by Kate Gray
dignity common to his station. The private, a rough, tow-headed man nearing his thirties, looked sheepishly at his major and saluted.
"Naw, sir, I dint see a thing. All I sees, sir, is the bushes go all trembly like, and wavin’ about like they’s alive. You don’t think it’s one o’ them bloodsuckers, sir?"
"Ah. Yes. Private Hunt, you’ve been listening to the Prussian campaigners, have you?"
The private reddened, and stared at his toes.
"Aye, sir. Round the night fires, like, and they’ve been telling the…stories they hears when they was all over there, sir."
"Well, Hunt, I surmise that we are quite vampyr-free here. It was probably just a peacock or some other of the domestic animals." The lie came off sour-tasting.
Macconnach looked again at the plants, knowing full well what he’d seen. A human form. On quite another topic, a question bubbled up in his mind.
"Tell me, Hunt, does Miss Alderton sit to hear these particular fantasies?" The man’s face lit up, his fright forgotten.
"Indeed, sir. She’s one for all those fine storytelling times. She’s plenty o’ her own, but she does enjoy hearing new ones. She sends her girl down in the evenings to get word whether anyone has one for th’night. If a body does, then she’s here, sir. Every time. Takes her tea with us an’ all." Hunt spoke with the fondness one might show an older sister, despite obviously being a piece older than Miss Isabel Alderton.
Armed with that knowledge, Macconnach asked to be given word of the next story hour that he might observe from a distance. Hunt, interpreting this as an inspection of their behaviour toward the young miss, swallowed hard, but nodded assent.
Macconnach hated to string the man along, but he could hardly let on that he was burning with curiosity to lay eyes on the mysterious Isabel, could he? Contentedly, he made his way outside the perimeter wall, scarcely concentrating on his task.
As he drew near the spot opposite the side of the wall where he’d spotted the dark figure, he paused. He yawned, thinking about his cot, his Scotch, and his pipe tobacco, gone mouldy in the humidity.
Damned shame. At least his shirts hadn’t been eaten by the dreaded ants. And his liquor was similarly safe. These were yet things for which to be grateful.
In a moment, he spotted further movement some distance away. From the lower branches of an acantha tree, someone in a long sari dropped to the ground, breaking into a joyous run toward the nearby local village. Macconnach frowned. He sincerely hoped that none of his men were taking advantage of local girls. He decided to follow, having concluded his rounds for now.
“Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.”
– Epicurus
Macconnach fell into his boyhood habit of stealth, as on the heaths, while he drew closer to the nearby village. He wished to ascertain as quickly as possible what a local girl might have been doing inside the camp perimeter.
He hoped to catch her up before she reached the protective folds of her family dwelling. To speak with her without terrifying her. The fluttering sari could be seen several dozen meters ahead of him, its dark color nearly impossible to follow but for its movement in the darkening surrounds.
The girl was progressing quite quickly, so he decided to run faster, a choice decidedly hampered by his full uniform kit. Unbuttoning the heavy wool jacket he still wore, he picked out a sturdy looking tree as he moved, and heaved it into the lower branches, trying not to imagine Abington’s reaction, were the general a witness.
Thus unencumbered, he moved far more swiftly, wearing only the white shirt and formal vest demanded by his rank. He was glad that he’d had his boots repaired recently as well. Only a fortnight before he would have been hobbled by their threadbare soles.
Macconnach slid into the half-aware consciousness of exertion as he loped along, and so he remained until suddenly, the person running ahead of him vanished into the thin air. Cursing heavily, he came to a halt, and searched the landscape.
The night air was still and thick, muffling most noises, as Macconnach crept along, muttering in Gaelic. He came up on a thicket, large and impassable, and began to circumvent it when he found himself inexplicably off his feet, and on his back.
A slippered foot pressed against his throat, as he saw the wicked gleam of a long blade. It was the sari he’d been chasing. She had her face veiled with it, though she leaned in to hiss at him in Hindi. Her eyes flashed, shining in the meager light of a half moon.
"What do you want, English?"
He found himself ruffling at her assumption, though he refrained from responding to it, with the threat of the knife still at large. He fumbled for a suitable answer in Hindi, which he had bothered to learn a bit of, but only a bit so far.
"I follow you to ask of you a thing to which I have no answer."
The kohled eyes narrowed in assessment. Then she spoke in English.
"You are not English. My apologies." Her flawless accent sent a cold pit into Macconnach’s gut.
"And you, miss, are no Hindu. Miss Isabel Alderton, I presume?" Her eyebrow raised slightly, and she tucked the knife into a hidden place within the folds of the sari, sighing as she did.
"You have me. Might I ask you to be so kind as to tell me why you have followed me?" She pulled the covering from her head as she spoke, revealing to him her face.
"Ah, yes. I’m afraid that I quite assumed you were a village girl."
"Being taken advantage of by some redcoat, I suppose."
"Yes, well, your, ah, father frowns upon that sort of thing." Isabel peered at him sharply.
"Not for the reason you might suppose, Major."
"You know who I am?" He felt a surge of hope at this thought, though he knew not why.
"I know who everyone is. As my father chooses his company, my own company is chosen carefully, and by me, I might add."
"See here, Miss Alderton, I have never given you reason to suppose that I thought poorly neither of your judgement nor of your father’s, have I? We’ve not even met formally! I know why Lord Abington wishes the men not to fraternize with local girls, and I also know that you govern yourself. I’m glad of it, I must say, because I have met far too many drab, colorless women in my time."
Macconnach stopped speaking with a snap of his jaw, both angered and embarrassed by this encounter. Isabel, for her part, managed to summon up something akin to contrition, as she offered him her hand. He took it, and stood up, brushing ochre dust from his breeches.
"I offer my apologies, Major Macconnach. I’m afraid that I’ve built up rather a thick defensive barrier against your many peers. Most often my dealings with them have been stuffed insensible with condescension and marriage proposals."
At that, Macconnach smiled.
"Aye. I’m aware of the phenomenon. They’re likely just reacting to the discovery that you’re more intelligent than they." He blushed maddeningly as she examined him once more, her black hair shimmering in the light of not-too distant fires.
She shrugged finally, and gave a half-hearted indication that he might be allowed to follow her. Following obligingly, he only asked to know their destination.
Casting a look backwards in the direction where his jacket lay unattended, he hoped that nobody came across it. Goodness knows what conclusion might be drawn.
"You shall see." She smiled at him over her shoulder, and he noticed for the first time how lovely she was. Her hair hung down, in defiance of modern fashion, a cascade of inky water all around her, and her dark eyes glittered with amusement, or devilry.
He tried to contain his thoughts as they walked nearer the village, making whispered reminders to himself that he was in the company of the general’s daughter.
"It must be very difficult for you."
For a moment, Macconnach’s heart leapt into his throat as he wondered whether she was a witch, able to sense his thoughts. Then he realized that she must have been referring to somet
hing other than the questionable direction of his musings.
"I’m not sure what you mean." He held back a thorny branch for her, and she smiled without mirth again, charging forth without hesitation into the dark expanse, where the village fires winked welcomingly.
"Major Macconnach, I’m sure you do. I have the feeling that, for a man like you, your status is a constant question."
"I suppose you refer to my ancestry, Miss Alderton?" He wished she would ask him to call her Isabel, but he supposed that was too much of a liberty.
"My father is not a man given to pointless charity, Major, if that’s the fear you’ve been harboring." She pierced him once again with those black eyes, less the color of ink, more that of black pearls.
And he retracted in his mind all of the casual thoughts he’d had in her regard. He’d previously thought her most likely to be an aristocratic sort, playing at the games they all played at so well, all the while never touching the fiber of real life.
She was every bit the fine mind her father had hinted at. She was so very much like her father in character, though she luckily bore little physical resemblance to the man. He shook himself loose from these thoughts to concentrate on walking.
“Have you encountered much of the local mythology yet, Major?”
This question caught him a bit off-guard. Was she testing him? Getting a sense of his mind?
“I’m afraid I haven’t had a great deal of time yet for cultural studies. Your father has a bountiful library; perhaps there is some