. .’
‘Hell, could have been worse,’ he had pointed out. ‘You got me out of there, remember? I’d never have had the pleasure of the amputation if you hadn’t.’
She had wanted to make some brave, clever remark to match his, to show that she was a soldier and a woman of the world. Then everything had caught up with her: the horrors and confusion of the battle; her capture; Doctor Lam’s insinuations about the King. Her eyes had filled with tears and she had knelt beside the bed and hugged Tubal close, despite her bruises, and wept into his chest for all the blood and innocence that had been lost.
In the midst of the busy throng who came to visit her at the doctor’s hut, there had been at least a few moments with friends. First of all, Giles Scavian, who had somehow survived the shots of the Denlanders, and who had then screened the Lascanne retreat with fire until his eyes had bled burning tears. While she was lashed to a frame in the Denlander camp, he had lain collapsed on a bed right here in the infirmary, drained almost to death. She was more glad than she could say to see Giles Scavian again.
And yet, as he sat by her, her hand resting in his, something stood between them. She had a world of things she wanted to say, and she could not say them to him. She could not tell him about the Denlanders, how they had really been. She could not tell him that the dreaded Doctor Lam was just an overwrought engineer with a moral dilemma. She could not tell him the lies of Denland against his beloved King. He would rage, he would go mad. He was a King’s wizard, and she did not want to see that anger. The silences between them were calming, healing, but her words were bottled up inside her, and she could not let them out.
Later there was Sergeant Caxton, the female man’s tailor with her new crown patch sewn crooked on her shoulder. It had not made her any less pale, any less worried. The added responsibility weighed hard on her, and she obviously wished that, with Emily returned, she might return to obscurity herself. Emily had laughed at her for that, mocking her, asked her what sort of a soldier was she, that she could turn down extra pay.
‘When they ever get round to paying us,’ Caxton had grumbled. ‘Besides, Lieutenant, you don’t look so happy with yours. You haven’t even sewn it on.’
Lieutenant Marshwic. It did not sound quite real to her. What fool would make her a lieutenant? The colonel would take it back before she left her sickbed, surely.
And at last, after it seemed that everyone from all three companies had come to tell her what a hero she was, there came John Brocky and, on his arm, Marie Angelline.
‘Well now,’ he said, trying a smile. ‘Look at this treatment. I never got this treatment when I was laid up here.’
‘The quality of the treatment is inversely proportional to the quantity of the complaints, Mr Brocky,’ came the sharp voice of Doctor Carling’s wife.
‘Listen, Doc—’
‘I am not a doctor, Mr Brocky. Carry on endearing yourself to me like this and you’d better hope you never end up here again.’
‘I have a bottle of whisky here that’s asking for you to go into the next room and not eavesdrop on us,’ Brocky suggested, dangling the contraband at his fingertips.
Doctor Carling’s wife approached him suspiciously, then pecked the bottle from his hand and left without another word.
‘God-awful woman,’ Brocky remarked, sitting. He still looked thinner than he had been when Emily had first met him. The loss of a layer of flab left him looking somehow more vulnerable than before.
‘I hear congratulations are in order,’ said Angelline. ‘Marshwic, you should count yourself lucky. Fat Squirrel’s second spot is empty, but they won’t give it to me. Pordevere won’t have a woman as his second, and I’ve not the clout to catch the colonel’s eye.’ She caught herself hurriedly. ‘Not that you don’t deserve it, but . . .’
‘I know. The name, the family. It helps,’ Emily acknowledged. She had no wish to be a lieutenant – to be in charge, for heaven’s sake – when the next assault came. She would gladly have shed her name, to dodge it.
Brocky wrung his hands anxiously. ‘Marie, could you . . . ? There’s something I need to run