‘If you are attacked by a dangerous man who means it, my advice is to run away.’ Gorst stood, offering his broad hand. ‘I expect he will destroy himself before too long.’
When he pulled her up, her legs were jelly. ‘Thank you, Colonel Gorst. That was … a very useful lesson.’ She wanted to cry. Or her body did, at least. She would not let it. She set her aching jaw and stuck her chin up at him. ‘Same time next week?’
Her father barked out a laugh and slapped the arm of his chair. ‘That’s my girl!’
Promises
Broad lay awake, staring at the ceiling.
There was a crack, next to a yellowed blister on the limewash. Felt like he’d been staring at it all night. Staring at it as the sun crawled up over the narrow buildings, through the washing strung between them and into the narrow street, through the narrow window and into the one-room cellar they were living in.
Felt like he’d been staring at that crack for weeks. Turning things over in his mind. Fretting at them as if they were big choices he had to make. But they were big choices he’d already made, and he’d made the wrong ones, and now there was no changing them.
He took a heavy breath, felt it catch at the back of his throat. That oily scratch on the Valbeck air. That smell of shit and onions the cellar always had, no matter how Liddy scrubbed it. It was in the walls. It was in his skin.
Folk were setting off to work outside, boots tramping through the muck beyond the tiny window near the ceiling, shadows of their passing flickering on the mould-speckled wall.
‘How are your hands?’ murmured Liddy, twisting towards him on the narrow bed.
He winced as he worked the fingers. ‘Always sore in the mornings.’
Liddy took his big hand in her small ones, rubbing at his aching palm, at his throbbing knuckles. ‘May up already?’
‘She slipped out. Didn’t want to wake you.’
They lay there, she looking at him, he not daring to look at her. Not wanting to see the disappointment in her eyes. The worry. The fear. Even if it was only his own disappointment, and worry, and fear reflected back, like in a mirror.
‘It’s not fair on her,’ he whispered at that crack in the ceiling. ‘She should be having a life. Dancing, courting. Not waiting on some rich bastard.’
‘She doesn’t mind doing it. She wants to help. She’s a good girl.’
‘She’s the best thing I’ve done. She’s the only good thing I’ve done.’
‘You’ve done good, Gunnar. You’ve done lots of good.’
‘You don’t know what it was like, in Styria. What I was like—’
‘Then do good now.’ An edge of impatience in her voice, and she gave his hand one last squeeze and let it go. ‘You can’t change what’s past, can you? Only what’s next.’
He wanted to argue but couldn’t find a crack in her obvious good sense. He lay there sullen, listening to the shuffle of boots and the yammer of angry voices and a girl at the crossroads yelling out bad news for coppers. A bread riot in Holsthorm, and a plot to burn a mill in Keln, and unrest in every corner of Midderland, and war. War in the North.
‘It’s my fault,’ he muttered. Couldn’t find a way to attack Liddy, so he ambushed himself. ‘I should never have gone to war.’
‘I let you go. I let the farm go.’
‘The farm was done anyway. That life was done. Would’ve been better for you and May if I’d never come back.’
She put her hand on his cheek, firm. Turned his head so she was looking him straight in the face. ‘Don’t ever say that, Gunnar. Don’t ever say that.’
‘I killed ’em, Liddy,’ he whispered. ‘I killed ’em.’
She said nothing. What could she say?
‘I fucked it all,’ he said. ‘In one moment. Is there a thing I can’t ruin?’
‘There’s nothing can’t be ruined in a moment,’ said Liddy. ‘It all hangs by a thread, all the time. We’ve got to look forward now. That’s what you do. You move on.’
‘I’ll put it right,’ he said. ‘I’ll find work here.’
‘I know you will.’ She forced out a smile. Looked like it took a lot of effort, but she forced it out. ‘You’re a good man, Gunnar.’
He winced at that, felt the pain of tears at the back of his nose. ‘No more violence,’ he said, voice thick and throaty. ‘I promise, Liddy.’ He realised he’d clenched his fists, forced them to open. ‘From now on I’ll stay out of trouble.’
‘Gunnar,’ she murmured, soft and serious, ‘you should only make promises you know you can keep.’
A little sprinkle of dust came floating down onto their bed. Along the street at the foundry, the engines were starting up, making the whole room tremble.
Wasn’t until he got around the corner Broad even realised what he was queueing for.
Cadman’s Ales was printed in gilded paint above the sliding warehouse doors, the bang and clatter of work booming from inside. A brewery. He’d spent half his time in Styria drunk and the rest aiming to get drunk. He’d promised no trouble, and he knew that for him, every bottle had trouble at the bottom.
Still, temptation was never far away in Valbeck. Every other building had a tap-house or a jerry-shop or a still in it, licensed or otherwise, whores and thieves and beggars buzzing around them like flies at a midden, and if you couldn’t make it as far as next door to drown your misery, there were boys running the streets with barrels on their backs who’d bring the beer to you.
A brewery was a poor omen, far as Broad’s promise to stay clear of trouble was concerned. But he’d seen no good omens in Valbeck, and he needed work. So he pulled his coat closed and hunched his shoulders against the thin rain that fell black out of the murky sky like ink, and shuffled forward another half-step.
‘However early I get here, there’s always a queue,’ said a grey-faced, grey-haired old man in a coat worn through at the elbows.
‘More and more folk coming into Valbeck for the work,’ muttered one of the others.
‘Always more folk wanting work. Never enough to go around. Used to be I had a house o’ my own, up the valley near Hambernalt. You know it?’
‘Can’t say I do,’ muttered Broad, thinking of his own valley. The green trees in the breeze, the green grass soft around his ankles. He knew things were always better in your memory and the farm had been hard work for lean rewards, but it had been green. There was nothing green in Valbeck. Except the river, maybe, stained with great coloured smears from the dyeing works upstream.
‘Beautiful valley, it used to be,’ the old man was droning. ‘Good house, I had, in the woods there, by the river. Raised five boys in it. Used to be good money in coppicing, burning charcoal, you know. Then they started making charcoal cheap in a furnace upstream and the river got full of tar.’ He gave a long, helpless sniff. ‘Prices just kept falling. Then Lord bloody Barezin cleared the forest for more grazing land anyway.’
A big wagon clattered past, rattling wheels ripping muck out of the road and showering it across the queue, and men grumbled and shouted abuse at the driver and the driver grumbled and shouted abuse at the men, and they all shuffled forwards another half-step.
‘My boys went off to other things. One died in Styria. One got married down near Keln, I heard. I had to borrow and I lost the house. Beautiful valley, it used to be.’
‘Aye, well,’ muttered Broad, feeling too sorry for himself to much enjoy anyone else doing the same. ‘Used to be gets you nowhere.’
‘True enough,’ said the old man, right away making Broad wish he’d never spoken. ‘Why, I remember back when I was a lad—’
‘Shut your fucking hole, y’old dunce,’ snapped the man in front of Broad.
He was a big bastard with a star-shaped scar on his cheek and a piece out of his ear. A veteran, no doubt. The anger in his voice set Broad’s heart thumping. A tickle of excitement.