Darwinia

The Lieutenant sat back in his chair, goggling. “God almighty! Murdered him? She said that?” He blinked. “But, Caroline, it’s absurd!”

“By sending guns across the Channel. Guns to the Partisans.”

He put down his cup. He blinked again. “Guns to the — ah. I see.”

“Then it’s true?”

He looked at her steadily. “That I murdered Guilford? Certainly not. About the weapons?” He hesitated. “Up to a point, it may be. We aren’t supposed to discuss these things even among ourselves.”

“It is true!”

“It may be. Honestly, I don’t know! I’m not a senior officer. I do what I’m told, and I don’t ask questions.”

“But guns are involved?”

“Yes, a number of weapons have passed through London.”

That was nearly an admission. Caroline thought she ought to be angry. She wondered why her anger was suddenly so elusive.

Maybe anger was like grief. It took its own sweet time. It waited in ambush.

Colin was thoughtful, concerned. “I suppose Alice might have heard something through Jered… and he probably knows more about it than I do, come to that. The Navy employs his warehouse and his dray teams from time to time, with his consent. He might well have done other work for the Admiralty. Fancies himself a patriot, after all.”

Alice and Jered arguing in the night, keeping Lily awake: was this what they had been fighting about? Jered admitting that guns had gone through his warehouse on the way to the Partisans, Alice afraid that Guilford would be hurt…

“But even if weapons went across the Channel, you can’t be sure they had anything to do with Guilford. Frankly, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to interfere with the Finch party. The Partisans operate along the coast; they need coal and money far more than they need munitions. Anyone could have fired on the Weston — bandits, anarchists! And as for Guilford, who knows what he ran into past the bloody Rheinfelden? The continent is an unexplored wilderness; it’s dangerous by nature.”

She was ashamed to feel her defenses crumbling. The issue had seemed icily clear when Alice explained it. But what if Jered was as guilty as Colin?

She shouldn’t be having this conversation… but there was nothing to stop it now, no moral or practical obstacle. This man, whatever he might have done, was being honest with her.

And she had missed him. She might as well admit it.

The seamen in their striped jerseys grinned lewdly at her.

Colin reached for her hand. “Walk with me,” he said. “Somewhere away from the noise.”

She let him talk all the way along Candlewick and up Fenchurch to the end of the pavement, let herself be soothed by the sound of his voice and the seductive idea of his innocence.

The mosque trees had been a dull green all winter, but sudden sun and melting snow had coaxed new blades from the tree crowns. The air was almost warm.

He was a soldier, she told herself again. Of course he did what he was told; what choice did he have?

Jered was another matter. Jered was a civilian; he didn’t have to cooperate with the Admiralty. And Alice knew that. How the knowledge must have burned! Bitter, her voice had been, arguing with her husband in the dark. Of course she blamed Jered, but she couldn’t leave him; she was chained to him by marriage.

So Alice hated Colin instead. Blind, displaced, unthinking hatred. Because she couldn’t afford the luxury of hating her own husband.

“See me again,” Colin begged. “At least once more. Before you leave.”

Caroline said she would try.

“I hate to think of you at sea. There have been threats to shipping, you know. They say the American fleet is massed in the North Atlantic.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“Perhaps you should.”

Mrs. de Koenig passed her a note from Colin later that week. There was a general mobilization, he said; he might be shipped out; he wanted to see her as soon as possible.

War, Caroline thought bitterly. Everyone was talking about war. Only ten years since the world was shaken to its foundations, and now they want to fight over the scraps. Over a wilderness!

The Times, a six-page daily pressed on fibrous mosque-pulp paper, had devoted most of its recent editorials to chastening the Americans: for administering the Continent as if it were an American protectorate, for “imposing boundaries” on the British Isles, for various sins of arrogance or complacency. Caroline’s accent provoked raised eyebrows at the stores and market stalls. Today Lily had asked her why it was so bad to be an American.

“It isn’t,” Caroline told her. “That’s all just talk. People are upset, but they’ll calm down sooner or later.”

“We’re riding a ship soon,” Lily said.

“Probably.”