Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Emily . . .’ He clenched his hands in front of him. ‘Emily . . . I have something to discuss with you. A matter of some great import, to me at least. I have had the chance to
raise it before, and have not done so, and regretted it. Ever since you left, I have cursed myself for lacking the courage to speak . . .’
‘Cristan, please . . .’
He was as pale as ever she had seen soldiers on the eve of battle, his fists clenched so tightly that the knuckles had gone white. ‘Emily, I have conceived an affection for you.’
His unwieldy turn of phrase almost made her laugh, but she kept quiet.
‘Emily,’ he said again. ‘I have found for some time now that you, of all the women of my acquaintance, are . . . most possessed of all those qualities that I value in any human
being: intelligence, strong character, good – if sharp – conversation. Before you enlisted, I had commenced a . . . campaign of my own, so to speak, to sound you out – to provoke
you, I think, into seeing me as some man other than . . .’
‘Other than the man that ruined my father,’ she finished drily.
‘Quite,’ he said, without shame. ‘Indeed. You see, I thought that you interested me, and that you would make a fine companion for me, and all manner of other nonsense that men
of middling position think when once they begin to court.’ He looked glumly down at his hands. ‘And then you left to go to war, and I realized the most abject thing, a revelation that
quite spoiled my enjoyment of life. I found that my bargains, my rumour-mongering and my oh-so-very-clever dealings quite failed to bring me any happiness and that, left to my own devices, all I
did was brood on you and wonder what you might be going through, with me not there to lend an underhand helping hand. In short . . .’ He paused, and she thought that, after all, he would not
be able to actually say it. ‘In short,’ he continued, more quietly, ‘I realized that I was utterly and dismally in love.’ The words, now said at last, seemed to roll out
towards the distant Wolds and come echoing back.
She found that it was she herself who was speechless. Somewhere between the blustering and the slyness, he had struck a vein of sincerity. Now his eyes were fixed on his hands as he waited.
‘Cristan . . .’
And if I do, I lose my sisters, unless I can bring them round. And Scavian. I have already given my love to Giles, haven’t I? And what will people say, who
knew my father? Can I spend my life with a man such as this, so venal and devious?
‘Please,’ he said, as soon as a heartbeat had elapsed without her answer. ‘Do not . . . answer too hurriedly. Please take time. Please think of what we have shared, if only on
paper. Please think.’
She reached out and took his hand, held it between both of hers, feeling his skin surprisingly cool despite the sun and his embarrassment. Thinking – she could not help herself – how
it was such a contrast to the heat that had flowed from Giles’s body.
‘I need time,’ she told him. ‘Believe me, I need time to think. I owe you so much, but I cannot allow myself to be bound just because of that. I need time.’
‘I understand.’ His voice betrayed only intense relief that finally he had at least been able to speak the words.
*
Try as she might, she could not have her life back. Each day she felt as though she were trying to find it again through a labyrinth, winding and turning, dead end after dead
end, and never any sight of the comfort and ease of mind she had once known when the worst to trouble her had been her feud with Mr Northway or a shift in the weather.
As she observed Alice and Mary go about their lives, she felt as though she was watching them from behind thick glass and, pound as she might, she could not break through to join them. Alice
would corner her and share the gossip from the local farms and the town: who was in, who was out, which war widow had already found a new match, which newly reunited man and wife could not live
easily with his wounds or her experiences. It all washed over Emily like a torrent, but left her dry. All she could think about, as Alice babbled on, were the men and women who had fought and died
with her, and was just it for this? To serve as titbits to alleviate Alice’s boredom?
What was the point?
She had lived with death and, having had that presence at her side, this
peace and calm seemed trivial and meaningless.
She would watch Mary play with Francis, who was now crawling energetically, getting everywhere he shouldn’t if not watched closely. There was meaning, but it was not for her. She could not
subsume herself in those minutiae of life which had once been her entire world of experience. And she frightened Francis: the boy would not go near her unless his mother was close.
Tubal adapted better than she had, and she wondered what secret he knew, or whether it was that he had simply thought less about it, all the while the war lasted. He was busy trying to rebuild
his printer’s business, with unexpected help from Mr Northway and his Denland masters. He had been commissioned to produce a book about the war, compiling and collecting stories from both
sides. The Denlanders were working to knit the countries together, to draw close the jagged-edged ravine that separated them.
Emily had no faith in it. None.
She could stay in the house until perhaps midday, but by then her patience would be spent. In her man’s attire, she would go riding out across the Wolds, seeking absolution through action.
She would carry her pistol with her, perhaps even Grant’s old musket, and she carried both of them loaded. She told herself it was a habit she would grow out of as the peace set in, but
inside she knew that she herself perpetuated it. She could not let go.
Coral.
She remembered once learning how sea-corals grew; how they built shells upon shells to protect themselves, growth after growth of hard armour, until the creatures that had
started the mound suffocated and died deep within, and it was the outer shell only that survived. She was like that. The war had callused her all over, had given her tough armour to wear against
its blows both physical and mental . . . and now that she came to take the armour off, she found it hollow and empty.
Every other day, at the very least, her horse took her to Chalcaster, and she would slope into the Mayor-Governor’s office. Whether he had people watching out for her, she did not know,
but somehow he was always free to talk with her. She would settle down in his office and converse about the war, about the future, about her doubts and fears. She had nobody else in the world with
whom she could speak so freely. He mocked her, to be sure, argued with her, danced words around her, but she needed that – needed the opposition. She was so used to being opposed.
And he would talk, as well. He had a whole life of iniquity and equivocation behind him, and he told her of it frankly, polishing nothing. He told her of the demands the Denlanders were making
of him, and of the complaints from the people of Chalcaster. He explained his subtle dealings that kept the town supplied with flour, with beer, with livestock. He told her the latest rumours
concerning the King, still at liberty and driving the Denlanders mad as he flew about the country, rallying rebellion. She was fascinated by it all.
To his credit, he never pressed her by raising the subject of his feelings again. He had put them away neatly, as he did with all things. He made gifts, on occasion, but they were practical and
not romantic: simple things that were hard to find in the shortages after the war. Sometimes they would walk through Chalcaster in the fine summer weather. She saw the sour looks he gathered as
they passed, but she noticed the looks she herself received as well. There was a kind of reverence there. Sometimes men or women, strangers, would approach her, and take her hand and congratulate
her. Merchants would stop haggling when she came by, and smile at her. Shopkeepers would give her things and refuse to accept payment, poor as everyone was these days. Once a man had approached
her, a little drunk, and told her, ‘I am with you, if you do it. Say the word and all my family will back you.’ Another time, Northway had taken her to a restaurant one evening, newly
reopened, and the owner had refused to take any money from her. ‘My son,’ he said, ‘fought at the Levant.’ His son had died at the Levant, yet still he idolized her.
She was a hero. She had cause to wonder precisely what Doctor Lam had said about her, and how it had changed in the telling before it reached Chalcaster, but she was known as the last commander
of Lascanne, the one who had not been defeated. Why her and not Tubal, she could not say. Was it her birth? Perhaps it was more heroic for this honour to go to a woman. Perhaps the odds defied
seemed greater that way. Nobody seemed to remember that the Levant forces had surrendered. Everyone knew how they had stood out to the very end.
She made no attempt to correct them. She wanted to. She wanted to stand in the market square and shout out the truth so loud that it would be heard in Denland itself. Each time she was tempted
to curse down some well-wisher, to brush off some well-meant gesture, she instead looked in their eyes. There was hope there, hope flowering because she was the sun that looked upon it. Lascanne
was short of heroes now, and she gave them something of their pride back, just by her walking the streets.
There were Denlander soldiers everywhere, of course. It almost seemed that there was one on every street corner, save that she knew they moved constantly to keep an eye on her, or perhaps to
protect Mr Northway They were cautious about her, deferential even, and in time she realized that they, too, held her in high esteem, almost in awe. She was the Lascanne warrior queen who had never
been beaten. She was the merciful commander who had saved their own comrades’ lives by not prolonging the fight to the bitter end: life and death in one frail body. She wondered if, in an
earlier age, there would be cults and mystery sects arising out of her footsteps. She seemed to have become something that she herself could not control.
*
This morning she lay in bed, watching the sun creep through the shutters piece by piece like an army escorted by its scouts. Below stairs, she could hear the sounds of the house
as it readied itself for the day ahead. Cook was getting a fire started and complaining to Jenna. Grant was outside cutting wood. Mary and Poldry would be scratching little marks against the meagre
household accounts, and making a list of what they might need from neighbours or from the town. It amazed her that the purpose of all this industry was not to gain something, to win or to keep
something, but simply to go one more day before the whole circle turned and put them back in their starting places again.
It’s not war that’s hard, but life.
She felt the tension in herself, still. Thirty days of peace had done nothing to remove it from her. She put her hand out to touch the butt of the pistol and its cool metal reassured her. No
matter what, she would keep herself armed. Let the Denlanders come; let rebellion set its fires. She would be ready.
Then Jenna screamed from downstairs and she found the gun automatically in her hand, her body halfway out of bed without her ordering it.
She slid her feet to the bedroom floor, listening to the commotion below. Jenna and Cook were shouting at someone, loud enough to drown any reply, and soon Emily heard Alice’s voice
joining in as well. She could not make out the words, but some visitor was trying to impose on them and they were having none of it.
And then came Grant’s gruff bark, and a pause, and a murmur as the newcomer explained himself. Emily edged over to the window and pushed the shutters ajar a little, but by then the visitor
had been let inside and she could see nothing.
She began dressing hurriedly in her white uniform breeches and shirt, and a dark coat of Rodric’s. The pistol was thrust through her belt without thought. By the time Jenna rapped at her
door, she was already standing before it, unconsciously at parade-ground ease.
‘What is it?’
‘There’s a man here says he needs to see you,’ Jenna said, half opening the door. ‘But he looks something awful. I think he slept in a ditch or something, like a tramp.
He doesn’t look like the sort of man you’d want to meet, if you take my meaning, miss.’
‘I don’t suppose he gave his name, did he?’
‘Oh, yes, miss.’ Jenna paused for a moment, trying to recollect it. ‘It was . . . He said he was a Mr John Brocky miss . . . Miss?’
For Emily had pushed past her immediately and was heading down the stairs, calling behind her, ‘Wake Mr Salander, Jenna. Wake him now!’
She burst into the drawing room so fast she almost took the door off its hinges, and very nearly bowled Alice over. The man who slumped there, his bulk overwhelming the chair,
was indeed none other than John Brocky.
There was not so much of the tramp about him. Still, he had looked better and his clothes were travel-worn, and torn at one knee. There were grey rings under his eyes that spoke of little sleep
in the last several days, and he was monstrously unshaven. Mary and Alice were watching him suspiciously from across the room, as if waiting for him to try and steal the silver.
‘Brocky,’ she said, and his face lit up to see her.
‘There you are, you bloody woman!’ he said, oblivious to the horror on the faces of his other listeners. ‘Have you any idea how hard it is to
find
this wretched
place?’
‘Emily do you know this person?’ Mary asked stiffly.
‘Mary Alice, this is Mr John Brocky who was quartermaster at the Levant with Tubal and me. Brocky these ladies are my sisters, Alice and Mary.’
‘Charmed, charmed,’ Brocky muttered to the women, who looked anything but. ‘Listen, Marshwic – Can I call you Marshwic here, or must it be this damnfool Emily
nonsense?’
‘Call me whatever you want, Brocky. Why are you here?’
He looked up at her without cheer. ‘It’s Scavian, Marshwic. He’s in trouble. They’ve got him.’
With a glass of wine to fortify him, Brocky told his story:
‘You see,’ he started, ‘when Scavian’s time came to get off, I rather thought I’d go with him. Peacetime and all, and he’s good family, you know. I thought I
might introduce myself, gain some patronage. It was always going to be hard picking up the pieces. You know what I mean.’