Guns of the Dawn

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  And Emily spared her from saying it, and asked Poldry to buy for Mrs Shevarler as well, in lieu of receiving money on account, and the awkward moment passed.

  By then, Alice had decided on cut and cloth, and it was Emily’s turn. True to form, Alice found no great pleasure in watching her sister become the centre of attention, and she took the first chance to wander out of the shop and stand by the waiting buggy.

  Emily was thus left trying to keep up a conversation with Mrs Shevarler, both of them clutching for the ragged ends of the life they remembered, and trying to work them into whole cloth. How was Mary? How was little Francis? How he must have grown by now! And as for Tubal, had they heard . . . ? But no, they had not heard recently. He had proved to be abysmal at writing letters home from the front. And Rodric? Yes, he must be at the Levant even now along with his new comrades-in-arms. And what of Mr Shevarler? The dressmaker busied herself with the measurements, then went back over questions of colour and pattern and weave. Only then did Emily remember that Mr Shevarler had been killed in the fighting. He had signed up at around the same time as Tubal, and had gone off to the Couchant: the western front, which was where the great bulk of the fighting was taking place. His name had subsequently been sent back to his home town on the casualty lists. But Mrs Shevarler would never openly correct a customer, of course, and nor would she show weakness. And so she and Emily were bound together in that lie, that pretence, going on with their business as though there had never been any such man as Mr Shevarler. The absence of him seemed to grow and grow, until the dead man took up all the space in the shop, becoming impossibly conflated with the luckless deserter that Northway’s men had shot down just a few streets away. Emily began to feel claustrophobic and ill, and knew that she must leave immediately.

  And yet if she just bolted from the shop, as she dearly wanted to, then she would expose their joint charade for what it was. And so Emily stood her ground and had herself measured, and agreed with whatever was suggested, and then she left.

  When she finally got outside into the open air, there was a man talking to Alice, beside the buggy. It was a familiar enough sight, and proof that not everything had changed in this world.

  ‘Why, Alice, who’s this?’

  ‘Em, this nice man was just telling me some fascinating rumours.’

  I thought the only rumours these days were war rumours. Emily looked at the man Alice was talking to, who was peering back at her, shading his eyes. He was lean and broad-shouldered, dressed in a long leather greatcoat stained and worn by both travel and time. His face had a few scars that could have come from fighting, one of them dividing an eyebrow in two. His moustache and beard were cut neatly short.

  ‘Perhaps you would care to introduce us,’ she prompted Alice.

  ‘The name’s Griff, ma’am,’ said the man. He was well-spoken enough, but seemed the sort of careworn character that Alice would not have deigned to look at before the war. Now she was starved of attention, and apparently anyone would do.

  ‘I hope my sister has not been annoying you with her talk, Mr Griff.’

  ‘Not at all, ma’am. She’s been kind to spend a few words on a poor traveller.’

  ‘I wonder that you have not taken the Red, under the King’s orders, Mr Griff,’ Emily said. ‘I’m sure a man like you would be a valuable asset to the war effort.’ Certainly this Griff seemed to have more intact limbs than most of the other men within sight, always excepting Mr Northway’s robust henchmen.

  Griff tapped his nose conspiratorially ‘We all serve in our own ways,’ he told her, with a smile that invited her to smile back.

  All he got from Emily was a frown. She leant towards her sister and murmured, ‘Alice, would you explain to me what is going on? I’ve seen you cross the street to avoid men less shabby than this.’

  Her sister made an exasperated expression. ‘Oh, you’re so shallow, Emily!’

  ‘Me? I am shallow?’

  ‘Well, really. Mr Griff, I hope you won’t mind me saying: I saw him eyeing the buggy, and I thought he was watching us, and so I did my duty and went out to ask him what business it was of his. Only, we fell to talking, and . . . may I tell my sister what you were saying?’

  ‘So long as it goes no further, miss,’ Griff agreed in a low voice.

  ‘Mr Griff has told me he is a servant of the King,’ Alice explained to Emily in an excited whisper. ‘Not in the way that all of us are, but a real one, travelling the kingdom as His Majesty’s eyes and ears. We must invite him home with us.’

  Emily blinked. ‘We must not.’

  ‘Em, he’s met the King,’ Alice insisted.

  Emily closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the events of the day suddenly building like a pressure in her skull. ‘Forgive us, Mr Griff, but we shall be leaving very shortly.’ And, true enough, she could see Poldry along the street, doddering along with a laden basket.

  Griff gave that easy smile again. ‘Not at all, Miss Marshwic. It’s about time I was on my way, myself.’

  ‘Oh, but really—’ Alice started.

  ‘No, Alice,’ Emily snapped firmly. ‘I’m sure Mr Griff has plenty of important business to attend to.’ The stare she gave the man was pointed, and he made a brief bow and then set off, the smile still firmly in place.

  Poldry arrived just then, with a meagre haul of bread and cheese, bacon and mutton, and he ducked into Mrs Shevarler’s shop to haggle over the dressmaker’s share. Alice had her arms folded tightly, her familiar indication of bad temper.

  ‘Why do you always find a way to ruin things for me?’ she demanded, in a fierce whisper.

  Emily frowned. ‘Alice, you cannot simply invite some stranger into—’

  ‘A servant of the King—’

  ‘What would a servant of the King be doing here?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Alice snapped crossly. ‘Who do we know that has his hand in the King’s coffers every minute of the day?’ She sent a fierce look towards the Mayor-Governor’s offices across the market square. ‘And who knows what might have come of that, if we had shown Mr Griff some proper hospitality! Don’t you care about our family, Emily? About our prospects?’

  ‘Alice, that is exactly what I do care about.’ Emily fought to keep her voice down. ‘A strange man under our roof– what would people say?’

  ‘If there was even a chance he was a familiar of the King! How often does any man of quality pass through Chalcaster these days? Next to never! And yet you have just sent a decent-seeming man away as if he was a beggar – no, worse than a beggar! Apparently you have some regard for them.’

  ‘Alice, it is not appropriate for you to indulge yourself in this way.’

  For a moment her sister stood rigid, with very real tears on her cheeks. ‘You don’t understand,’ she got out at last. ‘Emily, what do we have? A house and a name, and both too costly to keep. Mary married a tradesman because she was terrified of the poorhouse, and now he’s off to the wars – and Rodric too! How will we revive our fortunes if not by allying ourselves to a man of real standing? And will it come from you? No, you’re like a bee that buzzes in and out, defending us from all comers with the sting of your words, while Mary tries to gather honey. But if we are to ever be something more than we are now, it’s up to me to make it so. I am the only one who will restore the greatness of our family. And if I do, it will be in spite of you!’

  Poldry came out then, blinking in the cold silence that had developed between the two sisters. He climbed up into the buggy and plainly decided his best choice was to give his attention entirely to the horses.

  Leaving the town, Emily felt as though she had been driven out, as though she was an army that had been routed in a war.

  4

  We have endured another engagement in the swamps of the Levant. I am proud to report to you that I carried myself like a proper soldier and stayed with the line as we advanced. We were told that the colonel wished to force the enemy back. In this he was successful, for we advanced th
rough the thick and clouded air, burdened by our packs and our muskets, and never saw so much as a single Denlander. Our sergeant declared, arbitrarily it seemed to me, that we had achieved our objective. When we turned, to recross all that ground we had taken, there the Denlanders were.

  They had been shadowing us all that time, but it was plain that they had been as ignorant of this fact as we. No doubt the papers will carry an account of our heroic stand against their foreign tyranny. In truth there was merely a handful of shot before both sides retreated to a defensible position, after which we were unable to locate each other to continue the battle. The whole event would more fittingly make the subject of one of the papers comic sketches than an account of our martial glory.

  As the buggy drew up to Grammaine, Grant hurried out to greet them. He was Grammaine’s groundsman, currently left to them by Mr Northway’s whim. Not young, yet younger than Poldry, he was a big, broad-shouldered man stronger than many half his age. Striding over, she saw his face was tight with disapproval, and Emily felt a sudden jolt of worry.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Is it Mary? Has something happened?’

  ‘Nothing like that, ma’am.’ Grant’s eyes slid over towards the house as though something venomous was lurking there. ‘Wanted to tell you, before you go inside. There’s a visitor.’

  ‘Is it another messenger?’ Alice demanded. ‘Don’t . . . don’t tell me that Deerlings . . .’

  ‘Alice, enough,’ Emily ordered her, because apparently the worst the girl could imagine was that a ball might be called off, a catastrophe Emily rather thought they would survive.

  ‘He came while you were at Chalcaster, but he’s not said a thing about why. Wanted to talk to you in particular, ma’am.’

  Emily let out a long breath, even as Alice began demanding to know who ‘he’ was.

  ‘Has he been waiting long?’

  ‘Best part of two hours,’ Grant confirmed. ‘Been making himself at home, he has.’

  It was a confrontation Emily had not been looking for: this was something she steeled herself against before heading into town, not a trial to meet her on her return. She felt suddenly on unfamiliar ground, as though her own house had been turned against her.

  ‘Well, then,’ she said, ‘the sooner I meet with him, the sooner he can be on his way.’

  When she stepped inside, the sight that met her eyes brought her up short. While she had been shopping, someone else had supplied their every need. The kitchen table was cluttered with more food than Grammaine had seen in one place for months. There was a whole side of ham, several loaves, a sack of oats, two wheels of cheese, even a bag of dried fruit and a basket of apples. Compared to the mean fare that Poldry had managed to find at Chalcaster it was a wonder to behold.

  ‘Cook,’ she said, ‘where has all this come from?’

  The stout woman gave her a dour look. ‘He’s waiting for you in the drawing room, ma’am.’

  ‘He brought all this?’

  ‘And very proud of himself he was, too.’

  ‘Was he indeed?’ Emily passed by the groaning table and stepped through into the next room.

  Sure enough, by a smouldering fire and sitting in the chair that had once been her father’s favourite, was Mr Northway.

  She stared at him for a long time, without trusting herself to speak, and he looked back at her with that familiar insolent smile of his. They were like two duellists, each waiting for the other to make the first move.

  ‘My dear Miss Marshwic,’ he said at last. ‘Or may I call you Emily now, to avoid confusion with little Alice?’

  ‘You may not. What is the meaning of this, Mr Northway?’

  ‘Do not search for meaning in all things, Miss Marshwic.’ He settled himself more comfortably into the chair. ‘Can a man not pay a visit once in a while?’

  ‘You are not welcome in this house,’ she told him. ‘You have never been welcome in this house. And as for your . . . gifts . . .’

  His raised hand stopped her, despite all her determination. ‘Before you make some noble stand, Miss Marshwic, you should know that nobody but I will profit if you refuse my little gesture. You will neither feed the poor that way, or help the needy. Instead, it will all return with me to the town hall, and my staff will eat a little better, and yours a little worse.’ His deep-set eyes watched her keenly between blinking, to see how she would react.

  ‘Do you expect gratitude?’

  ‘Heaven forfend!’ he laughed. ‘Consider a little talk with you my reasonable payment for goods delivered. After all, enmity or not, it would be a poor show of hospitality to throw me out into the cold.’

  She left her response so long that he began to shift his feet uncomfortably, before finally she sat down on the chaise-longue across the room from him. ‘I would not dream, Mr Northway, of throwing the King’s duly appointed representative from the house. Do you have a purpose here, or are we simply the beneficiaries of your noted charity.’

  ‘The sole beneficiaries,’ added Northway. Am I not solicitous of your well-being?’

  A myriad of angry responses queued up on the tip of her tongue, and were bitten down. She let his goading pass her by in a single deep breath, and instead looked him in the eye. ‘Do you think I can be bought, Mr Northway?’ She was proud of herself, for her control.

  But he just raised his eyebrows, insufferable as ever. ‘Can you? How much is the price per pound, I wonder? What currency would suffice?’

  She stood at once, her hard-won composure abruptly falling away from her. ‘I feel hospitality has been served. I would like you to leave now. Poor Alice will not enter the house until you are gone.’

  ‘How very sensitive of her.’ He showed no signs of moving. ‘As it happens, I have a reason to be here other than simple benevolence. A warning, in fact, that there are house guests even more unwelcome than me, of late.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  He paused a moment, and she wondered whether he was reining in a temper that she had always guessed at, though never seen. His smile only widened, though, as if feeding on her displeasure. ‘Miss Marshwic,’ he continued at last.

  ‘Mr Northway.’

  ‘You will no doubt find this hard to believe also, but I hold you in high esteem. Your conversation, whilst somewhat on a single note, is at least free and untrammelled by social nicety. How refreshing to find someone who will hate me to my face, rather than simply talk ill about me behind my back. However, I am here in my official capacity, and if you will not hear me personally, then hear the words of my office when it warns you. The brigand known as the Ghyer has returned.’

  That dried up the harsh retort in her mouth. ‘The Ghyer? I thought he was dead.’

  ‘We all hoped it, but no. He was merely elsewhere, and now he appears to have returned to his old haunts. Two houses have been robbed by his men, isolated places just like Grammaine. There has been a death. I would have your man Grant keep loaded pieces to hand.’

  ‘He shall, Mr Northway. The Ghyer shall find Grammaine too hot for him.’

  In this sudden ceasefire between them, Mr Northway’s smile grew crafty and calculating. She thought she saw a dozen separate overtures forming on those lips, only to be weighed and discarded as he sought to capitalize on his small gains. In the end all he said was: ‘I imagine you wish me to depart, now that I have given my warning.’

  ‘Thank you for it,’ she made herself say, watching him lever himself from the chair.

  ‘Just doing my duty, Miss Marshwic.’ He paused on his way to the door, hovering closer to her than she liked. ‘If there is any other small hardship here I can alleviate . . .’

  ‘We will cope, I am sure,’ she told him, not harshly but firmly.

  After he had gone, her thoughts touched on the man, Griff, that Alice had been speaking to in town. Perhaps he had been a creature of Mr Northway keeping an eye on them. After all, the Mayor-Governor certainly seemed to be showing a great deal of interest in Grammaine these
days, although possibly he just enjoyed vexing her with his presence and his impenetrable conversation. Or perhaps this Griff had been something even more sinister than that.

  Stepping out of the front door, she could just see Mr Northway’s horse heading away down the path and out of sight. When he was gone from view, she called for Grant.

  ‘I think you had better take out and load Father’s guns, and keep them to hand,’ Emily told him. ‘There are brigands at large, I hear.’

  ‘Shall be done, ma’am,’ Grant promised.

  Perhaps this Griff was working for the Ghyer. It was hard enough that the infamous robber had returned at all, but that he might be showing an interest in Grammaine, yet again . . . Perhaps he had come for vengeance upon her father, little knowing that such revenge had been cold and stale for many years.

  Emily clenched her fists, trying to summon her determination. If the outlaw Ghyer turned up at Grammaine, then she and Grant and Poldry would treat him just the same as her father had, all those years ago. She would drive him and his villains away, or have Grant shoot them dead if he could. She was living in a world where men were shot dead, after all. She had the evidence of her own eyes for that.

  She went back into the drawing room, but the spectre of Mr Northway still hung in it with the residue of his expensive, intrusive scent.

  Perhaps this Griff had told Alice the truth, and he really was the King’s agent. Perhaps – and she found the thought too delicious to contemplate – he genuinely was investigating the misdeeds of Mr Northway. The Mayor-Governor’s corruptions were so many and manifest that word must surely have reached the King, and the idea of a spy investigating all Northway’s little treasons was vastly appealing.

  *

  In the weeks that followed, Mr Northway’s generosity continued to alight on them sporadically – though never regular enough to rely on, giving Grammaine’s finances a constant and literal feast-or-famine air. The man himself did not personally accompany his deliveries, though. Instead, he insinuated his way into Emily’s head every time she saw the kitchen filled with another load of unearned bounty.