The UnTied Kingdom (34 page)

Charlie led them, somehow finding the soldiers among the civilians and taking them out. People milled all over the compound and some soldiers were firing at them. Other soldiers ran around, half-dressed, unarmed, trying to restrain prisoners who clearly were in no mood to be locked up again.

Harker and his men ran towards the hole Tallulah had made in the fence, which was now being guarded by men with machine-guns. Banks, impressively, took them out without losing stride, and they ducked through into the chaos of the refugee camp, which was crawling with frightened people.

Frightened people, Harker knew, were the fastest route to complete anarchy, and no one managed to stop them as they raced out and back towards Tallulah and the car.

She had the engine started as soon as she saw them, and set off before Banks had even closed the passenger door.

‘Is she all right?’ she asked. Her eyes were on the road, but her voice was tense.

‘Not exactly,’ Harker muttered. He held Eve against him, trying to shield her from the knocks and jolts of the car as it bounced over badly made roads. They’d never taken it this fast before, because it was damned uncomfortable, although Tallulah had reached similar speeds in the truck trying to get Martindale home the other night.

Don’t think about how that ended, just don’t
, he told himself, and touched Eve’s face to bring her attention back to him.

‘Nearly there,’ he said, ‘and Daz’ll fix you up. You’ll be fine.’

Her head lolled against his chest.

‘Is she awake?’ Tallulah asked.

‘She’s in and out,’ Harker said. He reached inside the overcoat for her hand, and she flinched away from him. ‘It’s all right,’ he said softly, ‘I won’t hurt you.’

And so help me, if that Sergeant raped you I’ll burn that whole Abbey to the ground
.

‘’m already hurt,’ Eve mumbled.

‘Yes, but we’ll get you fixed. You’ll be fine.’
You’ll have to be
.
I need you to be.
He moved the edge of the coat aside and went for her hand again, but she had her left hand cupped protectively over her right and wouldn’t move.

Shit, and she’s a musician, if they’ve hurt her hands
–

‘Is your hand all right?’ he said, and she frowned. ‘Let me see. I won’t hurt you, I promise.’

She made a face, but allowed him to move her left hand away. In the dim light of the car, he couldn’t see much, and then with a sudden flare of light Charlie had lit a lantern and held it over Eve, who flinched away, squeezing her eyes shut.

The harsh light fell on her right hand, which looked fine until he gently turned it over and heard Charlie’s gasp.

Harker stared in increasing horror at the ruined skin of Eve’s palm and fingers, white in places and deep red in others. Something had burned her, something deep and awful, and it had mutilated her beautiful hand.

Rage swallowed Harker for a second, and then he heard Eve say, ‘You know, that’s the second time you’ve been the last thing I saw before I died,’ and his vision cleared just in time to see her eyes close.

For the second time in as many nights, the kitchen was full of chaos. It wasn’t quite late enough for the cook and her staff to have finished, which meant the squad were getting in everyone’s way. He collided with Frederick in the doorway and shoved past, ignoring the sneering voice as he carefully laid Eve on the table and bellowed for Daz.

‘Really, Major, must you–’ began the cook, and Harker snarled at her.

‘God, what is that smell?’ drawled Frederick as he sauntered over. He regarded Eve through his nostrils. ‘Ugh, it’s disgusting.’

‘I’d advise you to step back and shut up,’ Charlie said in a low voice before Harker could murder the little insect.

‘Where the hell is Daz?’ he growled. ‘Banks, Lu, go find–’

‘He’s talking on the telephone,’ Frederick yawned. ‘General Wheeler called. Apparently you’re not supposed to be here.’

Everything in the kitchen slowed and blurred as Harker turned to face Frederick. The loathsome cockroach didn’t even have the balls to look afraid.

‘How does she know,’ Harker said, struggling to breathe through the fear and rage threatening to strangle him, ‘that we are?’

Frederick looked bored, but there was a telltale gleam of malice in his eye that said he hadn’t forgiven Harker for humiliating him earlier in the week. ‘Well, she asked what time you’d left, and I told her it was only an hour or so ago, and she said–’

‘Is it bad?’ Daz said from the doorway, and Harker turned away from Frederick before he shoved him in the meat grinder.

‘Eve or Wheeler?’ Harker said.

Daz looked up from examining Eve and winced. ‘Someone,’ he shot Frederick a poisonous look which bounced right off, ‘told her you’d gone into Leeds to bring Eve back.’

Harker didn’t even see Charlie step in to stop him killing Frederick. His world had narrowed to pain and revenge, all his blood turned to fire, roaring through his veins–

‘Sir, concentrate,’ she said.

‘I’ll bloody
dismember
him–’

‘Yes, but first tell Daz about Eve’s hand.’

He turned, shaking, back to Eve and managed to gesture to her right hand. Daz wordlessly picked it up. He winced again.

‘Will she be okay?’ Tallulah asked, her voice hopeful, and his eyes returned to the ooozing, swollen wound on Eve’s leg. He’d seen men lose limbs over infected wounds. And he’d definitely seen amputations carried out on extremities burned less severely than Eve’s hand.

‘She’ll be fine,’ he said firmly, and Daz glanced up at him as he laid his fingers on her forehead.

‘Sir, I can’t promise–’

‘
Promise
,’ Harker said, and the violence in his tone made even Charlie flinch.

Right then Benson appeared, apparently not at all disturbed by the scene he found, and said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but General Wheeler begs me to inform you that she is becoming most impatient.’

Since this was directed at Harker, whose attention was rooted on Eve, it got no response.

‘She wants to talk to you, sir,’ Daz said, and Harker shook his head.

‘Not now.’

‘Sir, she is the General,’ Charlie said, and Harker’s conscience stabbed him in the back.

Daz was examining the wound on Eve’s leg again, checking her temperature, frowning a lot.

‘Daz,’ he said hollowly, and the doctor looked up. ‘What does she need?’

‘Hospitalisation,’ Daz said. ‘This is more than I can do here. I don’t have the drugs or the equipment. The Hull base has a decent hospital. We’ll take her there.’

‘Ought to keep the General happy,’ Charlie said. ‘Right. Put her in the car. The wagon can follow. Banks, go make sure the car has enough fuel. And you,’ she pointed to Harker, ‘need to talk to Wheeler. Longer you leave it, angrier she’ll get.’

Harker stared at her for a moment.

‘Sir,’ Charlie said in the tone she used to command troops on the battlefield. ‘Go and pick up the telephone.
Now
.’

He moved automatically, and was halfway across the room before it occurred to him to disobey. He looked back to see Charlie and Tallulah carefully picking up Eve, and very nearly turned back to take her from them.

‘Go,’ Charlie said, and Harker did.

He imagined Wheeler would probably be organising a sunny wall and a cigarette for him. He knew she’d yell.

He found he didn’t much care.

But when he picked up the phone and her voice was quiet, cold, and calm, he knew he was in trouble.

‘Kindly explain why I have been waiting so long.’

‘Eve,’ he said, and cleared his throat. ‘She’s injured, sir, but we’re ready to leave–’

‘Leave?’ Wheeler cut in, her voice made of ice. ‘Major Harker, tonight you disobeyed a direct order given by the highest authority in this army. Do you have the faintest idea what that means?’

‘Yes, sir.’
It means Eve is still alive
.

‘It means, Harker–’

‘Sir, we’re ready to go.’ Tallulah’s soft voice intruded over Wheeler’s.

‘I have to go, sir,’ he interrupted, which was probably his worst move all night.

‘Go?’

Harker flinched.

‘Sir, we really have to leave now if we’re going to get there before the bridge blows. Everyone’s in the car.’

‘Do you have another conversation to participate in, Major?’ Wheeler asked in a voice made of needles.

Harker looked at Tallulah for an unending moment, and covered the mouthpiece. ‘Tell them to go,’ he said. ‘I’ll follow.’

Tallulah frowned, but when Harker raised his eyebrows at her, she nodded and went, and Harker uncovered the mouthpiece again.

‘I’m sorry sir,’ he said heavily. ‘It’s a bad line.’

Wheeler paused for a long moment, and he wondered if that was actually true. Then she spoke, and this time the needles were made of ice.

‘I would not have entrusted just any of my officers with the task I gave to you, Major. You have consistently shown yourself to be a man of intelligence and resource but, most of all, of huge loyalty and trust. I trusted you with this mission and I trusted you,’ she spoke slowly and deliberately, ‘to follow my orders. All of them. You are not in a position to pick and choose which orders to obey.’

His torn fingernails dug into his palm. ‘No, sir.’

‘And now you force me to wonder if I can trust you at all. I am not unreasonable, Harker. I shall confer with my aides and other senior officers and in the morning I will let you know when and where the court will be held. And I expect you to be there to take my call, is that clear?’

In the morning. Eve would be in Hull, the other side of a bridgeless river. In the morning–

‘Court?’ Harker said.

‘Your court-martial.’

He stared at the gaping abyss between his life and his reality.

‘I can’t convene a general court-martial while you are on the other end of a telephone. It will take some time to gather enough officers of sufficient rank.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Harker said distantly. He heard the car rattle past the house and down the driveway. Away from here.

Tallulah appeared in the doorway again. She didn’t say anything.

‘And I warn you, Harker, it will go very hard for you if you are not there in the morning. If you do not answer the telephone when I call tomorrow, I will consider you a deserter, do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said mechanically. ‘Oh, and sir? There’s a traitor at the Tower. Just thought you should know.’

He hung up the receiver before she could answer.

You could just run away. Take Eve and disappear with her
.

The abyss yawned and stretched, and then Tallulah spoke and the entrance hall of Hatfield Chase snapped back into place around him.

‘Lieutenant Riggs has gone with Eve, sir,’ Tallulah said. ‘I said I’d stay. Help you drive the wagon, guard the computer.’

But he’d never run away from anything. He wasn’t a coward, never had been. He faced things. Dealt with the consequences of his actions. He’d deal with this.

‘When do you want to leave, sir?’ Tallulah asked, and Harker finally managed to look at her.

‘In the morning,’ he said, and walked away before she could ask why.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Eve woke to the smell of antiseptic, an unfamiliar bed, and the terrible fear that it had all been a dream.

Then her leg gave a twinge, her hand throbbed, and she opened her eyes to see a nurse in a silly headdress at the next bed.

‘Oh, thank God,’ she said, and wondered what she’d have done if it turned out the nightmare wasn’t real.

The nurse gave her a disapproving look, and Eve saw the large cross hanging round her neck.

‘Oh, come on, it’s not blasphemy. I’m thanking Him,’ Eve said, privately thinking that getting shot was a perfect excuse for blasphemy.

The nurse turned away, but to Eve’s eternal relief, it was to call a doctor and she was ridiculously glad to see it was Daz. He grinned at her. ‘Well, you’re a sight for sore eyes.’

Eve, who was just beginning to catalogue the many ways in which she ached, grimaced.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Even worse than the last time you asked me that,’ she said, and they shared a smile.

Daz called the nurse over, and they poked at Eve, sticking a thermometer in her mouth and a blood pressure cuff about her arm. Daz looked happy with the results.

‘The fever broke yesterday,’ he said, ‘but you’ve been asleep since then. Seems to have done you some good.’

Eve shifted in the bed and winced. She remembered getting shot in the leg, and by the looks of the heavy bandaging on her hand she hadn’t imagined her foolhardy poker-grabbing, either.

‘Of course, I wouldn’t recommend you, you know,
move
yet, but it does look like the infection has finally cleared,’ Daz said.

‘Infection?’

The nurse adjusted something hanging above Eve’s bed, and when she looked up she saw an IV drip, which appeared to be plugged into her arm.

‘The wound on your leg. It was pretty nasty. Hence the fever. I think you’re out of the woods now, but we’ll have to keep an eye on you.’ He gave that cartoon grin. ‘If you get so much as a bedsore, the Major will kill me.’

‘Harker?’ Eve said, trying to ignore the rather unappetising idea of bedsores.

‘Yes, Harker.’ Daz grinned at her. ‘How many other majors are madly in love with you?’

‘None,’ Eve said, and told herself the reason her stomach felt all squirly was the fever and the IV, and nothing else. ‘Including him.’

‘Sure, that’s why he was so adamant you recover properly. Don’t you let me down now. He really will hurt me if you’re not okay when he gets here.’

‘Why, where is he?’
I must look like hell
, Eve thought in a faint panic.
How much time do I have?

Daz laughed. ‘Don’t worry. He’s not about to come striding in. I’ll let you know when he arrives. He had to stay at the house,’ he explained, ‘to talk to General Wheeler on the telephone.’

Eve tried to remember whereabouts Hatfield Chase had been, and then she tried to remember where Hull was, and eventually she gave Daz a hopeless look, and he laughed and explained it to her. While Daz, Banks and Charlie had brought her in the car, Harker was having to bring the wagon, and take a slower route around the estuary, since the bridge had been destroyed for some security purpose or other.

‘Personally, I’m not sure how stopping ordinary people moving about is making anyone more secure, but then I don’t pretend to understand how these things work,’ Daz said, and Eve had to smile at that.

He told her she’d been kept sedated for several days, but that now the fever had largely gone, she should be feeling better and might even be allowed out of bed soon.

‘Stop, that’s far too exciting,’ Eve said. She chewed her lip. ‘How long would you say it takes to drive a wagon around the Humber Estuary?’

‘It’d say at least as long as it’s taken already, plus maybe a day or two more.’

She nodded distantly. ‘And how long would you say until I could, for instance, take a damn shower and wash my hair?’

Daz laughed at that. ‘Less than that. Later today, if you’re feeling up to it, you can try crutches, and if you’re steady enough on those, you can try taking a shower.’

‘Okay, good.’

‘I’ll probably have to send someone in to help you, though.’

Eve made a face at that. ‘Less good.’

‘Sorry. Can’t have you losing your balance or getting shampoo in your wounds.’ He hesitated. ‘Eve, about your hand …?’

She looked at it. The fingers were all bandaged individually, except for the very tips, and her palm was also heavily swaddled.

‘The tips of your fingers weren’t burned, so we’ve left them uncovered. I need you to tell me how much sensation you have in them, and if at any time they start going numb, or very cold.’

Eve tapped each fingertip with the nails of her other hand. ‘They feel okay.’

‘And can you move them at all?’

‘With all this stuff on them?’ Eve attempted to waggle her fingers, and let out a scream. ‘That hurts!’

Daz exhaled. ‘That’s good. That’s really good.’

‘That it hurts like hell?’ Eve said, incredulous.

‘Yes. It means the nerves aren’t destroyed. And if you can move them at all, it’s good news for the muscles. It’s hard to see straight away how much damage there is to the nerves, muscles and blood vessels, which is why it’s really important for you to tell me if there’s any change in what you can feel with the tips, because a restricted blood flow is very bad news for the healing process.’

Eve nodded, her eyes still watering.

‘To be brutally honest, the skin on your fingers is very badly damaged. We’re still in a process of cutting away the dead flesh, which is another reason we kept you sedated, but until we have it all and can see what, if anything, is growing back, we really can’t tell just how well it’s going to heal.’

Eve stared at her mummified hand.
I could probably still hold a plectrum
, she thought distantly.
But I think it’s adieu to the Beethoven sonatas
.

‘I’ve been speaking on the telephone to a colleague at St Thomas’s in London who is a burns expert. We’re doing everything we can, Eve, I promise you. But we really do have to wait and see.’

She nodded again.
Take good care of your hands, and your hands will take good care of you
.

‘Well, great,’ she said.

The body in his dreams wasn’t that of James White, or even of Mary. It was Eve, pale and bloody, worse each time he saw her. Sometimes she laughed with the Coalitionist soldiers, kissing them and taunting him, and sometimes it was them pinning her down, ripping her dress and raping her, violating her. And sometimes she just lay there, still and blue, a corpse because of his own idiocy.

He woke with a start, hand on his sword, but it was only Tallulah tapping his shoulder. The wagon had stopped its jolting, and he was stiff from trying to sleep wedged into a corner of it while it moved.

Still, it was probably the most he’d slept all week.

‘Sir, we’re nearly there. See?’

She pointed to the large compound, bigger than it had been last time Harker had seen it, but back then it hadn’t been a base for the Navy, too. Now that they were operating open blockades on all ports, rivers and bays, the Navy had taken up residence in a lot of army bases.

Climbing out of the wagon, he stretched and ran his hand through his hair by way of grooming. Tallulah had lit the lanterns on the front of the wagon against the dark clouds and the heavy fog which was halfway to drizzle.

He was cold, he was tired, he was hungry and he ached pretty much all over. Still curled in the pit of his stomach was the cold little ball of dread that whispered,
You’re going to lose your rank, and all over a woman who might be dead anyway
. He’d been trying to ignore it all week, and only partly succeeded.

‘Right then,’ he said to Tallulah, who’d been unfailingly helpful and chipper for the whole journey, and who he had, on occasion, felt like strangling. ‘Let’s go.’

They set off, both walking, Tallulah leading the horses. There’d been no opportunity to stop and change them along the way, not when they were so close to Coalitionist territory that all available beasts had been requisitioned by the enemy. So their progress had been slow, horribly, painfully slow, and each time Harker looked at his map and realised how far they hadn’t come, the cold little ball of dread grew a little colder, and a little larger.

‘She’ll be fine, sir,’ Tallulah said.

‘I know she will.’ He’d given up pretending not to be interested in Eve. He’d disobeyed orders over her, it had to be pretty clear to everyone now how he felt.

The guards on duty were clearly expecting them, and told Harker that Charlie had even organised accommodation for him.

‘Hope it has a shower,’ Tallulah murmured as she led the wagon in.

‘Are you being impertinent, Private?’ Harker said.

‘Actually, sir, I was being quite pertinent,’ Tallulah said.

He sniffed. Okay, maybe she was right. Soap didn’t exactly grow by the side of the road, and since he’d had to plough through boggy patches to dig the wagon out several times a day, his clothes had never seemed entirely dry, let alone clean.

The fog had fully turned into rain by the time they entered the compound. Harker wondered if that was enough to get him clean, decided not, and headed off to find his quarters.

Charlie, bless her heart, had evidently bullied the duty officer into assigning Harker the cushiest accommodation available, with a double bed and its own, fully plumbed bathroom. He took advantage of it, put on the cleanest clothes he had, and crossed the parade ground to the hospital wing, rehearsing things to say as he went.

Stop being so nervous
, he told himself.
You weren’t this nervous when you got married.

Yeah, but when I got married, it wasn’t to someone who’d nearly died because of my stupidity
.

‘Her name is Eve Carpenter,’ Harker told the duty nurse, who checked her clipboard and shook her head. ‘She should have got here on Thursday night, or maybe early on Friday.’

She checked again. The dread grew in Harker’s stomach.

‘Gunshot wound to the left thigh. Burned right palm. She had a fever, she would’ve needed, I dunno, one of those drip things–’

‘An IV,’ said the nurse absently.

‘Yeah, one of those.’ Harker leaned forward to see her insignia, panic setting in. ‘Corporal. She was here.’

‘Yes, sir, but now she’s not.’

‘No,’ Harker said forcefully, leaning over the desk, ‘she is here. She has to be.’ Because if she wasn’t any more then that might mean – it might mean–

‘She’s fine,’ came a voice, cutting through Harker’s panic, and he turned to see Daz, once more in a white coat. ‘Well, she’s recovering. I discharged her this afternoon. We need the beds.’

Relief shot through Harker, making him weak for a second. He closed his eyes, leaning back against the desk. ‘Recovering?’ he said. She couldn’t be too bad if Daz had discharged her.

‘Yes, sir. I think Banks took her to the NAAFI.’

Harker nodded. There was probably a piano there. ‘Her hand?’ he asked.

Daz paused, which told Harker enough. ‘We’re doing everything we can,’ he said eventually.

Harker thought of Eve sitting by the fire and playing the guitar to herself. Music was her comfort and her strength, and if she couldn’t play then what did she have?

‘Do more,’ he said, and went out into the rain.

The NAAFI bar was housed in a more than usually ugly hut on the far side of the parade ground, behind the much more attractive officers’ quarters. As he got closer, he could hear noises under the sound of the rain: people talking, laughing and most definitely drinking.

Ducking inside, he shook off the rain and searched for Eve’s blonde head.

There were so many people here, men and women, jostling for space and trying to avoid the raincapes and caps hung up around the walls. He eventually spied Banks near the bar, looking delighted to be able to buy Tallulah a drink, and strode over to them.

‘Sir!’ Banks looked slightly startled, and rather annoyed. ‘Uh, what are you doing here? The officers’ mess is–’

‘I’m looking for Eve.’

Banks pointed around the corner of the bar, which Harker hadn’t seen from the door. There was a snooker table there, and also an old upright piano, pushed against the wall. A smallish blonde in a very large sweater was sitting there, playing notes with her left hand and apparently singing to herself. The sound was largely lost under the noise of the bar.

Nodding vaguely to Banks and Tallulah, Harker moved across the room, and as he did people seemed to notice his uniform was slightly different, that there were pips on his shoulder, and little by little they grew quiet, until he could hear what Eve was singing.

She’d played it once or twice back at the Chase, but he’d never caught the words. She was singing about fields of destruction; she was singing about baptisms of fire …

She was singing about not being deserted by her ‘brothers in arms’, and the words hit Harker like a knife in the chest.