A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess (17 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

REUNIONS

Bronwyn had at first some considerable difficulty in getting an audience with Duke Mathias. The guards at the entrance to the encampment only saw what they with good reason interpreted as a pair of extremely dirty, ragged-looking tramps. The emaciated old man looks as though he is in the last stages of starvation and the female with him is a rather hard-looking cookie as tall as any of the men and more than half as rangy.

In spite of their orders, and mostly in deference to the appearance of the girl’s companion, they kindly offer to send the two around to the camp kitchen for a sandwich or soup before being sent along their way and are surprised and not a little offended to have the younger of the two tramps, a brazen, self-important hussy, become unnecessarily high-handed about their offer. She insists on showing them a ring bearing a device they have never before seen (they are mercenaries from Mostaza and have never even heard of the Tedeschiiys), some gewgaw or other she has no doubt either stolen or gotten in return for bestowing her favors on some luckless soldier. When this possibility is suggested, the girl flies into a rage and has to be physically restrained when she attacks the questioning sentry.

There seems to be nothing left to do but to turn her over to the Officer of the Watch. He, too, fails to recognize the Princess Bronwyn but does acknowledge the design on her ring, which he assumes has been stolen. She refuses to surrender it to him and laughs at his threats. Loath to use violence on even such a bedraggled and low-class female, the officer orders her restrained until he can get the advice of his own commander. Since it is by now well after midnight there is little that the officer is either willing or able to do; the issue is far from important enough to disturb any of his superiors.

Thus it is that Bronwyn and Wittenoom spend their first night with her army locked in a makeshift guardhouse, and it is thus that Duke Mathias finds them in the morning. The princess has in the intervening five hours lost not one ounce of steam pressure. The Duke’s immense surprise at discovering that Bronwyn is not only alive but for some mysterious reason locked in a wagon in his own camp is significantly tempered by having to bear the full brunt of her anger.

“Bronwyn, my dear,” he is finally able to say, “I had no idea you are even still alive, let alone here in my own camp! How was I to know? How were my men supposed to know who you are? I can barely recognize you myself! They were only doing their duty. I can’t punish them the way you’re suggesting for having done that!”

“What d’you mean, ‘your own camp’?” she asks, ignoring everything else.

“Let’s not get onto that old subject again, shall we?”

“Then you agree with me?”

“Agree about what?”

“That this is my army to lead as I see fit?”

“Now look . . .”

“What were you going to do, thinking that I was dead? I don’t see anything that looks much like an army girding itself for battle. What have you been doing all these weeks?”

“That’s not fair. We lost a good quarter of our ships and men in the storm. None of the ships survived unscathed; there are wrecks scattered all up and down a hundred miles of coastline and more. It’s taken all that time just to reassemble the army. Your own ship, the
Sommer B.,
had most of our ammunition and explosives on board.”

“And Payne Roelt and my brother have left you alone all this time?”

“We’ve been constantly watched, but otherwise we’ve not been interfered with. We suspect that Roelt and his satellites also think that you are dead and that without you we have no real reason to attack them.”

“It’s true then?”

“What?”

“That you were going to abandon the invasion because you thought I was dead?”

“There’s no point in pretending that it hadn’t crossed my mind. I mean, what would the point of it be? These men are all mercenaries; who is going to pay them? As you are so fond of reminding me, this whole thing is really your affair.”

“Then if you do agree with me, I don’t see that there’s room for any further argument. I’m here now and I don’t see any reason for not going ahead as originally planned.”

Realizing that he was lost, the Duke reiterates a compromise he had once before made with her: “All right, look here: you know nothing about military matters, nothing about running an army, tactics, strategy, administration, all of that . . . I do. I think your rightful position ought to be that of the owner of a ship, and mine that of the captain. You tell me what your goals are and I’ll see that they’re carried out. You are, however, to let me do this in my own way, as I see fit; you’re not to interfere in the actual running of the army.”

“That makes sense. Of course I agree.”

“Fine! Look, I’ll have some clothing issued for you and the professor and tents assigned to you, as well as batmen and whatever else you might need. And I’ll have food brought, too. You both look like you’re starving. Why don’t you get those things taken care of and settled, and then, in the morning, we’ll see what we need to do?”

Bronwyn agrees and is led away by one of the Duke’s subalterns. She is given a roomy wall tent, a kind of canvas cabin large enough for her to walk around in erect, and a duplicate set of the uniforms she had possessed when departing from Lesser Piotr, so long ago!, as well as a chest containing all of the standard miscellaneous peripheral equipment, including toiletries, that is normally issued to every officer. The professor had been too anxious to see what of his precious scientific devices might have survived and postponed both seeing his quarters and changing clothes.

A light meal is delivered, which she eats in her tent, inhaling the food almost without tasting it, glad that she is eating alone without having to waste time on politeness or consideration of the sensibilities of companions.

The princess orders a tub of hot water, and after this is brought to her tent and filled she strips from herself the by now almost unrecognizable sailor’s costume, which she has not had off more than half a dozen times since leaving Hartal, and threw it from the tent, shouting orders through the canvas to have the bundle of hateful rags burnt. She lowers herself into the metal tub, which is only just large enough for her to sit in, which she does slowly and carefully, luxuriating in the gradual ascent of the scalding high-water mark. She lathers herself thoroughly with the harsh military soap, feeling as though she ought to be scraping dirt from herself with a blade, or chipping it away with a trowel. She scrubs lather into her hair until her scalp tingles, then rinses with the extra buckets of still-steaming water that have been left beside the tub. She then repeats the process two more times. Standing up, she burnishes herself with an abrasive towel until her skin nearly matches her hair and is as tender as a sunburn.

She extinguishes her lantern and, stretching out on her cot, she enjoys the fresh scent of her body for the first time in weeks and the silky caress of the balmy night air. She feels a sense of relief and satisfaction and accomplishment that flows over her like a thick, warm honey and before she has a chance to really enjoy it, is asleep.

She is awakened before dawn the next morning by reveille. Dawn is still only a colorless tint in the east and the morning air is surprisingly cold; she wraps herself in her blanket and goes to the door of her tent. At her order, her batman, as small, smoothly rounded and efficient as a ball bearing, who is of course already dressed, alert and waiting, brings a mirror to her (how such a thing has survived she doesn’t bother to guess, nor how it can be considered a legitimate and useful part of an army’s baggage; but it is there nevertheless: a sliver of silvered glass five feet tall and six inches wide). Dismissing the man, she props the mirror against the center pole of her tent. She unwraps the blanket and drops it across the cot. She looks curiously at the image reflected in the glass; it seems only oddly unfamiliar. The princess is two years older than when she began her adventure: she is now twenty plus a few months. Can such a short interval have made all of the differences she sees in the mirror? She is at one and the same time sleeker and harder; her long lines flowing hydrodynamically from head to foot, as though she has been designed by a marine architect who specializes in yachts or racing sculls. She presses a finger into thigh and waist and stomach, feeling a resiliency like hard rubber. The boniness of her face is emphasized by the final disappearance of much of its youthful softening, as well as by her shorter hair, which now reaches just below her ears when it is loose (though at the moment it is tied by a ribbon at the nape in a jaunty queue). Her scalp seems as though it is covered with a glossy, copper skullcap, or by a hemisphere of polished mahoghany. Her cheekbones are prominent, slanting shelves over the shadowed alcoves of her cheeks and the line of her jaw is as straight and square as a brick. Her long raptor’s nose and strong chin look more arrogant than ever. Her chlorine-green eyes look larger than usual yet also older and sadder and wiser, as though the green is that of ancient glacial ice. She doesn’t mind them looking older, but sadder and wiser disturbs her. How can her eyes look so profound if she doesn’t feel that way? Where is all the wisdom they are reflecting?

She put on the underclothes and uniform that have been laid out for her, a cream-colored summer weight version of the uniform of the Duke’s personal army she had worn so many weeks ago. Pulling the patent leather boots onto her long legs, which are in turn encased in skin-tight pants, adjusting the high-buttoned collar and brushing her now rather shaggy hair completes the rehumanizing process.

Holy Musrum,
she thinks, standing straight, admiring the cut of her uniform,
but I’ve gotten tall
! Which indeed she has, to her great amazement. She knows that the peak of her tent is over six feet high, yet with her pith helmet and boots on she can not stand completely erect. The elastic knit fabric of the light uniform automatically makes allowances for a shape for which it had not been originally designed, and the flaring sides of her breeches make room for her slim but decidely unmasculine hips (though the waist has to be clumsily puckered in by tightening the belt).

There does not seem to her to be any reason to further delay what needs to be done. She strides into the duke’s tent and he looks up from his camp desk in surprise and pleasure.

“A vast improvement over last night! You slept well, I hope?”

“Very well, thank you,” she replies. “I probably should apologize for my behavior . . .”

“Not at all,” he says, smiling to emphasize how little it had really mattered, but thinking that it is exactly what he might have expected from her. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal, or so I understand from Professor Wittenoom.”

“Has the professor found his equipment?”

“I think he’s been a little disappointed. The
Barracuda
is lost when it ran aground and very little of its cargo is saved. I hope he’s found something we can use.”

“I suppose we’ll find out eventually,” she says in a distracted manner. “Now, Mathias, when do you think we’ll be ready to attack Blavek?”

“Blavek? We’re as ready now as I suppose we’ll ever be. But if I may say so, isn’t the capital a little obvious as a target?”

“Where else would you suggest? There’s nothing else in the whole country to attack
except
Blavek. We’re not at war with Tamlaght, we’re not out to destroy its industry or people . . . not even its army, for that matter. It’s only necessary to crush Payne Roelt.”

“But he controls the army,” protests the duke, “so how can you dismiss it?”

“He
doesn’t
control the army. Not the Royal Army, at any rate. He has his own private army, the Guards, which is far more loyal to him, and more efficient and larger than the Tamlaghtan standing army. It’s been so long since this country has been involved in a real war that it’s maintained only a token force for years. It doesn’t require much to engage in border squabbles with Crotoy. From what I’ve heard, Payne’s activities have effectively destroyed what little military force Tamlaght have, anyway. Without money for pay, food, weapons, and whatever, the regular army is pretty much defunct.”

“So, by your orders, we march on Blavek?”

“By my orders.”

The vast encampment vanishes with an alacrity that amazes Bronwyn; she feels as though she is watching a magician’s act on an enormous scale. The tents, thousands of them, collapse and fold away like houses of cards in a sudden breeze. She watches from horseback, atop the same hill from which she had first seen the camp, as a long line of baggage and supply wagons, carts, ambulances, batteries and men, four abreast, form from the dissolving camp like a crystal from a supersaturated solution. They make a line three-fifths of a mile long, raising a plume of yellow, dry dust from the unpaved road. The train wavers beneath her gaze as though it lay at the bottom of a pond whose surface has been lightly rippled. The busy army looks like the bustling creatures she had once seen through a microscope within a drop of water. She is certain that many of the men wish that they were in fact beneath the surface of that illusory pond.

The heat is intense and she feels sorry for the woolen-clad soldiers, each of whom is carrying a pack that weighs more than twenty-five pounds, with upwards of twenty additional pounds of equipment. She feels grateful for her cool, heat-shedding uniform and helmet, and cargo-carrying horse, to say nothing of the reflective parasol that shaded her. She also feels an eager anticipation for the immediate future that she had not felt in many months. She is no longer simply looking forward to getting the problem of Payne Roelt taken care of and over with; the sight of her army, its activity and noise, its brightness and precision, the ranks of weapons, aligned with mathematical regularity like the pickets in a fence, the sleek, dully gleaming artillery, all fill her with a renewed confidence and an indefinable excitement. She has rejoined the game with the enthusiasm reserved for the foregone victor.
This is it. This is as it should be and should have been.
The cost to her now seems nominal, though it may not be terribly fair, making allowances for her present optimistic state of mind, however true, to point out that she did not enter into the accounting of what her present position, resplendent uniform, parasol, impatient horse and excellent mood has cost several dozen people. Bronwyn has changed very much from the girl who had fled from Payne’s wrath nearly two years earlier . . . but she is unquestionably again a princess.