Inexplicable Incidents: Day 10

Word Count: 60,055

Summary of Events:

Étienne discovered the troublesome cavaliers who'd resented his interim command were trying to do something to him and, restraining one of them, sent a trustworthy cavalier to get help, only for that cavalier to be murdered by the troublesome cavaliers. Aline reeled over the news that the smith, his family and — at present — fifty other people had died in the fire, contrary to what she had hoped. The troublesome cavaliers were shipped off for trial by Duc Louis and Étienne was taken to Commandant Bouchard's tent to talk about his distress over his part in the trustworthy cavalier's death . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

“You do understand things happen by accident, do you not?” Commandant Bouchard asked.

“Oui,” Étienne replied.

“You did not know that they were lurking outside the tent waiting to kill you,” Commandant Bouchard said. “Why do you blame yourself?”

“I knew they were mad at me, that they didn’t like me,” Étienne replied. “I should have expected it.”

“Had they attempted such a thing before?” Commandant Bouchard asked.

“Non,” Étienne replied.

“Then I see no reason why you should have,” Commandant Bouchard replied.

Étienne wanted to argue, but he had no argument, so he just stared at the rug just ahead of Commandant Bouchard’s well-worn brown leather boots.

“If you want to become a Commandant in this army you need to be able to handle this,” Commandant Bouchard said.

Étienne looked up at Commandant Bouchard. “What do you mean?”

“To be a Commandant is to send men to their death,” Commandant Bouchard replied, a serious and seemingly paternal look to his face. “We give orders to attack, to kill, fully knowing that the same order has been given on the other side, and as a result our men, too, are at risk of being killed. We cannot burden ourselves with the guilt of it, even though we are responsible, in part, for their deaths, as we ordered them to go where they could get killed.”

Silently Étienne gazed at Commandant Bouchard, whose facial expression was grave, and yet also looked as if he were haunted, seeing some sort of spectre in his mind’s eye.

“You, and your comrades, as well as I, we swore to defend our land from those who would take it from us, and would defile it, to uphold the Holy Cause, even if it cost us our lives,” Commandant Bouchard said. “We chose to forsake safety, health, comfort, and even life, we swore to obey orders, even though we could possibly not succeed in carrying them out by virtue of our death at the hands of another. I do not know who will live or die after each battle, so I send all of them. If I could know who would die I would not send them, but I do not know, so I send them all.”

Distress came over Commandant Bouchard’s face and he raised a hand as if to shroud his face, or maybe hold it in place so that it wouldn’t crumple.

It had never occurred to Étienne that it could be hard to be a Commandant, but as he watched Commandant Bouchard struggle he began to think of all the bodies that they had removed from the battlefield and sent home in flag-draped coffins to families who would mourn the losses for months and years. Commandant Bouchard was, in a way, guilty of sending those men to their deaths, but since he hadn’t known they would die he couldn’t really be blamed.