The UnTied Kingdom (12 page)

‘Conscription,’ Eve said.

‘Yep. And that means we’ve got a load of men–’

‘And women,’ said Eve, who was still faintly amazed that women were on the front line now. Part of her, the feminist part, cheered, but a big chunk of her cowered.

‘Military term, military term,’ Harker said, waving his hand. ‘We’ve got a load of men who don’t really want to run around murdering complete strangers. It’s not a normal human thing to do. The Bible even tells you not to.’ He blew out a cloud of smoke, most of which went Eve’s way. ‘Which is something the padre at the barracks could never quite reconcile to my satisfaction. Anyway. The point is, we’ve got to take these men, who’ve been brought up nice, and turn them into people who will kill without a second’s hesitation. And do you know how we do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Eve said, still feeling belligerent. ‘Brainwashing?’

‘We drill ’em. Day in, day out. From the first minute they put their boots on. Basic Training involves day after day of being shouted at until you obey orders without even thinking. Squaddies don’t need to think. They need to obey. They need to have it hammered into them that when their sergeant tells ’em to march, they march. When he tells ’em to run, they run. And when he tells ’em to fire, they get their guns, they aim, and they kill the bloke standing in front of ’em. That’s why we drill. Every day.’

‘So you can beat the compassion out of ordinary people?’

‘Absolutely. Don’t you look at me like that. If we didn’t then we’d have an army of men who felt sorry for the enemy. And then the enemy’d kill ’em.’

Eve said nothing. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Now, the reason I have my men marching on a full stomach is this. It’s a damn sight better than marching on an empty one.’

‘An army marches on its stomach,’ Eve said, trying to remember who’d said that.

Harker looked at her like she was mad. ‘No, they march on their feet. But they’ve got to be ready to march at any time. Whether they’re tired, or hungry, or hurt – even if they have sprained ankles,’ he said, looking sideways at her, which Eve didn’t really appreciate. ‘Whether they’ve just eaten, or they haven’t eaten in three days. When I was defending Newmarket, they had us under siege for weeks and one of their shells hit the food stores. We were on such tight rations I was giving serious consideration to eating my own horse. But I still had to get up and fight, didn’t I?’

‘Aren’t you the hero,’ Eve muttered.

‘No,’ Harker said, ‘I ain’t a hero. I’m a soldier. Big difference. But the next time you tell me it’s bad for my men to march on a full stomach, or with blisters on their feet, or whatever, you consider that there are far worse conditions they’re going to have to march in, and fight in, and if I don’t toughen ’em up, and keep ’em tough, then I might as well wave a white flag at the Coalitionists right now.’

Eve knew that was intended to keep her quiet, and for a little while she
was
quiet, remembering every war film she’d ever watched, remembering history classes at school and pictures of soldiers in trenches at Ypres and the Somme. She supposed he had a point. Soldiers had to be tough.

But then, she wasn’t a soldier.

‘Who are the Coalitionists?’ she asked after a while.

Harker made an exasperated sound. ‘You ain’t very curious, are you?’

‘I’m just asking,’ she said. ‘If they’re who you’re fighting, and I’m stuck with you, then I think it’d be nice of you to tell me.’

Harker was silent a moment. Then he said, ‘Fair enough. The Coalitionists are, in brief, a group of people who think we should take the French up on their offer of a “coalition”.’

Eve saw Harker’s sneer. She nearly heard his inverted commas.

‘A coalition,’ she said. ‘Like an alliance?’

‘Yeah. Well, that’s the way they phrased it. But can you see France, the biggest power in the world, forming an equal alliance with a country that gets aid workers – what’s so funny?’

‘
France
is the biggest power in the world?’ Eve said.

‘Yeah.’ Harker gave Eve a look that she was getting used to. It said, ‘You really must be mad if you don’t know that.’

‘Okay,’ she relented, ‘I am crazy. But France?’

‘The French Empire,’ Harker clarified. ‘They own a third of the world.’

Eve, whose grandmother had related the story of colouring in the world map and running out of pink when she did the British bits, could only shake her head.

‘Anyway. They couched the offer in very pretty terms, but what it basically means is they want to annex us to the Empire. And we don’t want that. Well, the majority of us don’t. But there were some ministers who thought it’d be a good idea. They developed a bit of a following. It was all just political until they stormed out of Parliament and attempted to get the army behind ’em.’

‘And the army said no?’

‘The army did. More to the point, General Wheeler did. But two of the MPs who walked out represented Manchester and Leeds, and they raised militia and took over those two towns. Since then, it’s been us against them. Parliamentarians against Coalitionists.’

Eve digested this. It all sounded vaguely reminiscent of – well, every civil war she’d ever heard of.

‘The King declared military rule, and–’

‘I’m sorry,’ Eve said. ‘The
King
?’

‘Yes,’ Harker said patiently. ‘You know, posh bloke, sits on a throne, wears a crown.’

‘A king,’ Eve repeated. Not a queen. The
History of the Untied Kingdom
that she’d read hadn’t got that far. ‘What, uh, what’s his name?’

‘Charles,’ Harker said, and Eve nearly choked on her own breath.

‘Charles? Charles – son of Elizabeth II?’

‘Yep. See, you have heard of him. You know, I’m wondering if you just hit your head or something, I’ve heard of cases where amnesia’s set in–’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ Eve interrupted with a wave of her hand. ‘Look. What happened to the Queen? The old Queen?’

‘Elizabeth? It was pretty nasty, actually. There was a fire at Windsor Castle and she was killed. Thankfully, Charles and Diana and the princes weren’t there, or the whole line might have been wiped out.’ Harker chucked his spent cigarette on to the ground, where the wagon wheel rolled over it. ‘Plenty of people, of course, reckon that was the idea, but no one’s been able to prove it.’

‘I remember that,’ Eve said, frowning. ‘The fire at Windsor.’ She’d been a kid, maybe eight or nine, but she remembered news footage of ordinary people helping to rescue priceless works of art. Remembered that the damage had been so expensive the Queen had opened a couple of her houses to the public to pay for it.

Remembered, too, that the Queen hadn’t been anywhere near the place at the time, and that arson hadn’t even been suggested.

Then something else occurred to her. ‘You said Charles and Diana,’ she said. ‘His wife?’ Harker nodded. ‘Is she … still his wife?’

Harker shook his head. ‘No. The divorce came through in 1996. I remember that; it was the year I met Saskia.’ He laughed, but it didn’t indicate that he found anything particularly funny.

‘Saskia … your ex?’ Again he nodded. ‘What … happened after that?’

‘Well, my CO had recommended me for promotion and Saskia’s father bought it – well, she denies it, but–’

‘No, I mean with the – the King,’ Eve said, although her inner gossip hound shelved that bit of information away for later.

‘Oh. Well, not much, really. He has a lady friend, but I think there’s a lot of opposition to her becoming queen, what with her being divorced and all. Seems a little hypocritical, seeing as he is, too, but then that’s the monarchy for you.’

‘His lady friend,’ Eve said. ‘Would her name be Camilla?’

‘It would,’ said Harker, looking pleased. ‘See, it’s coming back to you. And Diana’s walking out with an Egyptian guy; it’s because of him we get imports of things like–’

‘Wait,’ Eve said, with such urgency that Harker hauled on the reins and stopped the wagon. ‘Diana’s alive?’

Harker gave her a strange look. ‘Of course she is.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Why, shouldn’t she be?’

Realising she probably sounded like a terrorist, Eve said quickly, ‘Oh, no – I mean, yes, I just thought … never mind.’

Diana was alive. Wow. Did the tabloids still put her on their front pages?

They reached the Devil’s Dyke a few hours after nightfall, and Harker started handing out duties before the wagon even stopped rolling.

‘Private Banks,’ he said, ‘take one of the horses – you can ride? Good. Follow this ditch to the north and keep on for three miles northwest and you will find a river. Fill this,’ he chucked a large water can at him, ‘and bring it back here. Spot anything we can eat on the way, you shoot it and bring it back. Tallulah, you take care of these three nags and the other one when Banks returns, and Private Banks,’ he added suddenly, as the younger man made to ride off, ‘when I say shoot something for our supper I do not mean animals that belong to anyone else, do you hear me? You poach another man’s livestock, that’s a flogging offence. Clear?’

Banks nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Clear, sir.’ He rode off.

‘Lance-Corporal Martindale, the tents, please, and get Eve to help you.’ He unshackled himself from Eve and fastened her wrist to a longish chain that was attached to the wagon.

Technically, he knew it ought to be Charlie giving the orders, because whatever her rank, she’d always performed as his sergeant, but a big chunk of Harker remembered being a sergeant himself, and he recalled being happier then than he ever had been since his promotion to the officer classes.

‘Charlie, you take first watch. Someone’ll relieve you in a couple of hours. Up on top of the ridge, if you please.’

The dyke had been built, however many years ago, by the simple method of digging a big ditch and piling the earth up to one side. It made a pretty decent defence, as Harker had discovered when the Coalitionists had made their advance on Newmarket.

Then, the ridge’s height had been supplemented by bodies, and the ditch had been a foot deep in water. Harker rubbed his right hand absently. He’d been made captain after Newmarket, four years after Wheeler had first offered it to him. Four years after he’d married Saskia.

He’d turned it down back then, having come to the unsettling conclusion that his promotions to ensign when he met Saskia, and then to lieutenant when he proposed to her, hadn’t been mere coincidences. Saskia, who’d just accepted a wedding gift of promotion to the rank of major, hadn’t been thrilled.

Looking back, he probably ought to have learnt something from that.

Since he’d run out of men to collect firewood, excepting Daz who, he surmised, would bring back green twigs and be unable to light them, Harker went off himself to do that, taking the small axe included in the wagon’s kit.
Mental note
, he told himself,
make sure Eve has both hands and feet bound at night and chain her out of reach of the wagon
.

It was perhaps over the top, but Harker hadn’t got where he was by taking silly chances. Well, he had, but not that kind of silly chance.

With a fire burning and the tents up, the camp looked much more appealing. Banks returned with a couple of rabbits, at which Eve looked horrified – especially when he proceeded to skin them and set them in a skillet over the fire.

‘Fried rabbit?’ she asked, going a little pale.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Just sautéing it before I chuck it inna stew. Got some vegetables, too, make a nice meal out of that.’

‘And where did you get those vegetables, Private Banks?’ Harker asked, making the kid jump.

‘Found ’em, sir,’ he said, his face open and innocent.

‘And where did you find ’em?’

‘Just lyin’ around, sir.’

‘Speaking of lying, Private, you’d better not be telling me falsehoods.’

‘Would I lie to an officer, sir?’

‘I don’t know, Banks, would you?’

Banks grinned. ‘Honest as the day is long, me, sir,’ he said.

‘Yes. Unfortunately, it’s October, so the days ain’t that long, are they, Private?’

Banks continued to grin, but said nothing more.

Banks turned out to be a decent cook, and over bowls of comfortingly hot stew, he entertained them with stories of his thieving days. He didn’t seem remotely ashamed of them at all.

While they were eating, Daz turned to Eve and said, ‘Tell me about this Internet. What is it?’

Eve blew out a long sigh. ‘God,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know where to start.’

‘At the beginning,’ said Harker, one ear on their conversation and one on Banks’s exploits.

‘Like with ABC?’ Eve asked. ‘Right, anyway,’ she said quickly. ‘The Internet. It’s like a … a worldwide network.’

‘You said that bit,’ Harker said, and she glared at him. He was beginning to enjoy provoking her.

‘What kind of network?’ Daz said, and Eve put down her spoon.

‘Well,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Okay. You asked me if I’d ever temped on a switchboard,’ she said to Harker, ‘so you know what they are?’