doctor, after all.
‘I should be able to get up today,’ Emily argued. ‘I need to go back to my company.’
‘Your entire company has been here to see you almost every day,’ the doctor’s wife remarked drily. It was true enough; Emily was a hero, apparently, although she had thought simply escaping was something short of a hero’s traditional trials and deeds. The attention had been tiring mostly. Men and women she barely recognized had come bustling in to offer their congratulations. How do they all know me? she had wondered, as her hand had been shaken, as admiring girls of seventeen told her they wanted to be like her. Two men had even proposed marriage, and she had been forced to have Doctor Carling’s wife evict them.
And the colonel had come, of course – he had come to her the first day she was awake. He had tired her out just by his being there, filling the infirmary with his chatter, the one well-wisher the doctor’s wife could not send away.
And he had come with questions, dozens of questions about the Denlanders, their camp, their kit, their leader. She had answered them as truthfully as she could, and watched Captain Mallarkey write it all down. From the first few words, she had been able to tell that the colonel did not quite believe her. In his opinion she was a woman recovering from a terrible ordeal, her mind not quite right, that sort of thing. The Denlanders she described did not fit with those in his imagination, and so he had reworked her answers to fit his preconceptions.
‘Jolly well done, though,’ he had told her. ‘Splendid boost for the men, Marshwic. Couldn’t have asked for better. A real war-hero. There’ll be a medal for you, I shouldn’t wonder, back home. The King himself’ll put it on you.’
‘That would be . . . nice, sir.’ Her reply had been a weak one. He had worn her out more than the Denlanders during their forced march, not with his interrogation but his constant praise. The bonhomie of Colonel Resnic was not what she had wanted to wake to, her first day back to life.
‘Can’t have you just a sergeant, of course,’ he had gone on to muse. ‘Dashed shame that Mallen chap won’t be promoted. Irregular, but he’s a useful sort. Have to keep him around, I suppose. Even though he looks like such a fearful creature.’
A very useful man, Colonel,’ she had said, with feeling.
‘What? I suppose so, suppose you would say that. Still, what I’m trying to say, Marshwic, hero and all, going to have to make you lieutenant. Can’t have more than one master sergeant in a company, you see.’
He beamed at her, but the breath had gone out of her. She had felt as though she had been shot, after all, in the swamp, and not known until now. ‘Sir . . .’ had come her croak, but she had been unable to get the sentence out.
‘My dear girl, what’s the matter?’ The colonel was all bluff frowns and incomprehension. ‘Can’t turn down a promotion, surely?’
‘Colonel . . . my . . . Lieutenant Salander, Colonel? He’s lieutenant of Stag Rampant. You . . . can’t have more than one lieutenant in a company either.’
The colonel had looked at her blankly for a moment, before understanding dawned at last. ‘Oh, yes, your cousin or something . . . ?’
‘My brother-in-law, Colonel.’
‘Ah, well, bad business that,’ he had said awkwardly, then, at her horrified face, he had hurriedly added, ‘Not dead, Marshwic. Not dead. Thinking of making him up to full captain, now that Goss isn’t coming back. Just won’t be doing any real commanding outside camp. You’ve got the company on the field.’ He was human enough that he could not look her in the face, but when he had tried to busy her with other topics she would have none of it, and had just stared at him until he found a pair of soldiers to take her to visit Tubal.
Tubal had been moved from the doctor’s hut to the clubhouse, lying up there in a bed Brocky had set for him. It had been his face she saw first: the same face that she knew, undamaged, with two eyes and a grin – full of joy at seeing her. Only afterwards had she noticed the crutch propped up at his bedside, and only then the leg he had lost from just above the knee.
‘Oh, Tubal .