Polly elbowed her way to the front, ignoring the mutterings around her, and scanned the sheets.
The same old stuff. They were recruiting again. The same old words. The same old croakings of long dead soldiers, inviting the living to join them. General Froc might be female, but he was also, as Blouse would have said, "a bit of an old woman". Either that or the heaviness of those epaulettes had weighed her down.
Kissing don't last. Oh, the Duchess had come alive before them and turned the world upside down for a space and maybe they had all decided to be better people, and out of certain oblivion had come a space to breathe.
But then... had it really happened? Even Polly sometimes wondered, and she had been there. Was it just a voice in their heads, some kind of hallucination? Weren't soldiers in desperate straits famous for seeing visions of gods and angels? And somewhere in the course of the long winter the miracle had faded, and people had said "yes, but we've got to be practical."
All we were given was a chance, thought Polly. No miracle, no rescue, no magic. Just a chance.
She walked back to the inn, her mind buzzing. When she got there, a package was waiting. It was quite long, and heavy.
"It came all the way from Scritz on the cart," said Shufti excitedly. She'd been working in the kitchen. It had become, now, her kitchen. "I wonder what it can be?" she said pointedly.
Polly levered the lid off the rough wooden crate, and found that it was full of straw with an envelope lying on top of it. She opened it.
Inside was an iconograph. It looked expensively done, a stiff family group with curtains and a potted palm in the background to give everything a bit of style. On the left was a middle-aged man looking proud; on the right was a woman of about the same age, looking rather puzzled but nevertheless pleased because her husband was happy; and here and there, staring at the viewer with variations of smile and squint, and expressions extending from interest to a sudden recollection that they should have gone to the toilet before posing, were children ranging from tall and gangly to small and smugly sweet.
And sitting on a chair in the middle, the focus of it all, was Sergeant-major Jackrum, shining like the sun.
Polly stared, and then turned the picture over. On the back was written, in big black letters: "SM Jackrum's Last Stand!" and, underneath, "Don't need these."
She smiled, and pulled aside the straw. In the middle of the box, wrapped in cloth, were a couple of cutlasses.
"Is that old Jackrum?" said Shufti, picking up the picture.
"Yes. He's found his son," said Polly, unwinding a blade. Shufti shuddered when she saw it.
"Evil things," she said.
"Things, anyway," said Polly. She laid both the cutlasses on the table, and was about to lift the box out of the way when she saw something small in the straw at the bottom. It was oblong, and wrapped in thin leather.
It was a notebook, with a cheap binding and musty yellowing pages.
"What's that?" said Shufti.
"I think it's his address book," said Polly, flicking through the pages.
This is it, she thought. It's all here. Generals and majors and captains, oh my. There must be... hundreds. Maybe a thousand! Names, real names, promotions, dates... everything...
She pulled out a white pasteboard rectangle that had been inserted like a bookmark. It showed a rather florid coat of arms and bore the printed legend:
Someone had crossed out the "p" in "frep" and pencilled in an "e" above it.
It was a sudden strange fancy...
How many ways can you fight a war? Polly wondered. We have the clacks now. I know a man who writes things down. The world turns. Plucky little countries seeking self-determination... could be useful to big countries with plans of their own.
Time to grab the cheese.
Polly's expression as she stared at the wall would have frightened a number of important people.
They would have been even more concerned at the fact that she spent the next several hours writing things down, because it occurred to Polly that General Froc had not got where she was today by being stupid, and therefore she could profit from following her example. She copied out the entire notebook, and sealed it in an old jam jar, which she hid in the roof of the stables. She wrote a few letters. And she got her uniform out of the wardrobe and inspected it critically.
The uniforms that had been made for them had a special, additional quality that could only be called... girlie. They had more braid, they were better tailored, and they had a long skirt with a bustle rather than trousers. The shakos had plumes, too.
Her tunic had a sergeant's stripes. It had been a joke. A sergeant of women. The world had been turned upside down, after all.
They'd been mascots, good-luck charms... And, perhaps, on the march to PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHansJosephBernhardtWilhelmsberg a joke was what everyone needed. But, maybe, when the world turns upside down, you can turn a joke upside down too. Thank you, Gummy, even though you didn't know what it was you were teaching me. When they're laughing at you, their guard is down. When their guard is down, you can kick them in the fracas.