have kept you here, Ensign. I would that I could have kept you safe.
It is the strangest thing that I cannot close my eyes, or take a moment’s thought, without thinking on you and where you have gone. I read each day the reports of what is daily done in the name of war. I would spare you, Ensign, if I could.
The past is no man’s clay for remodelling. It is fired the moment it is moulded, alas.
I have an offer for you, Ensign. I want you to commit treason with me. I want you to join with me in a conspiracy. Have I outraged you? Do you tear up this sheet of paper even now, or cast it at the feet of your Colonel Resnic? I say not. You read on.
You will wish to speak to those you love here, to tell them how it goes with you, in words that the Kings law does not permit. I will give you that chance, Ensign. What you hand to Belchere will make a most secret progress back to Chalcaster, and thence to wherever you will. There is my treason, and there is yours. I only ask that, as you write, you do not forget him whose venal soul gives you that chance. Write to me, Emily, if you would.
Do I know you so well? Have I struck a mark? Always, even with your anger and loathing turned on me, yet you know me and I you. Who is there now to slam back my door and harangue me with such righteous indignation? Who is there now to hate my name so fiercely? What a flame has gone out here, since you went to war!
We understand each other, do we not?
Your obedient villain,
Cristan, if you will have him so – if not, Mr C. Northway, Mayor-Governor of Chalcaster and servant of the King.
After the last word, she read through it again, and then let the piece of paper hang from one hand, as she stared off at the slow-approaching cloud. She felt her loneliness so keenly that it cut her like a knife. She had so few friends here, so many strange faces. And the war was not going well: he had been right. The insidious Doctor Lam played his games, and men and women of Lascanne died amid the hell of the swamps. Nothing was as she had been led to believe. The world – all bar one man – had lied to her. She had tried so hard to force her words out of this place, to speak to Mary and Alice across the miles, and he could not have known that. Belchere must have received her orders before Emily had ever gone to the colonel. And yet here his message was, his lifeline: a hand extended by Mr Northway, bane of her family.
And it was not Mary or Alice she thought of, as she held the letter close. Instead, she saw a man in shabby black on the railway platform at Chalcaster, felt the coolness of his hand as it slipped out of hers. Return, please.
She read the letter once more, and saw again words that she had taken for granted. He knew her, her fears and her wants. If she gave her imagination the freedom, she could know him in return: the cold office, the papers making demands in the name of the war effort, his slim-fingered hands pursuing their joyless work. Was that a heaviness about him, that no Marshwic could tear him from his duties with her demands? I would that I could have kept you safe.
Write to me, Emily. Her name, unqualified. She was always Ensign Marshwic or Sir here. Her name sounded strange to her own ears; she had left it behind, in the keeping of Mr Northway.
His words sidled into her mind, his imagined voice sly and mocking. She felt oddly awkward, exposed. He had read her mind. He had known her needs before she ever formed them. He was Mr Northway the villain, made to gloat, boast and threaten. His entreaty slid beneath her defences. She felt weak and angry with herself for it, but she could not put the letter down.
I should expose him, tell the colonel of his treason, finish the man. He had put the blade in her hand.
But Mary, Alice! This is what I want, after all, only what I want.
And she smiled ruefully because that was not it. Her sisters had been forgotten, these last five