ka-chunk of a blade striking wood and holding fast. Then Master Hawksworth grunted.

"Not bad. You haven't lost your old skills entirely, I see. But I told you to behead the beetle, not cut it in two."

"Fifty dand-baithaks, Master?"

"For you, Oscar Bennet?" the young man said. "One hundred."

CHAPTER 11.

OVER THE NEXT TWO DAYS, the Bennet girls learned many new stances and moves and, along with their father, sparred with many new weapons.

There were, as a consequence, many, many mistakes and accidents-and many, many, many dand-baithaks.

Lydia t.i.tters when the Master squats, legs bent into a U, for "the Sumo Position"? Fifty dand-baithaks.

Mary accidentally knocks Kitty silly with her nunchucks? Fifty dand-baithaks.

Kitty un-accidentally knocks Mary silly with her nunchucks? Fifty dand-baithaks. For Mary again. For not dodging fast enough.

Mr. Bennet raises an eyebrow at Mary's punishment? One hundred dand-baithaks and five laps around the grounds.

Jane quickly proved the most graceful disciple, and Mr. Bennet, of course, the most accomplished-so much so that Master Hawksworth frequently had him run his daughters through their drills while he stood back nodding gravely. Yet Elizabeth, with her piercing warrior's cry and eagerness to try any maneuver or weapon, no matter the difficulty or danger, was without doubt the most ardent student in the dojo. Though why that should be even she couldn't say.

Certainly, the Master never spoke of it. He rarely spoke of anything except how this is done right or this was done wrong or how many dand-baithaks were needed to make amends for one's unworthiness. All the Bennets truly knew of him had to be sucked out as a leech draws blood-and there was, of course, but one leech for the job.

"A lovely English spring we're having, is it not?" Mrs. Bennet said over dinner the day after Master Hawksworth's arrival.

The Master didn't even look up from his food, which he'd insisted on preparing himself. Not that it required much in the way of preparation: It was simply white rice and (to the obvious disgust of all, save Mr. Bennet) raw fish.

Up to then, Master Hawksworth had declared English cooking to be "bricks in a warrior's stomach where fire out to be," and at mealtimes he'd remained in the dojo to eat alone. Eventually, however, he'd been coaxed inside easily enough. All Elizabeth had to say was, "It would be an honor if you joined us this evening, Master," and in he came.

"It's probably been twenty years since we had so balmy an April," Mrs. Bennet forged on.

Still Master Hawksworth said nothing.

"It was an unseasonably warm spring when The Troubles first began, as well," Mary said. "It is my conjecture that the heat in some way accounts for the return of the dreadfOW!"

"What of the temperatures where you come from, Mr. Hawksworth?" Mrs. Bennet said, lifting the shoe heel from her daughter's toes. "Do they range as unseasonably high?"

"Yes," the Master said.

He reached out with the two smooth sticks he used in lieu of a proper fork or spoon, grabbed hold of a mound of rice, and stuffed it into his mouth. Mrs. Bennet waited patiently while he finished chewing so he could finish his thought, but he simply speared a floppy pink wad of fish and stuffed it in after the rice.

Mrs. Bennet grimaced and looked away, and when she again found her voice (which, alas, was never lost for long) she abandoned warmth as both a topic of conversation and a model for her deportment.

"Well. I'm glad to see you're enjoying your food... if you can call it that. You'll find the streams of Hertfordshire overflowing with fat, juicy trout you may pluck out and tuck into at your leisure. If I may ask, where is it that you acquired a taste for such awfully fresh fare?"

"j.a.pan."

Hawksworth shoveled in more rice.

"j.a.pan?" Mrs. Bennet said. "That's the little island nation down around New South Wales, is it not? Full of Orientals?"

Hawksworth finally looked up from his plate-so he could scowl at Mrs. Bennet.

"Yes, yes," Mr. Bennet mumbled, wincing. "That is the place."

Elizabeth and Jane shared a wide-eyed glance. Master Hawksworth-a young man scarcely older than they-had actually traveled to j.a.pan! If only he weren't so stern and taciturn. There were so many questions to ask!

For Mrs. Bennet, however, there was only one.

"Such a long journey would surely cost a fortune. Your family could afford such a venture?"

"No," Master Hawksworth said.

Mrs. Bennet frowned.

"But I have a patron for whom money is no object," the Master added.

Mrs. Bennet smiled.

Master Hawksworth was looking at Mr. Bennet.

"I shan't name names, yet I will say this: My benefactor has held true to the code others found it so easy to abandon once The Troubles were over. I was sent to j.a.pan to learn and live by that code. Soon, your daughters will be living by it, as well. And perhaps dying by it... if they can earn such an honor."

Mr. Bennet listened intently, solemnly, and when Hawksworth was finished, he replied with a single nod.

Mrs. Bennet, on the other hand, had stopped paying any attention whatsoever after the words "money is no object."

"Tell me, Mr. Hawksworth," she chirped, "do you like to dance?"

The Master froze with a glistening glob of raw flesh halfway to his face. "Pardon me?"

"In a little more than a week, there is to be a ball," Mrs. Bennet said. "Some of our best local girls will be having their coming out-including our own Elizabeth. I'm sure you, as our guest, would be welcome."

Master Hawksworth stared at Mrs. Bennet the same way she'd have stared at him had he stuck his eating sticks in his ears and mooed like a cow. After a moment, however, he overcame his dismay and reverted to his standard expression-which was, actually, an almost total lack of expression at all.

"I have no time for such frivolity, and neither do my students."

"Your students?" Mrs. Bennet scoffed. And then, her voice edging toward panic as his meaning dawned on her: "Elizabeth? And Jane? But of course they must be at the ball."

"When there is so much for them to learn and so little time to learn it?" Hawksworth shook his head. "I cannot allow it."

"Who are you to allow or not allow anything here?"

"I am the Master."

"Not of me, you're not! And if I say Jane and Elizabeth are going to the ball, they're... oh, you tell him, Mr. Bennet!"

"We will discuss this after dinner," Mr. Bennet said softly. He seemed to be antic.i.p.ating the conversation with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man looking ahead to his own hanging.

"Mr. Bennet!" his wife gasped. "You aren't actually siding with this... this... whatever he is?"