Guns of the Dawn

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  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.

  30

  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.’

  Emily paused with her hand on the drawing room door. ‘No, Alice. What is he now?’

  ‘The Governor of Chalcaster, of course!’ replied Alice, exasperated.

  ‘But he was always that, Alice.’

  ‘Yes, for the King! But now he’s governor for the Denlanders!’

  Emily stared at her, the pieces falling into place, and found the smallest smile creeping onto her face at how little things had really changed, beneath the surface. How very like him: he always knew which way was up. I wonder when he offered them his services?

  Mary was already present as she stepped into the drawing room. She hovered behind Northway’s chair as though intending to clean it as soon as he got up, and Emily knew she was attempting to make the man feel unwelcome. The acrid smell of his pipe drifted through the air, and he had settled back as comfortably as ever Brocky had in his old armchair, mockery and insolence evident in every line of him. When Emily entered, though, he sat up sharply, blinking at her through the pipe smoke.

  Had he changed? Study him as she might, she could not tell. Still the same undertaker’s clothes, the piercing eyes, the broad and thin-lipped mouth, and an indoor pallor that would have made even Caxton look healthy. Perhaps there were more lines on his face, from having to play to more sides than he was used to. Perhaps there was a knowing look behind his eyes, at the written confidences the two of them had shared, and in which they were equally incriminated.

  Looking on him, she felt a knot of emotions within her, but she could not untangle it. Was she glad to see him? Was she guilty for having lain with Giles Scavian? Was she angry that he had capitulated as easily as she had to the enemy?

  ‘Mr Northway,’ she said formally.

  ‘Miss Marshwic.’ He rose but did not move to take her hand. ‘And Miss Marshwic,’ he added, as Alice entered. The sharp glances from her two sisters pinned him like crossfire, Emily thought. The room was fraught with their disapproval.

  ‘I am delighted to see you back, hale and healthy, Miss Marshwic,’ Northway remarked, with one of his sardonic smiles. ‘My congratulations. I hear you have made quite a name for yourself. Midnight escapes and daring attacks, and the like.’

  He wants the letters kept a secret, she realized. It suited her just as well.

  ‘That’s . . . kind of you to say, Mr Northway.’

  An awkward pause developed, before Mary said, ‘You may have heard, Emily, that the governor confiscated the contents of Tubal’s shop. For the Crown, he claimed. What the Crown might want with paper and printers’ blanks is beyond me, but I think most tradesmen that return will find the same situation.’

  Mr Northway seemed unconcerned. ‘Royal decrees, Mrs Salander, are not for a mere mayor-governor to argue with – as I am sure everyone in this room understands. Miss Marshwic . . .’ And for a moment, just a moment, the next words failed to come to him, leaving him open-mouthed and exposed in the presence of his enemies. For how could he say anything of what he would need to say to her, here? His eyes sought out hers.

  ‘Mr Northway, it is apparent that much has happened in my absence that I might take issue with,’ Emily said. ‘I feel I ought to take you to task for many things, but I have been too active, and too much out in the weather, to relish doing so indoors. We have some few days left of summer, after all. Will you ride back to Chalcaster? I will ride with you, and we shall talk on the way. After all, your office in town has always provided the place for a reckoning before.’

  Mary and Alice exchanged uncertain glances.

  ‘Emily, are you sure . . . ?’ Mary started.

  ‘Mary.’ Emily realized that the smile she turned on her sister was as tight-lipped and sharp as ever Northway’s had been. ‘You have already made it obvious that he is not welcome here. Well, then, he should not remain here longer to incur your displeasure. I will escort him back to Chalcaster. That should suffice.’

  ‘And make sure you get something out of him,’ Alice said, at her shoulder. ‘An apology.’

  For what, Alice? How deep into history must I rake?

  Mr Northway made a terse little bow to each of her sisters, his smile still in place, and then retrieved his hat from Poldry in the kitchen. ‘It has of course been a pleasure,’ he said to the closed-faced Mary. ‘Please give my regards to your husband, when you next see him.’

  Outside in the yard, Emily beckoned Grant over.

  ‘Grant, would you saddle me a horse. I am to ride to Chalcaster with Mr Northway.’

  The old man nodded, but as he went into the stables she followed him, leaving Northway alone to be gawped at from the house.

  ‘Grant, Mr Northway has been here many times, I understand?’

  ‘That he has, and we’ve milked him well, ma’am. Cheese, wine, bacon and salt beef, bread, fruit. Nobody in this house has felt a pinch of hunger.’ He heaved a saddle from the wall and approached her favourite mare.

  ‘And . . .’ She gritted her teeth. If she could not speak to Grant about it, what hope with the man himself? ‘Why has he done so, in your opinion?’

  He laughed gruffly as he saddled the horse up. ‘Well, ma’am, what’re the army words for it? Permission to speak freely, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Always, Grant.’

  ‘He’s sweet on you, has been for years.’

  ‘I . . . suppose I knew that. Knew that since before I departed, anyway.’

  ‘He brought us word of you, too, whenever you sent it. We’ve not done bad by him, these last two seasons.’

  ‘What do you think of him, Grant?’

  He turned to face her. ‘I served your father, you know.’

  ‘So you hate him too.’

  ‘I didn’t say that, ma’am. Permission to speak freely again, ma’am?’

  ‘I said always, Grant.’

  ‘Then you should know that your father wasn’t always pure white linen himself. Oh, Northway was always the darker villain, which was why the man’s done so well, but there was an ounc
e of the villain in your father, too. When you were very young, the pair of them were to be found in each other’s company more often than not, deep in some scheme or other, before they fell out. All hush-hush, but I saddled a fair few midnight horses for one or other of them. It was never all one way, with your father and Cristan Northway. And any woman could do worse than a man that’s rich and clever, and that has enough in him to make sure her family’s looked after when she’s away.’

  ‘Mary and Alice haven’t taken to him,’ Emily observed.

  ‘That they haven’t, ma’am, and it’s no place of mine to say a word against them. They have their reasons, which bite them sharper than mine bite me, it’s clear. But . . . they ate his food, ma’am. And they took his news when he brought it. You can’t have it both ways.’ He checked over the horse tack one last time. ‘Ready for you, ma’am.’

  *

  With Northway at her side, Emily rode out of Grammaine’s gate in silence. It had been a long while since she had the chance to ride, but she had lost none of the feel for it. She rode astride of course, like a man.

  ‘They don’t understand,’ she told him, once they were clear of Grammaine and its attitudes.

  ‘I don’t expect them to,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I feel as though I should be very angry with you, for working with the Denlanders.’ She raised a hand to forestall his reply. ‘But I know I have no right. When their Doctor Lammegeier came to Tubal and me and asked us to surrender, to save the lives of all the soldiers on both sides, what could either of us do? The only way that I could serve my country then was to abandon its service, so that its sons and daughters could get home.’

  She glanced across at him, and his smile had abandoned mockery. It opened a window onto his soul.

  ‘I am . . . very glad to hear you say that,’ he confessed. ‘I am most profoundly glad that you surrendered in the end. If asked to place odds on your decision, I am not sure that I would have bet on that.’ He shook his head, and she realized how tired he must be of it all. ‘When the Denlanders stepped out at Chalcaster station – which was almost the first word we had that the war had been lost – they took the town with their soldiers, and everyone thought they would loot the place and shoot every man, woman and child. As Mayor-Governor, I waited in my office for the end to come. Instead, what arrived was a little bespectacled man, a clerk in a soldier’s clothes. He offered me my job, if only I would account to the Parliament of Denland instead of to the King. That way, he said, there would be the minimum of trouble: Denland would leave a skeleton garrison, and the country – or at least this part of it – would continue to plod on along its way with the minimum of disruption. They do love efficiency these Denlanders. They took a look at my ledgers and were suitably impressed.’ He coughed out a dry laugh. ‘And I knew that, if I took his hand on it, Chalcaster and its surrounds would be spared whatever rod the Denlanders saved for more recalcitrant boroughs. At the same time, the Denlanders would be spared the time and expense of wielding it here, and in fact only one man would really lose out in this deal.’

  ‘And that would be you,’ she finished for him. ‘A whipping boy for the Denlanders and an arch-traitor for the people of Chalcaster. And yet you did it. Are you sure it was not just that you would be loath to vacate your office, with all its pleasures and profits?’

  ‘If any man has ever made such a momentous decision for one reason only, I am not aware of it,’ he replied. ‘Do you blame me, Emily?’

  ‘I do not,’ she admitted.

  ‘So.’ He reined his horse in to better look at her. ‘Here you are, back at last.’

  ‘And here you are, who has never lied to me in his life.’

  ‘You acknowledge that now?’

  ‘I do.’

  She looked into his eyes, and a minute of silence stretched by between them, while the horses stamped and cropped at the grass edging the road.

  ‘How was the war, Emily?’ he said at last. His voice, speaking her name, grabbed at her. ‘Tell me, if you can. Tell me everything. You cannot conceive the scenes, the thoughts that have bedevilled me, since you left for the front. You cannot imagine how I have pored over every word you wrote, and how I have racked myself when no word came. Please, Emily, I have to know how it was.’

  She swung herself out of the saddle and led her horse to one side of the road, confident that he was following.

  ‘Sit,’ she suggested. ‘Let us sit and feel the sun, and know that it is all over, and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you more than you could ever want to hear about that damned war – and every word of it true.’

  So he sat down beside her under the shade of a beech tree, and she told him it all. She told him about Gravenfield and the Levant, Resnic and Pordevere and Mallarkey As the afternoon moved on, she spoke with feeling on the Survivors’ Club, which had kept her sane, and she heard her voice waver as she described Marie Angelline; her bravery and her end. She told him of the Denlanders’ savage assault on them, the grenades, the sacrifice, the piling bodies of the dead on both sides.

  She told him about everything except Giles Scavian, and she wondered if he could not guess that story, too, from the gaps she left. He made no interruption though, injected no sarcastic commentary. He let her tell the story in her own words, at her own pace.

  She told him about her capture, and how she had really felt and what she had feared: all those things she had told no other.

  And she paused there, because it was something she had to know and, of all people, he might have the answer.

  ‘Doctor Lam said something to me then,’ she explained. ‘I don’t know what to make of it still. He said that the war wasn’t started by the Denlanders overthrowing their king . . . He claimed that . . .’

  ‘That we did it?’ he suggested gently. ‘That our sainted Luthrian the Fourth had his men hire worse men to kill his cousin, and so expand his realm by claiming himself to be the rightful heir of Denland’s throne? Did he say that to you, Emily?’

  ‘He did.’ This was her last chance to remain ignorant, but she swallowed her qualms and continued. ‘You’ve always, always been truthful with me. Tell me, Cristan, is that true?’

  He was smiling at her, which seemed quite out of place, and it was a moment before she realized that she had spoken his name – his personal name – to him for the first time. ‘Cristan,’ she repeated, carefully, surprised at how natural it sounded. ‘Tell me, Cristan, please.’

  His face grew sombre. ‘I cannot be sure beyond all reckoning, Emily. I am not privy to the royal court. And even if I were, there’s no guarantee I’d know. But . . . I have many people who tell me many things. Yes, this I have heard, and I do believe it, that our grand and glorious king, by the grace of God, is a murderer. I’m sorry.’

  She remembered that golden-haired and laughing man she had danced with at Deerlings House. With his face in her mind, she could not believe it but, looking on Mr Northway’s altogether more ordinary features, she found she could.

  ‘Did you know before I enlisted?’

  ‘Emily, I knew it before war was declared.’

  ‘But . . . ?’

  ‘Why didn’t I say anything? Why didn’t I say anything to you? What on earth would you have done, Emily, had I made such an accusation? Why, you’d probably have shot me dead.’

  ‘I suppose I might have done.’

  ‘I notice that you are not currently reaching for your gun,’ he added.

  ‘My . . . ?’ She realized with a start that she had her pistol thrust through her belt, a decision while dressing that she had not even thought about. ‘No. I have fought so hard not to believe this. Ever since I heard it, I have been furiously telling myself that the King of Lascanne is a man of honour, and that we have been in the right all this time. And yet . . . and yet part of me knew that Doctor Lam was telling me the truth – or at least that he himself believed it. He never knowingly lied to me, either. You and he should meet one day. I think you’d like h
im.’

  ‘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.