walk, from Chalcaster to Grammaine, and it had seemed a bit of fun, an adventure, a bold way of showing off her new uniform and her new status.
Now she faced the miles stoically, and covered them with a soldier’s steady, metronomic pace, and she did not think about the journey itself, only the destination. The summer sun was strong above her, but she would call nothing hot now, save the steaming of the swamps. She bore it all without thought or complaint.
So she slogged along the road, and then the narrower track, seldom looking much ahead of her. She felt oddly unbalanced, shorn of something, and only when the gate of Grammaine was in sight did she realize that it was the comforting weight of her musket that she missed.
First the gate, and up the hill beyond it was the house. Grammaine’s grounds were modest: once she reached that gate, there was no hiding from the house itself. It overlooked everything. The sight of it struck her: the sheer nostalgia of it. How small it seemed! How long ago it was, half a year and yet forever, since she had last laid eyes upon it. The fear she had experienced in the war was nothing to this moment. What if the door should open and some strange face look out at her? Was her family still there, or had some bandit king or Denlander conqueror seized it as his residence? What if it has all changed? This place had been her rock, her anchor in the storm. What if it had not held, but shifted, as everything else had shifted. Where could she go, if not here?
There are always other options: Giles; Mr Northway . . . Think like a soldier, woman! Stop fretting and go find out.
She passed through the gate and made for the house, looking for signs of life and feeling oddly like a scout approaching enemy ground.
In the yard she paused, seeking some movement in the windows, but there was none. Her heart had already begun to fail her. She was not sure she dared discover what had happened here since she had left. Her hand sought out the pistol at her belt, and she wished she had loaded it.
Then a face at an upstairs window, looking down on her, in just a pale flash. She began to raise a hand and wave, but it was already gone. It might have been Jenna, the maid, though she could not swear to it. She gathered up her courage as best as she could, and made for the door.
‘Stop right there!’ bellowed a man from the stables. ‘You just hold there, soldier! Put your hands up where I can see them, and all.’
She stopped dead, but she was smiling and tears pricked at her eyes. She knew that voice, and knew therefore that she was home. She turned carefully, hands extended, and looked towards the burly old man advancing from the stable block with a musket in his hands.
‘Right, now,’ he said. ‘You give me your business here . . .’ and he tailed off into speechless wonder.
‘Hello, Grant,’ she said.
‘God bless me,’ he said, lowering the musket in such a way that she knew it had not been loaded. ‘Miss Emily, it’s not you?’ His eyes passed back and forth across her face, seeing the bruises, the lines of pain and strain that the war had put on her.
‘Hello, Grant,’ she said again, voice trembling. He was so much as she remembered that it was unbearable to simply stand and look at him. She found herself running over to him, throwing her arms about him and just holding him, feeling his strong, supporting embrace about her. ‘I’m back,’ she whispered. ‘I’m back.’
‘Steady now,’ he said, and then added the ‘Lieutenant’ after a glance at her shoulder. ‘We never knew you were coming back. Is that the end of it then, ma’am?’
‘Oh, I hope so,’ she said, heartfelt. ‘Listen, Grant, Tubal’s still at the station. I have to go back for him.’
‘Oh, no, ma’am. That’s my job. You need to see your sisters now, and they need to see you. I’ll go fetch Mr Salander.’ He let go of her, shaking his head as he gazed at her again. ‘Soon have everything back to normal.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Not ever again. Tubal will need the buggy, Grant, not just a horse.’
‘Is that right, ma’am?’ There was a wisdom in Grant’s nod that told her he understood