Monstrous Regiment

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 Polly realize that probably no one else wanted the job, and 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 thinner rope that disappeared up into the darkness. The other one lit a couple of candles, whose only apparent role was to make the darkness more gloomy.
    “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. All the girls carried one somewhere, 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.
    The stone walls dropped past as the platform rose.
    “How thrilling!” trilled “Daphne.” “And this goes all the way up through your big castle, does it?”
    “Oh, no, miss. Gotta go up through the rock first, miss. Lots of old workings and everything before we get that high.”
    “Oh, I thought we were in the castle already.” Blouse gave Polly a worried look.
    “No, miss. There’s just the washhouse down there, ’cos of the water. Hah, it’s a climb and a half even to the lower cellars. Lucky for you there’s this el’vator, eh?”
    “Wonderful, Sergeant,” said Blouse, and allowed Daphne back. “How does it work?”
    “It’s ‘Corporal,’ miss,” said the string-puller, touching his forelock. “It’s pulled up and down by pris’ners in a treadmill, miss.”
    “Oh, how horrid!”
    “Oh no, miss, it’s quite humane. Er…if you’re free after work, er, I could take you up and show you the mechanism…”
    “That would be lovely, Sergeant!”
    Polly put her hand over her eyes. Daphne was a disgrace to womanhood.
    The elevator rumbled upwards, quite slowly. Mostly they passed raw rock, but sometimes there were ancient gratings or areas of masonry, suggestive of tunnels long ago blocked—
    There was a jerk, and the platform stopped moving. One of the soldiers swore under his breath, but the corporal said, “Don’t be afraid, ladies. This often happens.”
    “Why should we be afraid?” said Polly.
    “Well, because we’re hanging by a rope a hundred feet up the shaft and the lifting machinery’s thrown a cog.”
    “Again,” said the other soldier. “Nothing works properly here.”
    “Sounds like a good reason to me,” said Igorina.
    “How long will it take to repair?” said Tonker.
    “Hah! Last time it happened we were stuck for an hour!”
    Too long, Polly thought. Too many things could happen. She looked up through the beams in the roof. The square of daylight was a long way up.
    “We can’t wait,” she said.
    “Oh dear, who will save us?” Blouse quavered.
    “We’ll have to find a way to pass the time, eh?” said one of the guards. Polly sighed. That was one of those phrases, like “Well, lookee what we have here!,” that meant things were only going to get a lot worse.
    “We know how it is, ladies,” the guard went on. “Your menfolk away and all. It’s as bad for us, too. I can’t remember when I last kissed my wife.”
    “And I can’t remember when I last kissed his wife, either,” said the other guard.
    Tonker jumped up, caught a beam, and chinned herself on the top of the box. The elevator shook and, somewhere, a piece of rock dislodged and crashed down the shaft.
    “Hey, you can’t do that!” said the corporal.
    “Where does it say?” said Tonker. “Polly, there’s one of those filled-in tunnels here, only most of the stones have been knocked out. We could get in easily.”
    “You can’t get out! We’ll get into trouble!” said the corporal.
    Polly pulled his