Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Emily watched the other women leave. Demaine’s face held no clues but she felt that somehow she had done something wrong.
‘What is it, Sergeant?’ she asked him, but he shook his head.
‘Not me. Major Castwood wants to see you.’
‘The major? Why?’ Since his address to them at the start of their training, none of the recruits had seen much of their commanding officer.
‘No idea, Marshwic, but I wouldn’t keep him waiting. He asked me to send you to him before the class, but I thought you needed the practice.’
He was seldom found beyond the confines of his private office, was Major Castwood, and there was much speculation about him. Why was he not at the war? What was wrong with him
– with his face? He had almost never appeared to his charges during the time they had been under his care, but it was known he spoke to the sergeants and the teachers every day or so, hearing
reports of who was proving apt and who was slow.
Emily approached his door now with trepidation. Had there been some more news from the front, perhaps.
Is it Tuba?
Had the war taken her brother-in-law now? Mary would be inconsolable.
Mary would need her support just when she could not give it. Or was it news from home: terrible news that only the major could give? Brigands, perhaps. Debts that had fallen due, threatening the
future of Grammaine itself. Or perhaps one of the staff had died – old Poldry maybe?
But, no, they would not trouble to tell me of a servant’s death.
It was an oddly bitter
thought. So many of the women she was training with, the same women she would be fighting alongside, were servants thrown to the Draft.
Who are the powers that be to count their lives the less
for it?
She rapped smartly and waited, before his quiet voice came clearly through the door. ‘Enter.’
Standing before his desk, she remembered to salute. The room was a small one, and nothing like Mr Northway’s opulence. There were maps on the desk itself and on the walls, with drawings
and notes on them. She imagined the major had been fighting the war here, solely for his own benefit, or fighting and refighting his own past battles, perhaps.
He looked up at her, and she took the chance to study his face, never before seen so closely. The one side was the face of a man of later middle years, lined with pain and toil. The other was
smooth, pale, and the eye stared out of it as unnaturally as if it sat on a dinner plate.
A mask, she saw: a porcelain mask, but done very finely. From any distance one might almost not realize, until he tried to speak.
‘Miss Marshwic,’ he said out of one side of his mouth, and then: ‘The answer to your question is that I was standing next to Demaine’s horse. Think about it.’
For an awful moment she almost laughed, but he was being quite serious. She composed herself.
‘You sent for me, sir.’
‘I did. Listen up, Marshwic. I hear things about you. Think you’re having a tough time of it here?’
‘No more than anyone else, sir.’
‘Is that so?’ He raised his eyebrow. ‘Word is you’ve been getting into fights, is that so?’
‘Isn’t that what we’re trained for, sir?’
His lips twitched. ‘That could count as insolence, Marshwic.’
‘Is there a problem, sir?’
‘Yes, there is.’ He stood up, his broad-shouldered frame looming over the desk, overshadowing her. ‘The problem is that I have four hundred green recruits – four hundred
women
, for the Lord’s sake – who aren’t going to last a moment when the war comes for them. My problem is that they ship sooner than I’d like, and there’s not
a damn thing more I’ve got time to teach them. My problem is that I am sending troops to the war who are undisciplined, unskilled and frankly just unready for combat, and that I have no
choice but to send them. Orders are orders. Do you see my problem, Marshwic?’
‘I do, sir.’ Emily might have felt apart from the mass of her fellow recruits, but now she felt a sudden surge of loyalty towards them, hearing them attacked like this.
‘Any suggestions?’
‘If you give us a chance, sir, we will not disappoint you.’
He stood back, regarding her through narrowed eyes. ‘Will you not?’ He sighed. ‘Well then, I’m afraid I’m going to have to make an example of you,
Marshwic.’
She stood silent and stiff, waiting for it.
‘I’m making you an ensign.’
‘Sir?’
‘You must have heard of it. It’s the lowest rank in the army above soldier-at-arms. In the olden days they used to carry the flags around. Now it just means you get to do the jobs
the sergeant doesn’t want.’
‘Sir, I know, sir, but . . . why me?’
‘Because you listen and you concentrate, and you have at least some intelligence about you, or so I’ve heard. Sergeant Demaine says you’ve some idea of which way to hold a gun,
which is more than most of them, even after all this time.’ He must have seen a hint of hubris in her expression, because he added, ‘But mostly because you’re a gentlewoman, and
it’s bad form to have someone of good blood as a common soldier. And don’t get too proud of yourself. I’m making four ensigns and a sergeant today, so you’re not even top of
the class. Any questions?’
‘What will this mean, sir?’
‘That you’ll have even more to worry about than anyone else. Dismissed, now, Marshwic. Off you go.’
In the forty days since we left home, we had ceased to think of the war. It seems incredible to me now but the very training to become a soldier had eclipsed the
reasons behind it.
All such thoughts returned to us a few days before the end of our time at Gravenfield when we were brought before Major Castwood again. He explained that we were to be portioned out.
Most of us would go to support the dashing cavalry of the Couch ant font: the mountain passes, the plateaus and the plains. This was Castwood’s old command, and Lord Deerling’s of
course, offering the grand spectacle of war as we forced the Denlanders back beyond their own borders.
And some few would be consigned to the Levant font. Such a pretty name it is for such a place. Levant, meaning ‘to rise’, as Couchant is ‘to retire’; the
nomenclature of the war dictated by the habits of the sun itself. But the sun has little enough to do with the Levant font. Here are only swamps, fetid jungles and a brackish salt marsh which
draws no clear line between land and sea.
They were all terrified of being sent there. Not I.
The announcements were due to be made that day, and most of the morning there was a crowd of women waiting anxiously in the refectory or the dormitory. They talked in low voices
about the future, muttering and murmuring about east and west. The war, staved off for so many days, was back with them, like a spectre haunting each and every face.
Emily had already made her way to the major’s office, only to find that others had got there first. There was a queue of women waiting to be seen, more than twenty of them, but none of
them having to wait long. Each entered and was sent out again within a minute, with a set, despairing look on her face.
Elise came out next, and stomped down the line looking angry, stopping only when Emily caught her arm.
‘What did he say?’
‘He says we don’t get a say in it. We go where we’re put.
Bastard.
I asked Demaine to put in a word for me, but he said he couldn’t help either.’
Elise’s relationship with Sergeant Demaine had only just recovered from her discovering that she was not, after all, going to be an officer, and now it looked as though, at the eleventh hour,
it was about to take another beating.
‘You might as well give it a miss,’ Elise advised. ‘He ain’t budging.’
Emily shrugged. ‘I’ll ask. What can I lose?’
‘Nob’s privilege?’ Elise asked her. ‘Take me with you, will you?’
Emily smiled, and saw that she was next to bring her petition. In such a short time the others had been disposed of, and there was still an anxious line behind her. She squeezed Elise’s
arm and went in.
Major Castwood’s maimed expression, when he saw her before him, was one of disappointment.
‘Marshwic,’ he said. ‘I must have seen a quarter of Gravenfield’s complement today, but all of them soldiers-at-arms. At least those I promoted have had the sense and the
duty to stay away, and accept what they’re given. Still, I suppose you are gentle born, and that usually counts for something.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Don’t,’ Castwood warned her flatly. ‘Your family gives you the right to be told this politely rather than summarily, that is all. There are soldiers required for the
Couchant front, and soldiers required for the Levant front. The lots have been drawn. I will not borrow from one to pay the other, nor do I think it just to swap. Not even for your family name will
I do this, Ensign Marshwic. The decision was made by pure chance, because in this I must be fair.’
‘I understand, sir.’
‘Than why are you here, Marshwic?’ Castwood demanded.
‘Because I want to go to the Levant front, Major. I know there are dozens, scores who want the opposite, but I want the Levant, and I would gladly swap.’
‘Why?’ Castwood leant back in his chair, frowning.
‘Because I have a brother-in-law there. Because I had a brother there, until he was killed. Because it was his death that brought me here. Sir.’
Castwood looked at her a long time, and Emily was aware of that long line of hopeful, desperate women outside, who would be noting the seconds as they dragged on.
Bloody Marshwic, bloody
nob’s daughter,
they would be thinking, but they would have been surprised if they could have eavesdropped.
‘A dead brother is a bad reason to choose the Levant,’ Castwood told her. ‘I remember what it felt like to be righteous and noble about things and, believe me, I feel a fool
every time I come to shave.’
‘But, sir—’
‘A brother-in-law, though: living family? That’s better,’ he said. ‘Stick close to him. The swamps of the Levant are a difficult place to be new in.’
‘Then you’ll—’
‘I see no problem with shipping anyone who asks to the Levant. As you say, there are plenty who want the opposite.’
‘Could I ask . . . there’s a woman called Elise Hally—’
‘Ensign Marshwic!’ Castwood barked. ‘If I will not dabble in the fate of my recruits for my own pleasure – and the offers I have had today, in money, goods or female
flesh would make a bawd and a pawnbroker blush – then I will not do so for you. You yourself have taken the place of one woman who will find the Couchant front more to her liking, but which
one you will never know.’
They were kept waiting in the refectory after lunch, and everyone knew that it was going to be then. Master Sergeant Bowler stepped up onto one of the tables with a great long
list in his hands, all of four hundred names.
‘These now before me, whose names I read out,’ he called, ‘shall be joining His Majesty’s forces at the Couchant front. Absolon, Theresa; Acherson, Sally; Afland, Leese;
Afland, Yolanda; Aillen, Jane . . .’ He marched through the names at a steady, military pace, and pockets of relief burst all over the room as one woman after another heard her name given,
and knew that she was to be spared the swamps of the Levant. The quicker women understood, as the alphabet trudged past with no mention of them, and Bowler’s recitation gathered momentum with
a growing moan of quiet despair from those who knew that they had been passed over. Emily looked to Elise, beside her, as Bowler ploughed through the H’s, and saw the realization dawn on her
friend when the master sergeant got to, ‘Helender, Grace.’
‘I guess you couldn’t do anything for me,’ said Elise, with no blame in her voice. ‘I’m sure you tried.’
‘I did try,’ Emily told her, mentally marking off the names as they came, and waiting. ‘I couldn’t help you one way or another.’
‘One way or . . . What’s that supposed to mean?’ Elise asked, but Emily held a hand up and listened closely as the names paraded across the room, leaving joy and despair in
their wake.
‘Mabbins, Cath; Masefield, Bridgett,’ Bowler announced, and then, ‘Matchlock, Gemima,’ and then another name, and another, and Emily waited for Elise to catch up and
realize.
‘But . . .’ And then Elise nodded. ‘So, I reckon you couldn’t shift the old bastard either.’
Emily was going to explain then just what had passed between her and Castwood, and even about trying to swap with Elise. It would have been boasting, though, and boasting to cover her own fear.
She did fear, despite what she told herself. The reactions of her fellow recruits were contagious.
‘I couldn’t, no,’ she told Elise. ‘Some things just can’t be changed.’
They listened together as the roll call continued, and each woman in the room understood what her fate was to be. Elise was trying to look philosophical, Emily saw, but there were tears in the
corners of her eyes, and her lips were pressed tightly together. Emily took her hand and clasped it tight.
‘It will be all right,’ she promised. ‘I’ll look after you.’ What easy words they were to say.
‘Yanlo, Karen,’ said Bowler, and paused a moment before rolling the list up again with the precision of his profession. The room was quite quiet now, aside from a little sniffling,
and on the master sergeant’s face there was an odd, awkward expression of sympathy that sat badly there.
‘Those of you whose names I have just read out are to report to the station on the fortieth, from where you will be taken direct by train to the staging post at Gare. You’ll have to
march from there. Remember: left and then right?’ He made a weak smile. ‘You lot go out and make sure you’ve got your kit requisitioned and ready. I want to talk to the
rest.’
After the chair-scraping, the quick steps and the excited murmur of conversation just outside the door, the room was a very still place indeed. About four out of every five of the recruits had
gone, Emily saw. The Couchant front was a broader, easier field of battle, and thus could better use the greater numbers.
She turned her eyes to the master sergeant, as did everyone still there. He faced them with a soldier’s bravery.