A Letter to His Majesty

SEPTEMBER 1939
3rd INDIAN ARTILLERY BRIGADE, CALCUTTA
We have been stationed here a while. Long enough for me who is not a man of letters, or pithy reminiscences, to crave the lost comfort of fog and fireplaces, the familiar, filial, and appetising scents of a hearth replaced by the oppressive gunpowder-and-metal foulness of howitzers. They have modelled this city after Home, but it is as far from my home as these thousands of fresh boys, nestlings, being shipped off to fight in a War they have no stake in, crossing forbidden waters, are from theirs.
Forgive my rambling. My time is drawing to a close, in a city of lost men I cannot recognise, and I feel I have much to say and naught but these last few hours to say it. Yet I must do my duty first.  I feel I must warn Your Majesty. A spectre is haunting the Empire. The spectre of Death.
It is not the War, or not just the War: I mean that our time has ended, though all of us may not know it yet. We are but Flying Dutchmen.
That is not idle metaphor. I believe that this spectre is following me, His only reason for not claiming me sooner being to savour my prolonged torment. He thrives on yearning and memories and tears and lost causes as much as on myths and legends and superstition. And I believe He has already claimed several of my men and brothers, though we, blind as we are, did not see it at the time.
I only now wait for Him to arrive, so that I might ask Him His Name, and if He does not answer me I shall scream, "Very well, Demon: then say my name and drag me to Hell" and He shall.
I apologise if it seems that I am wasting your time, or that you have trusted command of your forces to a raving madman (I have killed with and without cause, but never as a madman- this you must believe). But I sit here, now, in my bare alien quarters with only the light of a candle and the chirp of crickets, painful memories, the scratch of my pen and an unfamiliar, uncomfortable rustling for company, to report only what I believe- know- to be true, as is my duty, and to you directly because it is your misfortune to bear the crown and thus, despite all the protection we can offer, to stand at the gates when the time comes.
As is your sacred duty.
We created this spectre; we may have done it in Plassey or in Waziristan or in this very city, in May.
 Poor imitation of home it may be but in desperate times you relish whatever small comfort you can extract: perhaps from a stroll through the corridors of this still fledgling City, or the riverside. Buoyed by the announcement of the new Socialist congregation under one of their native sons (who I believe shall be confined soon), there was unrest, but not enough that I would not steal a chance to gauge how unsafe the city had become in the evening, for us and for them. A few months later death from the skies would ensure that.
A few paces out from the river I came upon what seemed to be a theatrical performance on the streets; the congregation was not big enough for the local Constabulary to notice. My eyes were drawn to what I presumed was a Bengali family: husband, wife and young son, dressed in finery and thus conspicuous in their choice of company, time, and place, despite the assertion that revolution does not follow the maxim of class. I had seen far too many instances to the contrary to believe in this: even the rebels and politicians of the higher classes adopt the vestments of the lower ones in a futile attempt at unity (which works no better than segregation: we tried both and failed). I followed them at a distance, being possessed by a wild curiosity; maybe the morbid and fatal interest one has in the instruments of his own failure.
The play began, stirring the crowd, perhaps shaping their spirits: zeitgeist, as the krauts would call it. The players shouted rhetoric, the crowd answered in kind. There were no guttural screams, or cheers, or bold declarations, as I had witnessed elsewhere, and it was all the more terrifying for it. I watched as they killed us.
Later, when the butchering was over, and the crowd had disappeared, only the conspicuous trinity was there, waiting for me. Evening had seeped into night, and in that mostly calm yet only very slightly troubled, mostly silent yet only very slightly whispering breeze, and in the glow of buildings that did not belong here, I could see myself in a clarity that I had been denied before: as a terrifying yet pathetic being from another world.
They were waiting to deny me, or perhaps to welcome me into their bosom. I do not remember the order in which I killed them then, in my mind, or even if I did: perhaps the boy knew where to strike, and knocked the gun out of my hand, and saved his family; perhaps he joined them in oblivion or a better land. Or perhaps he knelt among their bodies, weeping at the violation of his world.
I watched them leave. I already knew where they would go. And the streets were empty, but for the buildings and the owls and the bats.
And the spectre has been following me since that night. Sometimes it whispers the names of murdered dissidents and denied orphans who do not exist merely in my mind. It tells me of how this edifice raised on the soil of sacrifice and suffering is crumbling. But I am not the only one who is guilty, or with blood on his hands. And so I believe that this spectre, or their own spectres, has claimed so many of my brothers and my men. Soon it- they- will claim us all. Even you, Your Majesty- especially you. God save you.
I hope this reaches you. My night is tonight, and so I made this final effort to collect myself, my thoughts, and do my duty. There is much left to say, but the time has not been granted us. The night has grown quieter, the crickets have silenced their chirping in anticipation, and we, the bastard children of giants who dared to stand on their shoulders, shall now go to sleep.

The rustling grows louder. In distinctive beats, like the flapping of wings. Perhaps it is nothing more than a furry, fickle pest stuck in some corner of this empty room. It does not matter.
All that remains for me now is to blow out the candle.
It has been an honour.
I remain, your most faithful servant,
Major Joseph Chillingworth.