Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
There had been, the major said offhand, some other fighting that day. From his face Emily guessed at a hard-fought struggle, a desperate attempt to hold the foe at bay on open ground, before
those withering guns. He dismissed it, though, and laughed off his own efforts, merely remarking that the day had been lost from the moment the last horse died.
And Emily knew in her heart that the Denlanders called it the Golden Minute, not in honour of the doomed splendour of the cavalry but for the discipline of their own advance into the teeth of
Lascanne. They were celebrating the orderly firing advance of their shopkeepers and clerks and tradesmen, which had destroyed the finest professional soldiers of the age.
Towards dawn she encountered a navy man and listened to his story, too: his wild tales of Denlander ships clad in iron, of Denlander ships driven by engines against the wind. He was a sailor,
though, and, knowing his type, she did not know whether to believe him.
*
And the time came when the station the train slowed for was Chalcaster, and at last she had come full circle. She had helped Tubal down, but it became obvious that he was in no
position to walk to Grammaine, or even to his printer’s shop in town, and there was no cart or wagon to be had.
‘I’ll go to Grammaine and get Grant to fetch you,’ she decided, and then smiled despite herself, because it was the old Emily speaking, who she had thought was lost. ‘No,
I’ll come and fetch you myself.’
The thought then came to her that she could far more easily seek out Mr Northway in his offices, and call on him for whatever aid she wished, but Scavian was still in her mind, like a bright
fire. She did not want to have to lie to Cristan Northway, certainly not as her first action back home from the war front. And to stand before him now, and make no mention of ‘Giles
Scavian’, would be a lie in all but name.
As she left the station, she looked back, and immediately wished she had not. The soldiers stepping off the train were so few compared to those who had set out from this same station. She
suffered the sight of a great crowd of mothers, children, grandparents and sisters all pushing forward, past and around her, anxious for a glimpse of one familiar face amongst the new arrivals. All
too often they did not find it, and she was prompted to think about Doctor Lammegeier’s words, his sadness concerning the future of both nations after the war’s close. So many had died,
on both sides. Lascanne and Denland must lean on each other or fall, he had predicted.
When she had still been a lady of leisure, she would never have even thought of walking all the way to Chalcaster. The miles of rutted roads, the disdain of those riding past,
why, no lady would ever consider such a demeaning practice.
When she had been fresh from Gravenfield, she and Elise had made this walk, from Chalcaster to Grammaine, and it had seemed a bit of fun, an adventure, a bold way of showing off her new uniform
and her new status.
Now she faced the miles stoically, and covered them with a soldier’s steady, metronomic pace, and she did not think about the journey itself, only the destination. The summer sun was
strong above her, but she would call nothing hot now, save the steaming of the swamps. She bore it all without thought or complaint.
So she slogged along the road, and then the narrower track, seldom looking much ahead of her. She felt oddly unbalanced, shorn of something, and only when the gate of Grammaine was in sight did
she realize that it was the comforting weight of her musket that she missed.
First the gate, and up the hill beyond it was the house. Grammaine’s grounds were modest: once she reached that gate, there was no hiding from the house itself. It overlooked everything.
The sight of it struck her: the sheer nostalgia of it. How small it seemed! How long ago it was, half a year and yet forever, since she had last laid eyes upon it. The fear she had experienced in
the war was nothing to this moment. What if the door should open and some strange face look out at her? Was her family still there, or had some bandit king or Denlander conqueror seized it as his
residence?
What if it has all changed?
This place had been her rock, her anchor in the storm. What if it had not held, but shifted, as everything else had shifted. Where could she go, if
not here?
There are always other options: Giles; Mr Northway . . . Think like a soldier, woman! Stop fretting and go find out.
She passed through the gate and made for the house, looking for signs of life and feeling oddly like a scout approaching enemy ground.
In the yard she paused, seeking some movement in the windows, but there was none. Her heart had already begun to fail her. She was not sure she dared discover what had happened here since she
had left. Her hand sought out the pistol at her belt, and she wished she had loaded it.
Then a face at an upstairs window, looking down on her, in just a pale flash. She began to raise a hand and wave, but it was already gone. It might have been Jenna, the maid, though she could
not swear to it. She gathered up her courage as best as she could, and made for the door.
‘Stop right there!’ bellowed a man from the stables. ‘You just hold there, soldier! Put your hands up where I can see them, and all.’
She stopped dead, but she was smiling and tears pricked at her eyes. She knew that voice, and knew therefore that she was home. She turned carefully, hands extended, and looked towards the burly
old man advancing from the stable block with a musket in his hands.
‘Right, now,’ he said. ‘You give me your business here . . .’ and he tailed off into speechless wonder.
‘Hello, Grant,’ she said.
‘God bless me,’ he said, lowering the musket in such a way that she knew it had not been loaded. ‘Miss Emily, it’s not you?’ His eyes passed back and forth across
her face, seeing the bruises, the lines of pain and strain that the war had put on her.
‘Hello, Grant,’ she said again, voice trembling. He was so much as she remembered that it was unbearable to simply stand and look at him. She found herself running over to him,
throwing her arms about him and just holding him, feeling his strong, supporting embrace about her. ‘I’m back,’ she whispered. ‘I’m back.’
‘Steady now,’ he said, and then added the ‘Lieutenant’ after a glance at her shoulder. ‘We never knew you were coming back. Is that the end of it then,
ma’am?’
‘Oh, I hope so,’ she said, heartfelt. ‘Listen, Grant, Tubal’s still at the station. I have to go back for him.’
‘Oh, no, ma’am. That’s my job. You need to see your sisters now, and they need to see you. I’ll go fetch Mr Salander.’ He let go of her, shaking his head as he
gazed at her again. ‘Soon have everything back to normal.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Not ever again. Tubal will need the buggy, Grant, not just a horse.’
‘Is that right, ma’am?’ There was a wisdom in Grant’s nod that told her he understood what she meant. ‘I’ll harness it up right away.’
Heading back into the stables, he left her at the kitchen door and, after a moment’s hesitation, she knocked. She did not feel equal to simply walking into the place that had once been her
home.
It was Jenna who came to the door, staring at her blankly until Emily smiled. Then the girl shrieked with surprise and ran off into the house, leaving Emily to step in like a tinker and glance
about at the kitchen, noticing how little food there was, but how Cook had kept it neat all this time. Feeling unutterably weary, she sat down heavily at the table and waited, dumping her helmet
and the pistol before her.
She heard footsteps on the stairs, not jubilant but cautious, and did not look up until a shadow fell across her.
‘Hello, Alice,’ she said.
Her sister stood wide-eyed, open-mouthed, a woman who has just seen the dead come back to life.
‘Emily?
Emily?
But we heard . . . the war . . . we thought you all must have died!’
‘You’re always so melodramatic.’ Emily tried a weak smile. ‘Some of us got out.’
And some of us did not.
‘Did you escape the Denlanders? Are you on the run?’
Emily did not know whether to laugh or cry. ‘We surrendered, Alice. Does that disappoint you?’
‘But . . . we thought they’d kill everyone . . .’
The politics, the details, Doctor Lam’s philosophy, it was all far too much to explain, and she found that she had no energy left to even begin. ‘I’m here, Alice. They let me
come home. I suppose they’re not as bad as you’ve heard, when it comes down to it. Let that be enough.’
‘You . . . you look terrible,’ said Alice. ‘You’ll have to grow your hair back.’
Emily coughed out some incredulous laughter. ‘Alice, I’m back from the damned
war
and you’re complaining about my hair?’
Alice pursed her lips. ‘Well, it
does
need looking after. Have you brought . . . a man back, from the war? A soldier . . . ? Why are you laughing at me?’
‘Because you haven’t changed.’ Emily levered herself up from the table then, hearing footsteps.
Mary came in, with Jenna crowding behind, and stopped dead. She looked so much older than Emily remembered, so much more worn. It had been hard on her, all this time, even though she had stayed
at home. ‘You’re . . . alone,’ she whispered.
‘He lives, Mary,’ Emily told her. ‘Grant’s gone to fetch him. He’s . . . hurt.’
‘Oh, God, as long as he’s alive, I don’t care,’ Mary burst out, and was in Emily’s arms the next second, hugging her tight. ‘We’d given up hope.
We’d given up hope for either of you. Oh, God, I thought I was a widow, Emily! I thought I’d lost you and Tubal, as well as poor Rodric.’
And Emily held her, and wondered how many other families were having such tearful reunions today, and how many men and women would be at the train station, waiting, waiting, until there were no
more soldiers to come, and no more trains, and they had still not seen the face they sought.
*
She slept until noon the next day, and was still weary when she awoke. Opening her eyes, she at first could not work out where she was. What was this room, this sunlight, this
bed? Where were the cramped confines of her tent? Where were the sounds of the camp, and the smell of rot drifting off the swamps? When Jenna opened the door, she jumped, scrabbling for a gun that
was not there.
‘Miss, are you all right, miss?’ the maid asked nervously, for the look on Emily’s face had taken her aback.
‘I’m . . . I’m sorry, Jenna. I overslept.’
‘Mrs Salander said you should be left to sleep as long as you wished, miss,’ Jenna explained. ‘Only . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s a gentleman here to see you, miss, if you wanted to rise. Otherwise I can tell him to go away, if you want.’
‘A . . . Is it a Denlander?’
Where’s the pistol? Don’t tell me I left it in the kitchen.
No, there was the hilt of it, protruding from beneath her crumpled
jacket.
‘No, miss. It’s Mr Northway, from Chalcaster. Shall I tell him you can’t see him?’
Mr Northway
, the same name that had dogged her family, had ruined her father, had once tormented her. That ill-omened name she had come to hate, before. The name at the foot of so many
letters clandestinely delivered, secretly read. The only words from home, the repository for her hidden thoughts, the name that had been custodian of her sanity in the madness that had been the
war.
Oh, God, what can I say to Mr Northway? What on earth will I say?
She found her heart beating even faster than it had when she was fighting. She repeated his name to herself, and it brought no memories of his well-ordered office in Chalcaster. Just as the
smell of cordite would forever mean only the war for her, washed of its association with her father’s death, so his name took her to the front, and the moments she had been given to read his
letters. His name brought to mind that he, selfish and corrupt, had taken to breaking laws on her account, not on his own; that he, avaricious as he was, had promised money for her rescue when she
had gone astray. What kind of man had she brought out that had been so well hidden within his drab clothes?
For such a long time she had touched him only by messenger. Now here he was and she had not the first idea of what she might say.
And Jenna was offering to send him away.
‘Miss?’
‘Don’t . . . I’ll see him. Have him wait in the drawing room.’
After Jenna had left, Emily felt her heart skip, nervous as a young girl.
In the end, after deliberating over her old wardrobe, holding dresses up to the light and wondering how it would feel to wear one after all this time, she had Jenna bring her
some of Tubal’s clothes. She felt that she needed the freedom of movement. Today was not a day to feel constrained.
And, after all, what do the clothes matter?
She had worn the uniform of both armies in her day.
She met Alice coming down the stairs.
‘You’ve heard who’s here?’ she said. ‘That wretched man.’
‘It’s all right, Alice. I don’t mind seeing him.’
‘You always did want to argue with him. I can’t count the number of times you rode off to Chalcaster in high dudgeon, to give him a piece of your mind. Will you speak sharply to him
this time, do you think? Could I watch?’
‘Alice, please . . .’
‘He has been here a dozen times since you left, oiling his way around Mary, trying to pretend he’s not a villain. He’s brought us food, as though we can’t make do for
ourselves. He even brought a dress for me, when there were none in all the shops in Chalcaster. But I don’t care if I had nothing but my undergarments, I’d never wear anything of his.
He’s been trying to buy our gratitude like some petty merchant.’
‘Then perhaps we should be grateful,’ Emily snapped, before she could stop herself. Alice halted at the foot of the stairs, looking hurt.
‘But Emily, he’s Mr
Northway
.’ She put a world of dislike into those two syllables. ‘You know what he’s done to us – and who knows what other bad
things he’s done that we haven’t heard about. And, anyway, you must know what he is become now.’