Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
It was only after she had left his office and walked out into the clear crisp sunlight that she realized he was right.
*
Her two sisters did not take kindly to Emily’s truce with Mr Northway.
‘He is a hateful man,’ Alice declared, without hesitation. ‘How could you even want to speak with him after all he did to Father?’
Mary frowned, her steady gaze reminding Emily of their last conversation on this topic. ‘You know he tried to buy up Father’s debts. He would have taken Grammaine from us, if he
could. We sold half the estate, just to keep the rest away from him. You know that.’
‘We are at war. There is a common enemy,’ Emily reminded them. ‘He does what he can – as do we. In wars, you have truces.’
‘I do not know what you think he is, but he has always been a wicked creature,’ Mary insisted with finality.
Alice went on, ‘Look at the way he dresses: he is a repulsive, shabby little thing. He’s horrible. I wouldn’t have him as a servant, and now you’re dancing with him and
going to visit him as if he’s a real person.’
And all of it just brought home to Emily what Northway himself had said. Who else could she talk to about serious things? Who else was there who would not judge her words poorly?
Over that same winter, she went to see him four times. None of her visits was just an idle social call. Each time she went along as champion for some wronged party: a family going hungry, a
widow without firewood, a woman accused of theft who had a family to support. She had clashed with him over similar matters before, and it had been a duel of hates, as she focused her dislike of
the man into a crusading fury against his selfish and biased governance.
And now, when she came to him, she argued as fiercely as before, using ploy and counter-ploy as she chased him through the mansions of self-serving logic that he threw up to counter her. And yet
whenever they matched wits, no matter how life-or-death the stakes were for those she spoke on behalf of, she felt as though she and Northway were playing a game. Sometimes she broke past his
defences and forced some concession from him, and sometimes he led her down blind alley after blind alley, until she had exhausted her sophistry without winning him over. She was free to be
frustrated, to be angry with him, to decry his manners and his morals. The knife of her hate was sheathed, though. He mocked her words and ridiculed her chosen causes, but she mocked him back.
She was a changed woman. Deerlings House had made sure of that. She had entered into a wider world, coming of age in some new way. Some nights, over the long, mild winter, she dreamt of the
King, of dancing with his warm hand in her own, feeling the fierce fires of the
sangreal
dancing just beneath his skin. Other nights she was called before him, in all his majesty, not for
idle music and entertainment, but to bare her breast to him, to take the searing brand of his touch against her flesh, feeling the soul-shaking jolt of his royal blood as it infused her. She would
wake, twined in her bedsheets and drenched in perspiration, convinced that she would find a livid handprint stark against her skin; convinced that she had given herself into his service, that her
fate and that of the King’s were now inextricably linked.
*
Then came the day when Emily and Alice rode the buggy into Chalcaster market, only to find the stalls abandoned save for some determined few packing up their wares with the air
of women moving on to fresher pastures. By far the bulk of the people there were gathered about the Mayor-Governor’s noticeboard in the centre of the market square, and most of them strangely
silent. Emily and Alice slipped amongst the gathering of tradeswomen, market-seller’s wives, town gentlewomen and a few old men and children, until they were close enough to read.
The crowd around them was murmuring, a slow whisper that built gradually into something quite different. The women, for they were almost all women, were reacting with a ripple of horror to the
message just posted, a wave of bad news that would carry and carry until every household got to know if it.
‘What is it?’ Alice asked crossly, feeling herself jostled by the crowd. Emily squinted at the tacked-up paper, seeing first the royal seal at the base and only later the words
themselves.
Most who stared at the proclamation had no letters, she guessed, and those who could read it had done so and fled, as though the madness contained in those words might be catching, It
was
catching, she realized, and it would take a terrible toll of all gathered there. Listening to the snippets of rumour and misinformation as the crowd tried to puzzle out what was writ
there, she cleared her throat and held her hands up for quiet.
When she had enough of them waiting for her words, and with a heavy, sick feeling within, she read aloud what wiser heads had decreed.
‘BY ORDER of His Majesty, by the grace of God, Luthrian, King of Lascanne, fourth of that name, Lion of Denland, let the following proclamation be enacted in all
towns, villages and hamlets of the Kingdom of Lascanne, this fifty fourth day of Winter, Year of the King Seventeen Eighty-Eight.
IN ORDER that the war against the regicides and republicans of Denland be concluded at its soonest eventuality so as to thereby release those subjects of Lascanne
currently under arms, and;
IN ORDER that the rebellious nation of Denland be subdued forthwith, for which effort a sufficient and large number of soldiers is known to be required, to avoid the
threat of further rebellion, and;
For the greater glory and furtherance of the policies of the Kingdom of Lascanne,
IT IS COMMANDED that a further draft of the people of Lascanne be enacted.
So that all households, be they town or country, that have more than one female resident between the ages of fifteen and fifty must, by the First Day of Spring in the
Year of the King Seventeen Eighty-Nine, render up one such for the glorious service of her country, and, if it be thought fit, to be trained and outfitted as a soldier and put at the disposal
of His Majesty’s Armies.
’
Below was the seal and the signature of the King, but Emily hardly had eyes for them. Around her, a low moan of fear started up in one throat, and was taken up by the next, and
the next. The working women, the wives, the mothers all around her, must feel just as she had done when first she read this. There was now a dreadful weight inside her, below her ribs. It pulled
and dragged at her, choked her breath, hammered her heart. She felt ill, feverish. The sweat was chill on her face.
‘Oh, dear God, save us,’ she whispered, when she really meant,
save me.
This was fear, then. She had never really appreciated it before. She felt her legs buckle, and
clutched at the shoulder of a tradesman’s wife, so that for a moment the two of them were supporting each other. She heard the first sniffles and sobs begin around her.
‘Emily?’ Alice demanded, and for a moment Emily thought she simply had not been listening, as was her wont. Then, heedless of the expressions of the crowd, she exclaimed, ‘Oh,
don’t be foolish. It doesn’t mean us.’
Emily reached out and touched Alice’s chin, feeling suddenly very far away. ‘It does,’ she said.
‘No!’ Somewhere a woman started screaming: ‘They can’t make me!’ And it was echoed by others, at first few, then many – ordinary women thinking of their
homes, of their businesses, of their children.
‘
Everyone
, Alice,’ Emily confirmed shakily. ‘Every household. A draft of women.’ She could not get her breath to come evenly. Around them the crowd was coming
apart: women running home, or running away. The world seemed to spin slowly, ponderously, around her, with the proclamation at its centre.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Alice said, but she had gone pale. ‘It can’t mean . . . It’s just a . . .’
Emily looked around her, seeing her heart mirrored in every face. Here a girl of Alice’s age was weeping into her mother’s apron. Here a woman clutched her children to her, face
upturned towards the pale winter sky. A tradesman’s wife started backing away, her husband’s tools slung about her waist, her face slack at the thought of it. A young woman kept staring
intently at the notice, one hand clenched at her waist as though a sabre already hung there.
Beyond the disintegrating crowd, Emily saw the open doorway of the town hall, and a shabbily dressed figure standing framed within it. Mr Northway stared out across this great morass of woe, and
she could not say whether he saw her or not.
*
‘It must be me,’ she explained calmly. ‘There is no option, no other choice.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Mary protested, looking around the kitchen for support. Grammaine’s entire complement was there this evening: Emily’s sisters and the quartet of
servants, all silently considering the news. On the kitchen table lay the papers delivered to each household so that a chosen new recruit could be nominated, named and her skills anatomized.
‘There has never been a draft of women,’ Mary continued. ‘Whoever heard of such a thing?’ In her arms baby Francis made a disgruntled sound as if in agreement. ‘It
must be a mistake,’ she finished weakly. ‘They can’t really mean to send women to war.’
‘They must send someone,’ Emily said. ‘Who else, now, can they send?’
‘But they have sent men!’ Mary almost shouted. ‘They have sent the regular army, and then my Tubal, and a man from every other house, and then any man left who was not in his
dotage or infancy. How can they call upon us now to send the women? It isn’t fair. We must not send anyone.’
‘And did we say that when Tubal went to war, or Rodric?’ Emily replied emptily. ‘We did not. If our little brother had the courage to take up a musket and go off to war, then
what of us if we refuse? We make a mockery of his bravery, of the bravery of them all.’
There was a sudden sob from the corner of the room, and Emily turned to see Jenna putting her face in her hands.
‘What is it, Jenna?’
‘Please, ma’am . . .’ The maid tried to say more but huge, bullying sobs muscled in, one by one, to rack her, until old Poldry put his arms around her, letting her tears stain
his threadbare jacket.
‘What is it?’ Emily repeated. ‘I don’t understand . . .’
‘She thinks you’ll send her, ma’am,’ Cook explained. ‘Ever since she heard the news, she’s been frantic. I heard this morning that other households have done
it, sent a servant girl.’
Emily stared at her, and then at Jenna’s shuddering back, and inwardly her heart leapt.
Life!
it seemed to say.
Life and freedom. I was so sure it must be me, and now . .
.
And her own words of just a moment before returned to her, and she felt ill at herself.
How could I? How could I even think it?
Jenna was younger than Alice, a mere girl who had known little more than domestic service. How could Emily consider sending the poor creature to
some distant war far beyond the world she knew, with a gun in her hands and no real understanding in her head.
‘We will not send Jenna,’ she declared with finality. Inside, she wanted to cry because of the load she was taking on her own shoulders. How much more prepared was she than Jenna
would be? But still she spoke, and her voice barely betrayed the fear inside. ‘I think we all know who must go, now, to obey the King.’
‘Oh, no, Emily—’ Mary started.
‘Who else? Better me than Alice, and I will not have it said that the Marshwics send servants in their stead. We have always served the King, our family. We should be proud.
I
should be proud.’
‘There must be another way.’
‘No,’ Emily said. ‘No other way. First Tubal, then Rodric. Let us hope the war has had its fill once it’s got me. We have little enough left to give.’
*
Those women thus to be drafted from Chalcaster and its surroundings were to be sent to Gravenfield Barracks, thirty miles south along the railway line, for training to last
forty days. So the next notice in the marketplace explained, and the eyes that had read it were dry now. The weeping was done, the decisions made.
A recruiting sergeant brought out of retirement had made his way from house to house throughout Chalcaster, and then by carriage between the outlying farmhouses and the estates of the
countryside, and at every stop his list of names grew. When he came to Grammaine they were ready for him, and gave him bread and wine, and put brave faces on. Emily would be glad to go, she said.
She would be happy to serve, as her ancestors had served.
He had a long, mournful face with a drooping moustache and, when he nodded, it seemed that he was seeing the worst he could imagine become real. At how many doors had he been an unwelcome guest?
What scenes had he witnessed in carrying out his duty? What mothers had he parted from their children, sisters from sisters?
The list of the conscripts was posted in the marketplace, later, just in case any second thoughts were stealing about in the Chalcaster streets.
After the sergeant had been and gone, Emily’s dreams changed character, darkening into nightmares that tormented her. In those dreams, or most of them, she was running through Deerlings
House, through room after room of cracked armour and rusting swords. Behind her, almost in arm’s reach, came the Denlanders. In her dream, they were just faceless grey shapes. She had no
flesh to give them, but they had lusts, still. They called after her in whispering voices, entreating her, commanding her. They pursued her through the distorted rooms, chasing just exactly as fast
as she fled them. The more she tried to find the ballroom and the King, the dimmer and smaller those chambers became. If she did not wake soon after that, she knew that she would find herself in
the strangling garden with the futile angels, and so she forced herself awake each time the dream assaulted her, only to lie cold and alone in the small hours of the night.
One night, when she turned, at bay before the gate of the angels’ garden, it was not the host of faceless Denlanders that pursued her at all. Instead, Mr Northway stood there in front of
her with his bleak little smile and his pale hand outstretched to offer her a dance, and she knew he was Death, and let him take her.