Heading back into the stables, he left her at the kitchen door and, after a moment’s hesitation, she knocked. She did not feel equal to simply walking into the place that had once been her home.
It was Jenna who came to the door, staring at her blankly until Emily smiled. Then the girl shrieked with surprise and ran off into the house, leaving Emily to step in like a tinker and glance about at the kitchen, noticing how little food there was, but how Cook had kept it neat all this time. Feeling unutterably weary, she sat down heavily at the table and waited, dumping her helmet and the pistol before her.
She heard footsteps on the stairs, not jubilant but cautious, and did not look up until a shadow fell across her.
‘Hello, Alice,’ she said.
Her sister stood wide-eyed, open-mouthed, a woman who has just seen the dead come back to life.
‘Emily? Emily? But we heard . . . the war . . . we thought you all must have died!’
‘You’re always so melodramatic.’ Emily tried a weak smile. ‘Some of us got out.’ And some of us did not.
‘Did you escape the Denlanders? Are you on the run?’
Emily did not know whether to laugh or cry. ‘We surrendered, Alice. Does that disappoint you?’
‘But . . . we thought they’d kill everyone . . .’
The politics, the details, Doctor Lam’s philosophy, it was all far too much to explain, and she found that she had no energy left to even begin. ‘I’m here, Alice. They let me come home. I suppose they’re not as bad as you’ve heard, when it comes down to it. Let that be enough.’
‘You . . . you look terrible,’ said Alice. ‘You’ll have to grow your hair back.’
Emily coughed out some incredulous laughter. ‘Alice, I’m back from the damned war and you’re complaining about my hair?’
Alice pursed her lips. ‘Well, it does need looking after. Have you brought . . . a man back, from the war? A soldier . . . ? Why are you laughing at me?’
‘Because you haven’t changed.’ Emily levered herself up from the table then, hearing footsteps.
Mary came in, with Jenna crowding behind, and stopped dead. She looked so much older than Emily remembered, so much more worn. It had been hard on her, all this time, even though she had stayed at home. ‘You’re . . . alone,’ she whispered.
‘Oh, God, as long as he’s alive, I don’t care,’ Mary burst out, and was in Emily’s arms the next second, hugging her tight. ‘We’d given up hope. We’d given up hope for either of you. Oh, God, I thought I was a widow, Emily! I thought I’d lost you and Tubal, as well as poor Rodric.’
And Emily held her, and wondered how many other families were having such tearful reunions today, and how many men and women would be at the train station, waiting, waiting, until there were no more soldiers to come, and no more trains, and they had still not seen the face they sought.
*
She slept until noon the next day, and was still weary when she awoke. Opening her eyes, she at first could not work out where she was. What was this room, this sunlight, this bed? Where were the cramped confines of her tent? Where were the sounds of the camp, and the smell of rot drifting off the swamps? When Jenna opened the door, she jumped, scrabbling for a gun that was not there.
‘Miss, are you all right, miss?’ the maid asked nervously, for the look on Emily’s face had taken her aback.
‘I’m . . . I’m sorry, Jenna. I overslept.’
‘Mrs Salander said you should be left to sleep as long as you wished, miss,’ Jenna explained. ‘Only . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s a gentleman here to see you, miss, if you wanted to rise. Otherwise I can tell him to go away, if you want.’
‘A . . . Is it a Denlander?’ Where’s the pistol? Don’t tell me I left it in the kitchen. No, there was the hilt of it, protruding from beneath her crumpled jacket.
‘No, miss. It’s Mr Northway, from Chalcaster. Shall I tell him you can’t see him?’
Mr Northway, the same name that had dogged her family, had ruined her father, had once tormented her. That ill-omened name she had come to hate, before. The name at the foot