‘Well I think Mr Brocky is entitled to entertain his affections,’ Emily mused, ‘however unrealistic. Mr Scavian?’
Scavian, who had said little so far, looked up from his reverie. ‘Almost certainly. What is it we’re discussing? In truth I was miles away.’
‘Would that we all were,’ Brocky remarked. ‘These fools have conceived the idea that I am, in some way, infatuated with that Angelline woman. A more foolish idea I have never heard.’
‘Oh, but you are,’ Scavian said. ‘It’s well and widely known.’
Brocky eyed him narrowly. ‘What?’
‘The lady has a generous heart, old friend. When a collection of candies falls into her possession, she is remarkably free with them. But the question arises, where did she get such a treasure? And eyes inevitably point to the stores . . .’
‘Oh hellfire.’ Brocky scowled ferociously. ‘Are we playing cards or aren’t we?’
‘Amongst other games.’ Tubal gathered and redealt. ‘Mallen’s right, of course. I hate to break it to you, but you’re not quite her type.’
‘Am I not?’ Brocky glowered. ‘What type might that be, perchance, Mr Salander?’
‘Captain Pordevere has been romancing her these past four days,’ Tubal revealed. ‘He’s nowhere yet into the lady’s heart, but I’m afraid he’s her type if any man is: dashing.’
‘Daring,’ Scavian added.
‘Knighted,’ said Emily.
‘Handsome,’ Mallen put in.
‘Presentable.’
‘Of good family.’
‘Courageous.’
‘All right! All right! Bully for bloody Huill Pordevere.’ Brocky gathered up all the dignity within his reach. ‘Even if I had taken a shine to the woman – and there’d be nothing wrong with that because she’s a fine piece of female flesh, and no mistake – even if I had taken a shine to her, and I’m not for a moment at any rate admitting that it’s so . . . even if I had, then Captain Pordevere, who in any event is a posturing fool, has nothing on me and can do nothing that I can’t do.’
He folded his arms with an air of finality.
‘He can still buckle his belt past the endmost hole,’ said Scavian, after a pause.
‘“Piece of female flesh”?’ Emily couldn’t quite believe she had just heard the expression.
‘He can lead a company into battle,’ Tubal continued.
‘Get four hundred people killed in one day,’ Mallen said – and the mood guttered for a moment.
‘Shilling in the jar, Mallen. Rules of the Club,’ Tubal said firmly.
Mallen shook his head at the foolishness of the world, but made the required donation.
‘Are we quite finished?’ Brocky demanded of them all. ‘Is the topic well and truly exhausted? Honestly, a right knitting circle you all are. Gossip mongers, the lot of you.’ He went on to lose spectacularly at cards, which went no way towards improving his mood.
*
Two days later came the sequel to all that.
‘Marshwic, I need a word.’
She turned, not recognizing the voice, but only because its owner was out in the open rather than back in stores.
‘Mr Brocky?’ Remembering the Club’s last meeting, she was hard pressed to keep away a smile. He looked so very solemn, though, and she managed it. ‘How can I help you?’ His position in the army was unclear, being a civilian. It was generally reckoned that he was around a master sergeant’s rank though.
‘I need a quiet word. In stores, if possible.’ He glanced around as though expecting all the spies in Denland to be eavesdropping.
Inside the storehouse it was cool and quiet, fragrant with the supplies and Brocky’s hanging bunches of herbs. Rather than taking his place behind the counter, whence he dealt out his lopsided provisioning, he beckoned her into the back room, where he tipped out the last of their port from two nights ago.
‘Drink up,’ he instructed. ‘John Brocky has a favour to ask. You may not survive the shock.’
She lounged back against the door frame. It was shock enough to see him standing; she was so used to his overstuffed chair, the high stool behind his counter or his hammock, as his natural habitats. He was bigger than she had realized, quite a bear of a man and taller than she was by a handful of inches. His belly sagged out over his breeches, despite the best efforts of his straining shirt.
‘So what’s in it for me?’ she asked him, watching his eyes widen. ‘Come on, Brocky, I’ve been here long enough that I know a favour done for stores must have its benefits in return.’ She would not usually have insisted on it, when doing a favour for a friend, but somehow she felt he would think less of her helping him out for free. It was a strange thought; something Mr Northway might have suggested.
‘You wise up fast,’ he muttered.
‘I’m sure you draw up a bill as soon as someone gets a favour from you,’ she replied.
His face suggested that he could not deny it. ‘Well . . . let me know what you want. I’ve got my share of contacts back home. But, listen, you mustn’t tell anyone. I’ve got to have your word on that before I say more.’
‘You have it.’ It was a man’s world, here, of giving and taking words for surety, and she felt oddly flattered that he had no doubt about the strength of hers.
‘Well . . .’ He wrung his hands. ‘Listen, Marshwic, you’re a woman.’
‘I can’t deny it.’
‘You must get that habit of backchat from your brother-in-law,’ he observed glumly. ‘Well, it so happens that . . . You remember the ribbing you all gave me? Well, well, I can’t honestly say that I haven’t . . . noticed Miss Angelline. Master Sergeant Angelline, rather.’ To her amazement, he sighed as mournfully as any callow swain mooning over his shepherdess. ‘She’s quite a sight, isn’t she?’ he said fondly. ‘Lovely girl. Any man would be happy . . .’ Another monstrous sigh. ‘All right, so I’ve taken a shine to her. Nothing wrong with that, is there?’
She let him off the hook with: ‘None of my business either way, Brocky.’
‘Thank you, Marshwic. Good of you to say so. But the thing is . . . Well, what you all were saying about Pordevere, that maniacal bastard. I mean, even if I wasn’t . . . it’d still be my duty as a decent chap to make sure he didn’t get his philandering hands on her, wouldn’t it? But he’s got all those medals, all that charging-around-with-drawn-sword rubbish going for him. I mean, I could beat him at chess any day of the season, but that’s not what women look for in a man, is it?’
Emily wasn’t sure whether to feel mortally embarrassed for him or to collapse in fits of hysterical laughter, so she made do with a strangled ‘Different women look for different things.’
‘The thing is, just because you wouldn’t catch me marching around with a musket all day doesn’t mean I’m any less of a man, does it? I’m just too sensible to go constantly throwing myself in the way of the guns. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy attitude, surely?’ He had started pacing the narrow width of the room. ‘Only . . . if I want that woman to notice what a well-favoured and eligible individual I am, it’s not easy to do it from behind a counter. I need to step up my campaign. I’ve sent gifts. I’ve made my first moves. Now I need to try something a little more . . . high profile, if you see what I mean.’
‘And this is where I come in?’
‘Yes. Right, look, I happen to know your lot are backing the Bear next. Three days’ time, you’re heading out with them.’
Emily nodded. With the Bear Sejant’s strength still down, its squads were pairing with Leopard and Stag soldiers when their turn came to sweep the swamp for Denlanders.
‘She’ll be on your shift,’ Brocky explained.
‘You know that for certain?’
‘I got a look at the colonel’s rota. In fact I had some influence in how it fell out. Let’s just say that old Stapewood owes me a few favours. I just know it, all right. You and Miss . . . Sergeant Angelline will be on patrol together.’
‘Do you want
me to put in a good word for you?’ Emily asked him, but he was already shaking his head hastily.
‘No, no, don’t say a damned thing to her, you hear? I don’t need any pander wooing for me. No, I want to come with you.’
She let her silence hang for far too long, as his expression soured, before she replied. ‘Brocky . . . is that really wise?’
‘Wisdom doesn’t win women,’ he stated. ‘I want to come with you. I want to show her that I can do the soldiering thing. How hard can it be?’
‘Can you . . . have you ever fought?’
‘I did the basic training, same as everyone.’
Same as Elise. ‘Listen, Brocky, I’m really not sure of this. I . . . don’t want to see you get hurt.’
He gave her a smile on hearing that, breaking out from the clouds of his usual expression. ‘Emotionally or physically?’
‘I don’t want to see you get shot, Brocky,’ she said flatly.
‘Nobody’s so much as seen a Denlander for ten days,’ he argued. ‘I just want to show to her that I’m not some goods-in clerk: that I’m actually there, winning the war with the rest of you.’
She said nothing. His words had brought back the weight that so often knotted up her stomach. ‘And if we’re the first to find the Denlanders?’ she asked.
‘What are the odds?’
The twisting inside her wound its way through another two turns. ‘Don’t say things like that.’
‘Marshwic, it’s a simple enough request. I could ask anyone, but you’re . . . a woman. I thought you’d understand.’
In the end she agreed. She asked for no payment. She wished more than anything that he had not asked her.
*
‘Master Sergeant Angelline, I’m Ens— Sergeant Marshwic, from Stag Rampant.’
Angelline was taller than she was, slender and long-legged, endowed with a presence and a grace that Emily found unsettling and larger than life. The woman had the sort of face that sculptors coveted for their finest work. Her responding salute was smart, and Emily could tell that the squad behind her had already decided to adore her. She could quite see what had caught the eye of John Brocky – and why the wretched quartermaster was so outclassed.
She found herself feeling quite jealous, to her surprise. It was a feeling she thought she had left behind years ago.
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Sergeant. Mallen has said a great deal about you.’ Angelline’s voice was slightly accented, revealing just a touch of the foreign.
‘He has?’
Angelline smiled. ‘He’s quite a talkative man when you get him going.’
‘He is?’ It was hardly the way Emily would have described him. She wondered if Mallen, too, had eyes for the beautiful Angelline.
‘He has a list in his head, did you know?’ The master sergeant’s smile virtually shone. ‘Those people he would trust, out in the swamps. You’ll be pleased to know you’re on it.’
‘Surprised, certainly.’ Perversely flattered, too. So Mallen had a list, did he? She wondered who else had made it. ‘Is your squad ready to go, Master Sergeant?’
‘Ensign?’ Angelline asked, and her second stepped forward, with an over-enthusiastic salute, to confirm that it was. ‘Your own?’
‘Almost.’ Emily glanced around, seeing one man obviously missing. Perhaps his nerve had failed at the last moment. She could not blame him for it. ‘Caxton, would you go and . . .’ She fell silent, because the storehouse door had opened, and there stood John Brocky attired for war.
He was in uniform, which was a first. The jacket failed to meet at the front, and looked distinctly tight across the shoulders. The belt was in fact two belts tacked together, and its contents showed that being the store-master offered a few more perks than Emily had realized. There must be eight pistols thrust through it, she decided. She wondered if they were just for show or if Brocky had actually loaded them. As he strode up to them, he clanked with every step.
‘Mr Brocky will be accompanying us,’ Emily explained with a straight face.
‘Will he, now?’ Angelline cast a discerning eye over Brocky, who was looking everywhere but at her. His pose was trying for the heroic, but managing more the look of the constipated. The firm set of his jaw was lost between chins.
‘Quite the formidable soldier, Mr Brocky,’ the master sergeant said, dead-pan.
‘We, ah, all have to do our duty,’ Brocky replied, in an unnaturally deep voice.
Emily glanced from him to Angelline, who was smiling a little but trying to hide it. Any longer, she felt, and he would burst, or she would laugh at him. ‘Shall we set out, Master Sergeant?’
‘I think we had better, Sergeant Marshwic.’
It was, to be frank, less than a joy being on duty with John Brocky.
At first he had taken a place as close to Angelline as he could, striding along with pomp and attempted dignity; stumbling over every root the swamp had to offer; whomping through the pools and spattering them all with spray; falling to his knees in the mud and having to be helped up. The stifling heat had started to tell after that, and he had fallen halfway back to where Emily was shepherding the line along. He was breathing heavily by then, sweat sheening his brow, mouth gaping.
‘How are you coping, Brocky?’ she asked, but he had no breath left for a cogent reply. Instead his expression suggested he was already regretting this entire business. As far as Emily had seen, when mist and vegetation had allowed, Angelline had barely glanced at him.
It was not long before he was blundering along right at the back of the line, having to scrabble and scramble to keep up with the moderate pace that Angelline was setting. In a rush of pity, Emily sent Caxton back to keep an eye on him. She had begun to see why it was a good idea for Brocky to shirk the fighting. He seemed just the type to spring a trap or get bitten by poisonous spiders. He had been hushed three times so far for cursing at the swamp, the air, the water, the beasts. Now he kept his complaints down to a huffing of breath. He hadn’t enough wind for anything more.
They stopped, some hours in, for rations and a chance to rest. John Brocky sat apart from the soldiers, a broad, hunched bag of misery. Emily would have gone over to him but she knew that he would not have appreciated it. He was a swelling boil of self-loathing just then, waiting for someone to burst upon. It seemed an apposite metaphor.
‘Why has he come?’ The soft voice was Angelline’s. Emily glanced at Brocky’s slumped form and judged them out of earshot.
‘He . . .’ But what could she say? ‘He feels he should do his bit.’ It was a creditably neutral offering. Angelline’s look suggested she did not quite believe it.
‘His place is back at camp. What would we do if we lost our quartermaster?’ she pointed out. Emily could only shrug. What am I supposed to say? When we started out, he carried a torch for you, but I suspect the swamps may have doused it.
‘He’s a complicated man,’ she managed.
‘Inner demons,’ Angelline said. ‘I’ve known many such men, driven men.’ Her voice sounded halfway approving. ‘Greatness or madness, I find.’
Emily began to feel awkward with this subject. ‘Tell me, Master Sergeant, your accent?’
‘Am I a Denland spy, you mean?’ Angelline laughed. ‘My grandparents came from across the sea, from the Small Countries. Because of the Hellic wars, you know. What about you?’
‘Am I a spy?’ Emily asked.
‘I hear you are of great nobility, an important family. They say you are a duchess.’
Now it was Emily’s turn to laugh, and as she did the shooting started.
Three of their men fell instantly, even as the echoing crack of the muskets sounded. Angelline leapt back and rolled behind a buttress of roots, shouting, ‘Down, down!’ For a moment, Emily was caught out in the open, crouching low but without cover. A shot whistled through the air beside her and she hurled herself sideways into a stand of ferns before coming up with her musket ready.
‘There!’ someone shouted, and s
he saw in that same moment the movement of grey-clad forms between the trees. She counted up to a dozen, and then lost count. Many, many Denlanders: two squads at least.
‘Fall back,’ she advised. ‘We’re outmanoeuvred here.’
‘Back! Fall back on me!’ Angelline called out in a voice, loud and clear, that cut through the gunshot and the fog. She fired her musket and began backing off, still shouting. Emily did the same, discharging her gun towards the movement ahead, and then spotting movement to the side as well. The Denlanders must have moved men round to their left, and were now firing into their unprotected flank.
‘God almighty! Get to cover, quickly!’ she yelled. Already another two were down, picked off neatly at a range she would have thought impossible in this murk, had she not seen Captain Goss’s collapse. Better guns; they have better guns.
‘To me! To me! Into the thick!’ came Angelline’s shout. She had found dense cover in a stand of trees, and the remainder of the two squads tried to join her there, as the Denlanders took shots at them and advanced, always advanced.
Brocky! Emily peered about her, for a moment seeing no sign of the quartermaster. Then she had found him: a great ungainly shape trying to negotiate the roots and banks and get himself into cover.
‘Brocky! Come on, man!’ Another shot whipped past her, and her eyes were dragged to the perfectly circular hole suddenly in the cycad leaf right beside her head. She backed and backed away, stumbling and clambering, the useless musket clutched close to her. She saw Caxton vault past, her face set and without expression. The next man behind her stumbled and fell, clutching at his belly. The Denlanders were close now, a staggered line of grey men advancing, firing calmly and then stopping to reload.
How they have outwitted us!
She called out to Brocky again, and he gave her a desperate look full of knowledge of his own foolishness. ‘Marshwic!’ he cried, and in that moment he lurched forward and toppled, ending up draped over a root five yards away from any cover.
She screamed his name, but the shots were nearer now, and she bolted for the deeper vegetation, to where Angelline and the balance of the soldiers were returning fire at the Denlanders, who all the while were getting closer.
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