‘The sun has set, trooper,’ I said.

He glanced from me to the tent door, as if he did not quite believe me.

‘Go, chew your ettiene, and ease your night-brother into his turn.’

He thanked me and left, not even thinking to question who I was to give such soft, welcome orders.

There was a bucket of water in the corner of the tent. I began by refreshing the cloths pressed against each soldier’s head. Of the two men and two women, all but one were gripped by fever and vomiting. The fourth had developed the pox’s rash, which would in time change to the viscously filled pustules that scarred so in their falling.

As difficult and tiring as the duties of the night proved to be, it was those first moments that were the hardest. I had not realised, but like me, the night-siblings were then waking to the pox for the first time. Waking to their pox, bodies already ravaged from a day’s suffering.

I cradled one trooper as he wept and cursed his day-brother.

Between emptying buckets of thin, blood-flecked bile, I shushed delirious blasphemy and the like. The demon of pox was invoked and insulted regularly. In their more lucid moments, some of them spoke of their surprise at succumbing to plague while still on Reikovan soil – something they were all but expecting to face in the jungles of the southern tribes. I told the soldiers to save their strength. This was a test sent from the Lord, and they would not be found wanting. They were the King’s Dragoons, were they not? Strength, duty, honour. That was met with more bile. It was painful to see proud young men and women reduced to such a state.

Once, during the night, a crate of weak beer was brought to the tent by a bare-chested trooper. He stayed for an hour, perhaps longer, and helped me administer what draughts the suffering could take. It was a slow, frustrating task but we schooled each other to patience. What was our frustration in the face of the pox?

And so the night progressed by the rhythm of the moving of fluids.

It was still too soon for fatalities. But I couldn’t help wonder how many in this tent would survive the coming days.

18th October 1721

The row of tents was left behind. Alexsander stared from the road not entirely understanding, not entirely remembering, its significance. He was lucky in that, though he thought it strange that none of the soldiers looked at the tents, which were bold and incongruous in the empty, churned field. In the pale light of dawn he shivered and would not play his fiddle when asked.

He spent the day’s ride wondering about the tents. A sense of sickness was there, the sharp smell of a stomach’s contents was clearest to him. He tried so hard to remember what he thought I must have known. But there was no asking the soldiers, that much he did understand, so instead he worried at the thing, even catching himself biting his nails – something we did rarely. Soon there were more pressing concerns. For both of us.