The UnTied Kingdom (14 page)

Harker stared at her. ‘Right, so when the enemy comes at you, sees Daz and his armband and spares him, and you tell them you were going to wear one but decided not to because you’re not a medic and it’d all be a bit
dishonest
, exactly how long do you think they’ll spend listening before they shoot you in the bloody head?’

Wordlessly, Eve took the armband.

Harker checked his map again. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘If we don’t find you, meet us in Downham Market.’

He nodded at Daz, which seemed to be his version of an everyday salute, and slung a blanket on the back of one of the horses as a makeshift saddle. Eve watched him mount up to ride into the wood full of smoke, mayhem, death and blood, and blurted, ‘Wait!’

He glanced down at her, impatient, and the cold realisation occurred to Eve that she had no idea what she was going to say.

‘Come back, all right?’ she said. ‘Just … come back.’

He gave her an unexpected wink. ‘Count on it. Squad, to me!’ he shouted, and cantered off into the woods. The squad followed on foot, like a line of little ducklings.

‘They’re going to die, aren’t they,’ Eve said, her stomach churning.

‘We’re all going to die,’ said Daz, then caught her expression and added hurriedly, ‘eventually.’

‘Advance!’ Harker yelled, spraying bullets into the fog. He switched on the toff accent he’d learned while married to Saskia. ‘Leave no man standing! Hussars, advance!’

His horse screamed and reared. Poor sod, wasn’t used to being ridden, wasn’t used to all this noise and terror. In the fog, the woods were an impenetrable nightmare. He and the horse were muffled in their own terrifying little world, possibly miles from everyone else, possibly only a heartbeat. Neither of them knew which until a shape loomed out of the mist, screaming and wielding bloody death.

Harker galloped the horse towards the nearest shapes, yelling and swinging out with his sword. It wasn’t a cavalry sword, which meant it was far too short to make any real impact when swung from high up, but it made the soldiers on the ground recoil. Ducking loose bullets –
any bullet, the next one could be it
– Harker swung his left arm around a narrow tree trunk, gripped the horse with his thighs and forced it to veer around the tree, back towards the enemy, returning fire as he went. Evidently he hadn’t come away with nothing from his marriage to Saskia. Thank goodness for her daredevil brother, who had taught him how to control a horse with no saddle and no reins.

The horse bucked and Harker nearly lost his seat, but sheer bloody-mindedness kept him on, and he shoved the beast back down to the ground, thundering into the man he’d forced back with his sword.

The body squelched as it hit the mud, and a horrible scream bubbled from the man’s throat as he died.

Harker wheeled the horse around again, every muscle he had protesting, and galloped off down the line, zigzagging under a hail of bullets, until he’d driven the Coalitionists opposite him back further, and further still. From the mist and the dark woods came the shouts of surprise and dismay as the rest of the squad made themselves known further along the line. Sound bounced around, the direction impossible to distinguish.

Someone screamed, a woman, terrified and desperate. Hoof beats thundered, making the ground shake, and Tallulah, real plums in her voice, commanded an imaginary cavalry brigade forward. Somewhere a tree, having taken too many bullets, groaned and screeched and crashed to the ground. He heard Charlie bellowing in a raw voice, ‘Seven Platoon! To me!’ and a lot of gunfire from what appeared to be random directions.

In the fog, five men can be fifty. And fifty men can be followed by a lot more.

Good job half the enemy were cowards.

As the first cries of, ‘Retreat! Retreat!’ drifted through the fog, Harker smiled, and cantered off in the direction of Charlie’s rifle. She swung towards him, finger on the trigger, and in the space between heartbeats recognised him and lowered her gun.

Harker grinned. ‘Which bugger was it who said God was on the side of the biggest battalions, Charlie?’

‘Napoleon, sir.’

‘Well, he was wrong. God is on the side of the biggest bastards.’

A shot through the fog wiped the smile from his face. Harker swung down off his horse, slapped its rump, and watched it run away. He didn’t blame it.

‘Cavalry?’ came a voice. ‘Identify yourselves!’

Harker winked at Charlie. ‘75th Infantry,’ he said. ‘You?’

The darkish shape came closer, clearer. ‘Infantry? But I heard …’ he looked at the horse disappearing into the fog, ‘… horses.’

The speaker was a lieutenant. Quite young, by the looks of him, dirty and wet with marsh gunk and splatters of blood.

Harker clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Old trick, Lieutenant.’ The kid was even still wearing his cap, with a badge that identified him as 9th of Foot. ‘Reckon they’re retreating now, but you might want to give the order for a farewell salvo.’

The Lieutenant nodded, but he was looking around without much confidence. ‘Yes, sir, but the thing is, we’re all a bit broken up by this fog. They don’t fight in neat lines, sir, they just ran at us like a mob!’

Harker closed his eyes for a second. Unbelievable.

He opened his eyes. ‘Well, that’s the enemy for you, Lieutenant …?’

‘Simson, sir.’

‘Simson. Enemy ain’t got no manners. Right. Well then, I suppose we’d better form your men back up, hadn’t we? Who’s in charge of the 9th now? Danbury?’

Simson shook his head. ‘No, sir. Wounded at Newark. Major Collington had us, sir, but she was one of the first to fall when the barricades came down.’ He swallowed. ‘They took all of the first line out, sir. Shelled us at the back. We’ve only a quarter of the men left, sir; at least, we did when the barricades came down.’

‘When was this?’

Simson looked at his watch. Smudged some blood out of the way. ‘An hour, sir? Maybe more. Can’t quite see the minute hand, sir.’

Harker resisted the urge to swear, loudly, because the poor kid looked as if he’d had enough already.

‘All right, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘You go off, round up as many men as you can, form a line and advance towards the Causeway, firing and reloading the whole time. There’s to be no one else enters this bog, you understand? Unless they’re civilians, and you send ’em south. When you reach the Causeway, start curving round west, force them back towards the barricades. Got it?’

Simson quavered for a minute, then nodded. ‘Yes, sir. I understand.’

‘Well, go then!’

Simson ran off, and Harker turned to Charlie. ‘You go that way,’ he pointed west. ‘Do the same. Force ’em east, back on to the barricades.’

‘What about the ones who’ve already gone further east, sir? Past Simson’s men?

Harker glanced at the blood already drying on his sword.
Never stays clean
.

‘Those,’ he said, ‘are mine.’

Mist closed in on Eve and Daz, the rumble of the wagon and the thud of the horses’ hooves muffled like the bass beat outside a nightclub. Every now and then something boomed distantly, someone screamed, and fear pounded through Eve until she thought she might shatter.

The woods closed in on them, dark and murderous, full of fear and madness.

Manoeuvring the wagon up the path towards the Causeway, which seemed to Eve to be the wrong direction entirely, Daz halted suddenly when he heard a burst of fire and the muffled command, ‘9th of Foot! Advance! Slow and easy, men!’

‘They’re still fighting,’ Eve said, her eyes darting around, desperately trying to see through the fog. ‘Should we, er, should we be here?’

Daz gave her a look. ‘We’re not going near them,’ he said. ‘We’re going west.’

‘West?’ Eve hitched up the loose coils of chain looped over her shoulder.

‘Towards the barricades.’

Again with the
towards
. Towards was
bad
. She grabbed his arm. ‘Are you mad?’

‘No. I’m a doctor.’ At her look, which Eve suspected resembled a startled goldfish, he explained, ‘Heaviest casualties will be where the barricade was breached. And probably least fighting, too. Come on.’

She hurried after him, encouraged by the part about ‘least fighting’. ‘Er, did I tell you I’ve no medical experience?’

‘You’ll learn. Amazing how fast it comes on a battlefield.’

‘Have you, er, been on many?’

Daz shook his head. ‘Not while they were actually fighting. Been in plenty of field hospitals, though.’

Eve had a sudden recollection of the
Gone With The Wind
scene where all the wounded were laid out along the railroad tracks, and nearly threw up.

Large shapes, taller and broader than the windswept trees, appeared in the fog. Buildings.

The remains of buildings.

The stench hit her, even through the fog, as they approached the smoking skeleton of a timber-framed cottage.

A collection of wounded soldiers had already amassed in what Eve assumed had once been the village of Christchurch. Now it reminded her strongly of the No Man’s Land south of the Thames, except that this one came complete with bodies, and fresh blood. Several buildings were still on fire.

‘Oh God, it’s like the devil’s barbecue,’ she said, stuffing her sleeve over her nose. Daz gave her a look, but tore off a strip of bandage and told her to cover her mouth and nose. It made breathing more bearable, but now the problem was that the fire was burning away the mist, and she could see.

She could see the rubble, the overturned cart, the dead dog in the middle of the road. Somehow, that was the most upsetting thing.

Until she saw what was waiting for her inside the church.

As the only stone building in the village, it hadn’t been burned or knocked down by whatever monstrous weapons the enemy had been using, and so it was being used as a shelter by the soldiers too badly hurt to move any further.

Daz immediately ran to the closest and started checking him over, but Eve stood, horrified, as the stench of the dead and the dying overwhelmed her. It smelled like a sewer, and Eve wasn’t sure if she’d prefer that to have been because someone had been using it as a toilet, or because someone’s innards had been cut out. The sharp, hot tang of blood was everywhere, creeping inside her nostrils and taking up residence. Over it all hung the smell of burning flesh, like a lamb chop that had caught fire on an open grill. Eve didn’t want to know where exactly that was coming from. She had an awful premonition that Daz was going to ask her to find out.

‘Eve,’ he said, tugging on the chain for her attention. ‘Eve! Help me. Set up a triage.’

‘What?’ Eve said, dazed.
I can’t do this. I don’t want to be here. I can’t
do
this.

‘A triage!’ He was already moving on to the next soldier. ‘Sort out who’s most in need of help. Get the ones who can walk on one side of the church. Anyone who’s unconscious, check for breathing and heartbeat. You can do that, can’t you?’

Eve looked around helplessly, a muddle of excuses tripping from her lips.

‘
Eve
, these people
need
your
help
.’

A woman not much younger than Eve met her eyes. There was blood all over her jacket, which was stuck to her body. A long rip ran across the middle of it.

Eve swallowed. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I can do that.’

Chapter Ten

Eve straightened up, her back screaming in agony. She ignored it. Right now, it seemed ridiculous to complain about back pain when she’d just assisted Daz in chopping off a man’s arm.

She’d vomited the first time he’d done it. But that was because she’d kept her eyes open while he cut through the bone with a curved knife.

‘Eve, compression,’ he said, and she nodded and pressed both hands over the cloth that was doing little to stem the blood pumping from the soldier’s elbow. Daz, who’d already done something to the veins and arteries that involved thread and very bloody hands, rethreaded his needle and grabbed the flap of skin he’d left hanging from the man’s forearm. As Eve removed the cloth, Daz began to sew the flap over the stump, like some obscene sort of dressmaking.

The soldier, thank God, was unconscious. Partly due to the morphine Eve had given him, and partly, she suspected, due to shock.

Relief had come a while ago – maybe minutes, maybe hours – all Eve knew was that it had turned dark at some point and someone had brought oil lamps. The church had become a field hospital, and the pews were full of men and women waiting to be treated. Trestle tables and beds had been set up. Medical staff bustled. Outside was a tent where more soldiers were being carved and stitched.

Daz was performing amputations on the altar, a fact which Eve was sure was going to make her burst into hysterical laughter at some point. Maybe when she was less busy.

When the medical staff of whatever unit had arrived, Daz had said to Eve, ‘You can go now, if you want.’

And Eve, who’d spent the whole time she was assisting Daz praying violently for something to take her away from this, found herself shaking her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s still not enough staff. I’ll help. Besides,’ she said with what might, in other circumstances, have been a smile, ‘I’m still chained to you.’

He unshackled her, but Eve volunteered to stay. She didn’t think she could just go and sit outside and allow her conscience to beat her over the head while Daz was still working.

Now the sky outside the church windows was dark, and her back ached, and her clothes were saturated with blood, and even the stench of entrails and burned flesh wasn’t overpowering any more. Outside someone had lit a brazier, out of sight of the troops, where the amputated limbs were being burned, although thoughtfully, it had been placed downwind.

She was wrapping a tight bandage around the arm stump when Daz said, ‘Hey, that’s it. No more amputations.’

‘Yet,’ Eve said, not looking up. ‘They still haven’t brought everyone in. I heard someone say they were just five miles north of the Causeway before the reinforcements got there. That’s a lot of ground to cover.’

‘Yes,’ said a voice behind her, ‘but we were in line formation, so we found them as we came back.’

Harker
. Eve glanced up briefly at him before returning her gaze to the bandage. He looked like hell. ‘I was wondering when you’d turn up.’

‘I said I’d come back.’

‘Expected to see you on this table.’

‘Oh, cheers. You think I’d survive sixteen years as a soldier just to get my arm cut off?’

‘You got your finger cut off,’ Eve said, getting to the end of one bandage and reaching for another to knot on to it.

‘Aye, and that was enough.’

She was aware of Daz and Harker looking at each other over her head. They were communicating something, but she was too tired to care what.

Then Daz took the bandage from her hands and said, ‘All right, Eve, I’ll take it from here. Time you got some rest.’

‘I’m okay,’ Eve said, which wasn’t even remotely true. A small part of her knew she was in shock, that she was operating automatically. It was exactly how she’d functioned in the days and weeks following that brown envelope from the tax man. All throughout the phone calls and the horrifying figures and the hearings and the paparazzi, she’d retained a kind of numbness.

In three years, it hadn’t entirely worn off. Until the blood and fear and stench had slammed through the lack of sensation and woken her up.

On balance, Eve preferred the numbness.

‘No, you need to rest,’ Daz said. ‘Doctor’s orders.’

Eve closed her eyes for a second and wondered if she’d ever be able to open them again.

‘Banks has another stew on the go,’ Harker said. ‘Got real beef in it, too.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Shame to let a dead cow go to waste.’

For some reason, that tipped Eve over the edge, and she turned away, bile rising in her throat, and only just made it outside before she threw up again.

Gulping in fresh air, realising just how fetid it had become in the church, she sat back against her heels and wiped her mouth.

‘Eve? Oh my goodness, are you all right?’

It was Tallulah, hurrying over, looking horrified. Eve nodded, but Tallulah was staring at her and she realised she was so soaked in blood she looked like an entrant in the world’s most macabre wet t-shirt competition.

‘Oh, it’s not mine. I was helping Daz.’

Harker came out of the chapel, glanced down at Eve, then said to Tallulah, ‘Go and call off Martindale. And see if you can find some clean clothes for Eve and the doc. And some soap and water.’

Tallulah nodded, and ran off. Harker hauled Eve to her feet. ‘Better?’

She nodded. ‘What’s Martindale doing?’

‘Looking through the bodies for you and Daz.’ Harker took off his greatcoat and propped it around her shoulders.

‘No, I’ll get blood on it …’

‘It’s seen worse,’ Harker said, and closed the coat in front of her. Eve, shivering, let him, and when he strode away, she followed him. A camp had appeared, tents stretching away in the darkness, fires flickering against the ruins of the village, snatches of laughter and music penetrating her hearing.

‘So, the squad,’ she said, and faltered. ‘Are they – I mean, did you–?’

‘They’re all fine,’ Harker said. ‘And we won, by the way.’

‘Yes, I heard.’ Realising something else was needed, she added, ‘Er, well done.’

Harker flashed her a look that had half a smile in it. They detoured around a clutch of tents, open to the night air, steam escaping from the large tubs of water within. Men and women scrubbed at sheets bearing pinkening stains. Eve turned her head away, towards the vastness of the camp.

‘How many people are there here?’ she asked.

‘Dunno. Probably a thousand, all told. Maybe more. Mostly this is the 33rd, who finally deigned to grace us with their presence. There were only a few hundred of the 9th left, poor buggers, no wonder the barricades fell.’

He walked her past a rather hastily constructed corral, heavily guarded by men with large guns. Peering past them, Eve saw men in uniforms that were khaki, but different from the ones she’d seen so far. They had a more modern look to them, whereas Harker and the rest seemed to be wearing something from a WWII costume drama.

‘Are they prisoners?’ she asked, looking at the sullen men within. Funny, but they all seemed to be men. Or maybe the women of the Coalitionist army had been put somewhere else.

‘Yep.’

‘What’s going to happen to them?’

‘Probably round ’em up and shoot ’em in the morning.’

Eve flinched. So did the prisoners within hearing range. To her surprise though, Harker didn’t stop and admit her to their ranks, but walked on past. He murmured softly as they left earshot, ‘Actually they’ll just be sent to POW camps to make munitions and roll bandages. But I can’t resist winding ’em up.’

Eve nodded, her head bobbing back and forth, back and forth, like the bobble-head dolls Grrl Power had promoted somewhere in a universe far, far away. As Harker took out a cigarette and lit it, she found herself watching longingly.

He saw her, and said, ‘That’s a very hungry look for someone who doesn’t smoke.’

‘Well, maybe I should.’ Maybe it’d soothe her shaking nerves.

‘Nah. Filthy habit.’ Harker blew out a stream of smoke. He was holding the cigarette in his left hand, she noticed; he always held it in his left hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, his palm cupped around it.

‘What happened to your finger?’ she asked.

Harker glanced at his right hand. ‘French sabre,’ he said.

‘You fought the French?’

‘No,’ he gave her another of those half-smiles. ‘But they were supplying weapons to the rebels.’ He lifted his hand, looked at the scars crisscrossing it. Eve, with the experience of the past few hours behind her, could tell it hadn’t been a wound that had received a lot of attention.

‘Bastard tried to cut the sword out of my hand,’ he said. ‘Kept hacking at it. Had to learn to do everything left-handed while it healed.’

‘Can you use it properly now?’ Eve asked, because in all honesty she’d never noticed him holding a pen or doing anything that involved fine motor skills. Except for smoking, of course.

‘Oh aye, it’s fine now. Aches a bit sometimes, but it works all right. Got off lightly. I know plenty of old soldiers who get pain in limbs they don’t even have any more. Phantom limb, they call it. Bloody unfair, if you ask – Eve?’

She felt herself wavering, as if her bones weren’t strong enough to keep her solid, as if she wasn’t quite sure which way was vertical. The tents ahead of her tilted.

Daz had been using the
altar
for
amputations
.

She started to laugh.

‘Eve?’ said Harker again, from a great distance.

‘Like a pagan sacrifice or something,’ she giggled. ‘Look out, here comes King Kong! What sort of god wants a limb, anyway? That’s a bit crappy, isn’t it? Like – I know! Like one of those eight-armed pagan gods, maybe that’s how they got them–’

‘Eve.’ He had hold of her by the shoulders, which was odd because he was such a long way away, and impossibly tall, too, or was he standing on something?

She couldn’t stop laughing.

It was forcing all the air out of her lungs; she couldn’t breathe; she was sucking in huge chunks of air but it wasn’t working, and now it
hurt;
she was panicking, laughter turning to sobs,
she was covered in blood
, and he’d been
chopping arms and legs
off, they fell on the
ground
and he
kicked them away
like
debris
, and there was
blood
, there was
so much damn blood, everywhere–

‘We’ll wash the blood off,’ said Harker, and Eve realised she’d been babbling that out loud. They were on the ground, in the mud, and he was holding her as she sobbed and shook and hiccupped with laughter, even though nothing was funny any more.

‘Eve, it’s all right. It’s just shock. You’ll be fine.’ He was sitting beside her in the mud, his arm around her, just letting her shudder and bawl all over him. The coat had slipped off her shoulders and she was still wet with blood and it was smearing his jacket, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was covered in blood.

Her eyes focused on the spatters of dark red flecking his skin.

‘Were you hurt?’ she quavered, hearing the weakness in her own voice and hating it.

‘No. Nothing serious.’

‘But there’s blood …’ She touched his face, his neck, rough with a week’s beard and grimy with sweat and blood. In the hot flickering light of the small fires around them, his dirty skin gleamed.

‘Not mine.’

Harker’s hand covered her own, and shock travelled through Eve from her palm, right down her arm into her body.

He had grey eyes, the colour of gunmetal. There were smudges of blood and what might have been gunpowder on his face, his hair was tangled and damp with sweat and blood, and she could feel the pulse beating in his neck.

His lips were parted, and she moved towards them without even meaning to.

Towards is bad
…

‘Ah, Major Harker! Did you find your civilian?’

The moment broke almost audibly. Harker looked up at a moustachioed man in a suspiciously impeccable uniform and said, ‘Yes, sir. This is her, sir – Eve Carpenter, Colonel Wilson.’ He looked back down at Eve, in whom mortification was rising fast, and added, ‘Touch of shock, sir. She was helping in the hospital.’

‘Ah, yes. Not surprised.’ Wilson loomed over Eve and said in a loud voice, ‘Always a shock first time, my dear! Don’t worry, it’s all sterling work!’

Eve looked back up at him and said, ‘I’m in shock, I’m not deaf.’

Besides her, she felt Harker’s shoulders shake in what felt suspiciously like a chuckle, but she was too embarrassed to look at him. He still had his arm around her. She’d tried to kiss him!

‘Ah. Yes. Capital,’ said the Colonel, looking a bit wrong-footed. He recovered quickly, however, and said, ‘Young Harker here saved the day, dontcha know! Handful of men against hundreds of filthy rebels. Absolutely capital. There’ll be a medal in this for you, Harker, mark my word.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Harker said. He picked up the squashed half of his cigarette from the mud and shook his head. ‘Sir, if I could beg a favour?’