style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Does he despise me?’ Spink asked immediately.
I told him all that had transpired. I spared him nothing, thinking it was better to let him know that he had small chance of ever winning my cousin. He nodded at my account, and a ghost of hope came into his face when I told him that my uncle might speak for him to the colonel. But then it slipped away as he confided, ‘Her letters to me are very affectionate. I doubt he will read them and think she would write such things if I had never encouraged her. But I swear that is the truth, Nevare.’
‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘But I also fear that he will think that you incited Epiny.’
‘Well. There’s nothing I can do about that,’ he said. His words were philosophical but his voice was despairing.
‘You should go to bed, Spink. Get one solid night of sleep this week. This endless studying will make you a wraith by week’s end.’
‘I need to keep at it. I just have to fix the equations in my mind. Where I cannot master it by understanding, plain rote may suffice.’
I stood a moment longer. ‘Well. I’m going to bed.’
‘Good night.’ He was not to be dissuaded from his vigil.
In the darkened study room, my books were on the table as I’d left them. I gathered them up in the dark and carried them back to my room.
I put them away by touch and undressed by my bed, letting my clothes drop to the floor. I was suddenly too tired to deal with them. I listened to my friends’ breathing for a moment, then fell into my bed and let go of consciousness.
The remaining days to the section exams both lagged and sped past me. I thought it cruel that Captain Infal did no review with us, but simply kept on introducing new material right up to the day of the test. I felt my brain was crammed with dates and facts and names but little understanding of how the battles had flowed or what the overall strategy had been.
A long anticipated letter from Carsina arrived enfolded in a bare note from my sister. I tore it open and for the first two pages her flowering phrases and curly handwriting cheered me. But by the third page, the charm of her innocent affection and her girlish fantasies about the wonderful life we would have suddenly wore thin. What, I abruptly wondered, did she actually know of me at all? What would she think of me if I failed my history exam and condemned my entire patrol to Academy expulsion? Would she still find me as attractive if I were facing the prospect of enlisting as a common soldier? Would her father? Or did her parents, like my aunt, have ambitions and plans, and their daughter was merely a valuable item to be bartered for alliance and advantage?
I tried to shake myself free of my dismal thoughts and forced myself to read to the end of her letter. There was, I realized, nothing new in it. She had sewn a sampler and baked two loaves of pumpkin bread from a new recipe. Did I like pumpkin bread? She so looked forward to cooking for our darling children and me as they came along. She had already begun to fill her hope chest. She enclosed a drawing she had done of our initials intertwining. It was what she was embroidering on the corners of the good linen pillowcases that her grandmother had given to her for her future home. She hoped I liked it. She closed with the wish that I would think of her, and that I would send her some blue lace like I’d sent my sister if I had the opportunity to get to town.
It suddenly struck me that what I knew of Carsina was that she was pretty and well mannered, laughed easily, danced well and got along excellently with my sister. In the short time I’d spent with my cousin, I’d come to know Epiny better than I knew Carsina. I suddenly wondered if Carsina might be as eccentric and strong-willed as Epiny, but more adept at covering it up. I wondered if Carsina would ever want to hold a séance or spend half the morning wandering about the house in her nightgown. I felt very unsettled as I folded up her letter. It was all Epiny’s fault. Before I had met her, I had assumed that women were rather like dogs or horses. If one came of good bloodlines and had been properly trained, one had only to let her know what was expected of her, and she would cheerfully carry it out. I don’t mean that I thought women were dumb animals; quite the contrary, I had believed them wonderfully sensitive and loving creatures. I simply did not understand why any woman would wish to change her station or do otherwise than her husband’s or father’s wishes. What could she stand to gain by it? If a true woman dreamed of a home and family and a respectable husband, did she not betray that dream and undermine it when she defied the natural authority of her father or husband? So it had always seemed to me. Now Epiny had shown me that women could be sly, self-indulgent, deceptive, and rebellious. She made me doubt the virtue of every woman. Did even my sisters conceal such wiles behind their bland gazes?
The sudden uncertainty I felt about my wife-to-be, coupled with my anxiety about the upcoming exams, put me in a foul temper. I said little at our noon meal and could scarcely bear to watch Natred and Kort exchanging comments about their most recent missives from their sweethearts. It did not help my mood to see how longingly Spink followed their conversation. He looked a wreck. His uniform, never well-fitted to him, hung on his thin frame, unbrushed and rather spotted with mud about the cuffs. His eyes were red, his hair unruly, and his skin gone sallow from too many sleepless nights. The rumour of his probation had spread throughout the Academy, though not the reason for it. It made him an object of curiosity and speculation, and if he had had the spirit to pay attention to the stares that followed him, I’m sure he would have been annoyed.
The night before exams, Spink was ill. I couldn’t tell if it was nervousness or if the prolonged lack of sleep had made him genuinely sick. Half way through our final cramming session, he simply gave up. He closed his books and without a word, only a doleful glance around at us, went off to bed. Our mood, not bright to begin with, sank into the depths. Gord was the next to surrender. ‘Suppose I’m either ready for them or not. I’ve done the best I can,’ he observed. He heaved himself to his feet and began to stack up his books.
‘Done as much as you can for now, and will do as much as you should, tomorrow,’ Trist observed. He made it a statement, not a question. His meaning was clear to all of us. Gord didn’t rise to it.
‘I’ll do all I can to pass every one of my exams well and keep our patrol safe from culling. More than that, none of us can do.’
‘One of us could do more, if he had the balls to do it. If he really cared about the rest of the patrol.’ Trist raised his voice on the last sentence, to be certain that Gord had heard it. The closing of the bedroom door was his only response. Trist uttered an obscenity and sagged back in his chair. ‘That fat bastard is going to do us all in with his phoney honour. He’s probably hoping we’ll all be culled. Then he can go home to his trough, say it wasn’t his fault and forget about being a soldier. I’m going to bed.’
Trist slammed his book shut disdainfully, as if there were no use in further studying, as if all hinged on Gord and Spink, and none of us could do anything to change our fates.
Rory closed his books more quietly. ‘I’m done in,’ he said with resignation. ‘My head is as stuffed as it can get. I’m going to bed and dream about Dark Evening. Our scores won’t be posted until after the break. So I’m going to go out and enjoy myself in Old Thares. Might be the only opportunity I ever have. Night, fellows.’
‘He’s got a point,’ Caleb declared. ‘I, for one, am going to give myself a night such as I’ll never forget. I’ve heard the whores will be free that night, but just in case, I’ve saved two months’ allowance. I’ll leave them limping, I will.’
‘You’ll be the one limping, after you come down with the dick-scald. You hear what happened to Corporal Hawley from Shinter House? Dick-scald so bad he couldn’t even piss without screaming.
