The Battle of Harmingsdown: Chapter 9

There was no train to Harmingsdown. Being a small farming village on the southern end of the country, there had never been enough call for transport to such a distant pastoral town. Without industry, fortune, or noblesse oblige as a draw, Harmingsdown had stayed a quiet and sleepy village for the better part of a century.

Then, due to a remarkably unfortunate series of historical events,¹ the Spanish army had established themselves in the southern part of England. Quite inadvertently, Harmingsdown had become The Front. This meant the once pastoral village needed troops, supplies, equipment, and a great deal of other sundry items. Harmingsdown was not alone in this; any number of heretofore useless and ignored territories were suddenly vitally important to the war, and required a quick method for logistical support.

It was this necessity that mothered the invention of Pot-treller trains, or Enginettes, as they were called in the north. Designed for flexibility, the Enginettes rode on single-track rails that could be easily assembled and disassembled in less than a day per kilometer. The cars were smaller and the travel was slower, but the wheeled coal-engines were strong enough to carry entire regiments to the middle of nowhere in a relatively short amount of time and at relatively cheap cost.

Edmund had never ridden in a Pot-treller before. It was far bumpier than most of the familiar engines of Brackenburg’s train station, and he couldn’t help but feel like they were only going half-speed. He kept waiting for the coal-engine to accelerate, but it never happened.

But he kept waiting for it. It was easy to wait on a train or a carriage. Going to Grimm’s, coming home up Haggard Hill, even the journey from Mrs. Mapleberry’s orphanage to Moulde Hall had been full of anticipation for an unknown future.

When he had been young, the unknown future was full of possibilities. A Carriage was a place where his imagination could take flight. Now that he was older, trains and carriages were grounded places to sit and think, isolated rooms free from the regular and repetitive concerns of daily life.

This train was no such oasis. The Pot-treller² was small; only six cars, two of which were storage. Edmund spent most all of his time in his sleeping bunk, scribbling away in his notebook or reading reports he had requested Ung fetch for him.

He studied the history of Harmingsdown, as well as dispatches and reports from the military as to its current strategic situation. He read dossiers on every soldier stationed there, as well as reviewed every requisition and supply delivery for the past month. All in all, it seemed a relatively quiet town.

What was their plan?

If the Wickes wanted to become inventors for the military, they could have simply volunteered. If they had only wanted to sell Chrome to the army, they had ample opportunity. It was clear to Edmund that they had far more up their sleeves than was at first observable.

Had Edmund been more brave, he might have studied them as thoroughly as he studied Harmingsdown, but instead he found himself with a multitude of reasonable excuses for avoiding the horrible beasts. They stalked the thin hallway down the center of the train, Mr. Wickes’ cane like distant thunder, Mrs. Wickes’ broad hat like the constant flutter of a poisonous hummingbird. Even buried deep in his reading, Edmund was always aware when they walked past his room, pausing for only the briefest of moments before continuing down the hall.

Instead of confronting them, Edmund rarely left his bunk. When he did leave for a meal or similar event of importance, he couldn’t escape their gaze. They were always there, squeezing past him in the tiny hallways, or sitting in the corner of the dining car, watching everything.

A knock on the side of his bunk shook Edmund from his thoughts. He looked down at his notebook, disgruntled at the blank page that stared back at him. For all his efforts, he couldn’t stay focused for long.

He pulled the curtain aside to revel the massive form of Ung. “I have brought sir’s tea.”

Edmund accepted the tiny teacup with a nod of thanks. The past days had to have been miserable for Ung, forced into the cramped cars of a Enginette, catering to Edmund’s needs while barely having the room to dress himself in the morning.

They thought you fought on the wrong side in the last war, Edmund thought, but what side was that, exactly? I don’t doubt you have some German heritage, but you didn’t fight for the German country, did you?

Edmund heaved a sigh, and turned back to his blank page. “Ung,” he said after gathering his courage to ask the question, “am I a traitor?”

“To whom, sir?” the giant rumbled.

Edmund paused. The problem with being both a scientist and a poet was that Edmund lived in a world of emotion and science not yet discovered. Scraps of future theories and eventual discoveries played about his head, and it was often true that the English Language was woefully inadequate to describe any of it.

“I swore an oath to serve King and Country,” he began. “I’ve never sworn an oath to the Moulde Family, nor to Matron.” Not audibly, at least. “Yet, I have bent — if not broken — the spirit of the oath on several occasions already. The Army wants the Wickes to invent weapons for them, and I am resolved to oppose them. I left Matron alone to serve the army, and I abandon the army to fight the Wickes…am I a traitor?”

Ung didn’t respond at first, an oddity without evident reason. When he did speak, his words were slower and even more measured than usual. “A person can only have one master. If they serve two, there will come a time when one master must be sacrificed for the good of the other. It is these times that prove to us who or what we truly serve.”

“Who did you serve,” Edmund asked, “in the last war?”

“I served my country. If sir requires nothing else?”

Edmund recognized Ung’s subtle way of requesting leave.

“Thank you, Ung. That will be all.”

Ung bowed as best as was possible before vanishing once more. Edmund, for his part, turned back to his empty page, and stared; thoughts of treachery most noble swirling in his mind.

---

A word on the trenches of Harmingsdown.

The invention of Trench warfare was, as with all things British, based in propriety. While most soldiers on the front line were commoners, the war had caused a new breed of officer to rear it’s head. They were the “chummy” sort, who thought what separated a good soldier from a dead one was a good pat on the back and a reassuring smile from their superiors. These were the officers who could be found walking up and down the front lines, giving rousing speeches to the infantry lying face down in the mud while bullets whizzed by overhead.

Teaching soldiers to lie down in the face of incoming fire had always been a low-priority for the army, as it generally sorted itself out with a kind of high-speed evolution. Officers, on the other hand, were a different breed altogether; wounds usually resulted in inquiries, reports, and oftentimes very angry relatives causing no end of trouble.

The obvious solution was to order the officers to crawl in the mud if they wanted to give a rousing speech or soothing word on the front lines. The officer’s solution was for the soldiers to bloody well stand up when being spoken to by their betters.

The army’s solution, in the traditional compromise between common sense and clean officers, was the Trench.

It revolutionized warfare. Before, the lines of standing and kneeling soldiers with muskets was a common sight, flanked by charging cavalry waving sabers and dodging cannonballs. Now, battlefields resembled cabbage farms, with soldiers heads lined up in rows. Cannons were pointed upwards so their shells could drop into the trenches,³ rather than through the lines of soldiers like nine-pins. As for the cavalry, the Generals only needed to see one battle with their horses stopping to hop back and forth over the maze of trenches to realize the days of the cavalry charge were long over.⁴

Not everyone appreciated the change; older Generals had begun to grumble about how boring everything had become. Even the Maxmillim gun, famed for its ingenious design that allowed it to spit bullets at a rate of almost one every second, dwindled in effectiveness. What use was an automatic machine gun if there were no targets to shoot at? In one fell swoop, the Maxmillim gun was transformed from the symbol of Britannian military might to an inefficient waste of ammunition.

Nevertheless, war had irrevocably changed; now the front was less a collection of battalions marching across fields and firing at each other in rows while being cut down by cannons and machine guns, and more a protracted game of strategic ditch-digging.

And yet, the trenches were not the first thing Edmund noticed when he stepped off the small carriage that had taken them from the end of the Pot-treller line to the front; What he noticed was brown.

Not so much the color itself as a pervading essence of brown. Much as Haggard Hill was nearly monochrome with dark-gray ash and soot, so too were the reds, yellows, blues, and greens of Harmingsdown tinted with a film of pale brown. He later surmised that the dirt of Harmingsdown had a particularly high quantities of jarosite and ferrihydrite, meaning that every boot and bullet that struck the ground caused a plume of brown dust to blanket the air and anything that passed through it.

The second and third things that Edmund noticed were of only interest to himself. This made the Trenches of Harmingsdown the fourth thing he noticed, and historians agree that this was likely only because he was passing through them at the time.

The Trenches of Harmingsdown were not nearly as complex as those in the more contested regions of the war. The Pratsdim Trenches, for instance, each were given their own name, like streets in a city. The Harmingsdown Trenches, on the other hand, were fairly straightforward, encompassing only three main thoroughfares and seven smaller side-trenches.

As they walked, Edmund memorized the locations of every hospital station, depot, resupply zone, dressing station, latrine, and shelter they passed. He made a mental note of every intersection and dead end, and little by little he built a map of Harmingsdown in his head. It wasn’t a complete map, but it was a start.

“The Colonel is just this way,” a captain shouted over his shoulder, over the sound of periodic gunfire. “Please follow closely!” The captain had met them as they stepped off the carriage with apologies for the Colonel’s absence. With only two privates and Ung to help with luggage,⁵ it had taken them almost a quarter hour to push their way through the clostrophobic trenches.

Edmund felt almost at home. It was just like creeping through the secret passages in the walls of Moulde Hall, excepting the lack of a roof, of course.

Finally, the captain pulled up short, knocking on a surprisingly well-built door set into the dirt wall. A muffled “enter” prompted the Captain to push open the door and usher everyone inside.

The Colonel’s residence was a surprisingly large and well-built room. Gas lighting had been placed in the walls, and all of them except Ung could stand up straight without banging their heads on the dirt ceiling. A table dominated the center of the room, covered with papers, diagrams, and small figurines that covered a flat map of the trenches, marking where soldiers, cannons, and observation balloons were stationed. Leaning over this table was Colonel Muggeridge.

It has been already explained that there are two kinds of Generals. This mathematical property does not carry over into the lower ranks, least of all the Colonels, of which there is only one kind.

The British Colonel is an unfortunate sort of chap, who is wealthy and important enough to have purchased a commission, but neither wealthy nor important enough to reach the more influential ranks. Sandwiched between the high- and low-ranking officers, British Colonels are, to a person, generally up-beat, casually interested in everything, and fully capable of fulfilling their primary duty of turning to someone else and saying “see to it, would you?”

Colonel Uther Liddian Muggeridge III, Head of Military Operations at Harmingsdown, was a proper British Colonel. “I say, I say,” his smile was bemused, if cheerful, “You must be the Wickes? Jolly good. I’m Colonel Muggeridge. I’m sort of…in charge of the whole thing down here. You settled in alright?”

“We only just arrived,” Mrs. Wickes icy tone cut through the air, only to ricochet off of the Colonel’s curious stare.

“Yes? Oh, terribly sorry, old thing. You see, I’m afraid one of my best officers was called away fairly recently. He was reassigned, you see, so we’re all a bit out of sorts at the moment. Never had to run the show without a spot of help, what?”

“What luck,” Mr. Wickes’ cane thudded into the earth. “We happened to arrive with a replacement.”

“Major Schtillhart, reporting for duty, sir!” Schtillhart’s salute was as clean as his buttons. Edmund was certain it had not been luck that caused the Colonel’s aide to be reassigned.

“Oh? Jolly good! At ease, Major. Did you have a good trip?”

“I…yes sir, thank you sir.”

“Jolly good. I say it’s lucky you came along. Things have been mostly quiet, you know, but you can never tell with these Spaniards. Dashed clever fellows, what? I say, would you all care for a spot of dinner? It’s a bit early, I know, but I find eating late at night a bit arresting, myself.”

“Colonel,” Mr. Wickes held up his hand, “We are here with a purpose of great import, and are thus duty-bound to engage in our work at the earliest opportunity. Please, can you direct us to your telegraph?”

“Our what?” the Colonel blinked.

“Your telegraph, man!” Mrs. Wickes snapped like a whip. “We have urgent information to transmit to Brackenburg at once!”

“Oh, yes,” Colonel Muggeridge smiled winsomely. “Well, if you want to send a message, we have a post box set up right outside. A private picks them up every third Wednesday —”

“Do you mean to tell us you don’t have a telegraph system?”

“Not much call for one, really,” the Colonel scratched the back of his head. “Everything’s on an even keel here, and our orders were simple enough, what? Not much to say to the home office, and they don’t have much to say to us.”

“I assure you, Colonel,” Mr. Wickes drew his body up as tall as it would go, which was not very much at all, “we will certainly have things to say very soon.”

“We need a telegraph installed at once,” Mrs. Wickes continued, “preferably close to our laboratory, and a solider must be assigned to guard it at all times.”

“Must they? Oh, very well,” Colonel Muggeridge turned to the nearby captain. “See to it, will you?”

“Now,” Mr. Wickes said as the captain fled the room, “would you please show us to our laboratory?”

“What? Oh, yes, terribly sorry, old boy. Got a bit carried away with myself, what? We have a…” he stared at the trench map on the table, “…yes, here is an almost empty storage room on the eastern side of the trenches. It’s about as big as…yes, I’d say about as big as this room. I’m sure you will —”

“Quite unacceptable,” Mrs. Wickes snapped.

“I agree!” Mr. Wickes’ cane swung like a scythe. “This room is perfectly fit for you, Colonel, but we will be inventing! We will be creating! We can’t perform our duties acceptably with so little space. We need room!”

“Ah? Yes, well…” Colonel Muggeride sniffed, and moved to the map of Harmingsdown on the wall. “I seem to remember…Ha! Yes, I knew there used to be a farm somewhere around here. Back at the north end, not even half a kilometer away. No one’s living there now; cleared out once the trench digging started. There’s bound to still be a barn. Perfect place to set up a laboratory, what?”

“A barn will…suit us,” Mrs. Wickes sniffed. “What about our supplies?”

“What’s that?”

“We are part of the Military Research Division,” Mr. Wickes frowned. “That means we need supplies! Laboratory equipment! Materials! Machine tools! We can’t very well create prototypes that will strike fear into the very heart of our enemies out of milk-pails and straw!”

“I say,” the hapless Colonel frowned as he poked about in his pockets. “Steady on, of course you need supplies. Even had a list made up…somewhere around here…everything we can spare for…”

“Major?” A piece of paper appeared in Mrs. Wickes hand. Major Schtillhart’s jaw twitched as he took the paper, opened it, and handed it to the Colonel.

“These are a few of the things we already know we simply must have,” Mr. Wickes coughed. “You see, on the train ride here, we were already able to invent several things that will ensure victory for Britannia.”

“Oh?” Colonel Muggeridge scanned the paper. “Yes, well…yes, I must say, this looks…jolly comprehensive, doesn’t it? Yes. I’m sure we can…requisition most of it, I suppose…”

“We have, of course, anticipated this,” Mr. Wickes spread his arms towards Edmund. “This is Lieutenant…ah…a lieutenant, and he is a clerk in the ABCs. He used to work in the Logistics Administrative Legion and he will be more than willing to submit any requisition forms, supply requests, and manage your stores more than adequately, I am certain.”

“Ah!” the Colonel gave a nod as he handed the paper over to Edmund. “Jolly good. And this…large fellow?”

“My aide-de-camp,” Edmund said.

“Ah. Jolly…yes, jolly good, I suspect. Here, Please see to this list of supplies, will you?”

“And we will need all our luggage moved to the barn,” Mrs. Wickes said. “At once.”

“Of course. Major?” Colonel Muggeridge turned to Schtillhart. “See to it, would you?”

Major Schtillhart fired off another perfect salute before stepping back out into the trenches and heading towards the nearest cluster of soldiers, shouting commands and pointing like a conductor.

“I say, you’ve certainly put the cat among the pigeons, and no mistake!” Colonel Muggeridge gave a short laugh. “Telegraphs, laboratories…It will be quite the thing, having geniuses around.”

“I assure you, Colonel, it is likely we will not be here very long.”

“No?” the Colonel blinked, again losing his slim grasp on the situation. “I say, where will you be going then?”

“What my wife means,” Mr. Wickes smiled, “is that we will only be here as long as the war is ongoing, and we are certain that this will not be very long at all. Indeed, we already have an invention in the works that will spell victory for the crown!”

“Do you really?” the Colonel gaped. “Couldn’t tip us a nod, could you?”

“No,” Mrs. Wickes sniffed. “We couldn’t.”

“But it will be glorious!” Mr. Wickes continued. “It will be a victory for the history books, and you, Colonel, will be at the forefront of —”

Edmund left the Colonel’s room. He didn’t need to hear any more of Mr. Wickes rambling. He needed to learn more about Harmingsdown. If he wanted to foil the Wickes’ dastardly plot, whatever it was, he needed to get the lay of the land. Not knowing the battlefield was every bit as dangerous as not knowing your opponent.

“Ung,” he pulled a letter from his pocket, “Would you please see this is delivered to Moulde Hall? And take care of my bag and sleeping arrangements. I’m going to look around.”

“As sir wishes,” Ung nodded. “Will sir care to remove sir’s shako?”

Edmund blinked at the question. Not only was the shako part of his uniform, it was what kept him hidden. As long as he wore it, he was a Lieutenant, and no Moulde could be a Lieutenant. Why would he take it off? “No, Ung, I do not believe I will. Carry on.”

“As sir wishes.”

---

Before long, Edmund understood exactly what Ung had really meant by his question.

For half an hour, Edmund wandered the trenches learning everything he could. First of all, he noted the trenches themselves were not uniform. At the edges, where small teams held their ground or peered through telescopes at the enemy, the trenches were barely large enough for a single soldier to pass another. As one approached the center of the trenches, however, they became wider, deeper, and filled with activity. Small nooks were created to house a table for cards, or to rest. In the thickest areas, shops and barracks were dug into the walls like bunkers. Makeshift roofs provided shelter from the weather and enemy fire.

Edmund was impressed. He was beginning to understand how a well designed and fortified trench could be as busy and active as any city.^{6, 7}

It was a practical improvement to an inelegant solution. Why bother building stone walls rimmed with wire when the earth of Harmingsdown could do such a better job? With the invention of musketry and gunpowder, the high-ground was no longer the asset it had been in centuries past. Now, the lower you were, the safer. The harder you were to see, the harder you were to hit. Invisibility, Edmund reminded himself, was a great asset.

The word played about his mind as he wandered the Trenches of Harmingsdown. Everything looked to be in perfect order. The war was being run like a fine-tuned machine. Soldiers saluted as he passed, assuming they were not too wrapped up in the war to notice. Periodic gunfire cracked overhead as soldiers popped up and down like ducks at a shooting gallery. Orders were being given and followed with military precision (naturally), and no one seemed the worse for it.

It is possible that Edmund might have missed an important discovery completely, had he not, in a moment of introspective distraction, ran headlong into another soldier.

“‘Ere! Get on wi’ — Oh!” The bald soldier sputtered as he collected himself, saluting Edmund. “Terribly sorry, sah! Wasn’t looking where I was going, sah! Won’t happen again, sah!” The soldier spun about and marched away, crisp as anything.

Edmund watched him leave. To anyone else, it would have been an unimportant accident. Edmund, however, saw the soldier’s face. He had been prepared to argue, yell, even fight Edmund, but then…he had seen Edmund’s hat. It was a lieutenant’s hat marked with a red cotton ball on top. His officer’s sash had a lieutenant’s pin, and his shoulder pips marked him as an officer. If he hadn’t been wearing them, the soldier might have continued to behave in a brusque and aggressive manner.

Edmund’s hat had changed the soldier’s behavior. Was it changing anyone else’s?

On carefully calculated instinct, Edmund pulled off his sash and Lieutenant’s pips and shoved them both into his shako. Slipping the stuffed hat behind a small crate in a nearby storage shelter, Edmund now looked no different than any other private.

I wore a hat and sash and name / to hide myself from prying eyes. / Now I have to doff the same / to fashion me a new disguise.

Despite his genius, Edmund had not been prepared for how much of a difference such a simple change could cause. Where once he had seen military precision and focus throughout the trenches, now he saw casual aimlessness and disarray. When he passed by what he had thought was a professionally run medical station, he now saw soldiers gambling at cards and dice. When he peeked into what had been a storage bunker, he now saw rows of whiskey and gin. Women with loose dresses and looser suggestions appeared from nowhere, and the soldiers who had been so focused on following orders and winning the war were now firing blank charges into the air while their trench-mates reclined, smoked, and chatted with their fellows.

At first, Edmund was stunned. How had he missed all of this?

The answer was provided by the sudden whistle of a nearby private. The casual manner of the trenches vanished like a spring breeze, and the military ethic returned with a snap. Soldiers stood, guns were shouldered, the the women ducked away along with the booze, dice, and tobacco.

Seconds later, a Captain turned the corner, returning cheerful salutes — the same salutes Edmund had received.

This time, Edmund saw the salutes that the officer didn’t.

“Oi!” Edmund turned to see an old Corporal leaning against a trench wall, pulling a hidden cigarette from his ear. “You’re new.” he said, slipping off his helmet to reveal a shiny bald head.

“Just arrived this morning,” Edmund nodded.

“Easy to tell,” the Corporal took a pull from his cigarette and exhaled with the force of a steam train. “Your skin is so smooth, I bet you never need to shave.”

It was an odd greeting, perhaps a military tradition. It was the word “need” that confused him; while Edmund shaved every morning, he wasn’t positive he needed to — he had never seen or felt any hair growing on his face — but proper gentlemanly behavior wasn’t followed because it was practical.

The Corporal laughed, shaking his head. “First time in the trenches, I bet? You look like you don’t know your arse from your elbow.” The man stuck out his wrinkled hand to shake. “Corporal Thomas Cottonwood. Everyone calls me Old Tom, on account of me bein’ so old. Oldest Corporal in the army. Tried to promote me to Sergeant once, but I set them straight. Sergeant’s no better than an officer, mark my words.”

Edmund shook the man’s hand. It was course, like poor leather. “I’ve never seen the trenches before,” he agreed. “It’s not what I expected.”

“Of course not.” The Corporal laughed. “You’re just a private. They only train you to jump when they bark orders at you. Well let me tell you, lad, them officers don’t tell you half the story.” Eager to learn, Edmund leaned forward when Old Tom beckoned him closer. “Those Spaniard’s over there,” his harsh whisper was tinted with smoke, “they’re not the enemy.”

“They aren’t?”

“Not a bit. Oh, they’re firing at us, sure enough, but they’re just following orders, same as us.”

“You’re not following orders,” Edmund glanced around at the lazing solders.

“Aye! An’ why should we? You want to kill another young lad no older than you because some toff with a fancy hat says you should? Believe me, lad, your enemy ain’t the other side, it’s them officers, sure as bloody paste. They’re the ones who’ll get us killed. You think they know a toss about what being a soldier is like? No, they sit in their bloody brandy-rooms all day, toodle-pipping it up an’ dashing-it-all to high heaven.”

“So,” Old Tom winked, “we has a little arrangement. Them soldiers on the other side are no different then us, lad. Oh, they speak different, sure, and they eat some bloody queer food, but they want to go back to their farms and family the same as we do. So we trade a bit, share stories, tips, even share a bit of real sugar when someone gets a package from home. They’re alright.”

“I’ve seen soldiers firing across the —”

“Oh, when the officers are around, sure, we put on a bit of a show, but when they ain’t lookin’…just…fire the other way, yeah? Take a break. Don’t try so hard, see? Sometimes, when one of the officers gets it into their heads to try a real push, we’ll even tip a nod to the other side so they don’t get too hurt when we start shooting. An’ they do the same, no mistake. Oh, they’ll kill a few of your mates before this war is over, same as we’ll do to them, but they don’t mean nothin’ by it. T’ain’t personal. It’s them bloody orders is the problem, so we use our own discretion when followin’ them. That’s regulations, that is. It ain’t our fault if we’re just no good at our jobs.” He flashed a dirty grin. “For what we’re paid it’s bloody justice, right?” He clapped Edmund on the back. “Don’t worry about it too much, you’ll learn soon enough. And if you have any questions, you just ask for Old Tom. I’ll set you right straight.”

“Thank you. Excuse me, I have to go now.”

If this seems a rude and abrupt end to what might have been an important conversation, it very much was; however, it was also necessary, as Edmund had just recognized another soldier he needed to speak to.

“Pinsnip,” he said by way of greeting.

“Sir,” Pinsnip spat the word. “I see you have…divested yourself of your ornamentation. Feeling…guilty, perhaps? An impostor in borrowed finery?”

Edmund didn’t respond at first, instead pausing to take an offered cup of foul smelling trench-gin from a nearby private. Edmund sipped gingerly before handing the cup to Pinsnip. “You did well with Forthmore’s,” he said at last, his voice low enough that the surrounding soldiers couldn’t hear. “I’m very pleased.”

In truth, he wasn’t pleased at all — the burning of the factory had done little more than improve the Wickes standing among the Generals — but Pinsnip had done what he had been asked, so Edmund felt a compulsion to acknowledge this.

“I didn’t do it,” Pinsnip muttered.

Edmund blinked. “What?”

“I didn’t burn it down,” Pinsnip hissed.

At this point, the average mastermind would have spared a few moments reassuring Pinsnip that of course he didn’t burn anything down, and Edmund would swear as much in court, and thanks anyway for taking care of that thing; but Edmund heard Pinsnip’s tone, hushed as it was.

“Did you see who did?”

“No,” Pinsnip grimaced, whether from the shame or the trench-gin, Edmund couldn’t tell. “I had placed the fuel, laid a fuse, and was ready to…to burn the lot when the whole factory went up…like a candle. I barely had time to get away before the…water brigade showed up.” His eyes narrowed. “They showed up quite quickly…faster than I’ve ever seen.”

Edmund nodded slowly. “Keep an ear open. In the meantime, I’ll have another job for you soon.”

“I…expected as much.” Pinsnip’s voice leaked disdain. “Only just…um…arrived, you know. No Pot-treller for me. I had to walk most of the distance from the train in Sellafield —”

“I have something for you,” Edmund pulled out a jar from his pocket. “I made it on the trip from Brackenburg. Chloronated lime and ethonol. I discovered it when I was at Grimm’s; I call it Chloroform. It’s similar to ether but quicker and more effective. Just a little drop on a handkerchief is all it takes.”

“Ah?” Pinsnip stared at the bottle like a connoisseur. “How fast?”

“As fast as a knife,” Edmund handed it to him.

“Really?” In spite of himself, Pinsnip looked impressed. Edmund could see him imagining night after night of prowling the streets, pouncing like a wolf, feeling the body go limp and collapse to the ground, only to get up minutes later to be stalked and hunted again.

“I trust you can control yourself around your fellow soldiers,” Edmund said. It was not a question. And with that he moved on into the trenches, alone with his thoughts.

To know that Pinsnip had not managed to burn down the factory was a relief, in one sense; it meant that Edmund had not in fact helped the Wickes in their plan to become inventors for the Military.

In another sense, it drove the point home for Edmund; he couldn’t assume anything about what the Wickes were planning.

---

It is perhaps a good time to explain what is known for certain by historians and scholars, versus what is surmised.

What is known⁸ is that the transfer of Major Schtillhart, a Lieutenant Mauve, and Mr. and Mrs. Wickes to Harmingsdown occurred a full five months after the start of the war. There is no documentation referencing a Sergeant Ung nor Corporal Pinsnip, but two contemporary letters from soldiers stationed at Harmingsdown seem to suggest the two were at least present for a period of time.

After this transfer, there are three historical events which occurred over the course of six months that scholars use to mark the major events of Sir Edmund’s deployment to the front. They are as follows: the Scrapnel Push, the Battle of the Ironclads, and of course the Harmingsdown Truce, which preceded the end of the war by almost a full month.

This is not to say that these three events were the only events of note. Indeed, over the course of these six months, Harmingsdown became one of the more important battlegrounds in the war, though this was not known to be true at the time. It was only after, when strategists discussed the war over brandy, that they realized how pivotal the events surrounding the Battle at Harmingsdown were to the fortunes of post-war Britannia.

What is known for certain, much as various laws of nature and physics are known for certain, is that Edmund fell into a routine along with the rest of Harmingsdown. He was a clerk in the ABC, after all, and that meant supply reports, requisitions, dispatches, and mail of all kinds had to be sorted, arranged, filed in the tiny filing room hidden away in one of the periphery trenches, and delivered.

At least once a week, Edmund divested himself of his officer’s vestments and wandered the trenches to get a feel for what was really going on. Old Tom Cottonwood turned out to be an invaluable resource, as his sense of his fellow soldiers had been honed after years of experience. He knew exactly what gossip was important and what was nonsense. He knew which soldiers had been press-ganged and which had signed up. He knew which hospitals had makeshift stills in the back, and which storage rooms hid regular card games.

As the only local ABC clerk, it was Edmund’s duty to transmit any and all reports back to Brackenburg via the newly installed telegraph. Edmund had never used a telegraph before — the Nine Founding Families were quite antagonistic towards such a lower-class method of communication — but he understood the concept.⁹ He was far more interested in the possibilities. If I could somehow attach my Typograph to this telegraph, Edmund thought one evening as he transmitted the Colonel’s weekly report to the Generals of Brackenburg, I could write and send letters without ever touching pen to paper. The idea frightened him a little: a fleeting thought, around the world, / And back again in minutes flat. / There is no moderation / against the consternation / that I think will arise from that.

Thanks to seized documentation, we are also fortunate to know every invention that had its origin in the Wickes’ laboratory. These include the original “Black lung” flame-thrower, anti-personnel mines, “spotlight” bullets that puffed a brilliant blue when they hit, depth-charges (apparently invented by Mrs. Wickes on a tea-break), and notes for “Improvements in Telegraphy” for an “undulating current of electricity which might convey sound, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying vocal or other sounds.” The information that followed led directly to the invention of the first telephone.

These notes are controversially attributed to the Wickes, as while the documentation was discovered in the Wickes’ safe, handwriting experts are divided on whether the handwriting is closer to that of Edmund’s. If the handwriting were his, there is no clear indication for how or why said documentation ended up in a hidden safe behind the walls of the Wickes’ Family Manufactory.

This presents a thorny problem for any scholar of Sir Edmund’s life during the war: if Edmund had traveled to Harmingsdown in an effort to thwart the machinations of the Wickes, why did he not, in fact, stop them? Since each of the Wickes’ inventions saw use on the battlefield, one of two options must be true: The first, that Edmund attempted to stop the Wickes and failed; the second, that Edmund did not attempt to stop the Wickes at all.

The former option is, of course, impossible. The latter option, absurd. How then is any reasonable historian to “square the circle” as it were, and account for both Edmund’s presence in Harmingsdown and his seeming ineffectiveness?

While countless scholars have advanced their own theories, ranging from the inane to the insulting, the most commonly accepted theory is one advanced by Lady Comberry of Esthingdon Grange, and illustrated in the Wickes demonstration of their first invention for the Harmingsdown trenches, the semi-automatic rifle.