by Mike Carey
Late in the evening the colonel’s adjutant, Bedvar, came to Lieutenant Tusimov’s room and knocked. He knocked tentatively at first; Tusimov had retired only half an hour before and doubtless would not like to be disturbed. But it was a matter of character too. The adjutant was a man of a timorous stamp and hated to be placed in situations in which he was obliged to provoke and exasperate men of high rank and uncertain temper. Unfortunately his position required him to do this on a daily basis, so he was not – generally speaking – a happy man.
The first knock yielded no response. To his horror, Bedvar thought he heard the rhythmic creak of bedsprings from the room beyond. He drew back hastily and paced the corridor for a few moments as he weighed the prospect of enraging a lieutenant against that of displeasing a colonel. Eventually, he knocked again. And then again. Each time he stopped and listened, but heard nothing to indicate that he’d succeeded in rousing the lieutenant from his more compelling occupation. So he swallowed his misgivings and continued with increasing volume and quickening tempo until he was finally acknowledged with a profane oath from within.
‘I’m sodding well awake, you whoreson. Be quiet!’
Padding footsteps on the other side of the door. Then the rattling of the latch. Tusimov thrust out his head, big and choleric and bewhiskered, and demanded, ‘What?’
The lieutenant was in a long nightshirt of white cotton, his feet thrust without stockings into his unlaced boots. He clutched in his hand a wad of grey fabric that was probably a flannel nightcap. In the room beyond, Bedvar saw, a candle had been lit. Dame Konstanze was sitting up in bed, blushing furiously and clasping the covers to her chest. She looked anxious, as though she was expecting bad news. But surely she must know that if the Prussians were coming there’d be a general muster with bugles blaring like sheep in a fog, not a polite knock at the door.
‘The colonel’s compliments, sir,’ he said to Tusimov. ‘He wishes to see you in his rooms.’
‘Now?’ Tusimov was both astonished and belligerent. ‘It won’t wait until tomorrow?’
Bedvar didn’t know how to answer that. He imagined himself delivering that message. The lieutenant’s compliments, Colonel. He’ll see you in the morning. A muscle clenched somewhere in his gut. He wasn’t well equipped by nature even to think those words. He gave a wan, apologetic smile by way of an answer.
Tusimov grunted. ‘Very well. I’ll be up in a moment. I don’t suppose he wants to see my bare arse in his rooms!’
No answer to be made there either. Bedvar saluted and withdrew.
A scant few minutes later, Tusimov was trotting along the upper corridor (the one where Drozde had seen the kitten Amelie delivered into the world). He tucked his shirt into his trousers when he was twenty yards away from the colonel’s door, fastened his belt at ten yards, and smoothed down his hair as he presented himself, all smiles, to his commander. His rudeness to Bedvar was in direct proportion to his deference to Colonel August.
August gestured Tusimov to a chair and offered him a cordial, which he declined.
‘I wanted to talk to you about morale,’ he said impressively. The French word was a new import, replacing the more familiar auftrieb. Officers liked it because it carried the hint of a mystery specific to the military (since auftrieb still prevailed in civilian life). Tusimov felt that you should generally call a spade a spade. The men were up for it, or else they were in a funk. At the moment, in his opinion, they were neither. The prospect of a Prussian attack was remote enough to be exciting rather than frightening, but nobody had enjoyed the forced march and nobody liked being so far out here in the sticks. So it was an ounce of this and two pecks of that.
Still, August must have his own ideas on that score, and Tusimov wasn’t prepared to pin his colours to an opinion until he could see which way the wind was blowing. ‘Morale,’ he echoed, nodding thoughtfully. ‘Yes, sir. I think I understand you.’
‘We just don’t know,’ August went on, ‘how long this business will drag on. Prussia’s like a dog that has only just learned to bark. The only way to shut it up is with a kick or two. But we can’t kick until they get past barking and try to bite.’
‘And do you think they will, sir? Bite, I mean?’
‘No. I don’t think Frederick’s a big enough fool to try his luck against the archduchess.’
‘He can see her teeth are bigger than his, what?’ Tusimov chipped in, warming to August’s theme.
August nodded. But the lieutenant felt that his attempt to join in with the metaphor had ended in confusion and embarrassment. Had he just called Maria Theresa a bitch?
‘So it’s all just talk then,’ he said, trying to steer his chief onto safer and more prosaic ground, ‘Frederick’s claim that there’s a Prussian Silesia that’s somehow owed to him?’
‘Sabre-rattling,’ August agreed, pacing to the window and back. ‘And yet, now that he’s said it, he may be compelled to put up some sort of a show at least. He’s not yet nine and twenty. A young man, probably with a young man’s pride and stubbornness. He may not want to be outfaced and made to look a blowhard. So I’m not ruling out a little adventure on Prussia’s part. Most likely he’d pass to the south of us in such a case, and head straight for Wroclaw. Not that he’d get there, of course – one step into the lowlands, he’d find himself in a hornets’ nest, and no mistake.
‘But still, Tusimov. Still, you see? The men may be out here for months, waiting for an attack that doesn’t come. And then again, they may be called at any moment to fortify Lubin or Polcowice, or to relieve them in the event of a siege. I don’t want them losing their edge up here, imagining that they’re good and settled in winter quarters. That sort of thinking does a man no good at all.’
Tusimov nodded again, with more confidence this time. So the colonel’s concern was that inactivity would reduce the detachment’s readiness and soften its resolve. It wasn’t an empty fear.
‘Perhaps, sir,’ he ventured, ‘a sortie of some kind would be a good idea. To get to know the neighbouring terrain – so that if they should have to fight on it, they’ll know it better than the enemy does.’
The colonel pondered this. ‘War games?’ he hazarded.
‘Not war games as such.’ Tusimov was emphatic. The detachment was a patchwork quilt consisting of survivors from several companies decimated in the Turkish war. In his unit alone there were five languages, any one of which contained a cornucopia of insult words for speakers of the other four. And that was before you even got started on the regional dialects. No, there was no need to encourage them to fight. ‘I only meant,’ he said, ‘that if one of us were to lead a column, for purposes of mapping and reconnaissance, it might be time well spent. The men will feel more confident once they know the ground, and the activity itself – so long as they’re not whipped to the double march – will do them good.’ Another thought occurred to him. ‘And the villagers will see our strength and our discipline, which would also be no bad thing. They’ll know they’ve got nothing to fear from Prussia while we’re here.’
‘Or nothing to hope, perhaps,’ said August shrewdly. He winked at Tusimov, who smiled to show that he got the joke. Low church siding with low church, as sometimes was wont to happen. And citizens at the ragged edge of a polity forgetting which side of the bread had the dripping on it. Privately, Tusimov doubted that the good townsfolk of Narutsin had brains enough between them to form a political opinion. But then this was the land that had thrown up Hus and Žižka, so he could easily be wrong there.
‘All the more reason to march,’ he said to August, and August laughed and said that he agreed.
Which meant that Tusimov won his point – and as a reward was given the colonel’s maps of the region to take back to his bed with him. He was to choose a route and rouse the men at sun-up for a patrol in the hills to the north of the valley. ‘Or the south,’ Colonel August allowed expansively. ‘Any direction will do, really, so long as your march takes you along the village street. And make sure
the men turn out smartly, Tusimov. Make a show of it, eh?’
Tusimov was chagrined. It was all very well being in the colonel’s good books, but to rise at dawn while Pabst and Dietmar and that pimple Klaes snored through to grand réveillé didn’t appeal to him very much at all.
Nonetheless he saluted smartly to show willing, and only then seemed to consider. ‘Might it be better, sir,’ he said, ‘to stagger the manoeuvres a little? Let each of the units take a turn separately? If, as you say, part of the point of the exercise is to make a show, then to be active over a longer period might suit the purpose better.’
‘Possibly,’ August said slowly. ‘Yes, there might be something in that.’
‘And it might be of more effect to start out later in the day, when the light is better and the villagers are out in the fields. To be a visible presence, sir, if you take my point. It’s a matter of …’ Tusimov groped for a word ‘ … of ripeness.’
‘Ripeness. Well, well.’ August appeared only half-convinced, but he was nodding as he waved his lieutenant out of his presence. ‘The details I’ll leave to you, Tusimov. But you’ll take the vanguard, yes? And draw up a schedule for the others. I’d like all four units, including the gunners, to be involved.’
Tusimov knew he’d pushed his luck as far as it would carry. He saluted crisply and made his exit.
In the event, they started out closer to noon than to sun-up. He held his men back after grand réveillé and told them they would be on manoeuvres in exactly one hour. ‘That’s twenty minutes for breakfast, twenty for ablutions and twenty for uniforms and packs. So jump to it yeomanly, my lads. Because anyone who rolls up late will be written down for an offence.’
But Tusimov was distracted several times in the course of the hour. First by Klaes, who for some benighted reason wanted to know if he had the keys to the house’s cellars. Then by the mysterious absence of his greatcoat, which his wife had brushed down and then hung in an empty room to air. And finally by a civilian, who wandered in through the gates just as Tusimov was at last heading for the stable yard where he’d ordered his unit to assemble.
The man was a peasant from the village. He was of middling height but more than middling muscle, and he stood fairly in the centre of the overgrown carriage drive with the uncompromising air of a man who other men were wont to walk around. The look on his face, though, was somewhat bewildered, as if he wasn’t quite sure where he’d fetched up, or why. A simpleton, Tusimov decided, but once he accosted the fellow he seemed clear-headed enough – and civil, after his fashion. He gave Tusimov good day, and asked him where he might find Drozde.
‘Drozde?’ Tusimov repeated blankly. ‘Drozde the whore?’
The man flushed darkly. ‘I don’t think she’d like to be called so,’ he said. ‘Saving your presence.’
Tusimov was now bewildered in his turn. He’d meant the term in a literal and descriptive sense, and saw no reason to retreat from it. ‘The camp follower,’ he qualified. ‘Sergeant Molebacher’s doxy. That’s who you mean, yes? I haven’t seen her today. I wouldn’t expect to. But in any case you can’t be here. This is a military camp, not a marketplace. You can only be here if there’s some reason – some military reason – for your presence. Do you understand?’
The man nodded curtly. ‘As well as the next man,’ he said.
‘Good,’ Tusimov said, and he pointed to the gate. He had no more time to waste on this. But the man didn’t move.
‘Can I leave a message for her, then?’ he asked.
‘A … a message?’ Tusimov boggled. What did the man take him for? ‘No, you can’t. Off with you now, fellow. Don’t try the length of your stride against mine, or I promise you’ll be sorry. Here! Here, you!’
This last was not to the peasant but to two privates who he saw walking between the kitchens and the main house. He didn’t know either of their names, but he knew them well enough by sight. They were of Molebacher’s meinie, and they’d do well enough for the present purpose.
‘See this man back onto the high road,’ he said as they approached. And he walked away without wasting another word.
But by then it was five past the hour. Having threatened, very publicly, to put anyone who was tardy on a charge, Tusimov was obliged to walk across the stable yard to his troops, already formed up in columns by the ever-reliable Sergeant Strumpfel, five minutes after the time he’d decreed. It was provoking. It made him look a buffoon, and (which was worse) a hypocrite. And there was no way of getting around it or even referring to it. An officer couldn’t justify his actions to his own men. He relied on discipline, not fellow feeling. Damn Konstanze for not putting his uniform where he could find it. Damn Klaes for blathering at him when he could see bloody well he was in a hurry. And thrice damn that fucking yokel for a fucking fool. If he ever saw the fellow again, he’d lay a horsewhip across his shoulders.
The men stood to attention as the lieutenant walked up, reading his stormy mood in his face. He took the reins of his horse, Dancer, from Strumpfel and mounted smartly into the saddle.
‘At the single,’ he bawled, bringing the old girl around with just a touch of his crop to her right flank, ‘– march!’
Strumpfel executed an about-face that was much less crisp than the horse’s, and led the way through the rear gates onto the rutted road beyond.
Elsewhere, Anton Hanslo was walked to the front gates by Private Fast and Private Standmeier, who felt obliged by the dignity of their calling to give him the occasional push.
‘Off with you,’ they said when they came to the road. ‘And don’t let us catch you round here again, sonny.’
Hanslo took this insult with a grave, impassive face. Both men were his junior by the best part of ten years. One looked as though the soft down on his neck and chin had never seen a razor. ‘I’d like to leave a message,’ Hanslo said. ‘For Drozde. Or to see her, if that’s possible.’
It was no small thing that he’d come here. He didn’t share the fear and dislike of the company that was so prevalent in the village, but he knew its cause and was therefore well aware that to be seen here, talking to these soldiers, would earn him the censure of all who knew him. But there was no help for it. Since their last meeting he’d been unable to put Drozde out of his mind. He’d cut his thumb on a chisel and banged his knuckles twice with a framing hammer. He had to see her, or else the accumulation of these minor injuries would make it difficult for him to work.
So he was civil, even though these young lads were somewhat less so. He only asked them if they knew Drozde, and if they’d be prepared to tell her that he was here, so he might walk in the lane awhile in case she was free to join him.
‘Are you a sodding idiot?’ one of the soldiers demanded in response to this request. ‘Do you want your arse nailed to a tree?’
‘Drozde’s not for you,’ the other man supplied. ‘She’s warming our sergeant’s bed, and he’s worth ten of your kind.’
‘Which he’ll bloody well kill you,’ the first took up again, ‘if he sees you sniffing around his cunt.’
Hanslo looked from one to the other, digesting this very unwelcome news. ‘His cunt?’ he repeated quietly.
There was a moment’s silence. The two men glanced at each other, parsing those words.
‘The cunt he’s put his mark on,’ the second man clarified. ‘Is what I meant.’
‘Exactly. Now you just bugger off. Or we’ll tell the sergeant you’re eyeing what’s on his plate.’
‘If you’ll tell her I was here, I’ll be obliged,’ Hanslo said again. ‘For what you tell your sergeant, that’s up to you. Certainly I’ll not trouble you to give him my regards.’
He nodded to them both and walked away, conscious of their hostile gazes on his back as he walked down the road.
At the same moment, and very close by, Drozde was getting ready to return to the kitchen. In the workshop with Hanslo, Molebacher’s tyranny had seemed as though it belonged to a different age, distanced from her by a fog
of warmth and soft light. But last night, returning as fast as she could along the dark road to Pokoj, every step she had taken brought the memory of his expressionless face, dripping blood and sweat, more vividly before her.
By the time she’d reached his quarters and found him snoring, the idea of lying down beside him had filled her with a wave of disgust, and no small amount of fear. The thought that he might wake before she did, yesterday’s rage still in him, and find her vulnerable, was a deeply unpleasant one. When she saw him next, she wanted to be in control. So she had slept in her tent, leaving their inevitable confrontation for the morning.
Now, as she smoothed down her dress and pulled on her boots, she saw a silhouette appear outside. It bent down and put its head to the flap.
‘Drozde.’ It was Alis’s voice. ‘Are you in there? I need to talk to you.’
‘Alis!’ Drozde ushered the woman in with a smile. ‘Thank you for your help yesterday. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there.’
Alis did not appear to have heard her. She sat down, facing Drozde but with her eyes downcast, twisting her hands in her lap. Drozde was just about to ask her what the matter was when she spoke.
‘Did he hurt you?’ she asked. ‘Molebacher?’
Drozde started at the suddenness of the question. ‘Of course not, Alis. He’s never even touched me!’ It was the truth, but somehow the denial sounded hollow. Alis raised her head, her expression wretched.
‘I’m so sorry, Drozde,’ she said, the words spilling out of her. ‘There’s something that I should have told you about him, long before. Something that he … that happened to me when I first knew him.’
‘What?’ Drozde asked. Her voice came out louder and blunter than she had intended. There was a note of panic in Alis’s tone that was beginning to scare her, just as the look of horror on her face had done the night before.
‘You know that I like to cook,’ Alis began. ‘There was a time – it was before you joined us, but you’ve probably heard about it – when I used to help Molebacher in his kitchen. He never paid me, but he’d turn a blind eye if I wanted to swipe a few loaves or an extra portion of stew, and he needed the help, so it worked out well for both of us. There was nothing more to it than that though. At least not at first.