her ribs. It pulled and dragged at her, choked her breath, hammered her heart. She felt ill, feverish. The sweat was chill on her face.
‘Oh, dear God, save us,’ she whispered, when she really meant, save me. This was fear, then. She had never really appreciated it before. She felt her legs buckle, and clutched at the shoulder of a tradesman’s wife, so that for a moment the two of them were supporting each other. She heard the first sniffles and sobs begin around her.
‘Emily?’ Alice demanded, and for a moment Emily thought she simply had not been listening, as was her wont. Then, heedless of the expressions of the crowd, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, don’t be foolish. It doesn’t mean us.’
Emily reached out and touched Alice’s chin, feeling suddenly very far away. ‘It does,’ she said.
‘No!’ Somewhere a woman started screaming: ‘They can’t make me!’ And it was echoed by others, at first few, then many – ordinary women thinking of their homes, of their businesses, of their children.
‘Everyone, Alice,’ Emily confirmed shakily. ‘Every household. A draft of women.’ She could not get her breath to come evenly. Around them the crowd was coming apart: women running home, or running away. The world seemed to spin slowly, ponderously, around her, with the proclamation at its centre.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Alice said, but she had gone pale. ‘It can’t mean . . . It’s just a . . .’
Emily looked around her, seeing her heart mirrored in every face. Here a girl of Alice’s age was weeping into her mother’s apron. Here a woman clutched her children to her, face upturned towards the pale winter sky. A tradesman’s wife started backing away, her husband’s tools slung about her waist, her face slack at the thought of it. A young woman kept staring intently at the notice, one hand clenched at her waist as though a sabre already hung there.
Beyond the disintegrating crowd, Emily saw the open doorway of the town hall, and a shabbily dressed figure standing framed within it. Mr Northway stared out across this great morass of woe, and she could not say whether he saw her or not.
*
‘It must be me,’ she explained calmly. ‘There is no option, no other choice.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Mary protested, looking around the kitchen for support. Grammaine’s entire complement was there this evening: Emily’s sisters and the quartet of servants, all silently considering the news. On the kitchen table lay the papers delivered to each household so that a chosen new recruit could be nominated, named and her skills anatomized.
‘There has never been a draft of women,’ Mary continued. ‘Whoever heard of such a thing?’ In her arms baby Francis made a disgruntled sound as if in agreement. ‘It must be a mistake,’ she finished weakly. ‘They can’t really mean to send women to war.’
‘They must send someone,’ Emily said. ‘Who else, now, can they send?’
‘But they have sent men!’ Mary almost shouted. ‘They have sent the regular army, and then my Tubal, and a man from every other house, and then any man left who was not in his dotage or infancy. How can they call upon us now to send the women? It isn’t fair. We must not send anyone.’
‘And did we say that when Tubal went to war, or Rodric?’ Emily replied emptily. ‘We did not. If our little brother had the courage to take up a musket and go off to war, then what of us if we refuse? We make a mockery of his bravery, of the bravery of them all.’
There was a sudden sob from the corner of the room, and Emily turned to see Jenna putting her face in her hands.
‘What is it, Jenna?’
‘Please, ma’am . . .’ The maid tried to say more but huge, bullying sobs muscled in, one by one, to rack her, until old Poldry put his arms around her, letting her tears stain his threadbare jacket.
‘She thinks you’ll send her, ma’am,’ Cook explained. ‘Ever since she heard the news, she’s been frantic. I heard this morning that other households have done it, sent a servant girl.’
Emily stared at her, and then at Jenna’s shuddering back, and inwardly her heart leapt. Life! it seemed to say. Life and freedom. I was so sure it must be me, and now . . . And her own words of just a moment before returned to her, and she felt ill at herself.