Work Text:
Wazzer’s never alone on the march back to the palace. Funny, that. She was always on her own when it was just the squad. Everything has changed, of course–and Wazzer’s at the center of it, always in the center of the crowd. That’s why she’s never alone.
The thing is, people still don’t talk to her. Polly watches Wazzer from a distance all the time, because she always has, and a battalion around them isn’t going to change that. Not “watching out for” her, because Wazzer is the one watching out for–-over?--all of them now, in her shining red-and-white uniform and sparkling buttons, sat up high on her grey horse at the front of the marching soldiers with the tassels all over everything. But Polly watches her, in the same way that she watches birds. Wazzer is a little thing that takes up the view.
Sure, she has her own tent and her own cot. Sure, the boys they call soldiers are constantly falling over themselves to make sure it’s set up properly, to make sure the poles don’t fall down and that there are pillows and blankets and things that smell nice. Sure, there’s always one standing by the tent flaps, ready to open the, can’t stress this enough, tent flaps for Wazzer, in case Wazzer didn’t have the arm strength to open some tent flaps after serving as a soldier all these hard weeks.
It’s kind of the same thing the rest of the regiment has been dealing with, Polly reasons, only amplified. She, herself, has been letting some of the boys-–soldiers-–set up her tent for her, and they did give her a horse, which she was halfway to complaining about before Mal told her to shut the hell up and preserve her boots, “don’t you know how fast marching wears these things out and how hard they are to replace”, etc. But that’s about all the ridiculous treatment Polly gets, and she’s grateful for it.
Wazzer, though; Wazzer gets treated like a little goddess. Right, that’s it. The rest of the lads Are Women, but Wazzer is The Duchess. So there it is. None of the soldier boys are holy enough, righteous enough, worthy enough, to talk to her. So they stand next to her, and lay pillows on her bed, and retreat into solemn, dark corners, and never, ever talk to her.
But Polly hasn’t worried about being holy enough or righteous enough or worthy enough for anybody since her mother died. And anyway, she’s the only one who knows how Waz takes her tea. And anyway, it’s been days since they talked. So she makes the tea, and fills the pretty porcelain cups that the lads have all been provided, and she goes.
The soldier at the flap of Wazzer’s tent looks about seventeen, red-nosed and wearing boots that don’t match. He touches his forelock with two fingers when he sees her, which is a very respectable way to greet a woman and also, pointedly, Not A Salute.
“Ma’am,” he says.
“It’s ‘corporal’, private,” she replies, quite firmly, and gestures at her stripes. “And I’m here to see Waz-–erm-–I’m here to see Private Goom.”
“Sorry, ma’am–-um-–corporal,” he corrects quickly, owing partially to the glare and partially to the stripes, “I don’t think she’s taking visitors at this time.”
Polly gapes at him. “I am not a visitor,” she says after a moment, shifting into a scowl and squaring her shoulders, “I am her superior officer, and I am entitled to an audience. You will step aside and let me through.”
The boy shifts nervously. He’s seen the stripes, and he knows the tone of voice, but his military training is kicking and screaming against a veritable lifetime of meeting and talking to women. She can see him trying to adjust to a new reality where he’s not allowed to argue with her, and so far, the new reality isn’t putting up very much of a fight. “Um, well, but nobody’s really superior to her, are they?” He asks after a moment. “She’s leading the army, isn’t she? We all follow her and make sure she’s comfortable, and, um, she’s not really a soldier, is she? She was making pretend, because of The Duchess telling her to, right?”
“She took the shilling and she kissed The Duchess, which makes her as much of a soldier as you are,” Polly snaps, “and as for the implication you have offered, may I remind you that Private Goom has never been formally promoted, and, private, neither have you. One more chance, private: would you like to follow orders, or shall I speak to your C.O. about your insubordination?”
As she watches the pink stretch from his neck to the tops of his ears, Polly reflects briefly on her volume control, or lack thereof. Well, um… well, good. C.O.s are supposed to shout when orders aren’t being followed. No one around them has taken any notice-–they’re in a damn military camp. One shout out of a thousand.
“Yes, corporal,” the soldier says at last, and there it is–the properly rendered military salute. Polly’s shoulders relax, and she ducks through the open space where he pulls the tent flap away.
The tent is well-dressed, which is as close to opulence as a military outfit can manage. Someone has found a rug, mostly straw and partially grey wool, which has been rolled out on the ground to make it look more like a floor and less like dirt. Wazzer’s cot is on the far end of the rug, piled up with pillows and blankets, one or two of which are brightly colored. And the inside of the canvas is remarkably clean-–starched, and probably bleached. That’s the sort of thing you notice after a few nights of staring up at the canvas of your own tent, trying to figure out if the brown-yellow stain over your head was more likely caused by weather or by the previous owner’s piss.
In the middle of it, ignoring the creature comforts surrounding her on every side, is Wazzer in her shirtsleeves, kneeling, her head bowed and her eyes closed. Her hands, unclasped, are folded neatly on her lap. Maybe she’s just finished praying-–or maybe she doesn’t need to anymore.
“Tea’s up,” Polly says, and Wazzer’s face turns, eyes opening to peer innocently up at her as she approaches, brandishing cup and saucer. Her hands come up, slow, her whole demeanor unhurried now, to take it obediently.
“We saw you coming from the other side of camp,” she says. Her voice is strange, but only in the usual way. “You may sit.”
“And you heard the row outside,” Polly says, and sits. The stupid skirt makes it impossible to go cross-legged, which is how all the lads would crowd up if there wasn’t a log or a rock or something to sit on properly. After a few seconds of adjusting, she relegates her legs to sticking straight out across the floor, and leans back a little, an arm behind her, as if there were any way she could play this pose cool. “Can I talk to Waz?”
“She is here,” Wazzer says.
“Can I talk just to Waz, please?” Polly asks, more firmly.
Wazzer gives her that beatific look, wan smile and eyes with a whispering presence, and then leans down to have a sip of her tea. When she blinks again, she’s slightly pink and pinched, and there’s a bit left on her upper lip, which she wipes off with the back of her hand.
“She never really goes away,” she says, in the voice that Polly will not admit to other people that she has missed, “you know that, don’t you, Oz?”
“She can listen in if she wants, I won’t be saying anything seditious,” Polly replies, “but I don’t know how she takes her tea.”
Wazzer gives her that open, slightly puzzled look, and takes another sip. “I am glad that you came,” she says, “The Duchess says we will reach the palace tomorrow.”
“I heard some of the officers talking about it,” Polly agrees, and has some of her own tea. It’s already cooling–-winter is fast approaching. She glances covetously at the pile of blankets on Wazzer’s cot. “No one thinks there’s going to be much of a fight, but they’re all nervous anyway.” She sits forward a little, holds her cup in both hands to try and sap as much heat out of it as possible. “What are you going to do afterwards?”
“The Duchess will guide me,” Wazzer says, with an unconcerned air, “I will go where I am needed, until I am needed no more. Then will I settle into her grace, and let the hands raised on her behalf cradle me where I fall.”
“Right, okay,” Polly says. “And, um, do you have a Plan B, in case… um, just in case?”
“Polly,” she says, “you believe in The Duchess, don’t you? Were your eyes not opened so that you could see?”
“Oh, um, yes,” Polly says, who thought they were a bit past all that, “I didn’t mean–-I wasn’t saying that it won’t work–-”
“The last time we spoke, just the two of us, you told me you did not believe in her,” Wazzer says, cup clasped in both hands, staring at Polly with that old familiar expression of earnest concern, “we were in the laundry together and you were very upset by the truth when I told it to you. Do you still doubt?”
“No, that was–” she wants to say that was a long time ago, but stops herself. It’s only been a few days, even for her. And Waz was out cold after that. It must all seem very recent. “--That was before things changed,” she says instead. “And I… before, when we talked, I was… it wasn’t that I didn’t believe, it was… it was more that I didn’t want to.”
“Why?”
For the same reason Tonker gets so upset by it, Polly thinks, in my own way. “Because I asked her for help when my mother got sick,” she says. “Every day, while we sat there and watched her die.”
Wazzer is sitting and watching her. Slowly, she reaches across with her small, bony hand, to take one of Polly’s. It’s very cold. Thoughtlessly, Polly sets down her tea and saucer and presses her other hand against the back of her fingers, still warm from the outside of her cup.
“I understand now,” she says, looking at her knees, “about moving small things, and… that she was only intercessing. Too much to take, too much to bear. I understand that she couldn’t… she couldn’t do anything to change it. But I understood it then, too.”
There’s a relief that comes with confession, Polly thinks, her thumb idly rubbing over the back of Wazzer’s hand. Like a pain in her shoulders, fading at the touch of a gentle hand.
“Thank you,” Wazzer says.
“For what?”
“Telling me,” Wazzer says, “and talking to me, and listening to me. And not just smiling and nodding when I told you about her like everyone else. You opened yourself to change, and The Duchess is grateful to you, and for you, and she is watching over you and holding you in her hands.”
“Oh,” Polly says, looking down at their hands. “You’re not upset with me?”
“You never upset me,” Wazzer says, “I knew you doubted, but you were always very kind to me, and very gentle with me. We could disagree and you never shouted. I will miss you, Ozzer, when this is over.”
Polly looks up at her, at her watery eyes and her hollow cheeks. Underfed, even now, struggling to fill those boots with soup. “Look, Waz–-um-–would you prefer Alice?”
“You may call me as you know me,” Wazzer says brightly, bursting into one of her too-honest smiles. “I am happy to be Known.”
“Right,” Polly says. “Look, um… Shufti and I have been talking, and… after the war is over, I mean, after everything is settled… well, Paul and I are going to go home, and Shufti’s going to come with us. Back to Munz, I mean. You know my family has The… has the inn, and there’s lots of space, and… look, if things don’t go the way they’re supposed to, or if something… happens, if you don’t… erm…”
She trails off, chewing her lip. Wazzer is staring at her, the picture of innocent confusion, and Polly sighs. “You could come back with us, if you didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she says, “I know it’s close to… But they couldn’t take you back. We wouldn’t let that happen.”
“That building will burn,” she says, without a trace of emotion. “I have seen it in my dreams. I know it is not fantasy. It will be summertime then, and the flowers will be growing on the Downs.”
“Yes,” Polly says. And then, “Lofty’s going to do it.”
“Yes,” Wazzer says, and suddenly, her eyes burden with tears. “The rooms inside are locked individually,” she says, “they would never have the time to unlock them all, and they would not even try. Tell Lofty please, it must be during the midday, when the girls are out working… only a poor few souls are left in our rooms during the day. It must be during the day.”
The Girl’s Working School is a scab, Polly thinks, you pick and pick at it and it hurts to peel it off, but you go on picking anyway.
Wazzer–-Alice–-is looking up at her, tears falling when she blinks. She never has the sense to look away from your eyes, Polly notices, not for the first time. Not even when she’s crying. She just keeps looking, searching for something she can’t find.
“You never told me how you left the school,” Polly says at last.
“The Duchess summoned all of her strength to unlock my door,” Alice says, and one of her tears rolls like a shot down her cheek, “because she knew I was dying.”
Wordlessly, Polly takes her handkerchief out of her pocket, touches Alice’s chin with one hand, and wipes at her tears with the other. She’s small, and cool to the touch, and Polly thinks about (but does not look up for) the pile of blankets on the cot again.
Alice in her shirtsleeves, no jacket on over them, kneeling on a mat in the dark of the night with winter coming on. Somebody is supposed to be keeping an eye on her. Everybody is watching her, and nobody is keeping an eye on her. What’s the use of bringing her pillows and blankets she doesn’t use? Why isn’t anyone reminding her to use them?
“I was very cold,” Alice is saying, “because they washed me after they beat me, and pushed me under to wash my hair. And they left me in my room naked, and I was not strong enough to get on my knees, so I laid on my back and prayed until I could hear her speaking to me.”
The fresh tears have stopped coming, and Polly pulls her cloth away and tucks it back into a pocket. Alice is staring straight at her face, eyes pale and grey and looking at something beyond Polly, beyond the tent, beyond anything she could reach out and touch. Polly watches her, and starts to undo the fixtures on her jacket.
“She told me it was time to fulfill my promise,” Alice says, “and told me to find the strength to get to my feet, because to wait was to die. And she took my hand, and it was as warm as your hands are,” she says, and clasps her hands together, and smiles, brilliant and golden as the sun. “And she walked with me down the hall, and showed me to Father Jupe’s room, and commanded I take his clothes and dress in them. And I walked with her outside, and away, and over the hills and through the cool black dirt of the forest and the green of the hillside, and I heard the birdsong in the trees and above me in the grey sky, and knew that any death now will be my own, and that I am free.”
Polly shrugs her jacket off and pulls it around Alice’s shoulders, draped like a blanket. “You’re freezing,” she says, “you shouldn’t be going around in your sleeves like that, it’s almost November. What if you get sick?”
“Oh, Ozzer,” she says, and reaches up to touch Polly’s face. Her finger catches and smears something wet across her cheekbone, and Polly blinks and pulls away.
“Who’s going to look after you when I’m gone home?” She asks, looking away from Alice and staring hard and the bleached white canvas. If only there was a stain of something, she thinks bitterly, some shape I could be transfixed by. If only I could be sitting here, distracted, wondering whether or not that’s piss. “Who’s going to make sure you’re eating right?”
“The Duchess is with me always,” she says, and tugs Polly’s jacket around her an inch tighter.
“Well, I’d like to have a discussion with her about appropriate layering, then,” Polly says, “listen, before you tuck in, you tell that boy outside the tent that you want him to take a coal pan and warm your blankets for you. I can see in his face he knows how to do it, and it’s supposed to freeze tonight. Don’t you freeze with it. We need you, Alice.”
“Yes, Oz,” Alice says. “Oz?”
“Yes, Alice?”
“The Duchess says there is more for you to do,” she says, “she says your path will be guided by your sword and your heart. She says that Borogravia needs you.”
“I understand,” Polly says, “that’s why I’m going home.”
She picks up Alice’s empty cup and saucer, and picks up her own, gulping down the cold remains as she gets to her feet. Alice rises next to her, a hand reaching out to take Polly by the shirtsleeve.
“Do not forget your jacket, Polly,” she says.
“Keep it, I’ll be alright.”
“It has your stripes,” Wazzer says, quite firmly. “I have not been p-promoted, I can’t be seen wearing a corporal’s stripes. I can wear my own.”
“Then put it on,” Polly says, “I’ll take mine back when I see you again.”
Wazzer’s hand tightens in the fabric of Polly’s shirt for a moment. “I don’t think you’re going to,” she says quietly, “I don’t think you’ll ever see me again.”
“Did The Duchess tell you that?”
“No,” Wazzer says, “I just have a feeling.”
Polly looks down into Wazzer’s watery eyes, and stacks the dishes into one hand. “Well, I don’t,” she says firmly, “because we get to decide now. When you get to wherever you’re going, you write to me, alright? And you tell me what they’re feeding you, and how you’re being treated.”
“Yes, Polly,” Wazzer says.
“But I will take my jacket back, if it’s all the same to you,” Polly says, because she hears something soft and precipitation-esque hit the canvas of the tent above, and has decided that the socks do not get to make decisions about masculine chivalry when the snow is starting to come down.
Wazzer obediently takes the jacket back off, and Polly tries to get into it with one arm, the tea dishes suddenly too big and jangly to be managed. Those stupid soldiers, she thinks, they gave us saucers. Why did they give us saucers? And porcelain, why did we need porcelain? Why couldn’t they give us good old tin, the kind you can huck at a rock and have bounce back and whang you in the face? For that matter, why did I bring porcelain? I could have brought my standard issue, I've got standard issue. Did I really think I was going to be having tea with A Lady? I was just going to see Wazzer, who’s just…
Wazzer, who has started tugging Polly’s jacket on for her, and who takes the dishes so that Polly can maneuver her other arm into the other sleeve, and who is smiling in the sort of way that might break on into a giggle if Polly isn’t careful. Polly adjusts her jacket on her shoulders, but leaves it unfastened when she takes the dishes back.
“Thank you,” she says, “now yours, please.”
Wazzer shakes her own coat out, brushing at it with a hand to get the larger clumps of dirt off, and, under Polly’s unceasing eye, puts it on and fastens it up, proper and soldierly.
“Thank you,” Polly says again. “I’m… going to head back, now. It was good seeing you, Waz, and don’t forget what I said about the coal pan for your blankets, and–”
Two skinny little arms jut forward and wrap around Polly’s waist, under her open jacket, and she drops the stupid cups on the ground and pulls Wazzer in tight, feels her cold nose pressed against the heartbeat thrumming in her neck.
“Goodbye, Polly,” Wazzer says, quietly, muffled by the collar of Polly’s shirt where her lips lay, thin and cold and only half-moving, “thank you for being my friend.”
I’m sorry I wasn’t a better one, Polly thinks, I’m sorry I wasn’t one earlier, faster, more readily. I’m sorry we thought you were crazy. I’m sorry everyone left you on your own.
She doesn’t say any of it. She just squeezes Wazzer around the shoulders, and runs a hand through her hair, and kisses her forehead.
She waits until Wazzer lets go before she lets go herself. And she leaves the cups, miraculously unbroken, on the ground, and almost runs out of the tent.
The snow is slow, drifting quietly and muffling the sounds of the camp. It has that wet, orange feeling that Polly can taste when she breathes in, the kind of snow that won’t stick in the morning once the sun comes up. There's a long way to go until winter yet, and this time, they'll be ready for it.
And tomorrow, the sun will rise on a grey horse and a white flag, and the world will be a different place.