is for the best. Write them something nice and reassuring. It is for the best, believe me.’
She discovered something new within herself then. She discovered that she could dislike a man for something other than bad character. She could dislike men like the Ghyer and Mr Northway because they were bad men, and she was used to that exercise of judgement. Colonel Resnic was not a bad man: he so clearly believed what he said, and believed it to be the best thing to do. Yet she felt a sudden wave of fierce dislike spiking within her, because he was unfit. He did not understand.
He was a fool.
‘Dear girl,’ he continued, and he never paused to read her expression at all, ‘if you had known what you would find, would you have come here? Well, of course you would – being a Marshwic and all. No fear, eh? But others, of the lower ranks, you can imagine they might not be so happy to march out if they knew all this would be waiting for them. It never does to spread panic, spread worry.’ He drained his wine, held his glass out for Stapewood to refill. ‘Up against a madman, we are. A mad genius, they say. You must have heard of the doctor.’
‘Our doctor?’ she said, puzzled.
‘No no, not Doctor Carlingswife. Dear me, no. Why, I mean the leader of the Denlanders. You didn’t hear? Their commander: Doctor Lam. A terrible man, they say. Brilliant, but quite mad. And cruel, so very cruel. Anyone they catch is brought to him, and he holds the scalpel, I hear, when he gets what they know out of them. I shouldn’t say this in front of a girl, but you should hear it. Doctor Lam, the Butcher of the Levant – now how would it look if we said all that to the people back home? How would they feel, do you think? Fairly downhearted, I’d say.’
She stared at him, thinking: One insipid letter, long weeks of nothing, and then we hear that he is dead, just like that. Is that better, Colonel? Does that spare us the pain?
‘I can’t write, then?’ she said heavily.
‘Write, please do, but, you know, something nice,’ he said jovially. ‘Something pretty.’
He beamed at her in such an avuncular way that she felt she would be sick.
13
Beneath the canopy, we feel as though we are under water. The sounds of all the animals and insects and the water merge into a single mumble in our ears, as stifling as silence. Even the sounds we bring ourselves, our boots through the water, our breath, the metallic clink of harness, are eaten up by that constant murmur. It is a dream there; a terrible fever dream. We cannot wake.
She waded carefully around the edge of one of the deeper pools, eyeing the water. The heat, the closeness of the air, plastered her shirt to her body like on a summer’s day before a thunderstorm. Her jacket hung open, bunched into odd bulges by her sabre baldric.
Something moved in the murky depths, but declined to investigate the ripples Emily was making. Gratefully she stepped up to a snaking tree root, put a hand to the slick trunk to steady herself. She looked back as the three soldiers behind her made the same journey. She watched over them as they trod carefully or slipped down to one knee with a curse. That was the only sound that broke from clear from the susurrus: a human voice. She signalled furiously for quiet, and the swearing man was righted by his fellows until they were all across, over the root and spreading out along a silt bank. At the rear came Mallen, stepping without looking at his footing, his eyes shifting all around him instead. The unseen pool lurker gave another indecisive motion, then lay still. Mallen did not even glance at it, but he knew it was there.
He nodded acknowledgement to her, as he reached her, putting a hand on her shoulder, soldier to soldier.
‘You have the end, Ensign,’ he said softly as he passed, and she turned to follow them up as he moved their squad of twenty onwards.
She took a moment to breathe, sucking in the thick, wet air. Her helm felt like lead. Her musket was weighty as a stone pillar in her hand. The heat rode on her shoulders like a fat man. Life beneath the swamp canopy sweltered with a constant patience that knew nothing of the