Monstrous Regiment

Polly stared in fascinated wonder. She’d hated ironing. “Daphne, could I have a word?” she said, during a pause.

Blouse looked up. “Oh, P… Polly,” he said. “Um, yes, of course.”

“It’s amazing what Daphne knows about pleat lines,” said a girl, in awe. “And press cloths!”

“I am amazed,” said Polly.

Blouse handed the iron to the girl. “There you are, Dympha,” he said generously. “Remember: always iron the wrong side first, and only ever do the wrong side on dark linens. Common mistake. Coming, Polly.”

Polly kicked her heels for a while outside, and one of the girls came up with a big pile of fresh-smelling ironing. She saw Polly, and leaned close as she went past. “We all know he’s a man,” she said. “But he’s having such fun and he irons like a demon!”

“Sir, how do you know about ironing?” said Polly, when they were back in the washing room.

“Had to do my own laundry back at HQ,” said Blouse. “Couldn’t afford a gel and the batman was a strict Nugganite and said it was girls’ work. So I thought, well, it can’t be hard, otherwise we wouldn’t leave it to women. They really aren’t very good here. You know they put the colours and the whites together?”

“Sir, you know you said you were going to steal a gate key off a guard and break his neck?” said Polly.

“Indeed.”

“Do you know how to break a man’s neck, sir?”

“I read a book on martial arts, Perks,” said Blouse, a little severely.

“But you haven’t actually done it, sir?”

“Well, no! I was at HQ, and you are not allowed to practise on real people, Perks.”

“You see, the person whose neck you want to break will have a weapon at that moment and you, sir, won’t,” said Polly.

“I have tried out the basic principle on a rolled-up blanket,” said Blouse reproachfully. “It seemed to work very well.”

“Was the blanket struggling and making loud gurgling noises and kicking you in the socks, sir?”

“The socks?” said Blouse, puzzled.

“In fact I think your other idea would be better, sir,” said Polly hurriedly.

“Yes… my, er… other idea… which one was that, exactly?”

“The one where we escape from the washhouse via the clothes-drying area, sir, after silently disabling three guards, sir. There’s a kind of moving room down the corridor over there, sir, which gets winched all the way to the roof. Two guards go up there with the women, sir, and there’s another guard up on the roof. Acting together, we’d take out each unsuspecting guard, which would be more certain than you against an armed man, with all due respect, sir, and that would leave us very well positioned to go anywhere in the Keep via the rooftops, sir. Well done, sir!”

There was a pause. “Did I, er, go into all that detail?” said Blouse.

“Oh, no, sir. You shouldn’t have to, sir. Sergeants and corporals deal with the fine detail. Officers are there to see the big picture.”

“Oh, absolutely. And, er… how big was this particular picture?” said Blouse, blinking.

“Oh, very big, sir. A very big picture indeed, sir.”

“Ah,” said Blouse, and straightened up and assumed what he considered to be the expression of one with panoramic vision.

“Some of the ladies here used to work in the Upper Keep, sir, when it was ours,” Polly went on quickly. “Anticipating your order, sir, I had the squad engage them in light conversation about the layout of the place, sir. Being aware of the general thrust of your strategy, sir, I think I have found a route to the dungeons.”

She paused. It had been good fla

She hadn’t heard Jackrum use it, but with a certain amount of care it was an excuse to do almost anything. “General thrust” was pretty good, too.

“Dungeons,” said Blouse thoughtfully, momentarily losing sight of the big picture. “In fact I thought I said—”

“Yessir. Because, sir, if we can get a lot of the lads out of the dungeons, sir, you’ll be in command inside the enemy’s citadel, sir!”

Blouse grew another inch, and then sagged again. “Of course, there are some very senior officers here. All of them senior to me—”

“Yessir!” said Polly, well on the way to graduating from the Sergeant Jackrum School of Outright Rupert Management. “Perhaps we’d better try to let the enlisted men out first, sir? We don’t want to expose the officers to enemy fire.”

It was shameless and stupid, but now the light of battle was in Blouse’s eyes. Polly decided to fan it, just in case. “Your leadership has really been a great example to us, sir,” she said.

“Has it?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“No officer could have led a finer bunch of men, Perks,” said Blouse.

“Probably they have, sir,” said Polly.

“And what man could dare hope for such an opportunity, eh?” said Blouse. “Our names will go down in the history books! Well, mine will, obviously, and I shall jolly well see to it that you chaps get a mention too. And who knows? Perhaps I may win the highest accolade that a gallant officer may obtain!”

“What’s that, sir?” said Polly dutifully.

“Having either a foodstuff or an item of clothing named after one,” said Blouse, his face radiant. “General Froc got both, of course. The frock coat and Beef Froc. Of course, I could never aspire that high.” He looked down bashfully. “But I have to say, Perks, that I have devised several recipes, just in case!”

“So we’ll be eating a Blouse one day, sir?” said Polly. She was watching the baskets being stacked.

“Possibly, possibly, if I may dare hope,” said Blouse. “Er… my favourite is a sort of pastry ring, d’you see, filled with cream and soaked in rum—”

“That’s a Rum Baba, sir,” said Polly absently. Tonker and the others were watching the stacked baskets, too.

“It’s been done?”

“’fraid so, sir.”

“How about… er… a dish of liver and onions?”

“It’s called liver-and-onions, sir. Sorry,” said Polly, trying not to lose concentration.

“Er, er, well, it has struck me that some dishes are named after people when really they just made a little change to a basic recipe—”

“We must go now, sir! Now or never, sir!”

“What? Oh. Right. Yes. We must go!”

It was a military manoeuvre hitherto unrecorded. The squad, coming from different directions on Polly’s signal, arrived at the baskets just ahead of the women who’d proposed to take them up, grabbed the handles and advanced. Only then did she realize that probably no one else wanted the job, and the women were only too happy to let idiot newcomers take the strain. The baskets were big and the wet washing was heavy. Wazzer and Igorina could barely lift one basket between them.

A couple of soldiers were waiting by the door. They looked bored, and paid little attention. It was a long walk to the “elevator”.

Polly hadn’t been able to picture it when it had been described. You had to see it. It really was just a big open box of heavy timbers, attached to a thick rope, which ran up and down in a sort of chimney in the rock. When they were aboard, one of the soldiers hauled on a much thi

“No fainting now, girls!” he said. His mate chuckled.

Two of them and seven of us, Polly thought. The copper stick banged against her leg as she moved, and she knew for a fact that Tonker was limping because she had strapped a washing dolly under her dress. That was for serious washerwomen; it was a long stick with what looked like a three-legged milking stool on the end of it, the better for agitating clothes in a big cauldron of boiling water. You could probably smash a skull with it.