“Is this the last of the Ettricks?” asked a face in a globe three inches from his nose.
“Fuck off,” he muttered, then yelled it with the full force of his lungs.
“Wat Dryhope, eldest son of the slaughtered general,” said the face, “And clearly a reader who likes the robust language of twentieth-century fiction.”
“Hello, can I give you a hand?” asked another voice. Wat wrenched himself round and saw grey rock split by horizontal cracks. His torso lay on a clump of whins rooted in a crack above a narrow ledge. Twisting his face upward he saw the cliff top a few feet above with a figure kneeling on the edge. It was General Shafto, stretching an arm down and saying, “Come on — let’s have you.”
Wat raised a bloodstained right hand whose fingers, he knew, could now hold nothing, but Shafto gripped the wrist and dragged Wat up and over the edge as he fainted again.
He wakened a minute later with the neck of a flask between his teeth and a mouthful of burning fluid which set him spluttering.
“My aunts say this stuff does more harm than good,” said Shafto taking a swig, “I don’t believe them.”
“Thanks,” said Wat and propped himself up on an elbow. Judging by the sun less than an hour had passed since Ettrick had lowered the standard and charged downhill, yet the only signs of battle on the moorland slopes were some gangrels collecting scattered swords, helmets, shields of the dead and badly maimed. Three or four groups of Northumbrians stood or sprawled in small groups awaiting transport. Departing trucks in the distance showed where the rest had gone. The hospital ship still hung between clouds overhead; all dead and wounded bodies except his own had been lifted into it. A Red Cross aircraft was settling on the ground a hundred yards away; he saw nurses with a stretcher preparing to come for him.
“You were lucky it was me and not old Dodds who found you,” said Shafto affably, “He’d have pushed you into the sea. He says you got that draw by a trick — a filthy trick.”
“He’s right. Attacking after pretending to surrender is warfare for weans. When Dad gave his orders we were too feart and excited to think.”
“You’ll feel better when the medics have put more blood back into you,” said Shafto, “Your dad was a genius. He saw a loophole in the rules and made it work for him. People are tired of the old strategies — that battle will be disked by millions. In a month or three you and me should put our heads together and see if we can work out other new strategies — within the Geneva Conventions of course, always within the Conventions. I want you for an ally one day.”
As Wat was carried to the aircraft he said harshly, “Am I the last? Are all the rest of Ettrick dead?”
“No no no!” said a nurse soothingly, “Fourteen are living and most of them can be mended. Your brother Joe will mend.”
“Good,” said Wat and wept, covering his face with his hands. The public eye floated above it saying, “Goodbye Wat Dryhope, a hero of our time — a brave, nervous, tricky hero obviously shaken to the core by what may be eventually voted The Battle of The Century, a surprising last-minute draw between Ettrick and the five clans of Northumbria United.”
TWO PRIVATE HOUSES
THE RED CROSS put the dead soldiers into pure white vaults below their homes where useless things were made good again. Women who had most loved them washed the bodies, laying them neatly between their belongings and the weapons and armour returned by the gangrels. Later the whole family came down for a last visit. Sisters, nieces, aunts wept and clasped each other. Children mooned around looking woeful or puzzled until grannies helped them choose an instrument, ornament or video to remind them of a favourite brother or uncle. The living left and the vault was sealed. Clear liquid welled from the floor until it covered everything inside. The liquid turned black and frothy like Irish stout, sank back through the floor into the roots of the powerplant and left the vault perfectly empty and clean.
On the day after the funeral a morning service was held in the stalk room of Dryhope house. Smooth, milk-white and six feet wide the stalk grew like a tree from the floor and out through the ceiling. All who remained of the family were gathered round it except three members of the Boys’ Brigade: these were at the Warrior house watching replays of the recent war with other junior cadets. In a few days they would return with solemn faces and expectations of being more thoroughly served by women, but now their sisters, aunts and grannies sprawled, reclined or squatted about the floor on rugs and large cushions. The four greatest great-grandmothers were enthroned in chairs. The only two adult males also had raised seats. Joe, smoking a good cigar, lay in a wheelchair with attachments supporting the stumps of an arm and leg. Wat, lightly bandaged, sprawled on a chaise longue.
A stately woman of fifty was mother that day and stood at a crystalline table, the top patterned with coloured points of light which flowed from her finger-tips and continually changed as she played a Sanctus which had preceded the miracle of transubstantiation for centuries before. The Sanctus ended and two sturdy girls of twelve stood facing her, one on each side of the stalk. Silencing the organ she attended to the orders of the day. Nurses asked for flasks of cell serum and protein to help the growth of Joe’s new arm and leg, an ointment to ease Granny Tibs’s rheumatic knee, and Elastoplast for the medical chest. The mother struck the organ. With a low humming the objects appeared as diagrams on the stalk, each inside a circle. There were clicks, twangs and gurgles as the outlines received colour and tone. With sharp detonations the images became solid things in round cavities. The acolytes lifted them out and gave them to the nurses. With heavy thuds the cavities became grey blotches which faded from the stalk leaving it an unblemished, delicate shade of palest pink. The mother had made the sound sequence easier on the ear by blending it with chords from the Agnus Dei by Carver, Palestrina, Bach and Berlioz, covering the last thuds with a loud Amen which faded with the blotches fading from the stalk.
Then the teachers ordered disks, paper, pencils, paint; the cooks milk, cheese, flour, sugar, coffee beans; the henwife ordered a sack of meal, a sack of corn, a first edition of Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus; the joiner ordered parts for a new orthopaedic bed she was making for Joe; weavers and embroiderers asked for many different colours of yarn and silk. When all were delivered the stalk was flushed rose red, a throbbing was heard from the underground roots and the room was colder, sure signs of plant exhaustion.
“A light order now,” said the mother. “Granny Tibs?”
Granny Tibs was one hundred and twenty and ordered a doll for her two-year-old great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. It had to be exactly like a doll she remembered playing with herself at that age, a china girl doll with curly yellow hair, blue eyes, a matching silk dress with a big bow at the back. When the diagram appeared she remembered that the hair had not been curly but smooth, and twisted in two long plaits tied with bows at the ends. The dress had also been of a historical kind called dirndl worn by the women of Bolivia or California — that should be a clue — the dress was illustrated in a book called Heidi Grows Up which had been published she thought in the eighteenth or perhaps nineteenth century. The doll was also made of cloth, not china at all. It took a long time to get exactly the doll Granny Tibs remembered and by then the colour of the stalk and temperature of the room were normal again. The children now spoke out. A young jeweller wanted two hundred grammes of silver wire and was persuaded to accept a hundred of copper. A young sculptor who asked for six kilogrammes of clay was told to collect it from Mountbenger where some aunts had a pottery; she said she hated Mountbenger because of a boy there, so was given a four-page geological guide to help her find her own supply of clay. A very young wood-worker wanted a sharp new chisel but the joiner said she would show him how to sharpen his old one. This answer caused outcries which the mother drowned with a blast of cheery sound.