between the shoulder blades and tumbled her to the mud.
Only a musket butt. Get up! Get up! She lurched onto her hands and knees, sabre still in her grip, lashing out at the legs of her enemies.
Another gun butt smashed her across the side of the head, driving the rim of her helmet into her scalp. A third hooked under her ribs and she was on the ground again, the sabre sliding from her hand.
She looked up to see a dark man in grey standing over her, his gun raised up and then descending. She saw no more.
22
Dear Mr Northway,
This nice young girl explained her role to me, because there was only so long she could wait.
Ill reading for you, I’m afraid, and the handwriting should tell the story. No sign of the Marshwic woman.
The survivors have been trickling back for three days now, and there’s nobody here who’s holding his breath for more.
I cannot think she is alive. I’m sorry.
Yours sincerely,
John Brocky, Quartermaster.
Light. White light.
It sheared into her skull and she bucked and writhed against it. Someone was prising her eyelids open.
A moment later it was gone, but she was left with the realization that she was awake, and that she had not been so for some time.
She felt firm fingers touching about her face, outlining dull pains that arose within the darkness of her head like red and purple flowers. Bruises.
‘Skull all intact,’ said a voice indistinctly. ‘Can you hear me, in there?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She tasted dried blood on her lips. ‘What . . . ?’
‘Try not to strain yourself.’ The voice was strange, but there was a reassuring familiarity to it as well: a doctor’s calm mannerisms. ‘Tell me, can you hear this?’ A sharp click at one ear.
‘Yes.’
‘And this?’ The other ear.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Patient’s directional hearing is adequate.’
‘Is . . . ? What’s . . . ?’
‘Try not to strain yourself She felt her hand being prised out of the fist it was apparently clenched in, the fingers moved one after another. Some were tender, but none seemed broken. ‘Good,’ the doctor said again. There was something about his voice that was starting to make her uneasy.
‘Now I am going to ask you to open your eyes, one at a time,’ he said. ‘Left first, please.’
She tried to obey, but the light – the drilling, searing light – was too intense. The unseen doctor gave a little sigh and her eyelid was rolled up again with precise care.
‘Follow my finger, please.’
‘I . . . don’t see . . .’
She saw a movement, a blur of a blur, and tracked it automatically. The doctor said, ‘Good,’ again, and let her slip back into blessed darkness. Then the other eyelid was forced up, in the same procedure. This time she started to see the finger properly, started to focus through the shocking brightness.
‘Doctor, I—’
‘Try not to strain yourself.’
But she did, clenching herself against the pain in her chest and side to try and sit up. She could not; there were restraints about her wrists.
‘Doctor, what . . . ?’
‘Please, young lady, you must remain still.’
‘I don’t know you, do I?’
‘You do not, no.’
She screamed briefly as he pressed at her side, but he did not stop, just explored his way across her ribcage with a methodical efficiency. When he left off, she felt weak and ill in the stomach.
‘A slight crack to the fourth rib, left side, I think.’
‘Slight? she hissed through her teeth. ‘Where am I?’
‘Please stay calm.’
‘Are you . . . ?’ A ghoulish thought as his cool, dry fingers explored the bare skin of her leg, so professional as to be sexless. ‘You’re not Doctor Carling are you?’ Remembering the dead doctor’s wife. Where am I?
Is this it? Death is a doctor’s surgery?
The doctor’s hands had withdrawn sharply as she spoke that name, and so she knew it must be true. She fought to open her eyes, so as to look him in the dead face at last. The light was not so intense now, or perhaps her eyes had become more accustomed. What had seemed the sun shrank to the distinct flares of lamps, past which moved the shadow that was the doctor. She fixed her gaze on him, craning her neck, trying to focus.
‘Am I Doctor . . . ?’ he asked her slowly.
‘Doctor Carling?’ she whispered.
‘Ah, I am afraid not. My name is Doctor Craulen. I misheard you, for a moment.’
Seeing his pale clothes swim slowly into greater clarity, she mumbled, ‘Craulen?