“You may.”

“Does the king know what we face here? Does General Brodg?”

“Attempts have been made to explain it to the king. He did not accept the explanation. As for General Brodg, he has, as have the rest of us, experienced a Gettys sweat. Often, when I hear him criticized as having too much sympathy for the common soldier, I think that perhaps that is at the base of it. He has come to Gettys; he has seen what we face here, not just the terror, but the plague.” He suddenly cleared his throat, perhaps feeling he’d said too much to a common soldier. “You’re dismissed, trooper. Back to your duties. Tell the sergeant to write up the orders to have the carpentry shop turn out planks of a proper length for fifty coffins, but not to phrase it that way. I’m sure he can deal with that. And be assured that I’ll be watching you, Burvelle. Burve. Dismissed.”

I about-faced smartly and left the room. After a brief conference with the sergeant, during which I wondered if he were also aware of my secret, I left the headquarters and went back out in the street.

I’d left the colonel’s office with more questions than I’d come with. I couldn’t decide if our commander were mildly insane or a damn good officer. The chance that he might be both was particularly unsettling.

The colonel’s unpredictable mood and my chance encounter with Spink had disturbed me. I decided that rather than go back to my cabin and dwell on those things, I’d take my meal at the mess with the other enlisted men. It was something I did occasionally, when I was in a mood to endure gibes and mockery for the sake of some socializing. Some of the men were almost my friends. The mess was in a long, two-storey building. The lower room was for the enlisted men; the officers always went up the stairs to a more genteel atmosphere. At one end of the big open room, there was a kitchen, with three large hearths for cooking and big ovens built above them for turning out enough bread to feed everyone. It was probably hellishly hot in summer, but in winter the heat from the cooking and the smells of the food made it a welcome oasis. The ceiling was low and darkened with smoke. In the enlisted men’s mess, the floor was made of rough timber and permanently filthy. The tables were battered wood, and the long benches were uncomfortable and awkward for me, but I’d come to like the noisiness of the place. I missed the sounds of people talking, laughing, and eating almost as much as I missed my books and lessons.

My glimpse of Spink had brought all those memories back afresh.

Ebrooks and Kesey were seated when I came in. I picked up a large bowl of steaming mutton stew and four fresh rolls of bread and went to join them.

They were not the brightest of fellows. Their summer duty was to keep the grass in the cemetery mowed down. In winter, they shoveled snow or cleared ice from the walkways. In the plague season, they dug graves.