to face the unknown. He heartily wished they would get wherever they were headed, and reached inside his satchel to reassure himself that his tools were just as he’d placed them before leaving.
They approached an animal pen some distance outside a village; he could only assume it was the same one as the other night. The sounds of cattle and goats came to his ears. Several men were keeping watch, seemingly on high alert.
Surely this was not the usual procedure. He wondered what had brought on such vigilance, unless it was a question of protecting a dowry. Still, such a task would normally be given to boys, not to armed men out on this night.
Miss Alderton gave a low call, waiting for a reply, which came in the form of the one of the men surrounding the herds lighting a small lamp. The man walked tentatively toward them. He was following, one might guess, where he’d heard the noise from.
Isabel Alderton stood up straight, the flamelight glinting off the gold threaded border of her sari. Hastily, Macconnach made to do the same, hoping that this village had no ill-will toward redcoats.
It was a slender man with a thin moustache who approached them and identified himself as Arpan, son of the village head. Macconnach bowed to him in the manner he’d learned, but Arpan only smiled and offered his hand. He had none of the aversion to touching foreigners that was so often complained about over gin and whist.
Arpan led them to a freshly turned over patch of dirt. He spoke at length to Miss Alderton, while he first pointed to the mound, then to the animals, ticking off on his fingers, and then, he pointed to the hills that could be seen faintly in the distance.
Finally, he led them to the cattle pen. On the other side of the fence, goats clustered together, far too alert for a time when they should be drowsing. The cattle similarly showed signs of being on edge.
Macconnach asked Miss Alderton to advise Arpan that he was well familiar with the large beasts, and as such, approached them with confidence. It had been obvious, without needing to be told, what Arpan had wanted them to see.
As Macconnach walked into the nervous herd, talking gently, soothingly, he held up the lamp taken from Arpan’s hand. There, all over the hides of India’s holy animals, someone had cut strange symbols. Some of the cattle had these markings, healed, but only just, while others had fresh wounds.
The herdsmen had taken care of their precious animals, slathering ointments all over the wounds, but the attacks had taken their toll. The cows rolled their eyes fearfully, while the men just outside seemed to jump at every noise. Only Arpan’s calm leadership seemed to keep them on a steady course.
The symbols themselves were meaningless to Macconnach, but he recognized the care with which they had been done, and felt a frisson of the intent. It was the same unknown thing that had been clinging to him ever since that first night.
He walked from the herd back to where Arpan waited. Miss Alderton spoke quietly to him, and he gave his replies, but the other man had fixed an unfathomable gaze on Macconnach.
“He says that the attacks had been limited to these desecrations, but that the dirt mound over there is where they had to bury one cow that had been with calf, as well as three goats that had been…ahem, defiled.”
“Buried? Not burned?”
“No. They were unclean, he says, and the holy man wouldn’t allow burning, as it would have been an insult to the gods.”
“And they have no notion as to the perpetrator of these acts? No angry neighbors, no jealous rivals?”
“Would they have been seeking goddess Durga’s intervention otherwise?”
“I take your point. Surely he must have some theory, though.”
“I shall share that with you presently, but for now, I must endeavor to keep with my assigned role. They wish me to make a small offering and be blessed, and then, it is supposed that I shall have some sort of vision from Durga that will shed some light on all this.”
She intended to accomplish this on her own, apparently, in spite of the fact that her “contact” with the goddess was pure fabrication. He put a light hand on her arm as she began to turn away from him.
“Might I suggest that you allow me to accompany you?”
ॐ
There was something in his tone which did not allow for dismissal. His presence would be somewhat difficult, especially if he was thinking he might try to keep her from misleading anyone.
“Please. I won’t do anything to undermine what you plan on doing. I think you might find me to be useful, in fact.” He was being truthful, she appeared to decide.
“Have it your way. They might not be pleased having a man interfering with the work of the goddess.”
“Her companion was a lion, correct?” This seemed to catch her by surprise. He had to have been in her father’s library since last they met.
“Your point?”
“That she had a companion at all, much less an animal also seen as a warrior.” He was so earnest that she conceded, and spoke to Arpan. The other man nodded slowly. It seemed he had some curiosity regarding the major, though it was not entirely clear as to why.
They walked back to the center of the village. Its temple was typically modest, with several shrines and niches on all sides. They made their way to the Durga shrine, where an offering was already prepared.
Smoke from incense burners wafted through the still air, but unlike the previous night, everyone in attendance was silent, solemn. Miss Alderton demonstrated for Macconnach the appropriate posture of humility before the goddess.
He knelt, uncomfortably, on the ground outside the temple. There was still, somewhere in his thigh, a musket ball fragment from his time spent in the Baltic states. However, he did as always, and let go, gradually, deliberately, to reach into a realm over which his physical being had no dominion.
It was something he had always been able to do, even before he understood and could control it. His father had first thought these moments were fits of some sort; it was his father’s father who had seen them for what they were.
The “sight” was the way they had explained it to Macconnach the child. As an adult, he began to understand that it was much more than seeing the unseen. That had become apparent from the first moment Macconnach had used his skills in anger, albeit accidentally.
Some might call it magic, or witchcraft, and he doubtless would have been put on trial had it been an age for such things. Luckily for him, they lived in a time when parlor séances and fortune-telling were beginning to be in vogue.
He’d just needed to be taught self-discipline and a strict coda for using his gift, if it could be called that. The memory of a sudden rush of fury, and a stormy rumble from above still made him feel a bit ill.
Bringing harm to innocent people was something he had never wanted; for this reason he had begged his father to send him to the army. At the very least, he might be able to put himself to better use than accidentally blowing up a still.
In light of his request to accompany Miss Alderton, Macconnach supposed he should have told her about his abilities. It was a bit surprising that the general hadn’t shared anything with his daughter, in light of his seeming habit of doing so on every other topic.
Nothing to be done about it at the moment, however, and so he finished his reaching into the ether. No matter that Miss Alderton might think there was a very real person behind all this mischief, Macconnach could see she was mistaken.
He did his best to cast a net outwards, to pull in, but it was a monumental effort for once. He could feel sweat pouring down his back, but pushed the physical sensation away roughly.
ॐ
Next to him, Isabel watched peripherally. She was trying her best to maintain the illusion that she had carefully set up, and now, here was Macconnach, behaving strangely again.
She wondered what he was up to, or if he was taking ill. It was most distracting, but nobody else had seemed to notice. She focused on the task at hand, which was to procure more time to investigate these strange attacks.
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It was her hope to bring them to an end before they escalated, which she knew was likely inevitable. The human mind in an uninterrupted, diseased state never got better before it got much, much worse. The next obvious progression of the attacks might move onto human victims.
Isabel thought carefully. The study of the motivations of man was a hobby of hers, but again, she relied heavily on her own observations and intuition, rather than the nonsense that science and medicine had produced so far.
Were she to follow popular theory, it would be that phrenology and race had more to do with criminal impulses than anything else. She knew this to be utter drivel, just from having grown up in this country.
Delinquency, as far as she had observed, seemed to have more to do with environmental and social pressures than anything else. It depressed her that so-called doctors of medicine and letters could waste their time trying to discover a magical recipe for evil.
One could instead simply see what was in the streets all around them. Not for the first time, she thought that the world might function less foolishly were women at the reins of leadership.
Accordingly, her thoughts ran to what type of madman would commit atrocities against defenseless animals. The most highly held animal in Hindu culture, no less. She wondered if someone was trying to disrupt relations with the British, but the appearance of the symbols was entirely unfamiliar to her.
She was glad she had