been great to visit here, to meet your family and all that, but I’m going home now. Tell me you don’t feel the same, just a little.’
‘I know what you mean.’
By this time, the news had spread. Emily could hear Mary’s feet on the stairs. She turned to Penny Belchere and saluted as smartly as she could. ‘Thank you, Soldier Belchere. You’ve done your duty.’
Penny saluted back just as seriously. ‘Thank you, Ensign. Permission to go on my way?’
‘Granted.’
Elise leant in the doorway, watching the messenger mount up and canter off, while Emily turned to her sisters. The opened letter in her hand told them all they needed to know.
*
The pack’s weight was a familiar burden, even a comforting one. She and Elise had walked all the way from Chalcaster with these. They were a soldier’s life contained in a single bag: clothes, utensils, tools, weapons, everything the King’s largesse supplied for new recruits to his army. Emily had made sure every last thing was there, and checked that the action of the musket still moved freely.
Downstairs, Mary and Cook were preparing a cold spread. Emily already had a letter from her sister in her jacket pocket, exhorting Tubal to write more frequently. She wondered whether she herself would write, and how often.
‘Ma’am?’ The voice, in this room, was unfamiliar. It was Grant, of course, and, when she saw him in the doorway of her bedroom, Emily realized that to her knowledge he had never been above stairs before.
‘What is it, Grant?’ she asked.
‘Well, ma’am, maybe it isn’t my business to say it, but I reckon there’s something you should take with you.’
As she frowned at him, he moved awkwardly into the room and she saw he was holding a flat, black-wood case with brass corners. A familiar case, for all that she had avoided the sight of it for many years. It had re-entered her life at the same time as the Ghyer had, and she had hoped never to see it again. Her father’s pistol case, of course. Within it nestled the exit he had chosen when his life became too harsh for him to handle.
‘I can’t,’ she said shortly, but Grant was resolute.
‘You shouldn’t turn it down just because of what it’s done. It’s just a thing, ma’am. Just a weapon. It’s a good one, though, better than any the army’ll give you. I reckon you might need this – need the extra. It’s a good piece, all right. Think about it, ma’am.’
He placed the dead weight of the case into her unwilling hands, and she laid it on the bed beside her pack. Steeling herself, she undid the clasp and lifted the lid, and looked within. There it was, nestling in its velvet: sleek and deadly, a long-barrelled horse pistol of dark iron with gold inlaid in the grip. It must have cost her father a fortune in the happier days when he had ordered it made. He had not known then what use he would put it to at the last.
Pistols were not standard issue for junior officers. The army would not find her a replacement if she left this lying here. War was an uncertain business, and sentiment had little part to play in who should live and who should die.
‘You’re right,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘I’d be a fool to leave it.’ I will give it a second chance to prove its loyalty. Perhaps a term in the army will erase the stain on it. ‘Thank you, Grant. You’re right, of course.’ She closed the case and found room for it in her pack.
The morning came before that final day, the darkness outside misty with the last of the winter weather. Emily sat at the kitchen table with her empty porridge bowl in front of her, and thought about another dark morning years ago, or so it seemed. Then she had been nothing but a spectator, watching Rodric and his brave companions being led away by the recruiting sergeant.
She glanced across the table at Elise, who managed a pale smile. She had drunk a lot of wine the previous night, making many boasts and toasts in a soldier’s fashion. It was not the hangover, though, that dragged her face down.
Grant was making the buggy ready, so they could ride into town like ladies of leisure. Mary and Alice had wanted to come to Chalcaster to see them board, but Emily had told them they should not. They should say their farewells here,