“Porter!” Dr. Keckilpenny called to one of them. “I say, Private Porter!”
The soldier peered at him in confusion, then said, “It’s Corporal Parker, Sir.”
“Yes, yes, Parker, Parker. Do be a good fellow and fetch the colonel, would you? There’s someone here I think he should meet.”
“Very good, Sir. I’ll go get the captain.”
Cpl. Parker favored Elizabeth with a smirk before hustling away.
“I’m afraid I must bid you au revoir, Miss Bennet,” Dr. Keckilpenny said, and he tapped the side of his head with a crooked finger. “There is fresh data here, much of it, and I must set it all down in my journals before it degrades. Friend Parker’s name I can get wrong—as I get almost all names wrong until I’ve known someone at least a decade—but science demands precision. Before we part, however, I must thank you for taking the time and care to guide me here safely. You have my deepest gratitude,” the young man put his hands over his heart, “and admiration. Ah! Capt. Cannon!”
The doctor looked off to the left, and before Elizabeth turned that way, too, she might have guessed from the sound of squeaking axles and grass being flattened that someone was pushing a wheelbarrow their way. As indeed someone was, though it wasn’t so much a wheelbarrow as a wheeled man.
Strapped to a seatback mounted on a small cart was a big, bluff officer with bushy white eyebrows and mustache and mutton chops . . . and no arms or legs.
“Limbs, halt!” he barked.
The soldiers pushing him—one for each wooden shaft of the wheelbarrow—came to a sudden stop.
“Dr. Keckilpenny,” the torso-man growled, “I’ve had two squads out combing the countryside for you when I can’t spare so much as—”
“Oh, I know, I know, apologies, apologies!” Dr. Keckilpenny said cheerfully, and he began hurrying off into the camp. “But I’m back now, thanks to the young lady here. Allow me to introduce Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Miss Bennet—Capt. Cannon. Good-bye now. Must dash!”
He darted around a tent and was gone.
It seemed a decidedly unchivalrous exit, abandoning her to the fuming glower of a stranger, and such a truly strange one, at that.
Capt. Cannon took a moment to look Elizabeth up and down—then surprised her with a warm smile.
“You wouldn’t be a relation of Mr. Oscar Bennet, would you?”
“Indeed, I would. He is my father.”
“Capital!” the captain boomed. “Then once you’re rested and refreshed, you may lead me straight to him. He’s just the man we’ve come here to see!”
CHAPTER 15
CAPT. CANNON’S GOOD CHEER didn’t last long: He turned grim again when Elizabeth told him, in answer to his question about her scrapes and bruises, that some she’d acquired courtesy of an unmentionable not half an hour before.
“Limbs! Lean!”
The soldiers behind him tilted his little cart up on its front wheel, lifting the armless, legless man closer to Elizabeth’s ear.
“The dreadful,” Capt. Cannon whispered. “He didn’t nip you, did he?”
“No.”
The captain sighed with relief. He obviously knew firsthand what had to be done after a nip from an unmentionable.
“Limbs! Pace!” he commanded, and his attendants lowered him again and began wheeling him first this way, then that. “So. Another rotter already. Blast!”
“We’ve encountered one other unmentionable, as well,” Elizabeth said. “Aside from Mr. Ford, I mean. He was the first, from the church. I assume it was news of his . . . awakening that brought you to Meryton?”
“Precisely. Your father has friends in London who . . . ah! Lieutenant Tindall! What splendid timing. Limbs! Halt!”
The captain’s “pacing” stopped just as a handsome, flaxen-haired young officer came striding up to offer a crisp salute.
“Sir,” Lt. Tindall said, “we never found him.”
“That’s because he’s back in his tent scribbling in his journals. Miss Bennet here was kind enough to return him to us.”
“Miss Bennet?”
The young man turned a curious stare on Elizabeth. She thought she caught a slight wrinkling of his nose when he noticed her contusions and dirt-smeared sparring dress.
“That’s right,” Capt. Cannon said. “She’ll be taking me to her father forthwith. And, Lieutenant, the game’s afoot. I will require an escort. Regroup your search party and report back here.”
“Right away, Sir.”
Lt. Tindall saluted again and hurried off.
“He’s been out looking for Dr. Keckilpenny?” Elizabeth asked the captain.
“Yes. Our ‘necrosis consultant’—whatever that is—managed to get himself lost all of thirty minutes after we reached Meryton. And the doctor might be young . . . and inexperienced . . . and rather an odd duck, truth be told . . .”
Capt. Cannon seemed to lose his train of thought, and Elizabeth prodded him with what she guessed his next word was meant to be. “But . . .?”
“But the War Office wanted him with us, so I couldn’t let him stay lost. I see the lieutenant’s ready for us. Shall we, Miss Bennet?”
And so began the march to Longbourn. The soldiers did most of the marching, actually. Elizabeth simply walked, though she kept finding herself stepping in time to the tromp-tromp-tromp of the infantrymen’s heavy footfalls. Lt. Tindall was to one side of her, Capt. Cannon and his Limbs to the other, while behind were a dozen troops, each with a Brown Bess on his shoulder.
As if Elizabeth’s entry into Meryton hadn’t attracted notice enough, now she was leaving at the head of a parade. At least this time no one laughed.
It would have been impossible to carry on a quiet conversation with the captain now that the under-greased wheels of his cart were squeaking and rumbling along the road, so Elizabeth turned to Lt. Tindall instead. He presented quite a pleasing profile, yet with his ramrod bearing and unwavering gaze—never blinking, always straight ahead—he hardly seemed amenable to banter, and she said nothing. Of course, it wouldn’t do for her to make conversation with the foot soldiers, either (though they were all around Elizabeth’s own age and seemed much more prone to friendly smiles than she would’ve imagined battle-hardened warriors to be). So it was a long, silent, awkward journey back to Longbourn.
As they neared her family’s small estate, Elizabeth became aware of a very different sort of discomfort than mere embarrassment. A strange chill was running up and down her arms and over the back of her neck, and it seemed to grow stronger with each step. It wasn’t a cool breeze; the air was dead still and unseasonably warm. It was more like her skin was feeling some other swirl in the ether, not a wind but a shift. A change.
A presence.
They were just passing the spot on the road she’d led Dr. Keckilpenny to from the forest sometime before. The dreadful the young doctor had killed would be but sixty or seventy yards off, hidden behind hillocks and bramble. Elizabeth dredged up the memory of it, trying to recall every detail, each dollop of gore upon the ground.
Was it possible to stun a dreadful? Could one of the sorry stricken be knocked unconscious but not killed?
Did a zombie still prowl the woods around Longbourn?
Instinctively, Elizabeth looked over at Capt. Cannon, as she would have turned to her father had he been there. Or Master Hawksworth.
“It’s the stench,” the captain said, and Elizabeth knew he was speaking to her though he was peering off into the woods. “Even when you don’t know you’re smelling it, you are.”
“Sir?” Lt. Tindall said. He hadn’t noticed a thing.
“On your guard, men,” the captain rumbled.
The soldiers slowed their march to a scuffling stumble, and Lt. Tindall put his hand to the hilt of his sword.
Elizabeth suddenly missed her katana.
“There’s the bugger!” one of the soldiers cried out, pointing at a huge, knot-rippled tree up ahead.