unfortunately, that’s not always the case. This list was compiled by my predecessor. A more meticulous man than I.” He gave the handwritten sheet to Stephen Reed.
As the young policeman scanned it, Sebastian went on, “My predecessor toured every parish with a border adjoining Sir Owain’s estate and noted every death or disappearance in recent years. Suspicious or accidental, report or rumor, they all went in. A woman drowned in a pool. A girl who set off for school and neither arrived nor returned. The disappearances were always at a time when Sir Owain was at home.”
Stephen Reed looked up from the list. “I know two of these names,” he said.
“You do?”
“Grace Eccles and Evangeline May Bancroft. Local girls. They’re my age. I knew them growing up. We went to the same school.”
“Do you know what happened to them?”
“I remember some concern when they were lost on the moors one night. But it turned out they’d each misled their parents and gone camping together. They were found the next morning, miles from anywhere.”
“Where are they now?”
“Evangeline’s gone. She went away to London. And Grace is not an easy woman for anyone to speak to.”
“Easy or not, this is no time for reticence. What if today’s crime has a precedent?”
“It’s not a matter of reticence,” Stephen Reed said. “Believe me. If you were to meet Grace, you’d understand. May I hold on to this?”
At that moment, there was a knock at the door. It was Dolly, to say that Sebastian’s supper was waiting for him in the dining room.
“Keep it,” Sebastian said. “And do with it what you can.”
E XTRACT FROM The Empire of Beasts BY S IR O WAIN L ANCASTER , FRS
I T WAS the morning after the night attack on our camp. The dead and the injured lay where they had fallen. Everyone came down out of the trees and out of their hiding places and began to share their stories of what they had seen. One of the camaradas told, in his halting English sprinkled with phrases from his native Portuguese, of seeing four of our fellows carried off alive.
I had witnessed no such thing myself. I am ashamed to say that the attack had been too sudden, and too overwhelming, for any response other than hasty self-preservation. One moment we had been sitting by our separate campfires, doing our best to raise each other’s spirits for the further trials ahead; the next, it was as if a combined landslide, whirlwind, and stampede descended upon us, all at once.
You might say that, after our earlier experience upon the river, we should have been more prepared for something like it on dry land. In our defense, I should say that even the most fertile and apprehensive imagination could never have anticipated what came to befall us. First had come the sound, like the thunder of an approaching wave, to which had quickly been added the crashing of falling trees. We had barely time to rise to our feet and then the herd was upon us, charging through the camp, scattering bodies and trampling our fires.
What little I saw, I saw by firelight. I could make no estimate of their number. Each of those beasts was a giant, of a species hitherto unknown to science. They seemed to move as easily on two legs as on all fours, their long tails providing balance and their forelimbs as well adapted for gripping as running. At the time their attack appeared to have no purpose other than to terrify and destroy.
But now, as we counted our number that morning and found no less than three of our fellows and one of the camaradas missing, it seemed that the simple peon’s story was true. There was a purpose to the attack after all; we had been harvested. There was much grieving and wailing, and a great sense of gloom and despair settled upon the camp, and I resolved that if I did not act to dispel it, our adventure might end there, and all the struggles we had endured and the losses we had borne would be for nothing. I gathered everyone together and addressed
As the young policeman scanned it, Sebastian went on, “My predecessor toured every parish with a border adjoining Sir Owain’s estate and noted every death or disappearance in recent years. Suspicious or accidental, report or rumor, they all went in. A woman drowned in a pool. A girl who set off for school and neither arrived nor returned. The disappearances were always at a time when Sir Owain was at home.”
Stephen Reed looked up from the list. “I know two of these names,” he said.
“You do?”
“Grace Eccles and Evangeline May Bancroft. Local girls. They’re my age. I knew them growing up. We went to the same school.”
“Do you know what happened to them?”
“I remember some concern when they were lost on the moors one night. But it turned out they’d each misled their parents and gone camping together. They were found the next morning, miles from anywhere.”
“Where are they now?”
“Evangeline’s gone. She went away to London. And Grace is not an easy woman for anyone to speak to.”
“Easy or not, this is no time for reticence. What if today’s crime has a precedent?”
“It’s not a matter of reticence,” Stephen Reed said. “Believe me. If you were to meet Grace, you’d understand. May I hold on to this?”
At that moment, there was a knock at the door. It was Dolly, to say that Sebastian’s supper was waiting for him in the dining room.
“Keep it,” Sebastian said. “And do with it what you can.”
E XTRACT FROM The Empire of Beasts BY S IR O WAIN L ANCASTER , FRS
I T WAS the morning after the night attack on our camp. The dead and the injured lay where they had fallen. Everyone came down out of the trees and out of their hiding places and began to share their stories of what they had seen. One of the camaradas told, in his halting English sprinkled with phrases from his native Portuguese, of seeing four of our fellows carried off alive.
I had witnessed no such thing myself. I am ashamed to say that the attack had been too sudden, and too overwhelming, for any response other than hasty self-preservation. One moment we had been sitting by our separate campfires, doing our best to raise each other’s spirits for the further trials ahead; the next, it was as if a combined landslide, whirlwind, and stampede descended upon us, all at once.
You might say that, after our earlier experience upon the river, we should have been more prepared for something like it on dry land. In our defense, I should say that even the most fertile and apprehensive imagination could never have anticipated what came to befall us. First had come the sound, like the thunder of an approaching wave, to which had quickly been added the crashing of falling trees. We had barely time to rise to our feet and then the herd was upon us, charging through the camp, scattering bodies and trampling our fires.
What little I saw, I saw by firelight. I could make no estimate of their number. Each of those beasts was a giant, of a species hitherto unknown to science. They seemed to move as easily on two legs as on all fours, their long tails providing balance and their forelimbs as well adapted for gripping as running. At the time their attack appeared to have no purpose other than to terrify and destroy.
But now, as we counted our number that morning and found no less than three of our fellows and one of the camaradas missing, it seemed that the simple peon’s story was true. There was a purpose to the attack after all; we had been harvested. There was much grieving and wailing, and a great sense of gloom and despair settled upon the camp, and I resolved that if I did not act to dispel it, our adventure might end there, and all the struggles we had endured and the losses we had borne would be for nothing. I gathered everyone together and addressed
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