Sarah Hall: The Carhullan Army

It passed through my mind that she might have directions to fire the place, so that nothing was left of the original enterprise. And I could picture her doing it, coating the floors with paraffin and trailing it up the stairs. As if from above, I could see the orange glut of flame in the middle of the courtyard as the main house burned, and hear the crack and splinter of timber as the byres went up. And afterwards, only the smoking hull of Carhullan would be left, its masonry rimed with soot, its slate roof collapsed. And the fell wind; mournful, tugging at the granite fibres, unable to move a single blackened stone.

[Data Lost]

Megan and I carried her inside, away from the line of fire. Her midriff was soaked red, and though she had taken hold of the pale fletches of her own ribcage, she could not hold her flesh sufficiently closed. We could hear the summoning of bullets on the crenellations, the high-pitched tacking of them against the old sandstone guard. The Marines had laid charges at the walls, the soil leaping up behind the vallum as they were detonated, and though the fortified structure had held, the gate below the portcullis had been blown off its hinges. The women defending it were being cut apart, just as Jackie had been.

We took shelter for a few moments behind a barricade in the keep, and, looking around the cordon, I saw smoke blowing across the entrance, obscuring the bodies on either side of the gateway, and those firing through the breach. Above us hovered a military Lynx. The blades of its propeller bent the air around us. I had heard it coming above the noise of gunfire and shouting, and watched it rise up above the ramparts like a great prehistoric bird, horned and reptilian. It was so close I could make out the pilot’s face. I had not seen anything put into the sky for almost ten years. But they had done it for her. In the end, they had been forced to.

I nodded to Megan and she knelt up above the barrier and let off a round. I dragged Jackie towards the barracks. Her hand unfastened from the bone and came away from her stomach. It was gloved in red. I folded the remnants of her jacket off the pulped flesh and examined the wound. It was massive and stippled with black fragments. I glanced up at Megan. She was crouched down behind the barricade again, reloading. Her expression was blank. She was fifteen years old.

Jackie looked up at me and gestured for me to lean down so that I could hear. Her dark hair leapt about her face in the shearing gusts. I could see the light going out of her eyes. The flame in them was guttering and their blue pigment was becoming dull and solid. She was cold, and pale. As she lay in the castle grounds, swallowing down her blood and fighting still, she gave me one final instruction. ‘Lie down,’ she said. ‘Hands behind your head. And take off your vest. Lie down and wait. It’s enough now. It’s enough. Someone has to live through this, and tell them about us. Tell them everything about us, Sister. Make them understand what we did and who we were. Make them see.’

*

This is my statement. Let it serve as a confession if one is still required. I was a willing participant in the siege on Rith, and the occupation of Authority headquarters. I led the patrol that bombed the clinic and I gave armed support to attacks on three other targets, including the refinery and the railway station. I do not know how many men I have killed.

We regretted the civilian casualties and civilian deaths that occurred in the first few weeks of the conflict, when residents of the quarters attacked the remaining Authority cruisers and were shot. We were unable to provide adequate support. Their bravery will not be forgotten, and others will follow them. This is just the beginning.

We took the town and held it for fifty-three days before the air corps and a regiment of ground forces were called back from overseas and deployed. We executed those monitors that were captured, and three doctors from the hospital, and we destroyed all official records for the Northern territories. There are no remaining carbon prints, or medical files, and the census had been wiped. You will not find out who I am. I have no status. No one does.

My name is Sister. I am second in council to the Carhullan Army. I do not recognise the jurisdiction of this government.

I’d like to thank Cantrell Jones for help with military research, and Philip Robinson for his environmental predictions. Thanks to Jane Kotapish, Valecia McDowell and Joanna Härmä for their conversations over the years.

Thanks also to Jacob Polley for reading several drafts of this novel, and for coming up the fell in bad weather. Thanks to Clare Conville for all her support, and to Lee Brackstone and Trevor Horwood for their editorial advice.

The Carhullan Army is a work of fiction. Character, events and place names are either products of the author’s imagination, or, if real, not portrayed with geographical and historical accuracy.

Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She received a BA from Aberystwyth University, Wales, and a MLitt in Creative Writing from St Andrews, Scotland. She is the author of Haweswater , which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize. In 2004, her second novel, The Electric Michelangelo , was short-listed for the Man Booker prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region), and the Prix Femina Etranger, and was long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Carhullan Army , was published in 2007, and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, and was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. Her fourth novel, How to Paint a Dead Man , was longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize.