Guns of the Dawn

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  She had discussed with her two sisters what they should do with such an embarrassing harvest. Northway plainly thought that he could secure an advantage over them, and if they simply hoarded it all for their exclusive use, then that would become true. They would be making themselves conspirators with him while the rest of Lascanne endured short commons.

  It was Mary’s idea to simply go round the other isolated homes nearby and parcel it out. They would parsimoniously reserve sufficient for their own needs, and then load the rest on the buggy and visit the farmhouses and the cottages, bestowing Northway’s largesse on all and sundry. Emily gained some degree of satisfaction in recalling how he had boasted that no others would profit from his charity save herself and her family.

  They learned a great deal by talking to the farmers’ wives. For one, they learned that the Ghyer was growing more active – waylaying travellers and robbing houses. He had even ventured into Chalcaster once to take revenge on a woman, they said. With news like that echoing in their minds, Emily and Mary always hurried to reach Grammaine before nightfall.

  Alice had gone with them on the first of these charitable ventures, in high spirits at the thought of being received by the country people as an angelic saviour. The experience itself was less to her taste: too windy, too rainy, the roads too rutted, the people not ecstatically grateful enough. After that she left the task to Mary and Emily.

  Soon enough there was more to argue over. Before the war, Alice’s energies had been given plenty of outlets, but now there were few social occasions, few men of good standing to enchant, few places to go. Alice felt boredom keenly. Many times she wanted the buggy to drive into Chalcaster when Mary needed it for making deliveries. At other times, when their own table was barren, she would lament that they had given so much away too soon. Emily’s patience with her, never capacious, frayed every time, and only Mary kept the two of them from a fierce row whenever they sat down to supper.

  At last matters came to a head. Alice had been acting with a particular assurance for a day or so, a smug pretence that she had somehow garnered a new admirer. Emily had kept pointedly ignoring her, but her sister’s arrogance was irksome. Despite being older, Emily had always felt somewhat in Alice’s shadow. The youngest Marshwic had been everyone’s darling as a child, and always a great beauty. In better days, Grammaine had seen its share of respectful gentlemen callers, but they only came for Alice.

  And that became their battlefield, when at last they were snapping at each other across the table. Alice, at the end of her tether for lack of entertaining company, brought the subject up as a time-honoured way of needling her sister.

  ‘I fear you’re catching up with me, then, Alice,’ Emily shot back, with eyes narrowed, ‘for you’ve gone as unadmired as I. What a shame that when this war is done and all the men return, there will be a new generation of beauties, and you will be old.’

  That was plainly exactly what worried Alice, who went terribly pale. ‘Even with this inconsiderate war I am not without friends,’ she insisted. ‘You’re so busy doing your good deeds that you don’t even notice, but I have callers.’

  This sounded like nonsense to Emily, and she said so.

  Alice bit at her lip. ‘Oh, but I forget, you think yourself the catch now, do you not? You are the Marshwic beauty all of a sudden.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘But yes.’ Alice put on a particularly vicious smile, ‘I forgot! Emily had a caller, at long last. He came just once and has not come again. But what a shame that Mr Northway is your only admirer!’

  ‘Is that it, then?’ Emily felt herself very calm. Inside her, those words were rattling back and forth, hurting her every time they struck, but if Alice was going to be childish, then two could play ‘Well, then, if I am such a disappointment to you, I would not dream of disgracing our family by showing my face at Deerlings.’

  Alice stopped, open-mouthed and frowning. ‘But of course you must.’

  ‘No, my mind is made up. You’re quite right.’

  ‘But I can hardly go alone.’

  ‘Quite. So we will simply send our regrets, and sit here together at home.’ It was a stupid thing for her to say. She wanted to go herself, and of course they would go. They were words spoken in anger, that was all. Alice did not know it, though, and she just stared aghast at Emily, and then shrieked with horror and stormed from the room, leaving Emily looking shamefaced at Mary.

  ‘She’ll calm down by tomorrow,’ she tried defensively. ‘She was being intolerable, Mary. I had to do something.’

  Mary’s expression said she was unconvinced, and Emily found that she agreed.

  She would have addressed the matter directly the next morning, but Alice was always late in rising – and when she was in a foul mood she might not be seen before noon. Emily and Mary took the buggy out to distribute the last of Mr Northway’s most recent bounty, then returned for a frugal lunch just as Grant was riding back from Chalcaster with news. He had brought a letter for them: a letter from the front.

  Mary snatched it first and read it out over the table.

  ‘My dearest Alice, Emily and Mary,

  I am well. I have arrived now at the Levant, and conditions here are good.

  I have already fought in my first battle. It was hard fighting but a great victory, and we routed the Denlanders from the field. I hope you are proud of me for serving king and country. I certainly am.

  Uncle Tubal is well.

  We are moving soon, pressing our advantage into enemy territory. I do not know how soon I will be able to write again.

  I think about you all every day. It helps remind me what I am fighting to protect.

  All my love,

  Your little brother,

  Rodric.’

  ‘It’s so brief,’ Mary complained. ‘How can he not have more to write?’ And why doesn’t Tubal write? It has been so long now since we’ve heard from him.’

  Emily spread her hands ‘Perhaps he does not think to. You know how men can get wrapped up in their own schemes.’

  ‘Emily he is a printer. If printers don’t think to write, who ever will?’ complained Mary. ‘Well, I suppose it is good, at any rate, to know that they are both safe.’

  ‘Rodric does sound like he is enjoying himself.’ Emily folded the paper, staring at the smudged print on the frontispiece: An artist’s rendition of the taking of Fort Lascaia. ‘I didn’t want him to go, as you know, but, now he’s gone, perhaps it’s for the best,’ she mused. ‘The newspapers say the war will end soon, and it would have been difficult for him later if all the other men had fought, and not he.’

  ‘Men,’ snorted Mary disdainfully. ‘Men and their games, who cares about them?’

  ‘And I’m sure you won’t care at all when Tubal comes back with his uniform and his medals,’ Emily said slyly.

  Mary fell silent, and then she smiled a little for the first time in a long while. ‘Well, maybe—’ she began, before they heard a shrill wail from baby Francis upstairs. ‘Awake again, so soon? I swear he sleeps less and less every day. By three years old he will never sleep again.’ She started for the stairs, and then turned back and placed Rodric’s letter on the table in front of Emily. ‘You should have Alice come in and read it. She misses Rodric more than we do, I think. And it will put her in a better humour.’

  ‘She only misses having someone to tease,’ Emily remarked to Mary’s retreating back. She picked up the letter and read it over again. So much for Mr Northway’s dire hintings, she thought. And so much for my fears.

  She went upstairs to rap at Alice’s door, but received no answer. When she pushed it ajar, she found the bed empty and neatly made. Apparently Alice had already arisen, and was presumably moping somewhere, avoiding her.

  Emily decided that she was not going to play hide-and-seek with her own sister, and went to find Jenna instead. ‘Go find Alice for me, when you have a moment. She should see this.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

>   Emily folded the letter and put it in the pocket of her dress, before strolling out into the kitchen, which still bore the faint, delicious smell of bacon from that morning, courtesy of what they had retained from Mr Northway’s latest donation.

  ‘Cook, have you seen Alice?’ she asked.

  The stout woman looked up from scrubbing a pan. ‘Not since mid-morning, ma’am, when she was talking to that gentleman at the gate.’

  Emily frowned at her. ‘What gentleman, Cook?’

  ‘Well, I say gentleman – a scruffy sort. Some wandering tinker or the like. I’ve seen him before around here, talking to the young miss.’

  Emily nodded slowly, a little disquiet creeping into her. A traveller would have moved on by now, and anyone keeping watch on Mr Northway would be in Chalcaster right now. Obviously it couldn’t be the same man Alice had met in town . . .

  It came to her then just how little she knew about how her younger sister spent her time, just as Alice had accused the night before.

  Feeling anxious now, Emily stepped out into the stable yard, calling, ‘Grant! Are you there?’

  She had to call again before the burly servant appeared from behind the house, with a shovel in his hand.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am. I’ve just been seeing to the garden. What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Grant, do you know where Alice is?’

  ‘That I don’t, ma’am.’

  Emily clenched her fists, taking a deep breath. ‘Have you seen her talking, perhaps, with a stranger at the gate? A man in a long coat, like a traveller?’

  ‘That I have, ma’am. Some few times now.’

  Emily stared at him. ‘Grant, why didn’t you chase him off or something?’

  He stuck his thumbs in his belt. ‘Well, ma’am, I did try, but Miss Alice told me to mind my own stupid business, and that I was to go back to my chores.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Grant.’ Emily put a hand to her forehead. ‘If you see her with him again, you may chase him off with a pitchfork, and never mind anything my silly sister says to you.’

  ‘With pleasure, ma’am.’

  ‘Emily! Emily!’ The voice was Mary’s, coming from inside the house.

  The baby! Emily turned to see Mary running out as fast as her dress would let her.

  ‘Mary what is it? Is Francis—’

  ‘Not Francis. Emily you must see this! It’s terrible.’

  She had a letter in her hand, and for a confused moment Emily thought it was Rodric’s. No, I have that, so what’s—

  Mary practically forced it into her hands. Emily unfolded the letter and read.

  Dear Sisters,

  I daresay you must be all in a tizzy now, and have no idea where I’ve gone, so I’m writing this to set everything straight. I’ll leave it with little Francis, because I couldn’t think of anywhere else you were sure to go eventually. I hope my nephew will not mind the intrusion.

  You have probably noticed how very dull Grammaine is these days, with Rodric gone, and all the men gone, really, except Poldry and Grant, and I can’t really count them because they’re so old. Or perhaps you haven’t, since you two do seem not to feel the boredom as much as I do. I suppose it is because you are both settled. Mary with Tubal, and Emily with Grammaine. I never knew anyone could marry a house before.

  Anyway, I’ve gone for a little holiday for a few days, to cheer myself up and get away from all of you, because to be perfectly honest you do drive me mad sometimes with how dreary you are. My fiend Griff suggested I come and stay with his people for a few days, and he will tell me what it is like to be an agent of the King, who he has met three times. I will try and arrange an introduction for all of us, if the opportunity comes around.

  Anyway, please don’t worry about me. I am perfectly able to look after myself for a few days, and I daresay I will love you all much more when I have had a break from you. I am not angry with you, and I know you do not mean it about Deerlings, because you are my sister after all

  Yours wilfully,

  Alice.

  “Yours wilfully . . .”’ murmured Emily. It was always Alice’s favoured way of ending a letter, but just now it seemed truer than ever. This was not new: Alice had done similar before – running off to the estate of some friend, inviting herself as a guest with the family of some beau or other. Since the war started, such opportunities had been few and far between, and now . . .

  She passed the letter to Grant, who grimaced and looked to Mary for enlightenment. She whispered the main points to him, and he rushed to the stables instantly.

  ‘Her bay’s gone,’ he confirmed, on returning. ‘And the black as well.’ He turned, his jaw jutting out angrily. ‘That tramp has one of our horses.’

  ‘He has our sister,’ said Emily.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Mary’s eyes were wide.

  Another deep breath. Time to think, then time to act. ‘Grant, you must go and get the guns,’ she said. ‘Then saddle up two horses.’

  ‘Two, ma’am?’

  ‘For you and me, Grant. You can’t go alone. If we track him down and simply point a musket at him, it should convince him that it’s time for him to move on, I hope.’

  He nodded grimly, and stormed into the house.

  ‘Emily, are you sure about this? You’ve never even used a gun before,’ Mary cautioned her.

  ‘I can at least point the thing at someone. I know which end of it makes the noise.’

  ‘But those guns.’ And a world of bitter shared experience passed between them in those few words. Shuttered windows and silence, and the smell of cordite. The dreams of her younger self that just would not go away.

  ‘What would you have me do? I can’t sacrifice the future to save the past, Mary, so it will have to be the other way round.’

  Grant was coming out of the house now with the weapons.

  ‘Be safe, Emily,’ Mary told her.

  ‘Let Alice be safe. I will take my chances.’

  5

  For so long a time, a passage of some fifteen years, the smell of spent firearms sickened me. You will know what memories the scent of hot metal and burned powder brought. We had those guns locked out of sight because I could not bear to look at them, though I am thankful we never threw them out or gave them away. They became like plotters, part of a terrible conspiracy, now consigned to an oubliette.

  If I had my way, I would never have picked up a gun in all of my life. I would have sat at home and done my embroidery and read my romances, and probably married and had children, and never needed to know the secret of gunpowder.

  I have learned well what my instructors since taught me. The secret of gunpowder is that anyone – a man, a woman, a child, a cripple – can kill with it.

  ‘Can you pick up their trail, Grant?’

  He never really smiled much, but there was grim humour in his gaze now. ‘Oh, there’s precious little I can’t track, after twenty years on the estate, ma’am.’ His reins hung loose in his hands and he guided his steed with his knees. Emily’s own mount, a chestnut mare that knew her well, tagged docilely along behind. Emily rode astride like a man, her dress hitched up on both sides. The place and time did not lend themselves to the social niceties of side saddle, and privately she was proud of the approving look Grant had given her. He worshipped practicality, did Grant.

  Their horses were taking them down the old path towards town, Grant’s narrowed eyes darting left and right.

  ‘Grant . . .’ Emily paused before asking it. ‘How old are you, exactly?’

  He gave a gruff little laugh. ‘If the recruiting sergeants come asking, I turned fifty-one two years back.’

  She frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound very patriotic.’ Grant was fit and strong, whatever age he was. If he had asked, as Poldry had asked and been refused, the army would undoubtedly have taken him.

  ‘Maybe I’m not, then, ma’am.’ Grant reined his mount in, staring keenly at the trees alongside the road. This limb of the forest was all new woodland, planted
in Emily’s grandfather’s day, but towards the Wolds it was thicker and older, a deepwood that the brigands had once frequented, before they were driven away.

  ‘Don’t you love our King, Grant?’ she asked. She had never really spoken much to him before. He was a simple, silent presence, always a reliable pair of skilled hands.

  ‘As much as the next man,’ he said. ‘I did my fighting years ago. Overseas, against the Hellics. I got no wish to go playing that game again, ma’am.’

  ‘What . . . what was it like?’

  His expression was unreadable. ‘Like hundreds of men I didn’t know were trying to kill me, ma’am.’ He urged his horse off the trail and in between the trees. ‘Looks like they came off here. Weren’t that long ago, either, for your sister always did dawdle. I reckon it’d be best to have the guns out, ma’am.’

  Emily nodded, and watched him slip down off his horse to load them. The long musket came first, which he handed to her after setting it with ball, wadding and powder. After that he primed the blunderbuss, filling the flared muzzle with a handful of birdshot. Last came the sleek, vulpine horse pistol; its stock engraved with gold, it was a present from some long-ago business associate of her father’s.

  She could not take her eyes off it, as Grant’s slow, sure fingers tamped the ball and wadding down the barrel, and tipped a measure of powder into the pan. This weapon had a presence of its own. It gleamed darkly with memories and family history.

  When he was done, he tried to hand it to her, too, but she would not take it, so he thrust it through his belt and got back into the saddle, holding the blunderbuss barrel-up, like a lance. ‘Reckon we’re ready, ma’am.’

  ‘How far ahead are they?’ she asked as they got underway.