quite quiet now, aside from a little sniffling, and on the master sergeant’s face there was an odd, awkward expression of sympathy that sat badly there.
‘Those of you whose names I have just read out are to report to the station on the fortieth, from where you will be taken direct by train to the staging post at Gare. You’ll have to march from there. Remember: left and then right?’ He made a weak smile. ‘You lot go out and make sure you’ve got your kit requisitioned and ready. I want to talk to the rest.’
After the chair-scraping, the quick steps and the excited murmur of conversation just outside the door, the room was a very still place indeed. About four out of every five of the recruits had gone, Emily saw. The Couchant front was a broader, easier field of battle, and thus could better use the greater numbers.
She turned her eyes to the master sergeant, as did everyone still there. He faced them with a soldier’s bravery.
‘The rest of you are for the Levant front, as you’ve guessed,’ he said. ‘Right then: they’ll be putting you together with a couple of other camps, so as to make you up to full strength, and some of them are behind schedule. They ain’t all such good recruits as you lot, right? You’ve done good.’ He was such an impersonal man, such a bluff and solid soldier, that it was almost embarrassing to hear such sentiments from him.
‘What this means,’ he continued, ‘is that you’ve got some time. Maybe ten days, maybe less. Now, anyone as wants can stay here for free, no problem. You can even give some tips to the next lot we’re getting in. Otherwise you can go home and wait for your call-up. Spend a few days with your families. We shouldn’t allow it really, but the major’s put his stamp to it.’ His face went stern. ‘Don’t get ideas. Anyone who doesn’t turn up when you’re called will be a criminal, right off, and they’ll hang you for treason when they catch you. Orders for the army come straight from the King. But, other than that, I’m sure you’ve got people you want to see.’ He surveyed them with such strangled humanity that Emily wondered when he had last seen his own family, for from that same look she knew he had one, and that it had been a long time indeed.
‘Where will you go?’ Emily had a musket on an oily cloth spread over her knees, and was cleaning its mechanism industriously. There was only a handful of women in the dormitory, since those destined for the Couchant front had already packed their bags and departed.
‘I reckon I’m staying here,’ Elise said. She lay stretched out on her bed in her shirtsleeves, with her uniform jacket draped over the bunk above. ‘Got nowhere else to go, after all.’
‘I suppose not,’ Emily allowed, recalling Elise’s patchwork history.
‘You’ll be going back to . . . what was it? Grimble?’
‘Grammaine, yes. It’ll seem very strange to me, now.’
‘All those sisters of yours getting to see you in your uniform,’ Elise said.
‘Mmm.’
‘You’ll be the toast of the town. Lady Marshwic come back to say cheerio before going off to do her duty. They’ll be proud of you.’
‘Alice will make fun of my clothes, and Mary will cry,’ predicted Emily.
‘Still, they’ll be proud. If I had sisters I was on talking terms with, they’d be proud of me.’
Emily nodded slowly. ‘Elise?’
‘What?’
‘Come with me to Grammaine?’
She looked over to see the other girl sitting half up, staring at her.
‘Do what?’
‘Come stay at Grammaine, until we get our call-up. Why not?’
‘You’re serious?’
Emily nodded, watching a few expressions try to form on Elise’s face and fail.
‘That’s . . . I always wanted to live like gentry, even for just a few days . . . Hey, you don’t mean as a servant, do you? Because if that’s—’
‘I mean as a guest. As a friend,’ Emily said solemnly. ‘I mean, unless you want to stay here with the gunnery sergeant or something, of course.’
‘Demaine can live without me.’ Elise swung her legs round and perched on the edge of the bed, still looking a little stunned. ‘You really want . . . someone like me, staying with your sisters and your . . . servants?’
‘What’s someone like you? You’re a soldier just like I am.’
‘Yes, sir, Miss Ensign.’
‘You know what I mean. Besides, you’ll annoy Alice beyond all measure, and that’ll be worth the