those lost by Bear Sejant alone, quite aside from the other companies. Emily stood back and watched as the newcomers were given patches and assigned their places. How young they looked, most of them: the girls only sixteen, seventeen years, perhaps. Daughters and granddaughters, with a few grey-haired matrons thrown in. There will be few more now, after this.
Northway had sent her a second missive: a page torn from some ledger, scrawled in crabbed writing and couched in such scholarly tones that it was near impossible to decipher. The last paragraph alone offered much sense for her, discussing her new home in layman’s terms:
CONCLUSION: there is no future, alas, in the plan. These swamps will never be satisfactorily drained, reinforced as they are by the sea. The vegetation herein growing will not give way easily to any crop considered useful to man. The animals are not to be farmed, seldom edible, often venomous. Even the airs are heavy and inimical to human labour. What minerals there are would not repay any industry set to sieve or mine or distil them. Moreover, the native folk are slight and unfit even for the labours one might entrust to a child, let alone a man’s work. In short: expend your efforts on the rail and road of the western passes. This place will not serve.
She thought at first it was his dark jest, to show her what she knew already regarding what a hellish place she had found herself in. Only on a second reading did she unlock the final scribble: ‘Jakob Mallen, Surveyor by Royal Appointment, 43rd Day of Summer, Year of the King 1727’.
She had made mention of Master Sergeant Mallen in a previous letter; now Mr Northway had repaid her confidence. The present Mallen’s grandfather, she guessed from the date. The family had been the guardians of this place for so long, at least. What would old Jakob think of his descendant doing a soldier’s work sixty years down the line?
*
The infirmary door hung lopsided on its hinges, and gave way only after some persuasion. Emily peered into the lamplit interior, asking, ‘Doctor Carlingswife?’
‘Go on in,’ she heard Tubal, from behind her. ‘Let’s get out of the rain at least.’
She ducked inside the doctor’s hut, whose interior resounded to the drumming of the weather on its roof. Eighteen men lay there on raised pallets, with room for six more. There was precious little space to walk between them. These were the worst of the wounded, after the rest had been discharged to their units or sent limping off to Locke. Many were sleeping, and two lay so pale and still that Emily wondered if they were already dead. One or two propped themselves up, on her approach. One man even managed a salute with his remaining arm. Soon enough there would be a detail to get them to one of the hospitals further back, probably once the weather cleared. Until then they would lie here, as they had done since the Big Push. Most likely some would move no further than the burial field in the shadow of the cliffs.
Tubal closed the door behind them, as Emily saw a stern-faced woman appear amongst the racks of medication hanging at the far end of the building.
‘What is it, Sergeant?’ this apparition asked, eyes narrowing to pick the new rank from Emily’s sleeve.
‘Is Doctor Carlingswife here, Miss . . . ?’ Emily asked, for a moment feeling uncertain of her position in relation to this woman. Tubal coughed discreetly behind her, and she realized the error that she, of all people, should not have made. ‘Doctor . . . Doctor?’
‘No doctor,’ said the woman, weaving her way between the palettes with a skill honed by long practice. ‘Merely his wife.’
‘Doctor Carling . . . ?’
‘Left us.’ Her voice gave no indication of how this should be taken. Seeing Emily’s confusion, Doctor Carling’s wife sighed. ‘Infection. An insect’s bite that suppurated. The irony was not lost on him.’ She wore austere, dark clothes, with a leather apron atop them that was stained by marks no amount of cleaning would clear. ‘Lieutenant, there has been no change. You waste your labour coming here.’
‘I know, ma’am,’ Tubal said politely. ‘With respect, it’s not as though I’ve anything better to do.’
Doctor Carling’s wife gave him a disapproving look, and stepped back from the motionless form lying in the bed closest to her. With a start, Emily recognized the pale, closed features of Captain Goss.