~ CAROLINE ~

“You’ll have to keep the weight off the thumb for a while.” Caro peered over her clipboard at the patient of the day, a hefty soldier with red-stained teeth by the name of Rawlinson. He’d come in with a cut on the back of his hand, just at the base of the thumb. The cut had been red and infected. Caro had somehow not noticed this. She was about to discharge Rawlinson when Lily Day, ever observant, spotted the error.

They’d kept him in for three days, plied with antiseptics. Now, at last, the swelling of the hand had mostly subsided. Only a slight tenderness remained in Rawlinson’s thumb. It didn’t look like being any cause for concern. By coincidence, Caro was once again paired with Lily today. She had gaunt cheeks and slender fingers, but she wasn’t skinny. And while her face was always perfectly made-up in the morning, she never seemed to care if it got smudged in the course of her work. “Proof of a hard day,” she called it.

“Lil, go with Corporal Rawlinson, and make sure Delphine fills out the discharge form properly.” Delphine Janley often had her mind on other things. It caused an administrative headache when half of the boxes in a form hadn’t been filled in, and half of the others were clearly wrong.

Lily led Rawlinson away, towards the reception desk. When they were gone, Caro ripped off the plastic gloves she’d worn and cast them into a waste bin. Hang the bloody things, she thought. All they did was make her hands sweaty. That, and reduce the spread of lethal infections.

At the end of the bed that Rawlinson had slept in, tied around one of the metal posts, was a green ribbon. The edges were lightly frayed; in one area, a small tear had developed. Lily had brought the ribbon in with Rawlinson’s dinner, the first night of his stay here. She’d tied it in place and left it there. He wasn’t the first to have received this treatment. Since Jem had passed away, at least a dozen ribbons had cropped up. They spanned the gamut of colours, all in pristine condition when they were first appended to the beds.

“It’s a nice touch is all,” Lily explained, when Caro had questioned her on it. “When that poor man died, I couldn’t help but think how ugly the whole place was. It’s so sterile and grey. If I was going to die in a hospital bed, I’d like to at least get to see a splash of colour in my last days.” She’d got the idea, so she claimed, from the memoirs of an old war nurse who had used coloured strips of card to distinguish between soldiers of different battalions, so that she knew what to talk about when she tended to them to make them feel like they had a friend.

“She died of cholera,” Caro had said, knowing exactly which war nurse Lily was referring to. “She caught the disease because she spent so much time talking to sick patients.”

Lily had smiled. “We don’t have cholera anymore. Isn’t it so incredibly selfish to leave these people in misery when they’re unwell, just because we’re scared they might make us sick for a while?”

Since then, Caro had grappled on and off with the idea. There was a part of her—the core, that soft heart of hers that had fired her through the hardest days of the academy—that understood exactly what Lily was saying. They were the medics, after all. Risking her life if need be to make people better was just a part of the job she’d signed up for. But then again, the cynical side of her always argued, a doctor needs to be there for everybody. If she were to get sick making one patient feel slightly more at ease, there would be dozens more who she’d be simply unable to treat.

She’d never settled on her answer. If it comes to it, I’ll go with my gut, she resolved. For now, there was no need to do anything other than what she’d always done—to treat everybody who entered her hospital with the same respect and attention.

Lily returned to the room just as Caro was untying the ribbon from the bed. As she pulled at it, she noticed the way it caught the light. It seemed almost to glint. Looking closer, she saw that in amidst the green, tiny strips of golden fibre had been woven.

“I love the colours on this one,” she said, handing the ribbon to Lily. “You’ll have to tell me where you got it from.”

Lily put the ribbon away in the pocket of her tunic. “It’s pretty, isn’t it? Rare fabric. Cost a bushel or two, from some market in Tallaske, and that just for an offcut. They were selling it by the sheet, but I didn’t have a small planet to pay for it with, so I just got this.”

“But why?”

“I like my ribbons,” said Lily. “And I didn’t have that one. The old crone who sold it reckons it’s a lucky cut. Perhaps some of that luck will rub off on me, but if not at least I get something pretty out of the deal.” As if suddenly remembering it, Lily passed a piece of paper to Caro, who took it. “Phina got it all right this time, if you’ll believe that,” she said. “Even spelt ‘discharge’ right.”

They’d all laughed at Delphine’s most egregious error, when a woman with a sinus infection received ‘the scourge’ papers. ‘The Scourge’ had briefly become Delphine’s nickname, said as a warning herald whenever she approached. She never laughed at it, or indeed reacted at all, and it quickly lost its humour.

Caro thanked Lily and took the paper to her office, leaving the nurse to clean up Rawlinson’s bed and mark it as empty on the system.

Her office was the centrepiece of the admin block, an octagonal room with walls of frosted glass around which the other doctors had their rooms. The door had a magnetic lock, a complex electrical system requiring a passcode to open. She’d never bothered with the initial set-up, so the magnetic lock was always disengaged. Instead, she secured her office with a good old-fashioned key. It lived in her boot. She figured that if anybody wanted to break in, they’d devote all their energy into trying to find out a code that didn’t exist. Who would think of forcibly removing her shoes for a physical object?

Inside, the office was always perfectly tidy. Caro preferred to work on the wards rather than secluding herself away. She only came to the office when she needed to do something in particular, so what was the point in making a mess? Easier just to seek out any paperwork she needed and return it to its proper position.

The exception was Rawlinson’s file. She remembered staying late to fill it in, at the end of a long day. One of the nurses had distracted her with a call for assistance—over something trivial, it turned out, but she’d not known it at the time. She’d left Rawlinson’s file on her desk and rushed to see what was going on, pausing only to lock the door behind her. She never forgot to lock the door. How could she? She had to take off her boot to get into the office, so she’d made it a habit to leave the foot bare until she was done. Putting the boot back on would remind her to lock the door—and surely Janna would have commented if she’d turned up half-shod. In any case, the key had still been with her just now. If she’d forgotten to lock the door behind her as she left, the key would have been still sitting on her desk.

By the time she was done helping Janna Davis, it was well past time to clock off. So she’d gone straight home, rather than traipse all the way back up to the admin block just to put a folder away. She hadn’t been back to her office since. Rawlinson’s file should have been on her desk, where she left it. Instead her desk was clear.

So where was it?

Immediately her mind began to race. Had somebody broken in? Somehow stolen the key? How could they? She still had the key on her. It would take a particularly capable thief to steal something from inside her shoe while she was wearing it, without her noticing. In any case, who would want to steal a file? If Rupert or Emmeline or Tema needed something from her office, they’d only have to ask.

Unless they didn’t want her to know.

What was it Emmeline had told her? “Staniforth’s after your job.” It would make sense if he’d tried to sneak a look at her files without advertising the fact.

No. She shook her head, for the benefit of nobody. Rupert Staniforth wouldn’t do that. None of the doctors would. They were good people, all of them.

On a whim, she took a detour via Staniforth’s office, once she’d made sure to lock her own. The lights were off, as they should be. Staniforth wasn’t working today. On the code panel beside his door, an amber circle flashed off and on. Caro glanced right to the next door along, Edith Sinclair’s office. That panel was in darkness. Too, Tema Caerlin’s to the left. Only Staniforth’s was lit.

The door, she noticed suddenly. It’s not closed properly. Whether it had been deliberately done or not she couldn’t tell, but Staniforth hadn’t latched it fully shut. The magnetic lock wouldn’t have engaged. Tentatively, she pushed at the door. It slid silently inwards. The sanctum within was open to her. Staniforth was evidently not such a stickler for tidiness. Piles of paper adorned both his desk and the floor around it, all scattered about wherever they lay. The waste bin in the corner of the room was overflowing, and a pile of plastic cups had begun to form in its wake, each bearing the telltale brown droplets of a cup that had once held cola.

She crept over to Staniforth’s desk, aware that if somebody were to chance upon her here she’d have no reason for her intrusion. As expected, Rawlinson’s file was right there, sitting atop a pile of papers in the very corner which looked untouched. Caro helped herself to the file. If Staniforth were to miss it, he’d have no way to complain without admitting to having been in her office, so she knew he’d drop it.

Caro was about to leave when another item caught her eye. A small leather-bound notebook lay on the desk. Upon a label stuck haphazardly to the front, the words ‘Doctor C Ballard—observations’ were written. She felt a surge of the white-hot rage. How dare Staniforth keep a book about her? Taken by curiosity, she peeled back the first few pages.

The contents inside were neatly written. Staniforth had an immaculate print, and he seemed to stick rigidly to invisible gridlines. Each entry was in a different colour too, alternating between blue ink and green, red and orange. The format was the same each time. A date, a time, a scathing comment. “Doctor Ballard exceeded the regulation time in conversation with a junior orderly”; “Doctor Ballard’s inability to observe time manifested itself today by her absence from the hospital”; “Doctor Ballard conducted an autopsy without prior authorisation, and in the presence of an unqualified nurse assistant, and further failed to complete the autopsy before leaving”. Every mistake Caroline had made, big or small, was noted here in infuriating detail. How could Staniforth be so attentive when it came to what she was doing, and yet not apply the same standards to his own work? She was often correcting his poorly-filled-in forms, and she knew she wasn’t alone in doing so.

Some god of mischief took hold of her. With a smirk on her face, she took a pen from Staniforth’s desk and added another entry to the bottom of the list, taking great pain to write the date and time exactly. “Doctor Ballard caught wind of my attempts to undermine her authority,” she wrote, “and was magnanimous enough not to report me to the Governor for working contrary to the oath I swore”.

Let Staniforth have a moan about that, she thought. See what the Council thinks about grubs like him.

She left the pen atop the book and made her exit, folder still in hand.

She met Viola Watling as she came down the grand staircase.

“Doctor Ballard,” said Viola, panting. “I’ve been looking for you. There’s a woman asking at reception for you.”

“A woman?”

As they walked side by side, Viola nodded. “Bethany, I think she said her name was.”

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Caro regarded Viola with furrowed brow. “Might it perhaps have been Bessily?”

“Yep.” This time, Viola nodded with more gusto. “That was it. Say, you’re popular of late. That’s the second time you’ve had someone asking for you.”

Caro swung her head to Viola so sharply she thought she might have given herself whiplash. “Who else was asking for me, sweet?” She hoped she sounded casual.

“Some man,” said Viola. “He didn’t give his name. Strange man, breathing really heavily. Sounded like he was just about to cough his guts out. This was a week or so ago.”

“You didn’t come to find me?”

Viola shook her head. “You weren’t here. He didn’t like it when I told him, said he’d wait until you showed up.”

That was definitely strange enough behaviour to rule out it having been someone she knew. Chris wouldn’t have waited, nor Ian Fitzhenry. They’d have sought her out elsewhere, or found people who’d know where to find her. Not even Edward Ruddingshaw would go to that extreme. Why Master Ruddingshaw would want to speak to her she couldn’t fathom, but he seemed to enjoy her company. Whenever she didn’t go to a Council meeting, Ruddingshaw found opportunity to ask where she was. But Master Ruddingshaw was just an old man. He acted like a grandfather towards Caro, on those infrequent occasions when the two interacted at all. And he was sufficiently by the book that Caro didn’t doubt he’d give his name immediately when asked.

So who was waiting to speak to her? “Nobody came to me,” she said. “Are you sure this man said he’d wait for me?”

Viola nodded. “He did, me and Cherry made a joke about it. But then he was gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone. He was sat in the waiting room, and then he wasn’t anymore. Neither of us noticed him go.” Viola stopped suddenly. “I should have said something, Doctor Ballard. I’m so sorry, it completely slipped my mind.”

“Something special must have happened to make you forget about that,” said Caro. She wasn’t angry, though perhaps she should have been. No strange man had accosted her. If anybody did, the personal security detail assigned to her and Chris was just a word away. If she asked, they’d follow her so closely they’d be atomically bonded to her shadow, and any untoward characters straying too close would receive a savage beating.

To her surprise, Viola flushed. “It’s embarrassing,” she said, shuffling her feet.

“I’m not here to judge.”

“I went to the Tavern, after my shift. Got a bit drunk—a lot drunk, really—and... I didn’t mean to kiss Phina, we were sat next to each other and we turned our heads at the same time and the next thing I know she was all over me.” Viola was rushing herself. The words blended together into one as she spoke. “I don’t like girls. Not in that way. It was just because I was drunk, and I wasn’t really thinking clearly, and Phina had this gorgeous honeysuckle perfume on, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her all night. I still can’t look at her without blushing a bit.”

Caro laughed. “Love’s a tricky thing, and it doesn’t really make any sense.”

“It’s not love,” said Viola. “I don’t love… I can’t… Not with a woman.”

“It doesn’t have to be love. The emotions are the same.” She hadn’t loved Chris to begin with, not at all. He was just another one of the Borrowood crew, a friend of Armand and Tessa who had allowed Caro to enter his life when she was half the height of everybody else. One day, when she was about twelve years old, she’d found herself thinking more and more about him. She’d made excuses to be near him, overslept and been late for school because he’d featured in a dream she was having and she didn’t want to wake up. Only later had she realised that she was obsessed with Chris, when Dani Carrigan asked her why she had a notebook full of doodles, the redhead girl and the brown-haired boy hand in hand, each one signed ‘Caroline Ballard’.

That was a decade before she’d said the vows, and been able to sign her name as ‘Caroline Ballard’ for real for the first time.

“Tell you what, Viola, I’ll have a look at swapping some shifts around. That way you won’t be paired with Delphine for a while, until it stops being awkward.”

Viola smiled thinly. “You’re too kind, Doctor Ballard.”

“I’m not kind, sweet, I just don’t want you being distracted. You don’t work as well when your mind’s elsewhere.”

When they came to the reception, she found Bessily Edwards stood waiting beside the desk, hands interlocked in front of her skirt, while Delphine Janley kept herself busy with a nailfile. Viola melted away at some point, before either of the women in reception spied her.

“Mistress Ballard,” said Bessily, her face lighting up when she saw Caro. “You said to find you if I needed somebody to talk to.”

Caro nodded. “Come with me,” she said, putting an arm around Bessily and spinning her around. “There are far nicer places to talk than this.”

The Clearwater was just such a place. The principal river running through the valley, much of the little town was centred on it. Large swathes of both banks were undeveloped still, patches of greenery where people would sit and talk, or else enjoy a picnic together. A group of women in identical grey smocks, each with a white cotton bonnet affixed on their heads, curtsied at Caroline as she passed, Bessily beside her.

They came to a halt at an area a half-mile north of the Eia. Here, the Clearwater curved sharply to steer around a raised hillock; the result was a small secluded area, a shale beach hemmed in by trees and grass. Caro removed her shoes and balled up her tights into the left one, and wandered barefoot to the water. Something about the coolness lapping at her toes was intensely peaceful.

Despite her coaxing, Bessily wouldn’t join her. She stood at the very edge of the river’s reach, just close enough for the soles of her boots to be wet, and spoke from there.

“I had a dream the other night,” she said. “There was a woman in it. I was sat looking out at the fields around my house—the place I lived before, there were great cornfields that went on for miles, and sometimes in the summer I’d sit on the back porch and just watch the sun set over them. But I looked up, and this woman was in the clouds. Like she was watching me. A pale woman, waifish, with hair like straw.”

“I’ve seen her,” Caroline murmured. “Just the once.” Clair de Lune, she called herself. That was all she’d said; for the rest of that particular dream, she’d just hovered in the sky watching as Caro danced with her mother. There was a sinister spectrality to Clair de Lune. Her skin was so pale it could almost be seen through, and her feet pointed downwards as she hung still and silent in the air. Caro was glad never to have been visited by her again.

“She watches me sometimes,” Bessily continued. “This time she spoke. She told me I needed to go to the lake.”

Caro turned. “And did you?”

Bessily nodded, and rummaged around in the little purse she wore around her neck. “The woman told me I’d find this,” she said, producing from the purse a small figurine. She offered it out to Caro, who took it from her and held it up to the light. It was little more than six inches in height, carved out of wood. The features had been dulled, but there was no mistaking the basic shape. This was a woman, with hair down her back and a crown on her head.

“How did this get here?”

“The woman said I’d find the Willow Queen,” said Bessily. “I can only assume that’s what this is.”

“The Willow Queen.” Caro had to sound out the name for herself. It made her lips tingle as it trickled off her tongue. Where had she heard it before?

Vaguely, she remembered an evening at home, in the drawing room of the family manor. Nana Raine was sat in her starched armchair, looking serene as ever. Armand and Tessa had been lured to bed by the promise of sweet macaroons and warm milk, but Caroline had stayed. She wanted Nana Raine to tell her a story. Nana Raine knew all the best stories, and she told them in such a warm way. Father just read the words off a page, like it was a chore that had to be done. Mother found the stories to be too sad, even the happy ones, and always looked like she was just about to burst into tears.

She’d found some mayflowers growing in an aspen grove, and she’d picked them as a gift for Nana Raine. They were in a vase behind Nana Raine’s chair, soaking up the light from a little candle. She remembered the way her grandmother had looked back at the vase, and then to Caroline, and then patted on her lap, the way she always did to say that it was time for a story. Caro had perched on Nana Raine’s lap, resting her head against the organdy of Nana Raine’s dress, and listened to a story.

The Willow Queen. “She lived a long time ago,” she said aloud, telling the tale to Bessily as it came back to her. “What her real name was, we don’t know.” In truth, Caroline had an inkling that the Willow Queen had been called Isabella, but she couldn’t be sure she was remembering right. “Her husband was the king, and a great warrior, and she had a dozen sons, who were all just as great. One day, war came to their little kingdom. The menfolk all sailed to meet the enemy, while the women stayed behind. Only the men never reached the field of battle. Whilst they sailed on their way, a savage storm blew. The king and all his sons were strong fighters, and they could match any foe on land, but the Gods are a foe no mortal man can face, and all the martial prowess the world over meant nothing when those Gods unleashed their fury on the ships.”

Bessily stepped back, away from the water, and sat leaning against the dirt bank that kept them apart from the rest of the valley. Caro followed. She found a handy perch, where the thick branch of an overhanging tree lay at just such an angle that she could sit demurely on it.

“In her village, the women wept. They wept for the king, and they wept for their husbands, and their sons. The hours became days, and days became weeks, with no sign of returning ships. The women asked the queen why she didn’t weep, why she didn’t mourn for those who had been lost. And the queen replied that they weren’t truly lost. To prove it, she lit a candle in the shade of a great willow tree overlooking the ocean, where the women had often sat to wait for their husbands to return.” Caro paused for a second, to take a breath and to steady herself. Nana Raine had done the voice for this next part. She always did the voices in her stories, so well that as a very small girl Caro had actually believed these wondrous characters were speaking.

She wanted to capture the essence of Nana Raine’s vocal talent, if she could.

“‘This candle is our hope’, said the Willow Queen. ‘For as long as it burns still, so we will know that our men enjoy good fortune in their wars. I promise that it will burn until the ships sail back over the horizon, and every one of your husbands is returned to you.’ And every night, she returned to sit beneath the great elm tree, in the light of the candle, and it never went out.”

“Did they come back?” asked Bessily. “The men?”

Caro had asked the same question of Nana Raine. She gave Bessily a sympathetic smile, just as Nana Raine had smiled at her those years ago. “No, sweet. They were drowned in the storm, every last one of them. But the Willow Queen never gave up hope, and because of her neither did any of the other women. When at last she died, she was buried in the shade of that great willow tree. The candle was still ablaze then. If the legends are true, it burned for a hundred years after she died, until another king came along and her husband, along with all of his men, was forgotten.”

“That’s a nice story,” Bessily murmured. “But what does it have to do with me? Why is the Willow Queen floating in the lake?”

“That’s a question probably best suited to somebody who isn’t me,” said Caro. “I stopped looking for the meaning in my dreams a long time ago. It’ll make itself apparent, if it’s something I need to know.” She pressed the idol into Bessily’s hand. “You should hold onto this. It’s better in your hands.”

“What will I do with it?”

“Hide it away. Tell people it’s a doll if they ask—a memento from home. People won’t ask, trust me.”

Bessily shook her head. “I can’t keep it. Mistress Ballard, you know more about this stuff than me. I was meant to find it, but I don’t know that I was meant to hold on to it.”

She daren’t take it. Chris would see it, sooner or later, and he’d want to know what it was. She’d tell him the truth, because he was her husband and there was nothing she wished to keep from him. But that would degenerate into an argument about the existence of Foresleepers, an argument she was not prepared to have, and it would mean telling him about Bessily. Chris would then feel obliged to present the idol to the whole Council, and then everything would be revealed. Within the week, everybody would know that she was a Foresleeper, and Bessily too.

Caroline wasn’t worried about her own life. The personal security detail she shared with Chris, Sergeant Marris and the others, would guard her devoutly. But she couldn’t vouch for Bessily’s safety. The girl would be miles from her protection, surrounded by soldiers of uncertain trustworthiness. It would only need one to beat her bloody in the night, and undoubtedly General Bradshaw would step in to deny that the mashed up pulp in Bessily’s bed had ever been a human woman.

“I can’t have it, sweet,” she said. “If it was meant to come to me, I’d have been the one to have the dream. The woman showed you for a reason.”

Bessily nodded, clearly disappointed, and reluctantly put the idol back in her satchel.

“You should tell somebody,” said Caroline. “It has to be somebody you trust with your life, because they might want to take it. But I can’t always be there to look after you, and to listen to your dreams.”

Bessily looked confused. “You said to keep it secret.”

“And I meant it. This world is a dangerous place for people like you and I. It’s always good to have a friend who’ll look after you, just in case the worst thing possible becomes reality.” She put her hand on Bessily’s shoulder. “Take time to find the right person, you’ll only get one chance. But there has to be someone. For when I’m not around.”

After a while, Bessily nodded, and swallowed hard. “There’s someone,” she said. “He’ll protect me.”

“And don’t forget, you can always come to me. You’ll be my top priority, no matter what.”

Caro sat with Bessily for a while longer, neither talking. The soft flow of the river filled their ears with its gentle sound. Somewhere distant, the shrieking of laughing children carried on the air. A bird in the trees flapped its wings and cawed loudly. It could have been summertime at home, by the meandering river that they all went swimming in. She could have been fourteen again, enjoying her best years surrounded by her best friends.

Filled with a happy melancholy, she bade farewell to Bessily, and went off to rejoin society at large.