‘That’s Corporal, thank you!’
‘I apologize for the lapse. Now . . . go on . . .’ Clogston opened his bag and produced a pair of half-moon spectacles, which he put on, and took out a pencil and something white and square. ‘Whenever you’re ready?’ he added.
‘Sir, are you really going to write on a jam sandwich?’ said Polly.
‘What?’ The major looked down, and laughed. ‘Oh. No. Excuse me. I really mustn’t miss meals. Blood sugar, you know . . .’
‘Only it’s oozing, sir. Don’t mind us. We’ve eaten.’
It took an hour, with many interruptions and corrections, and two more sandwiches. The major used up quite a lot of notebook, and occasionally had to stop and stare at the ceiling.
‘. . . and then we were thrown in here,’ said Polly, sitting back.
‘Pushed, really,’ said Igorina. ‘Nudged.’ ]
‘Mmm,’ said Clogston. ‘You say Corporal Strappi, as you knew him, was . . . suddenly very ill at the thought of going into battle?’
‘Yessir.’
‘And in the tavern in Pliin you really kneed Prince Heinrich in the fracas?’
‘In or about the fracas, sir. And I didn’t know it was him at the time, sir.’
‘I see you haven’t mentioned the attack on the hilltop where, according to Lieutenant Blouse, your prompt action got the enemy code book . . .’
‘Not really worth mentioning, sir. We didn’t do much with it.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Because of you and that nice man from the newspaper the alliance has had two regiments trotting around in the mountains after some guerrilla leader called “Tiger”. Prince Heinrich insisted, and is in fact in command. He is, you could say, a sore loser. Very sore, according to rumour.’
‘The newspaper writer believed all that stuff?’ said Polly, amazed.
‘I don’t know, but he certainly wrote it down. You say Lord Rust offered to let you all go home quietly?’
‘Yessir.’
‘And the consensus was that he could . . .’
‘Stick it up his jumper, sir.’
‘Oh, yes. I couldn’t read my own writing. J . . . U . . . M . . .’ Clogston carefully wrote the word in capital letters, and then said: ‘I am not saying this, I am not here, but some . . . senior . . . people on our side are wondering if you would just quietly go . . . ?’
The question hung in the air like a corpse from a beam.
‘I’ll put that down as “jumper” too, then, shall I?’ said Clogston.
‘Some of us have got nowhere to go to,’ said Tonker.
‘Or no one to go with,’ said Shufti.
‘We haven’t done anything wrong,’ said Polly.
‘Jumper it is, then,’ said the major. He folded up his little spectacles and sighed. ‘They won’t even tell me what charges are going to be made.’
‘Being Bad Girls,’ said Tonker. ‘Who are we fooling, sir? The enemy wanted just to be quietly rid of us, and the general wants the same thing. That’s the trouble about the good guys and the bad guys. They’re all guys!’
‘Would we have got a medal, sir, if we’d been men?’ Shufti demanded.
‘Yep. Certainly. And Blouse would have been promoted on the spot, I imagine. But right now we’re at war, and this might not be the time—’
‘—to thank a bunch of Abominable women?’ Polly suggested.
Clogston smiled. ‘I was going to say “to lose concentration”. It’s the political branch who are pushing for this, of course. They want to stop word getting around. And high command want this over quickly for the same reason.’
‘When is all this going to start?’ said Polly.
‘In about half an hour.’
‘This is stupid!’ said Tonker. ‘They’re in the middle of a war and they’re going to take the time to hold a trial for a few women who haven’t even done anything wrong?’
‘The general has insisted,’ said Clogston. ‘He wants this cleared out of the way.’
‘And what authority has this tribunal got?’ said Polly coldly.
‘Thousands of men under arms,’ said Clogston. ‘Sorry. The trouble is, when you say to a general “You and whose army?” he just has to point out of the window. But I intend to prove that the meeting should be a court martial. You all kissed the Duchess? You took the shilling? I say that makes it military business.’
‘And that’s good, is it?’
‘Well, it means there are procedures. The last Abomination from Nuggan was against jigsaw puzzles. They break the world into pieces, he says. That’s making people think, at last. The army may be crazy, but at least it’s crazy by numbers. It’s reliably insane. Er, your sleeping friend . . . will you leave her here?’
‘No,’ said the squad, as one woman.
‘She needs my constant attention,’ said Igorina.
‘If we leave her she might have a sudden attack of vanishing without a trace,’ said Tonker.
‘We stick together,’ said Polly. ‘We don’t leave a man behind.’
The room chosen for the tribunal was a ballroom. More than half the keep had been taken back, Polly learned, but the distribution of ground was erratic. The alliance still held the central buildings, and the armoury, but were entirely surrounded by Borogravian forces. The current prize to fight for was the main gate complex, which hadn’t been built to withstand attack from inside. What was happening out there now was a brawl, a midnight bar fight but on a huge scale. And, since there were various war engines atop the towers now occupied by either side, the keep was shooting at itself, in the finest traditions of the circular firing squad.
The floor in here smelled of polish and chalk. Tables had been pushed together to make a rough semicircle. There must have been more than thirty officers, Polly thought. Then she saw the other tables behind the semicircles, and the maps, and the people scurrying in and out, and realized that this was not just about them. This was a war-room.
The squad were marched in, and stood at attention. Igorina had browbeaten a couple of guards to carry Wazzer on a stretcher. That circle of stitches under her eye was worth more than a colonel’s pips. No soldier wanted to be on the wrong side of the Igors.
They waited. Occasionally an officer would glance at them, and go back to looking at a map, or talking. Then Polly saw some whispering going on, heads turned again, and there was a drift towards the semicircle of seats. There was a definite sense that here was a tiresome chore that, regrettably, had to be done.
General Froc did not look directly at the squad until he had taken his seat in the centre of the group and adjusted his papers neatly. Even then, his eye passed over them quickly, as if it was afraid to stop. Polly had never seen him before. He was a handsome man, and still had a fine head of white hair. A scar down one side of his face had just missed an eye, and showed up against the wrinkles.
‘Things are moving well,’ he said, to the room at large. ‘We have just heard that a flying column led by the remnant of the Tenth are closing on the keep and attacking the main gates from outside. Someone must have seen what is happening. The army is on the move!’
There was a certain amount of refined cheering at this, none of it from the squad. The general glanced at them again.
‘Is this all of them, Clogston?’ he said.
The major, who at least had a small table to himself, stood up and saluted. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘We are awaiting—’
The doors opened again. Jade was brought in, chained between two much larger trolls. Maladict and Blouse trailed behind her. It seemed that in all the rush and confusion no one Had found any trousers for Blouse, and Maladict looked slightly blurred. His chains jingled constantly.
‘I object to the chains, sir,’ said Clogston.
The general held a whispered consultation with a few of the other officers. ‘Yes, we do not want undue formality,’ he said, nodding at the guards. ‘Remove them. You trolls can go. I just want the guards to remain on the door. Now, let us proceed. This really shouldn’t take too long. Now then, you people,’ he settled himself in his chair, ‘this really is very simple. With the exception of Lieutenant Blouse, you will agree to be returned to your homes and placed in the charge of a responsible male, understood? And no more will be said about this matter. You have showed considerable spirit, there is no doubt about that, but it was misplaced. We are not ungrateful, however. We understand that none of you is married and so we will present you all with suitable, indeed, with handsome dowries—’
Polly saluted. ‘Permission to speak, sir?’