Guns of the Dawn

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  But closer study of each face in turn showed her many things. She saw eyes that were wide, a lip that trembled, pale faces, and all of them so young. Had any of them used a razor more than once? Had they sweethearts, these lads, or had the woman that kissed each goodbye been a mother, watching her son recede into the darkness?

  In the lead was an older man, squat and unshaven in stark contrast to his charges. She recognized his face from two weeks before, preaching to these same young faces in Chalcaster Square.

  ‘Miss?’ he said. ‘All ready, miss? We need to be going.’

  ‘Won’t you come in for just a few minutes, Sergeant Pallwide? We’ve some porridge warmed up, and some bread, and you and your men have a long way to go. I’m sure a second breakfast won’t keep the uniforms from fitting.’ It was a well-rehearsed speech, and her smile no less. A few more minutes was all it meant. Just a few more minutes.

  The sergeant’s face split wide in a grin. ‘Well, that’s mighty kind of you, Miss Marshwic. Mighty kind. That’s the sort of kindness that puts fight in a soldier’s belly when he needs reminding of what he’s fighting for. Hear that, lads? You’ll remember this place when you’ve a Denlander in front of you.’

  He was first into the kitchen with a jaunty step and a too familiar nod at Alice, but he was too old and too plain for her, with his stubble and his lines. She was already looking beyond him at his recruits.

  Emily could name about half of them: field labourers and farmers’ sons, the second children of tradesmen, lads whose hands had been trained and apprenticed for peacetime. They looked awkward and clumsy in their uniforms, gangling and unfinished, fruit picked before its time. They filed in, half grateful and half embarrassed. None had seen the inside of a fine old house like Grammaine, unless while running errands or making deliveries. They murmured ‘Miss Marshwic’ to her and ‘Miss Marshwic’, more warmly, to the preening Alice, and ‘Mrs Salander’ to Mary. They bobbed their heads in automatic respect and stood in the kitchen as though they had no idea what they were doing there.

  And how true that is. ‘Come . . . come along, Cook.’ Emily felt her voice quiver as she spoke, suddenly on public display. ‘We mustn’t keep Sergeant Pallwide or his men waiting.’

  They were not men, of course; would not be for two years or more. Cook began serving them with bowls of porridge, thick slices of buttered bread, mugs of hot broth. The sergeant gave her a smile.

  ‘Mind if I light up, now we’ve settled, miss?’ he asked.

  It would have been churlish to refuse, and so she watched him take out a well-used clay pipe and stoke it with weed one-handed. She wondered if that was a skill he had learned with a gun in his other hand. Soon the sweet, fragrant scent was shouldering the aroma of the bread and porridge out. Emily caught Mary’s look, and knew that her sister was remembering the last time anyone had smoked inside Grammaine, while their father still lived.

  There was a footstep above her, at the top of the stairs, and Poldry moved down into the crowded kitchen to allow room. Emily caught her breath as her brother Rodric came down the stairs, one careful step at a time.

  How handsome he looks, was her first thought. He wore the uniform well, better than any of them: standing tall and straight in that red jacket, the brass buttons shining like the gold braid at his cuffs. His knee boots were polished to any sergeant’s satisfaction and he carried his gleaming helm in the crook of his arm, as if to balance the brass powder flask on the other side.

  He looks like a general or a prince. Emily stepped back, and back further as Rodric descended, as though his neat brightness would scorch her. There was a set, determined look to his face. He had worn the same serious expression when he was learning his algebra or Classics. It was the look of someone taking care to avoid making mistakes.

  When they saw him, a little cheer went around the young recruits gathered there, and Emily saw then that Rodric would be a hero to them: the young gentleman not afraid to take up a musket and defend the King. He would be a splendid soldier, an officer, a great man.

  And she wished he did not have to go.

  At the foot of the stairs he nodded to his fellows, saluted the sergeant. Cook bustled over to him with his breakfast, and he laid his helmet on the kitchen table to accept it.

  ‘I’m not too late, am I?’ he enquired, his voice sounding a little unsteady. Emily wondered how long he had been sitting, in his uniform, in his room, drawing together the courage to face his new life.

  ‘You take your time, lad,’ the sergeant told him. ‘We can hardly grudge you that, what with this fine hospitality your sisters’ve given us.’

  Rodric nodded. His serious expression persisted as he ate, as though he was still somewhat unsure of what was happening around him but determined not to show it.

  ‘Sergeant,’ Emily spoke up, ‘might I speak with you before you leave?’

  ‘You may speak now, miss, if you will.’ Pallwide had finished his pipe and stowed it carefully inside his jacket before good-naturedly elbowing his way through his charges to get near to her. ‘What can I do for you, miss? Got a message for someone at the front?’

  ‘I have, yes.’ She pressed the sealed missive into his hands. ‘It’s for Lieutenant Tubal Salander at the Levant front. That’s where you’re going, isn’t it?’

  ‘Certainly is, miss. I’ll see he gets it. Your sister’s husband, miss?’

  ‘That’s right, Sergeant. Oh – and Sergeant?’

  ‘Miss?’

  ‘You will . . . look after him, won’t you? Please.’ She swallowed, then got the words out as quickly as she could. ‘If anything happened to him, Sergeant, I don’t know what we’d do here. Please will you make sure he’s all right?’

  Sergeant Pallwide gave her another broad grin. ‘I’ll make sure he’s put in my company, miss. I’ll keep an eye on him, never you worry. War’s not got much puff left in it, anyway. We’ll all be back looking for work ’fore the year’s out.’

  She knew she should leave it at that but she wanted somehow to wring further assurances from him, to demand that he keep Rodric safe from all harm when the only way that could happen was if Rodric never left at all. Abruptly she felt a sob building up inside her and she turned away to hide it.

  She turned back sharply at a touch to her elbow, to find Rodric standing there.

  ‘Em, thank you for not making a scene. I thought . . . when my papers came you might do something . . .’

  She just waited quietly, not trusting herself to speak.

  ‘Something unpatriotic,’ he finished, ‘because you didn’t want me to go. So . . . thank you for understanding.’

  ‘And with that, young master, it’s time we were about,’ the sergeant put in from a respectful distance.

  It was true. The young recruits were handing their bowls back to Cook, thanking her, giving a brave smile all round for Alice’s benefit.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ Rodric promised her.

  Feeling time slipping away from her she embraced him fiercely. ‘See that you are. I’ll never forgive you if something happens to you. Never!’

  He slipped out of her arms to bid farewell to Mary and Alice. The soldiers were filing out of the door under the watchful eye of their sergeant. Rodric went last, accepting some final admonition from old Poldry, before turning at the door to look back at his past, his family, all that he had ever had.

  ‘Watch out for me,’ he told them all. ‘I’ll be back.’ Then he was gone, and only Sergeant Pallwide was left. ‘Much thanks, Miss, Miss and Mrs. I shall make sure your old man gets the letter, Mrs Salander.’ He retreated with a nod of his head, and they could hear the young soldiers mounting up on their assortment of army-requisitioned mules and nags outside. Grant was fetching Rodric’s riding horse out, a king of beasts amongst beggars. How would it fare, Emily wondered suddenly, in the swamps of the Levant front? Too late now to ask that question.

  The three Marshwic sisters clustered at the door and watched the sergeant and his recruits ri
de off into the mist, until only the blurred light of their lanterns identified them in the dark.

  I thought you might do something unpatriotic . . .

  The time for such action was past. She was Emily Marshwic, of good family, with a public dignity that even old matrons approvingly remarked on; nevertheless she had done her level best to hold the King’s orders at arm’s length. Without Rodric’s knowledge, against his express wishes, she had tried her utmost to fight his drafting. She now had no more fight to give.

  After the recruiting sergeants had drummed up all the actual volunteers they would get, and the proclamation had gone out that each household, high or low, must give up one of their own to take the Red, she had protested vehemently. She had gone and spoken her piece to the officers and the officials, and they had nodded and explained how important it was that this war was won quickly. Then Tubal had robbed her arguments of any force by purchasing a commission, and she had looked a fool, and her sister Mary had become a widow-in-waiting. And when the order had come to her house that those retainers who had served the Marshwic family for so many years – whose families had grown with the Marshwics for generations like vines to a tree, and who claimed Grammaine as their home – must leave her, she had protested. She had refused, in fact. She had held out for two weeks until Mr Northway, the Mayor-Governor of Chalcaster, had come to her door with his odious smile and undertaker’s clothes, and explained things to her. He had said – and all the while his eyes twinkled with cold humour – that there were mills and workshops and farms that were critically undermanned, now that the men were at the front. He showed her the King’s sealed order dissolving contracts of service, allowing men like himself to take what they wanted. He made a great, ingratiating play of remorse, threatening to leave the three sisters all alone in Grammaine like mad recluses, and then magnanimously relenting. ‘You may keep your old man there, he’s surely not fit to work in the factories, and it would be criminal to leave three such vulnerable women without protection, so I’ll leave your groundsman too, although I’m risking royal displeasure by showing you that much favour.’ And he had smiled with a broad and lip-less mouth, cold as a reptile. ‘You shall have a maid and your cook – at least until the next decree is passed to me. Can I say fairer than that? I don’t think that I can.’

  And he was not a fair-minded man, that much she knew. The Marshwics and Mr Northway had a twisted history together, in which their own fortunes had only withered as he had leeched off them; until they were impoverished in all but history and memories, and he governed Chalcaster and grew fat.

  Yet still, when the sergeants had come that last time and found that Rodric was now their lawful prey – when her brother was formally invited to grace the war with his presence – she had gone to Chalcaster, with a foul taste in her mouth, to plead with Mr Northway.

  It had been no small sacrifice on her part to throw herself on the mercy of such a creature as he. It was widely known around Chalcaster that the man had bought his post, greasing every palm from here to the capital to ensure his own slick rise into fortune. To most it was just another example of the politics of power. The King’s justice would find Mr Northway out eventually, they said, but until then they just shrugged and sighed. For Emily – for the Marshwics of Grammaine – it was far more personal than that. Going begging to the man, going cap in hand in search of a charity she knew would not be extended, was like stabbing at herself with a knife and seeing which part of her would hurt most.

  There were men standing at the doors of the town hall in Chalcaster: two soldiers in red that royal decree had not seen fit to request for the war effort. They carried glaives with broad blades, which clanked together to bar her way as she tried to simply walk between them.

  ‘Let me in. I have business with the Mayor-Governor,’ she bade them with as much authority as she could manage. They exchanged leering looks.

  ‘Bet you have, miss, I just bet you have,’ one said. ‘Only thing is, miss, he’s busy, see? Got a lot on, what with the war to run, miss. You wouldn’t understand, but it’s a difficult business.’

  Emily had drawn herself up, as far as that went, and clutched at her purse furiously. ‘I fully understand that the business of a war, soldier, is a complex matter,’ she told him, making her ‘soldier’ every bit as much of an insult as his ‘miss’. ‘I also understand, however, that as Mr Northway only has a small – one might say insignificant – part of it to himself, I am sure he can spare me a few minutes. Kindly go and tell him that Emily Marshwic awaits his pleasure – if that is the right word.’

  Mention of her name changed their expressions. She thought at first it was because the Marshwics represented a good old stock that went back forever, but then the soldier said, ‘Oh, right, miss. We got special orders about you Marshwics. I reckon you’d better go straight in, miss. He’s looking forward to seeing you.’

  The two men exchanged knowing looks, but they lifted their glaives and she swept between them before they could change their minds, or decide to humiliate her any further.

  And then she had been standing in front of Mr Northway’s polished desk, like a schoolgirl up before the master for truancy. The man himself, the loathsome Northway, was bent over a ledger, counting some minutiae. When she had entered he had given her a look that put her in her place and then, his eyes following his finger down a column of figures, made some calculations on his abacus and jotted a few notes, all with the air of a man with time to spare, war or no war.

  ‘Now.’ He had closed the ledger with a snap. ‘Why did I think I would be seeing you so soon?’

  Mr Northway’s dour style of dress made him look not dignified but as morbidly patient as a vulture. His hair had receded into a widow’s peak over a high forehead, though the scholarly dignity it lent to his face was sabotaged by a mouth wide and mobile with mischief. His eyes were deep-set and piercing, but blinked furiously in mock emotion whenever he made some particularly bare-faced statement. He had spent perhaps near four decades on this earth, and in that time he had certainly been busy with self-advancement.

  ‘If you know why I am here, Mr Northway, then you might save me a great deal of explanation,’ Emily said.

  ‘My dear Miss Marshwic.’ Northway folded his hands across his belly. ‘Emily, in fact – I presume, on the basis of our long acquaintance I may call you Emily?’

  ‘As always you presume entirely too much, Mr Northway.’

  ‘You may nonetheless call me Cristan.’

  ‘Alas, that is a kindness that I cannot avail myself of.’

  At last he had indicated for her to sit, and she did so with poor grace. Northway looked down at his hands, grimaced briefly, and looked back at her with his slightly mocking smile. ‘I do wish you would realize that I am not in any way your enemy.’

  She considered retorting Except insofar as I am an honest woman, but felt that would be descending into mere abuse and get her nowhere. ‘You were no friend to my father,’ she noted, managing to bring her tone down to the merely accusatory.

  Northway sighed. ‘You are not your father, any more than I am mine, Miss Marshwic. Mine was a bootblack polishing the boots of the lowly – and a petty criminal besides. I feel that, regarding both professions, I have at least moved several rungs up the ladder.’

  His office was lavish by any standards. The stacks of ledgers jostled with marble statuettes and gold candlesticks, busts and fine paintings. There were gilts and velvets and rich dark woods in evidence everywhere she looked. She knew it well, for it had been her grandfather’s once – who had kept it in a far more spartan manner – and should have been her father’s.

  ‘You know why I am here,’ she reminded him, but he was not to be deflected.

  ‘Your father and I fought like cats in a sack, I know. We were not friends by any definition, or not at the end. We disagreed on everything. If I admit that, Miss Marshwic, you surely must admit that I did not kill him.’

  You destroyed him. You did everything you
could to ruin and discredit him so as to obtain this post. She said none of it, though. What would it serve? ‘You know why I am here,’ she repeated. ‘Have we not given enough?’

  Northway’s lips twisted, and he shrugged. ‘You have heard the news about the war, surely, Miss Marshwic. You have heard that it takes a great many soldiers to secure a country as large as Denland. The broadsheets and the ballad papers are full of such accounts. You must have heard that we need to keep pouring soldiers into Denland until they finally reconsider their warlike and republican ways.’

  ‘I have not heard that they need my brother, Mr Northway.’

  ‘Every man from fifteen to fifty so the order runs. One imagines such precise numbers were put in by some poetic-minded clerk, does one not? A little too convenient otherwise.’ He sighed again, the paragon of humanity. ‘What do you want me to say, Miss Marshwic?’

  ‘That my brother need not go for a soldier,’ she declared outright.

  ‘Special dispensation, is it?’ He leant back in his chair, putting his hands together as if in prayer. ‘There is such a thing, but not for him.’ As she made to interrupt, his hands stopped her. ‘I have such dispensation, as do some few of my remaining staff who are men. The rest are women, or will be replaced by them. I have no further dispensation to make, Miss Marshwic, and I am not going to commit treason by twisting an order from the King.’ Again she had tried to speak but his words ground over her. ‘Oh, I know what you would say. What view does the King take on embezzlement? On petty bribes and sleights of local justice, and all the other things they say of me in the marketplace? I say to you that he takes a very different view of those things than he does on a man stinting him when his war orders come.’ Without warning, he was standing, leaning over the desk, too close for comfort. ‘What do you want me to say, Miss Marshwic? That I have always done as I wished here in Chalcaster? Consider it said. That the King’s wishes trump my own? That also. That the war fought on the front is not the war reported in the papers, and a near-victorious army does not need so much recharging with raw recruits? There: I’ve said it. I have never lied to you, Miss Marshwic.’