Angels in the Gloom

To my father,

Henry Hulme,

scientific advisor to the admiralty,

World War II

. . . beyond that whisper

Going to look for angels in the gloom.—Siegfried Sassoon

CHAPTER

ONE

Joseph lay on his face in the ice-filmed mud. Earlier in the night a score of men had gone over the top in a raid on the German trenches. They had taken a couple of prisoners, but been hit by a hail of fire on the way back. They had scrambled over the parapet wounded, bleeding, and without Doughy Ward and Tucky Nunn.

“Oi think Doughy’s bought it,” Barshey Gee had said miserably, his face hollow-eyed in the brief glare of a star shell. “But Tucky was still aloive.”

There was no choice. Under a barrage from their own guns, three of them went to look for him. The noise of the heavy mortars was deafening, but when it eased, Joseph could hear the quick, sharper rattle of machine guns. As the flare died, he lifted his head to look again across the craters, the torn wire, and the few shattered tree stumps still left.

Something moved in the mud. Joseph crawled forward again as quickly as he could. The thin ice cracked under his weight but he could hear nothing over the guns. He must get to Tucky without sliding into any of the huge, water-filled holes. Men had drowned in them before now. He shuddered at the thought. At least they had not been gassed this week, so there were no deadly, choking fumes in the hollows.

Another flare went up and he lay still, then as it faded he moved forward as rapidly as he could, feeling his way to avoid the remnants of spent shells, the tangles of old wire and rusted weapons, the rotting bodies. As always, he had emergency first aid supplies with him, but he might need more than that. If he could carry Tucky back to the trench, there would be real medics there by now.

It was dark again. He stood up and, crouching low, ran forward. It was only a few yards to where he had seen the movement. He slithered and almost fell over him.

“Tucky!”

“Hello, Chaplain,” Tucky’s voice came out of the darkness, hoarse, ending in a cough.

“It’s all right, I’ve got you.” Joseph reached forward, grasped the rough khaki, and felt the weight of Tucky’s body. “Where are you hurt?”

“What are you doing out here?” There was a kind of desperate humor in Tucky’s voice as he tried to mask his pain. Another flare went up, briefly illuminating his snub-nosed face and the bloody wound in his shoulder.

“Just passing,” Joseph replied, his own voice shaking a little. “Where else are you hit?” He dreaded the answer. If it were only the shoulder, Tucky would have made his way back.

“Moi leg, Oi think,” came the reply. “Tell you the truth, Oi can’t feel much. So damn cold. Don’t seem they have summers here. ’Member summers at home, Chaplain? Girls all . . .” The rest of what he said was drowned in another roar of gunfire.

Joseph’s heart sank. He had seen too many die, young men he had known most of their lives, including Tucky’s elder brother Bibby.

“I’ll get you back,” he said to Tucky. “Once you’re warmer you’ll probably feel it like hell. Come on.” He bent and half lifted Tucky onto his back. Hearing a cry of pain as he inadvertently touched the wound, he apologized.

“It’s all roight, Chaplain,” Tucky gasped, gagging as the pain dizzied him. “It hurts, but not too much. Oi’ll be better soon.”

Bent double, staggering under Tucky’s weight, and trying to keep low so as not to make a target, Joseph floundered back toward the line of the trenches. Twice he slipped and fell, apologizing automatically, aware that he was banging and jolting the injured man.

He saw the parapet ahead of him, not more than a dozen yards away. He was sodden with mud and water up to the waist. His breath froze in the air and he was so cold he could hardly feel his legs.

“Nearly there,” he told Tucky, although his words were lost in another barrage of shells. One exploded close to him, hurling him forward flat onto the ground. He felt a sickening pain in his left side, and then nothing.

He opened his eyes with a headache so blinding it all but obliterated his awareness that the whole of his left side hurt. There seemed to be other people around him. He could hear voices. It took him several moments to recognize that he was staring up at the ceiling of the field hospital. He must have been hit. What had happened to Tucky?

He tried to speak, but he was not sure if he actually made any sound or if the words were only in his head. No one came to him. He seemed to have no strength to move. The pain was appalling. It consumed his whole body, almost taking his breath away. What had happened to him? He had seen men injured, lots of them, their arms and legs blown off, bodies ripped open. He had held them, talked to them as they died, trying simply to be there so they were not alone. Sometimes that was all he could do.

He could not take up arms—he was a chaplain—but the night before the war had been declared, he had promised himself he would be there with the men, endure with them whatever happened.

Matthew and Judith, his brother and younger sister, had sat at home with him in St. Giles, watching the darkness gather over the fields, and spoken quietly of the future. Matthew would stay in the Secret Intelligence Service, Judith would go to the front to do what she could, probably to drive ambulances, Joseph would be a chaplain. But he had sworn that never again would he allow himself to care about anything so much that he could be crippled by loss, as he had been by Eleanor’s death, and the baby’s. Naturally his married sister, Hannah, would stay at home. Her husband, Archie, was at sea, and she had three children to care for.

There was someone leaning over him, a man with fair hair and a tired, serious face. He had blood on his hands and clothes. “Captain Reavley?”

Joseph tried to answer but all he could manage was a croak.

“My name’s Cavan,” the man went on. “I’m the surgeon here. You’ve got a badly broken left arm. You caught a pretty big piece of shrapnel by the look of it, and you’ve lost rather a lot of blood from the wound in your leg, but you should be all right. You’ll keep the arm, but I’m afraid it is definitely a Blighty one.”

Joseph knew what that meant: an injury bad enough to be sent home.

“Tucky?” The words came at last, in a whisper. “Tucky Nunn?”

“Bad, but I expect he’ll make it,” Cavan answered. “Probably going home with you. Now we’ve got to do something about this arm. It’s going to hurt, but I’ll do my best, and we’ll repack that wound in your leg.”

Joseph knew dimly that the doctor had no time to say more. There were too many other men waiting, perhaps injured more seriously than he.

Cavan was right; the surgery was painful. Afterward, all Joseph did was swim in and out of consciousness. Everything seemed either the scarlet of pain or the infinitely better black of oblivion.

He was half aware of being lifted and carried, of voices around him, and then a few very clear moments when he saw Judith. She was bending over him, her face pale and grave, and he realized with surprise how frightened she was. He must look pretty bad. He tried to smile. He had no idea from the tears in her eyes if he succeeded or not. Then he drifted away again.

He woke up every so often. Sometimes he lay staring at the ceiling, wanting to scream from the pain that coursed through him till he thought he could not bear it, but one did not do that. Other men, with worse injuries, did not. There were nurses around him, footsteps, voices, hands holding him up, making him drink something that made him gag. People spoke to him gently; there was a woman’s voice, encouraging, but too busy for pity.

He felt helpless, but it was a relief not to be responsible for anyone’s pain except his own.

He was hot and shivering, the sweat trickling down his body, when they finally put him on the train. The rattle and jolt of it was dreadful, and he wanted to shout at the people who said how lucky he was to have “a Blighty one” that he would rather they left him alone where he was. It must still be March and the weather was erratic. Would the winds make the Channel crossing rough? He was too ill to cope with seasickness as well! He could not even turn over.

In the event he remembered very little of it, or of the train journey afterward. When he finally woke up to some kind of clarity, he was lying in a clean bed in a hospital ward. The sun shone through the windows, making bright, warm splashes on the wooden floor, and there were bedclothes around him. Clean sheets? He could feel the smoothness against his chin and smell the cotton. He heard a broad Cambridgeshire voice in the distance and found himself smiling. He was in England, and it was spring.

He kept his eyes open, afraid that if he closed them it would all disappear and he would be back in the mud again. A slight woman, perhaps in her fifties, bent over him and helped him up to drink a cup of tea. It was hot, and made with clean water, not the stale dregs he was used to. The woman was dressed in a starched white uniform. She told him her name was Gwen Neave. He looked at her hands around the cup as she held it to his lips. They were strong and sunburned.

During the next two or three days and nights she seemed to be there every time he needed her, always understanding what would ease him a little: the bed remade, pillows turned and plumped up, fresh water to drink, a cold cloth on his brow. She changed the dressings on the huge, raw wounds in his arm and leg without any expression on her face except a tightening of her lips when she knew it must be hurting him. She talked about the weather, the lengthening days, the first daffodils flowering bright yellow. She told him once, very briefly, that she had two sons in the navy, but nothing more, no mention of where they were or how she feared for them amid all the losses at sea. He admired her for that.

It was she who was there at the worst times in the small hours of the morning when he was racked with pain, biting his lips so he did not cry out. He thought of other men’s pain, younger than he, who had barely tasted life and were already robbed of it. He had no strength left to fight; he only wanted to escape to a place where the pain stopped.

“It will get better,” she promised him, her voice little more than a whisper so as not to disturb the men in the other beds.

He did not answer. The words meant nothing. Pain, helplessness, and the knowledge of death were the only realities.

“Do you want to give up?” she asked. He saw the smile in her eyes. “We all do, sometimes,” she went on. “Not many actually do, and you can’t. You’re the chaplain. You chose to pick up the cross, and now and again to help other people carry theirs. If somebody told you it wouldn’t be heavy, they were lying.”

Nobody had told him, he knew that. Others had survived worse than this. Just hang on.

It was a long, slow night. Other fears crowded his mind—of helplessness, endless nights when he was awake while the rest of the world slept. He would be dependent, with somebody else always having to look after him, too kind to say he was a burden, but growing to hate him for it. He did not drift into sleep until dawn. The next night was almost as bad.

“What day is it?” he asked, when finally it was light again.

“Twelfth of March,” the young nurse replied. “Nineteen sixteen,” she added with a smile. “Just in case you’ve forgotten. You’ve been here five days already.”

It was the morning after that when the same nurse told him cheerfully that he had a visitor. She whisked away the remnants of his breakfast and tidied him up quite unnecessarily, and a moment later he saw Matthew walking down the ward between the other beds. He looked tired and pale. His thick, fair hair was not quite short enough for the army, and he was wearing a Harris tweed jacket over an ordinary cotton shirt. He stopped by the bed. “You look awful,” he said with a smile. “But better than last time.”

Joseph blinked. “Last time? Last time I was home I was fine.”

“Last time I was here you weren’t even conscious,” Matthew replied ruefully. “I was very disappointed. I couldn’t even shout at you for being a fool. It’s the sort of thing Mother would have done.” His voice caught a little. “Tell you she’s so proud of you she’d burst, and then send you to bed with no dinner for frightening the life out of her.”

He was right. Were Alys Reavley still alive that is just what she would have done, then later send Mrs. Appleton upstairs with pudding on a tray, as if she were sneaking it up and Alys did not know. In one sentence Matthew had summed up everything that home meant, and the impossible loss of their parents, murdered at the end of June two years ago, the same day the Archduke and Duchess were assassinated in Sarajevo. The loss washed over Joseph again in stinging grief, and for a moment his throat ached too fiercely to reply.

Matthew blinked. “Actually for this she’d have had you down again, for hot pie and cream,” he said a little huskily. He fished in his jacket pocket and brought out something in his hand. It was a small case, of the sort in which good watches are presented. He opened it and held it up. It contained a silver cross on a purple and white ribbon.

“Military Cross,” he said, as if Joseph might not recognize it. “Kitchener would have given it to you himself—it’s good for morale, especially in hospitals. But he’s pretty occupied at the moment, so he let me bring it.”

It was the highest award given to officers for consistent acts of courage over a period of time.

“I’ve got the citation,” Matthew went on; he was smiling now, his eyes bright with pride. He took an envelope out, opened it up, and laid it on the table beside Joseph, then put the cross on top of it, still in its case. “For all the men you rescued and carried back from no-man’s-land.” He gave a tiny shrug. “It mentions Eldon Prentice,” he added quietly. “Actually there’s a posthumous M.C. for Sam Wetherall, too.” His voice dropped even lower. “I’m sorry, Joe.”

Joseph wanted to answer, but the words would not come. He remembered the death of war correspondent Eldon Prentice as if it had been a month ago, not a year. He could still taste the anger, everyone else’s, not just his own. The night Charlie Gee was wounded, Joseph could have killed Prentice himself. And he had never stopped missing Sam. He had never told Matthew the truth about that. “Thank you,” he said simply. There was no need for elaboration.

Matthew understood this as well. “I heard Tucky Nunn’s not doing too badly. He’ll be home for a while, but he’ll get better. In the end his wounds weren’t as severe as yours.”

Joseph nodded. “Doughy Ward got it,” he said quietly. “I’ll have to go and see his family, when I can. They’ll just have the five girls now. It will be a hardship for the old man. There’ll be no one to take over the bakery.”

“Maybe Mary will,” Matthew suggested. “She was always the equal of her father at the baking, and more imaginative. Susie could keep the books.” He sighed. “I know that’s not what matters. How’s everyone else? The people I know?”

Joseph smiled ruefully. “Much the same, or trying to be. Whoopy Teversham is still a clown, got a face like India rubber.”

Matthew rolled his eyes. “Last time I was here the Nunns and the Tevershams were still not speaking to each other.”

“Cully Teversham and Snowy Nunn are like brothers in the trenches,” Joseph said with a sudden ache in his throat, remembering them sitting together all night in the bitter cold, telling stories to keep up their courage, the tales getting wilder with each one. Two men half a mile away had frozen to death that night. They found their bodies when they brought the rations up the supply trenches the next morning.

Matthew said nothing.

“Thanks for the phonograph records.” Joseph changed the subject abruptly. “Especially the Caruso one. Was it really popular?”

“Of course it was,” Matthew said indignantly. “That, and Al Jolson singing ‘Where did Robinson Crusoe Go with Friday on Saturday Night?’ ”

They both laughed, and Joseph told him about other men from the village, but he spoke only of the pranks, the rivalries, the concert parties, and letters from home. He said nothing about the terrible injuries—Plugger Arnold dying of gangrene, or handsome Arthur Butterfield with his wavy hair, drowned in a bomb crater in no-man’s-land. He did not talk about the gas either, or how many men had been caught on the wire and hung there all night, riddled with shot, and no one could get to them.

Joseph spoke of friendship, the kind of trust where everything is shared. He saw, as he had many times before, the guilt in Matthew’s face, that he, a healthy young man, should be doing a job here at home when almost every other man he knew was either at the front or at sea. Few people realized how important his job was. Without good intelligence, quickly gathered and correctly interpreted, tens of thousands more lives would be lost. There was no glory at the end; in fact, seldom was there any recognition at all.

Joseph was simply grateful that his brother was safe. He did not lie awake at night, cold and sick with fear for him, or scan each new casualty list with his stomach churning. He knew that Matthew was responsible specifically for information concerning America, and the likelihood of their joining the Allies, as opposed to their present neutrality. He could imagine his duties might involve the decoding and interpretation of letters, telegrams, and other messages. “How’s Hannah?” he asked.

“Fine. I expect they’ll let her in to see you this afternoon or tomorrow. Not that there’s been much to see, until now. You’ve been out of it most of the time.” The anxiety returned to Matthew’s eyes.

“There are others a lot worse,” Joseph said truthfully. “I’ve a cracking headache, but nothing that won’t heal.”

Matthew’s eyes flickered to Joseph’s arm, which was heavily bandaged, and then the bedclothes carefully placed so as not to weigh on the wound in his leg. “You’ll be home a while,” he observed. His voice was thick. They both knew Joseph was fortunate not to have lost the arm. Perhaps, had Cavan been less skilled, he would have.

“Any other news?” Joseph asked. He said it quite lightly, but there was still a change in his tone, and Matthew heard it immediately. He knew what the question really meant: Was he any closer to finding the identity of the Peacemaker? That was the name they had given to the man behind the plot their father had discovered, and which had led to his murder and that of their mother.

It was Joseph who had learned, to his enduring grief, who it was who had physically caused the fatal car crash. He and Matthew together had found the treaty, unsigned as yet by the king, on the day before Britain declared war. But the man with the passion and the intellect behind it still eluded them. Their compulsion to find him was partly born out of a hunger for revenge for the deaths of John and Alys Reavley. Others, too, whom they’d cared for, had died—used, crushed, then thrown away by the Peacemaker in pursuit of his cause. They also needed to stop him before he achieved the devastating ruin he planned.

Matthew pushed his hands into his pockets, lifting his shoulders in the slightest shrug. “I haven’t found anything helpful,” he answered. “We know it isn’t Chetwin. I followed everything else we had, but in the end it led nowhere.” His lips tightened a fraction, and there was a moment’s defeat in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where else to look. I’ve been pretty busy trying to prevent the sabotage of munitions across the Atlantic. We’re desperate for supplies. The Germans are advancing along the Somme. We’ve over a million men wounded or dead. We lose ships to the U-boats pretty well every week. If it goes on like this another year, we’ll start to know real hunger, not just shortages but actual starvation. God! If we could only get America in on our side, we’d have men, guns, food!” He stopped abruptly, the light going out of his face. “But Wilson’s still dithering around like an old maid being asked to . . .”

Joseph smiled.

Matthew shrugged. “I suppose he has to,” he said resignedly. “If he brings them in too fast, he could lose his own election in the autumn, and what use would that be!”

“I know,” Joseph agreed. “Maybe while I’m at home I’ll have time to think about the Peacemaker a bit. There might be other people we haven’t considered.” He had in mind Aidan Thyer, his old master at St. John’s, and he was startled how the idea hurt. It had to be someone they knew, which made it the ultimate betrayal. It was difficult to keep the hatred out of his voice. Perhaps Matthew would take it for pain. “What else is happening in London?” he asked aloud. “Any new shows worth seeing? What about the moving pictures? What about Chaplin? Has he done anything more?”

Matthew smiled broadly. “There’s some good Keystone stuff. ‘Fatty and Mabel Adrift,’ with Roscoe Arbuckle and Mabel Normand, and a great dog called Luke. Or ‘He Did and He Didn’t,’ or ‘Love and Lobsters,’ if you prefer. They all have alternative titles.” And he proceeded to outline some of the highlights.

Joseph was still laughing when Gwen Neave returned, clean sheets folded over her arm and a roll of bandages in her other hand. She smiled at Matthew, but there was no denying her authority when she told him it was time for him to leave.

Matthew bade Joseph goodbye briefly, as if they saw each other every day. Then he walked out with a remnant of his old, slight swagger.

“My brother,” Joseph said with a sense of pride that startled him. Suddenly he was filled with well-being, as if the pain had lessened, although actually it was just as grave.

Gwen Neave set down the sheets. “He said he was up from London,” she remarked without meeting his eyes. “We’ll change those dressings first, before I put on the clean sheets.”

The implicit rebuke in her voice hurt Joseph. He cared what she thought of his brother. He wanted to tell her how important Matthew’s work was so she did not think he was one of those who evaded service, the sort of young man to whom girls on street corners gave white feathers, the mark of the coward. It was the ugliest insult possible.

She slid her arm around him and put an extra pillow behind his back so she could reach the raw, open wound where the broken ends of the bone had torn through the flesh.

“He works in London,” he said, gasping as the pain shot through him in waves. He refused to look at the wound. He still needed to tell her about Matthew.

She was not interested. She dealt with the injured, the fighting men. She worked all day and often most of the night. No call on her care or her patience was too much, no clasp of the hand or silent listening too trivial.

“He can’t tell us what he does,” he went on. “It’s secret. Not everybody can wear a uniform. . . .” He stopped abruptly, afraid to say too much. The physical pain made him feel sick.

She gave him a quick smile, understanding what he was trying to do. “He’s obviously very fond of you,” she said. “So is the other gentleman, by all appearances. He was upset you weren’t well enough to see him.”

He was startled. “Other gentleman?”

Her lips tightened. “Did they not tell you? I’m sorry. We had an emergency that evening. Rather bad. I dare say they forgot. They wouldn’t do it on purpose. It . . . it was distressing.” Her face was bleak. He did not ask what had happened. It was too easy to guess.

“Who was he?” he asked instead. “The man who came?”

“A Mr. Shanley Corcoran,” she replied. “We assured him you were doing well.”

He smiled, and a little of the tension eased out of him. Corcoran had been his father’s closest friend and all of them had loved him as long as they could remember. Of course Corcoran would come, no matter how busy he was at the Scientific Establishment. Whatever he was working on would have to wait at least an hour or two when one of his own was ill.

She eased him back as gently as she could. “I see your brother brought you your medal. That’s very fine, Captain, very fine indeed. Your sister’ll be proud of you, too.”

A young man walked briskly along Marchmont Street in London, crossed behind a taxicab, and stepped up onto the curb at the far side. He had come down from Cambridge for this meeting, as he had done at irregular intervals over the last year, and he was not looking forward to it.

Full of high ideals, quite certain of what end he was working toward, and believing he knew what the personal cost would be, he had secured his place in the Scientific Establishment in Cambridgeshire. Now it was much more complicated. There were people and emotions involved that he could not have foreseen.

This meeting would entail a certain degree of deception, at least by omission, and the young man was not looking forward to that. There were changes to his own plans of which he could say nothing at all. It would be intensely dangerous, and he strode along the footpath in the sun without any pleasure at all.

In the afternoon Hannah was allowed to come to the hospital. Joseph opened his eyes to see her standing at the end of the bed. For a moment he registered only her face with its soft lines, her eyes so like her mother’s, and the thick, fair brown hair. It was as if Alys were standing there. Then the pain in his body returned, and memory. Alys was dead.

“Joseph?” Hannah sounded uncertain. She was afraid he was too ill to be disturbed, perhaps even still in danger. Her face lit with relief when she saw him smile and she moved toward him. “How are you? Is there anything I can bring you?” She held a big bunch of daffodils from the garden, like cradled sunshine. He could smell them even above the hospital odors of carbolic, blood, washed linen, and the warmth of bodies.

“They’re beautiful,” he said, clearing his throat. “Thank you.”

She put them on the small table near him. “Do you want to sit up a little?” she asked, seeing him struggle to be more comfortable. In answer to her own question she helped him forward and plumped up the pillows, leaving him more upright. She was wearing a blouse and a blue linen skirt that ended only halfway down her calf, as the fashion was now. He did not like it as much as the longer, fuller, ground-sweeping skirts of recent years, but he could see that it was more practical. War changed a lot of things. She looked pretty, and she smelled of something warm and delicate, but he could also see the weariness in her face and around her eyes.

“How are the children?” he asked.

“They’re well.” Her words were simple and said with assurance, probably the answer she gave everyone, but the truth in her eyes was far more complex.

“Tell me about them,” he pressed. “How is Tom doing at school? What is his ambition?”

A shadow crossed her face. She tried to make light of it. “At the moment, like most fourteen-year-old boys, he wants to join the war. He’s always following soldiers around when there’s anyone on leave in the village.” She gave a tiny laugh, barely a sound at all. “He’s afraid it will be over before he has a chance. Of course he has no real idea what it’s like.”

He wondered how much she knew. Her husband, Archie, was a commander in the Royal Navy. Such a life was probably beyond the imagination of anyone who lived on the land. He had only the dimmest idea himself. But he knew the life of a soldier intimately. “He’s too young,” he said aloud, knowing as he did so that there were boys, even on the front lines, who were not much older. He had seen the bodies of one or two. But there was no need for Hannah to know that.

“Do you think it will be over by next year?” she asked.

“Or the one after,” he answered, with no idea if that were true.

She relaxed. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can bring you? Are they feeding you properly? It’s still quite easy to get most things, although that might change if the U-boats get any worse. There’s nothing much in the garden yet, it’s too early. And of course Albert’s not with us anymore, so it’s gone a bit wild.”

He heard a wealth of loss in her voice. At the front they tended to think everything at home was caught in a motionless amber just as they remembered it. Sometimes it was only the thread of memory linking that order of life to the madness of war that gave the fighting any purpose. Perhaps on the front they were as blind to life at home as the people at home were to the reality in the trenches? He had not really thought of that before.

He looked at his sister’s anxious face. “The food’s not bad at all,” he said at last. “Maybe they’re giving us the best. But when I heal a bit more, I’ll be home anyway.”

She smiled suddenly, alight with pleasure. “That’ll be wonderful. It’ll be quite a while before you can go back, I should think.” She was sorry for his wounds, but they kept him in England, safe and alive. She did not know where Archie was, nor Judith. No matter how busy she was during the day, there was still too much time alone when fear crowded in, and helplessness. She could only imagine, and wait.

Seeing her loneliness far more than she realized, he felt an intense tenderness for her. “Thank you,” he said with a depth that surprised him.

It happened sooner than he expected. More wounded arrived. His bed was needed and he was past immediate danger. Gwen Neave helped him to dress in trousers, with a shirt and jacket over one shoulder and around his bandaged arm. He was taken to the door in a wheelchair and, feeling unsteady, helped into the ambulance to be driven home to Selborne St. Giles. He was startled to find that he was exhausted by the time the doors were opened again. He was assisted out onto the gravel driveway where Hannah was waiting for him.

She held his arm as he negotiated the steps, leaning heavily on his crutch, the ambulance driver on his other side. He hardly had time to notice that the front garden was overgrown. The daffodils were bright; leaves were bursting open everywhere; the yellow forsythia was in bloom, uncut since last year; and there were clumps of primroses that should have been divided and spread.

The door opened and he saw Tom was kneeling on the floor in the hall, holding the dog by his collar as he wriggled and barked with excitement. Henry was a golden retriever, eternally enthusiastic, and his exuberance would have knocked Joseph off his feet.

Tom grinned a little uncertainly. “Hello, Uncle Joseph. I daren’t let him go, but he’s pleased to see you. How are you?”

“Getting better very quickly, thank you,” Joseph replied. He did not feel that was true, but he wanted it to be. He was light-headed and so weak it frightened him. It was an effort to stand, even with help.

Tom looked relieved, but he still hung on to Henry, who was lunging forward in eagerness to welcome Joseph.

The two younger children were at the top of the stairs, standing close together. Jenny was ten, fair, with brown eyes like her mother. Luke, seven, was as dark as Archie. They stared at Joseph almost without blinking. He wasn’t really Uncle Joseph anymore; he was a soldier, a real one. More than that, he was a hero. Both their mother and Mrs. Appleton had said so.

Joseph climbed the stairs, hesitating on every step, assisted by the driver. He spoke to Luke and Jenny as he passed, but briefly. He was longing to get back to bed again and lie down, so the familiar hall and stairs would stop swaying and he would not make a spectacle of himself by collapsing in front of everyone. It would be so embarrassing trying to get up again, and needing to be lifted.

Hannah helped him to undress, anxious and repeatedly fussing over him. She helped him into the bed, propped the crutch where he could reach it, then left. She returned a few minutes later with a cup of tea. He found it shook in his hand when he took it, and she had to hold it for him.

He thanked her and was glad when she left him alone. It was strange to be at home again in his own room with his books, pictures, and other belongings that reminded him so sharply and intrusively of the past. There were photographs of himself and Harry Beecher hiking in Northumberland. The memory and the loss of his late friend still hurt Joseph. There were also books and papers from his time as a professor of Bible studies at St. John’s, even of his youth before his marriage, when this house had been the center of life for all of them.

His parents were no longer here, but when he lay awake in the night with the light on to read, he heard Hannah’s footsteps on the landing. For an instant it was his mother’s face he expected around the door to check if he was all right.

“Sorry,” he apologized before she could ask. “My days and nights are a bit muddled.” It was pain that was keeping him awake, but there was nothing she could do to help it, so there was no purpose in telling her. She looked tired, and, with her hair loose, younger than she did in the daytime. She was far more like her mother than Judith was, not only in appearance but in nature. All he could ever remember her wanting was to marry and have children, care for them, and be as good a part of the village as Alys had been—trusted, admired, and above all liked.

But everything was changing, moving much too quickly, as if a seventh wave had accumulated and drowned the shore.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she said anxiously. “Or cocoa? I’ve got milk. It might help you sleep.”

“Yes, please,” he said, as much for her as for himself. “Cocoa.”

She returned ten minutes later with two cups on a tray, and sat in the chair beside the bed sipping her own, having assured herself that he could manage his.

He started speaking to fill the silence. “How is Mr. Arnold?”

Her face pinched a little. “He took Plugger’s death pretty hard.” He was a widower, but she knew Joseph would not have forgotten that. “He spends most of his time down at the forge doing odd jobs, cleaning up, taking people’s horses back and forth. Mostly for the army, and to keep busy, I think.”

“And Mrs. Gee?” Memory of Charlie Gee’s death still twisted inside him. When he was well enough, he planned to go see these neighbors and friends. He knew how much it mattered to them to hear firsthand news. They wanted to ask questions, even if they were afraid of the answers. Mrs. Gee’s other son, Barshey, was still at the front, and most of the other young men she knew as well. Everyone had friends or relations in the trenches; most had lost people they loved, dead, injured, or simply missing. In some cases they would never know what had happened to them.

“Mrs. Gee is all right,” she answered him. “Well, as all right as anyone can be. She always has to make up her mind whether to go and look at the casualty lists or not. And she always does. Like the rest of us, I suppose. You go with your heart in your mouth, then when your family’s names are not there you feel almost sick with relief.”

She bit her lip, her cocoa forgotten. Her eyes searched his to see if he understood the depth of the fear, the moment of crippling aloneness. “And then you realize that other women next to you have lost someone, and you feel guilty. You see their faces white, eyes with all the light gone as if something inside them was dead, too. You know it could be your turn next time. You try to think of something to say, all the while knowing there isn’t anything. There’s a gulf between you that nothing can cross. You still have hope. They don’t. And you end up saying nothing at all. You just go home, until the next list.”

He looked at the misery in her eyes.

“Mother would have known something to say,” she added.

He knew that was what Hannah had been thinking. “No, she wouldn’t,” he answered. “Nobody does. We’ve never been here before.” He paused for a moment. “What about your friends? Maggie Fuller? Or Polly Andrews? Or the girl with the curly hair you used to go riding with?”

She smiled. “Tilda? Actually she married a fellow in the Royal Flying Corps last year. Molly Gee and Lilian Ward have gone to work the factories. Even the squire has only one servant left. Everybody seems to be doing something to do with the war: delivering the post, collecting clothes and blankets, putting together bags with mending supplies, and of course knitting . . . miles of it.” She sipped her cocoa. “I don’t know how many letters I’ve written as well, to men who have no families. And of course there’s always cleaning and maintenance to be done. And lots of women drive now—delivering things.”

He smiled, thinking of the vast organization of support, everyone striving to do what they could for the men they loved.

“I expect the squire will be to see you,” she went on, changing the subject completely, except that he, by his very position, was part of the old way of the village. He belonged to the past that she trusted. “He’s bound to be a bit tedious, but it’s his duty,” she added. “You’re a hero, and he’ll want to pay his respects and hear about your experiences.”

He debated it. He hated to talk about the men he knew. No words could draw for anyone else what their lives were like. And yet the people left at home who loved them had a need to know. Their imaginations filled in the emptiness, but it would still be immeasurably better than the truth.

“You don’t have to see him,” Hannah cut across his thoughts, but her voice was gentle. “Not yet, anyway.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll see him as soon as he feels like coming.”

She finished her cocoa and put down the cup. “Are you certain? I can put it off very nicely.”

“I’m sure you can,” he agreed. “I’ve seen you. Always a lady, but like Mother, you could freeze anyone at twenty paces if they took liberties.”

She smiled and lowered her eyes.

“If he comes now,” he went on, wishing he were able to lean over and touch her hand, “then I can be very brief, and get away with it.”

She looked up with a flash of understanding. “You don’t like to talk about it, do you? Archie doesn’t, either.” There was loneliness in that, knowing she was being excluded. She stood up. “Do you think you can go to sleep now? I’ll stay if you like.”

That was just what she must have said to her children time and time again, after a bad dream. He felt so very much at home now, as if he were back in the past: the house, Hannah, the books and habits, the best from childhood—all these were familiar and comfortable with use. There were ways in which they were threads that held the core of life together. “I’ll be fine,” he said quietly.

She went out, leaving the door ajar, in case he should want her. He felt like a child, and at least for a short while, just as safe. Surprisingly, he did fall asleep shortly after.

CHAPTER

TWO

Hannah remained at home the following day until the squire had visited in the morning. He seemed to be as relieved as Joseph was that he could just utter a few hearty platitudes and consider his duty done.

After he left, Hannah ascertained Mrs. Appleton was downstairs and would make lunch for Joseph. She herself needed to go into Cambridge and see the bank manager, and perform one or two other necessary errands.

She caught the train in the village and was there in half an hour. The city did not look so different to her—the change had been gradual—but she still noticed the absence of young men. There were a few errand boys, junior clerks, and delivery men, but in streets once crowded with the cheerful conversations of the young with the world of knowledge before them, there were hardly any students. She could not bear to think of how many of them were already dead in France, and how many more would be.

She went into the bank and asked to speak to the manager. She liked Mr. Atherton. He was very capable and she always left reassured.

After a few minutes, a smart young woman in a plain, dark blue suit came out of the side door. The blouse was crisp and tailored, and the skirt was rather full and reached only to the middle of her calf. No doubt the jacket would be long, and equally fashionable. She had also cut her hair short. She looked about Hannah’s age.

“Good morning, Mrs. MacAllister,” she said with a slight smile. “My name is Mae Darnley. How can I help you?” She offered a cool, lean hand, without any rings.

The gesture struck Hannah as odd, but she nonetheless shook the woman’s hand because it would have been rude not to. “I would like to speak to Mr. Atherton, please.” She had already said as much to the original clerk.

“I am afraid Mr. Atherton is no longer with us,” Miss Darnley replied. “He works with the War Office in London. I am the manager now. How can I assist you?”

Hannah was lost for words. Surely things could not have changed so much? This woman could not be more than thirty-five at the most. What could she know?

Miss Darnley was waiting.

Hannah realized she was being discourteous and other people were beginning to look at her. “Thank you,” she said awkwardly. “Then . . . then I suppose I had better confer with you.”

Hannah followed Miss Darnley into the office and even before she sat down she noticed how it had changed. The silver tantalus for whiskey that previously sat on the side table had disappeared. In its place was a vase of narcissi. She smelled their perfume immediately. The photographs were different. Instead of Mr. Atherton’s wife and sons there was an elderly couple in a silver frame, and a young man in uniform, so far framed only in polished wood. And all the ashtrays had gone, too. Apparently Miss Darnley did not approve of smoking in her office.

Hannah sat down while her mind raced through what she could ask this young woman, other than the advice she had come for, and would customarily entrust only to Mr. Atherton. Miss Darnley was clearly waiting expectantly, so Hannah cleared her throat and began. “I have a small amount of money left after my parents’ deaths. And continuing income from my house in Portsmouth, which my husband and I are renting out because I now live in the family home here.”

“I see. And you wish to invest it?”

“Yes. Mr. Atherton suggested certain bonds, but I need more advice before I make up my mind. I don’t wish to trouble my husband with the matter because he is seldom home, and only for a few days at a time.” Already she wished she had not told this smart young woman so much. Perhaps she should ask the family lawyer? He was always reliable.

“Will you require the money within a short time?” Miss Darnley asked. “Two or three years, for example? Or is it a long-term investment, perhaps with your children in mind, or your husband’s retirement?”

“Long-term,” Hannah replied.

“How much are we speaking of?”

“Just over a thousand pounds.”

“Considerable,” Miss Darnley acknowledged. “Houses are usually safer than bonds, which can be affected by a radical change in business, or the markets.” Her lips tightened. “But in wartime houses can be bombed, and of course insurance does not cover war—or acts of God.” She looked at Hannah very steadily. “Have you considered purchasing land, perhaps something that is presently agricultural, but on the outskirts of the city, where future development will take place? That is almost impossible to damage, except by flooding, and will increase in value as well as bringing you a small return now. There is also no upkeep required, as there is on rented houses.”

Hannah was astonished. Her mind raced through the advice for flaws, and found none. Could it truly be so simple? Why had Mr. Atherton not thought of it? “Really?” she said aloud.

“Give it a little consideration,” Miss Darnley suggested. “You could ask your brother. I believe he is at home. How is he progressing?”

“Well, thank you.” That was a lie. Joseph was still in a great deal of pain. She saw it in the strain in his face, the hollows around his eyes, and the slow way he moved, afraid of jolting fragile flesh, and the raw ends of bone as yet unknitted. Why did she exchange polite nothingness with this woman? Everybody admired those who did not complain, but the denials of truth cut them off from each other, making help impossible, to receive or to give. “No, actually he’s not,” she said suddenly. “He was very badly hurt, and it’s going to take ages, if he recovers completely at all.”

“I’m sorry,” Miss Darnley said with a sudden bleakness in her eyes.

Hannah wondered with a flash of perception if perhaps the man Miss Darnley had been going to marry had been killed, but it would be intrusive to ask. “Thank you for your advice,” she said instead. “It sounds excellent sense to me. I shall think about it, and make some inquiries as to what is available. I hope you will like it here at the bank.”

A quick enthusiastic smile lit Miss Darnley’s face. “Oh, yes! It’s a marvelous opportunity. It’s almost the only advantageous thing about the war—that women are getting the chance to do all kinds of jobs we were prevented from before. It’s my belief that one day we really will get the vote. And then the next thing will be to become part of the government.”

Hannah had meant her remark only as a pleasantry. “Yes, I suppose so,” she said confusedly. She thanked Miss Darnley again and took her leave. But outside in the street the sense of fear persisted. A horse and cart clattered past her, and an automobile went the other way. She had not realized until now quite what dignity and grace there had been in the certainties of life. It was not just the outer peace that everyone could see, but an inner quality as well, a gentleness that was utterly gone.

She almost bumped into the young man in flannel trousers and blazer coming the other way. She started to apologize, then realized it was Ben Morven, one of the scientists who worked for Shanley Corcoran in the Scientific Establishment. She had met him several times here in Cambridge or in the village. She liked his warmth, the way he laughed at some of the absurdities of life and yet treasured the old and simple things, just as she did.

“How are you?” he asked with a flicker of concern.

“I’m well,” she assured him. “Just a little off-balance to find my bank manager has been replaced by a young woman.” She smiled back at him ruefully.

“It’s only temporary,” he replied with a little twist of his mouth. “When the war’s over and the men come home, she’ll go back to whatever it was she did before. She’ll have two or three years at most.”

“Do you think so?” Then as she laughed she was ashamed at her eagerness, and found herself blushing.

They were walking side by side in the sun up King’s Parade. The traffic seemed to have eased. It was nice not to have to explain her feelings to him, even if it was a little embarrassing to be understood so well. She knew something about him already. He came from a small town on the coast of Lancashire, a scholarship boy from a very ordinary family. His mother had died when he was about Jenny’s age and there was a yearning in him for the light and the sweetness of the past. When she had mentioned the death of her own mother, she had seen the swift gentleness in his eyes. No words were necessary to tell him of the grief that still descended on her without warning, almost taking her breath away.

That evening Shanley Corcoran came to see Joseph. Hannah was delighted for her own sake as well. Since her father’s death the children had had no grandparents. Archie’s family lived in the far north and poor health prevented them from traveling. Corcoran told them marvelous stories and made the world seem like an exciting place, full of color and mystery. For Hannah, he was inextricably tied to the memories of family life, childhood, times when pain was brief and permanent loss unimaginable.

Corcoran arrived with a wave of enthusiasm, leaving the door wide open onto the clear evening outside. He was of average height and build, and remarkable for the vitality and intelligence in his face. His hair was white but still thick and his eyes were unusually dark and seemed to burn with energy.

He spoke to them all, asking after each, but he was too eager to see Joseph to wait for more than the briefest of answers. Hannah took him upstairs after a few moments.

Joseph felt his spirits lifting simply because Corcoran was there. Suddenly the idea of rest seemed a waste of opportunity. He wished to be well again and do something. When Corcoran asked him how he was, he replied drily, “It holds me up a bit.”

Corcoran laughed; it was a bright, infectious sound. He sat down on the chair beside the bed. “Doesn’t stop you talking, anyway,” he observed. “It’ll be good for Hannah to have you here, at least for a while. As soon as you’re on your feet you’ll have to come for dinner. Orla would love to see you. She’ll drive over and fetch you. I’m so busy these days I practically have to be delirious with fever before they’ll let me off.”

“I thought you were the head of the Establishment?” Joseph raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, I am! They are my own inner demons that drive me,” Corcoran admitted, then for an instant he was deeply serious. “We’ve got marvelous work going on, Joseph. I can’t tell you details, of course, but what we are creating could change everything. Win the war for us. And soon. So help me God, it’ll have to be soon, the way it’s going at sea. Our losses are appalling.” He spread his hands. “But enough of that now. I imagine you know all you want to already. I’ve seen Matthew once or twice since you were last home. And Judith—” His eyes were bright and tender. “Your father would be so proud of her, driving an ambulance on the Western Front! How times have changed, and people.”

Joseph smiled back. John Reavley would have been passionately proud of his younger daughter, and he would probably even have said so. He would also have feared for her, as Joseph did, while assuring Alys that she was in no danger. Desperately as he missed his mother, he was glad she did not have to endure this.

Corcoran was staring at him, his face puckered. “Are you all right, Joseph? Are you feeling worse? Am I keeping you up? Please be honest. . . .”

“No, of course not,” Joseph said quickly. “I’m sorry, I was just thinking of some of the things Judith has seen—and experienced. She’s a very different woman from the girl who used to tear around the lanes here in her Model T, scaring the sheep half silly.”

Corcoran laughed. “Do you remember her at our Whitsun picnics?” he said with light in his face. “I don’t think she was more than five or six years old when we had our first. I’ve never seen a little girl run as she did.”

Corcoran and his wife, Orla, had had no children. Joseph had caught the sadness in his face, but only for moments, and it never clouded Corcoran’s joy in his friend’s family, nor stinted his generosity of praise and willingness to share the successes and the failures of their lives.

“And the time she decided to show us the cancan, and did a cartwheel that ended in the river!” Corcoran was laughing as he said it. “Matthew had to pull her out, and what a sight she was! Soaked to the skin, poor girl, and looking like a piece of water-weed herself.”

“That was only seven years ago,” Joseph reminded him. “It seems like another world now. I remember that day vividly. We had fresh salmon with lettuce and cucumber, and egg and cress sandwiches, and apple charlotte for pudding. It was too early for berries.” There was regret when he said that. He loved raspberries. He could never pass the bushes in the garden when they were in fruit without taking a few.

The mood changed suddenly. Both were returned to the present. They were lucky: safe and whole, and with people they loved. But even though Joseph considered how warm he was, it was as if the cold of the trenches were only beyond the door to the landing.

“We’ll win,” Corcoran said, leaning forward with sudden fierceness. “We have the science, Joseph, I swear to you. We are working on an entirely new invention, something no one else has even thought of. And when we’ve solved a few remaining problems, it will revolutionize the war at sea. U-boats will cease to be a threat. Germany won’t strangle us. The shoe will be on the other foot; we shall destroy them.” His eyes were dark and brilliant with the knowledge of what could be, and the passion to bring it about. It was a kind of pride, but the love of it robbed him of all arrogance. “It’s beautiful, Joseph. The concept is as simple and as elegant as mathematics; it’s just the last few details of practicality we have to iron out. It will make history!”

He reached across and put his hand on Joseph’s. “But don’t whisper of it to anyone, not even Hannah. I know she worries herself ill over Archie, like every woman in England who has brothers, husband, or sons at sea—but she can’t know yet.”

Joseph felt a surge of hope and found himself smiling widely. “Of course I won’t tell her. That should be your privilege anyway.”

“To be able to tell her will be one of the greatest rewards of all. But I’m glad you will be home with her for a while. Take good care of yourself. Allow yourself to mend slowly. Build up your strength again. You’ve done such a lot already, you deserve a little time to see the spring.”

Ten minutes later, as Corcoran bade him goodbye, Joseph felt there was a new warmth in the room, an easing of pain. Instead of going back to sleep, or trying to read, he contemplated the reality of being at home for the blossoming of the year. He would see the lambs and calves, the first leaves on the trees, the hedgerows filled with flowers, and all of it untrampled by marching feet, far from gunfire—with nothing broken, poisoned, or burned.

He thought quite suddenly of Isobel Hughes, to whom he had been obliged as chaplain to write and inform her of her husband’s death. She had written back, thanking him for his kindness. A correspondence had developed, only a letter once a month or so. Although they had never met, Joseph was able to convey his feelings of weariness—and his guilt that he could do so little to help. She, in turn, did not make futile suggestions, but gave him accounts of the village in Wales where she lived, providing little stories of gossip, even the occasional joke. It brought him a remembrance again of the sanity of village life where quarrels over a piece of land or a churn of milk still mattered, where people danced and courted, made silly mistakes and gave generous forgiveness.

Should he write and tell her that he had been wounded and was at home for a while? Would she care or worry if she did not hear from him? Or would he be presuming on her kindness? He liked her very much. There was a gentleness and wry honesty in her letters he found himself thinking of more often than he would care to tell her.

In the end he asked Hannah for pen and paper and wrote a brief letter. After she had posted it, he wondered if he had been too terse, and rather silly to think Isobel would be concerned anyway.

He thought of the dugout where he had slept and where most of his belongings were, the books he loved best, and the portrait of Dante. That was where he wrote the almost daily letters he had to, to tell of a death, or a serious injury . . . presumably someone had done that for him, to tell Hannah? He had not thought of it until now. It would have been one of the easy ones to write, because he was still alive.

Who was doing it now that he was not there? Would they have got another chaplain? But he would not know the men, or their families! He would not know the rivalries, the debts of kindness, the weaknesses, and the strengths. He himself should be there! But not yet. He still had time to watch the slow spring at least begin.

The next day he got up for a little while. He knew if he didn’t, he would begin to lose the use of his muscles. The fever was gone; it was just a matter of his wounds healing and his gaining strength again.

It also meant he was well enough to receive visitors outside the family. The squire was already dealt with; however, the local minister was not, and he arrived in the middle of the afternoon. Hannah showed him in to the sitting room where Joseph was sitting quietly, the dog at his feet, tail thumping on the floor now and then as Joseph spoke to him. Hannah shot them both a quick glance of apology.

Hallam Kerr, a man in his forties, was of medium height and build with straight hair parted in the middle. His manner was full of enthusiasm, rather like a school sports master at the beginning of a match, but there were lines of anxiety in his face and something faintly dated in his dress.

“Ah! Captain Reavley! Congratulations!” He thrust out his hand, then as if feeling that Joseph might attempt to get up, he snatched it back again. “Please, please don’t stand, my dear fellow. I simply came to see if there is anything I can do for you. And of course to say how immensely proud we all are. It’s superb to have a holder of the Military Cross in the village—and for the church as a whole! Shows that we men of God are fighters, too, what?”

Joseph’s heart sank. There was an eagerness in the man’s eyes as if the war were all somehow magnificent. That was the moment Joseph realized how alien he felt here at home. What could he say to this man without betraying all that was true? “Well . . . I suppose you could put it like that. . . .” he began.

“Very modest,” Kerr said. “I’m proud to meet you, Captain.” He sat in the chair opposite Joseph’s, leaning forward earnestly. “I envy you. It must be superb to be part of such a fine, brave body of men—helping, encouraging, keeping the word of God alive among them.”

Joseph remembered the young men with lost limbs, lost sight, terrified, bleeding to death. Their conduct was heroic, certainly; it took the ultimate courage, going into the darkness alone. But there was nothing glorious in the circumstances. He was choked with the desire to weep just at the overwhelming return of memory. He looked at Kerr’s idiotic face and wanted to run away. He had no desire to be cruel. The man could not help his blinding ignorance. He might in his own way be doing his best, but his every eager word was an insult to the reality of pain.

“I wish I could have gone,” Kerr continued. “Too old,” he said ruefully. “And health not up to it. Damn shame.”

“There’ll be plenty of people in hospital you can help,” Joseph pointed out, then instantly wished he had not. The last thing on earth crippled men wanted was platitudes about God or the nobility of sacrifice.

The light went out of Kerr’s face. “Yes, I realize that, of course,” he said awkwardly. “But that’s not the same as being with our boys in action, braving the gunfire and standing by them in their hour of peril.”

Joseph thought of real fear and its pathetic indignity, those who wept, or soiled themselves with terror. They desperately needed compassion and the willingness to forget as if it had never happened, the passionate, driving urgency to love, to reach out a hand in the bitterness of extremity, and never, ever let go. These easy words were a denial of honesty.

“We’re bored most of the time,” he said flatly. “And tired, and cold and fed up with the mud and the lice. The whole trench network is infested with rats, hundreds of thousands of them, as big as cats. They eat the dead.” He saw Kerr blanch and recoil, and it satisfied something of the anger inside him. “We get used to them,” he said a fraction more gently. “Believe me, you’re needed here as well. And there will be plenty of widows to comfort who will require all your strength.”

“Well, yes, I suppose that is true,” Kerr admitted. “There is need for great faith, great faith indeed. And if there is anything I can do for you, please let Mrs. MacAllister know.” He looked sideways, as if Hannah had been standing in the doorway.

Joseph was ashamed of himself now for having been so crushing. The man spoke from ignorance, not ill will. He wanted to help. It was not his fault he did not know how. “It was very good of you to come by,” he said. “You must have a lot to do with so many men away. I don’t suppose you even have a curate, do you?”

Kerr’s expression lightened. “No, no, I don’t. Poor fellow felt obliged to go and do his duty. Went to the East End of London, actually, where they had no one. Had a game leg, no good for the army.” He rose to his feet. “I don’t want to tire you. I’m sure you need all the rest you can get—to grow strong again and go back into the fray, what?”

“Yes, I expect so,” Joseph agreed. What else could he do?

After Kerr had departed, Hannah came into the room. “What did you say to him?” she demanded. “The poor man looked even more lost than usual.”

“I’m sorry,” Joseph apologized. He drew in his breath to explain to her, then realized that he couldn’t. She knew no more of the reality than Kerr did, and it would be unfair to try to force her to see it. She had her own burdens, and they were sufficient. He smiled at her warmly. “I’ll be nicer to him next time, I promise.”

“Don’t push him into the water, Joe. He can’t swim.”

He knew exactly what she meant. It was a touch of the old Hannah back again, from before the war, before the world changed, and youth had to grow wise and brave and die before its time. He hated the Peacemaker for the murders he had committed, and made other people commit, for the loss of John and Alys Reavley, and the betrayal of Sebastian. But he could understand the dream of avoiding war and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands across the battlefields of Europe, the ruin of a generation, the grief of millions. It was the price that choked him—the price in honor. Was betrayal ever right, even if it saved a million lives? Ten million?

Perhaps every one of them was loved as much by somebody as John and Alys Reavley had been by him.

He closed his eyes and drifted off into a half-sleep, aware of his arm throbbing, and his leg, and longing for the time he could turn on his side without pain.

CHAPTER

THREE

Calder Shearing looked up from his desk as Matthew Reavley came into his office. “How is your brother?” he asked.

“Lucky to keep his arm,” Matthew replied. “He’ll be several weeks before he’s fit to go back. Thank you, sir.”

“I suppose he will go back?” Shearing questioned him. He knew something of Joseph and had a deep respect for him rooted in his extraordinary actions a year ago.

“His conscience would crucify him if he didn’t.” Matthew sat down as Shearing indicated the chair.

Under his heavy, black brows, Shearing’s expression was bleak. “The sabotage is getting worse,” he said grimly, all pretense at courtesy abandoned. “How much longer before we can act?” There was an edge of desperation in his voice. “We’re being bled to death!”

“I know. . . .” Matthew began.

“Do you? The French are being massacred at Verdun. Last month the Seventy-second Division at Samogneux was reduced from twenty-six thousand men to ten thousand. The Russian Front is unspeakable. Sturmer, a creature of Rasputin’s, has replaced Goremykin as prime minister.” His face tightened. “Our people there estimate that a quarter of the entire working age population is dead, captured, or in the army. The harvest has failed and they are facing starvation. We are fighting in Italy, Turkey, the Balkans, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, and more than half of Africa.”

Matthew deemed it pointless to declare that they had finally succeeded in extricating themselves from the disaster of Gallipoli, and without losing a single man. The actual evacuation had been a military masterpiece, though nothing could make up for the fiasco of the attempted invasion that had cost the lives of over a quarter of a million men. On the worst days the reconnaissance aircraft had reported the sea red with blood.

Shearing was staring at him. His eyes were shadowed with exhaustion and a deep, corroding knowledge. His emotion dominated the austere room in which there was nothing of his home, his past, or the man he was outside these walls.

Matthew was compelled to offer all the brief information he could about his own specific task. “The fact that they are putting smoke bombs in the holds of the ships, in among the munitions, so the captains have no choice but to flood the holds, can be deduced easily enough; it doesn’t need any explanation,” he said. “To trace the money to pay for the bombs themselves and the agents who plant them, all the way from Berlin to America, needs several people. We can fabricate bank clerks, officials, and so on, suggest bribery and betrayal, a degree of carelessness, but it all has to be verifiable.”

“I know that!” Shearing snapped. “You’ve got men—do it!”

He was referring to Detta Hannassey, the Irish double agent the Germans were using to test whether their vital naval code had been broken. It was Matthew’s job to convince her, and them, that it had not. Otherwise they would change the code and Britain would lose one of the very few advantages it maintained. All communication from Berlin to their men in the neutral United States hung in the balance. “I am doing it. I can’t just lay it out in front of her. I have to wait until she asks, or something happens to make it natural to talk about it. I’ve got a story about someone turned from their side to ours, but I need a cover to make it believable.”

Shearing kept his impatience under control with a visible effort. “How long?”

“Three weeks,” Matthew estimated. “Two if I’m lucky. If I rush it, she’ll know exactly what I’m doing.”

Shearing’s face was pale.

“How is our status in Washington?” Matthew asked drily. He had little hope of change. Even rumor of a Japanese base in Baja California and all the violence and chaos in Mexico under Pancho Villa had made no real difference.

Anger and self-mockery lit Shearing’s eyes. “About equal with that of the Germans,” he said sourly. “President Wilson is still aspiring to be the arbiter of peace in Europe. Teach the Old World how it’s done.”

Matthew would have used an expletive had he not been in his superior’s office. “What will it take to make him change?”

“If I knew that, I’d damn well do it!” Shearing told him. “Work hard, Reavley. It can’t be long before they take the next step up and start actually sinking the munitions ships. It only takes an incendiary bomb instead of smoke.”

Matthew was cold. “Yes, sir, I know.”

The nightclub where Matthew had arranged to meet Detta was crowded with soldiers on leave. There was a hectic gaiety about them, as if it took all their energy of mind to absorb every sight and sound to remember in the days to come. Even the young women with them caught the mood—elegant, romantic, a little wild, as if they too knew that tonight was everything, and tomorrow might slip out of their hands.

There were only three musicians on the small platform: a pianist; a slender, wispy-haired man with a saxophone; and a girl of about twenty in a long, blue dress. She was singing a haunting lyric from one of the popular music hall songs, but altered every now and then to be sadder, harsher, full of the reality of death. Her smoky voice added passion to it, belying the innocence of her face. Her hair was short, and she wore a band around it, over her brow.

Matthew found a place at the bar and sat down.

He had nearly half an hour to wait, and he was surprised and annoyed with himself at how tense he became. He listened to the music; all the tunes were familiar, from the madcap “Yacka Hula Hickey Dula,” popularized by Al Jolson, to the heartbreaking “Keep the Home Fires Burning.”

He sipped his drink, spinning it out, watching couples dancing. It was natural that he should be anxious to see Detta in order to further his work convincing her that the code was unbroken, but his disappointment was personal. The emotion of the music, the fear in the eyes of the young men around him, made him overwhelmingly aware of loneliness, separation, clinging too hard to the present because the future was unbearable.

Then he heard a slight commotion in the doorway, a momentary silence, and Detta came down the steps. She was not tall, but she walked as if she were, with a unique kind of slow grace, as if she would never stumble or grow tired. She was wearing a black dress, cut low at the bosom, a red rose at her waist. The skirt was lined in satin so it rustled very slightly as she moved. It made the flawless skin of her neck seem even whiter, and the cloud of her dark hair accentuated her eyes. One of her brows was a little different from the other, a blemish to perfect beauty that gave her a vulnerable, slightly humorous look.

As happened every time he saw her, no matter how much he guarded against it, his pulse raced and his mouth went dry.

At first she did not appear to have seen him, and he hesitated to stand up and draw her attention. But then she turned and smiled. Walking elegantly past the young men who had crowded toward her, she approached Matthew. As she seated herself, she spoke to the bartender first, as if that were what she had really come for, then turned to Matthew.

“I haven’t seen you for a while,” she remarked casually. Her voice was low, and the soft Irish lilt gave it a unique music.

It was five days since they had last met, but he did not tell her he had been counting. He must not let her know it mattered so much, or she would be suspicious. Whatever he felt—and it was far more than he wanted to—it must never affect his judgment. He could not afford to forget for an instant that they were on opposite sides. She was an Irish Nationalist, with sympathy for Germany, and perhaps any other enemy of England. Only here, in the lights, the laughter, the music, they pretended it did not matter.

He paid for her drink and another for himself, and they walked over to one of the few free tables.

“I went back to Cambridgeshire,” he explained. “My brother was wounded rather badly and they sent him home.”

Her eyes widened. “I’m sorry.” She said it instantly, without time to consider loyalties or causes. “How is he?”

The girl in the blue dress was singing again, a sad, angry little song with downward-falling notes.

“Better than many, I suppose,” Matthew answered. He could be reasonably dispassionate about other people—one had to be—but seeing Joseph gray-faced and obviously in appalling pain had shaken him more deeply than he had been prepared for. It brought back the memory of his parents’ broken bodies after the car crash. The police had called it an accident and nothing public had ever suggested otherwise.

To talk about numbers of losses was one thing; to see the blood and the pain in real people was quite different. He understood very well why soldiers ran away rather than take cold steel in their hands and plunge it into another human being. The fact that that other man was German was irrelevant. He was flesh and bone, capable of exactly the same emotions as themselves. Perhaps for some the nightmares would never entirely go. He did not want to be the kind of man for whom they would. He was intensely grateful that his job had never required him to meet his enemy face to face and exercise the violence of death. He did not delude himself that he was somehow absolved from the results of any victory he might win, and of course he was not; he was merely spared from the sight and the memory of it.

Detta was looking at him curiously. He caught in her eyes an unguarded moment of compassion.

“He’s a chaplain,” he said quickly, to explain that Joseph was not a soldier. Although since he was Protestant, not Catholic, perhaps in her eyes that would be even worse. He found himself smiling at the lunacy of it; it was that or rage, or tears. “A shell ripped his leg open and smashed his arm pretty badly, but the doctor says he’ll not lose it.”

She winced. “I suppose he’s in considerable pain,” she said gently.

“Yes.” He needed to go on; the next thing had to be said, but he hated it. “The casualties are heavy at the moment. He was out over no-man’s-land carrying back a pretty badly wounded soldier, someone from our own village—not that that makes any difference, I suppose. We’re desperately short of ammunition. We’re having to ration it, so many bullets per man. They’re being shot at, and they can’t shoot back. We’re buying stuff from America, but it’s being sabotaged at sea, and when it gets here it’s no bloody use!” There was more anger in his voice than he had meant there to be, and his hand on the table next to his glass was clenched tight. He must think clearly. He was here to do a job, not to indulge his fury.

“Sabotaged?” She affected surprise, her dark eyes wide. “The Americans would never do that, surely?”

“At sea,” he corrected her.

“At sea? How?” She did not disguise her interest.

That made it easier. Now they were playing the game again, threading the lies in with the truth, testing each other, tying the knots of emotion tighter and tighter.

“Smoke bombs,” he answered. “Pack them in the hold, along with the shells, and set them to go off when the ship’s at sea. It looks like fire. Then, of course, the captain has no choice but to flood the holds, and the shells are damaged. Not all of them, and there’s no way to tell which. From the outside they look perfectly all right. We’re so desperate for munitions, we can’t afford to turn them down.”

“How do you know they’re smoke bombs?” she asked. “Do you find them?”

“We know they’re being put there,” he answered. “We have men in several of the American East Coast ports.” He was not sure whether to go on. Was that enough? Might she realize what he was doing if he added any more?

“Then why don’t you stop it?” she said curiously, her faintly uneven brows giving her a quizzical look. “You can’t be squeamish! Or are you afraid of upsetting the Americans?”

He gave her a sidelong, incredulous look. “Of course we aren’t squeamish! What about? Taking out one or two saboteurs? Showing them up to the Americans? We can do it without causing a diplomatic incident. It’s just too soon to act. We know who they are. If we take them out now, they’ll only be replaced by others that we don’t know. Far better to wait, and trace the whole organization, then we can get rid of all of them.”

“How can you do that?” She turned her hands up and smiled broadly. “Sorry! Shouldn’t have asked. I’m Irish—you’d hardly tell me.” There was laughter in her eyes. And then she did laugh. He had realized weeks ago that the hunt, the battle, was part of her life. The legends of Celtic conquest and mysticism, the heroes of the past with their love and their loss woven together inextricably, were part of her identity. If she won this struggle, she would have to find a new one. She needed to seek the unattainable, to voyage beyond the known. Her crusades fed her dreams, and starved her heart.

If she were more realistic, if the fire in her burned under control, he might like her just as much, but the magic that enchanted him would be gone, and the vulnerability that made her so very human.

“If it were a secret I wouldn’t tell you, even if you were English,” he replied, smiling at her as she winced at the insult. “But it’s only the obvious,” he went on. “Just what you would do yourself: Follow the flow of money. If we get agents into the banking system at all the right points, we can prove to the Americans exactly what is happening. And the other thing, of course, is to put pressure at the right places, at exactly the right time, and turn one of their agents. Or should I say one of yours?”

She shook her head. “Not ours! I’m strictly for freedom of my own land from British oppression, that’s all.”

He did not challenge her. He might get into an argument in which he would say too much and give away more of his purpose than he could afford, or too little, and make his reason for being with her obvious. Nor did he want to quarrel with her. He smiled. “All right, not yours,” he conceded. “German.”

The girl in blue was singing again, this time “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag,” with its injunction to “smile, smile, smile.”

Detta looked at her glass, twisting it slowly in her fingers. “Do you think you can turn people’s loyalties?” she asked with a lift of doubt. “How would you know if you had, and they weren’t just feeding you the information their masters wanted you to have? Even taking back bits and pieces about you?” She lifted her eyes quickly to meet his, bright and dark, full of a hidden laughter that was always on the edge of sadness.

He smiled back, a wall of humor against reality. “I don’t.”

She gave an elegant shrug. Her shoulders were beautiful. He had no idea whether she was conscious of it or not.

“There are ways,” he added, aware that he had not said enough. “You measure one against another, advance information against what actually happens. But it’s pretty hard to turn people. You must have powerful information to do it, and unless they’re stupid, they know the risks. Their own people will kill them if they’re caught.”

She looked away across the room. “Part of the price. I can’t imagine betraying your own like that. I’d rather die.”

He said nothing. The Irish did not kill their traitors easily; more often they made examples of them by breaking their knees. Many a man never walked again. But this was not the time to tell her how much he knew about that.

“Probably spies for money rather than passion,” he said instead.

She did not answer. She was staring somewhere into the hollowness and hurts of her own mind.

“It’s nasty to turn someone,” he went on quietly. “But then if you see what’s happening in the trenches, that’s also pretty nasty. We need ammunition we can rely on.” He thought of Joseph, and allowed the pain to show in his face. He knew she was watching him.

“I can’t imagine you related to a priest,” she said softly. “Actually I’m not sure I can imagine an English priest at all. You haven’t the fire or the mysticism for it.”

“Is that what it takes?” He let the slight banter back into his voice.

“Isn’t it?” she countered.

“There’s not much room for mysticism when men are cold and frightened, squatting in the mud with the rats, or dying in crushing pain—armless, legless, their guts torn out. You need the reality of human pity and human love. It’s about all there is left.”

She reached up and for a moment it was as if she were going to touch his face, then she changed her mind abruptly. The tenderness vanished from her eyes. “So isn’t that the time when you need a priest most of all?” she countered. “To make sense of the senseless? Or don’t Protestant priests do that?”

“I don’t know. It sounds a bit like a retreat,” he said with more candor than he had intended. “Recite some comfortable piece of scripture and think you’ve solved the problem.”

“You’ve no magic in your heart,” she accused him, but she was looking at him with searching eyes now, gentle and surprised, as if she had seen something that had awoken a new emotion in her.

“Does magic help?” he asked with raised eyebrows.

“I think when you’re face to face with the devil, you’ll find out. I’ve a horrible fear that maybe it doesn’t after all. What then, Matthew? English courage, naked, without any pretty clothes and nice music?”

“Doesn’t have to be English,” he replied. “Any sort would do.”

She sat silent for a while, staring at the dancers on the floor. They were holding each other closely and moving as if the music carried them like a tide. There was sadness and anger in her face as she watched them.

“They know it, don’t they?” she said after a while. “You can see it in their eyes, hear it in the pitch of their voices, a bit high and with an edge. They could be dead in the Flanders mud this time next week.” The passion welled up in her, a rage and sorrow that spilled over in tears on her cheek. “It didn’t have to happen, you know!” she said fiercely. “You didn’t have to fight the Germans. It could all have been avoided, but one misguided idealist, an Englishman with an arrogant, narrow patriotism and blind to any vision for the world, stumbled onto the papers that would have stopped it. And because he didn’t understand that, he stole them and destroyed them.”

She blinked, but it did not stop the tears. “I’ve no idea who he is, or what happened to him, but Mother of God, if he can see what he’s done, he must be in the madhouse with guilt and grief. All these men, so young, all gone, sacrificed on the altar of stupidity. Don’t you despair of us sometimes?”

He didn’t hear her anymore. The words ran through him like fire, scorching with a pain he could not have imagined. She was talking about John Reavley and the treaty he had found, and for which the Peacemaker had had him murdered. The document had been in the gun room in St. Giles where he and Joseph had replaced it after reading it.

Only one other man beyond the family knew of it, and he had paid with his life.

The document was a conspiracy to create an Anglo-German empire of peace, prosperity, and domination, the cost of which was the betrayal of France and Belgium, and ultimately most of the world. It would be a dishonor that would cast a black pall over everything that England had ever been, or believed in. And how could Detta know that, unless she were part of it?

Detta was talking to him and the words were a meaningless jumble of sounds.

That she was involved with the Peacemaker was something he had not even considered. Her Irish nationalism he could understand. In her place he would have felt the same. He might have fought for Germany, if the reward were his own country’s independence, even if half of them did not want it. But this had to mean that she was close enough to the Peacemaker to be trusted with at least the core of the plan, the dream of it. There would be no need to tell her the name or the fate of the man who had foiled it. His death was regarded by everyone else as an accident and no one in the family had challenged that. The Peacemaker himself never knew that they had found the treaty, or understood its nature. John Reavley had said simply that he had found a document that would dishonor England and change the world.

Detta was an idealist. It could be dangerous to tell her more of murder than she needed to know. The Peacemaker took no risks.

Until now Matthew had had little idea of his identity, hard as he had sought. It was not Ivor Chetwin, John Reavley’s one-time friend; Matthew and Joseph had proved his innocence in Gallipoli. Nor, surely, was it Aidan Thyer; but then that had been only a passing thought because of his power in Cambridge as master of St. John’s. Matthew’s greatest fear had been that it was Calder Shearing himself, right at the heart of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. Shearing was brilliant, charming, and elusive, and Matthew knew almost nothing about him outside those walls.

He had never even considered Patrick Hannassey. He had thought of him only as the cleverest and most dedicated fighter for Catholic Ireland’s freedom from British rule. Now he had to face the possibility—in fact the probability—that he was wrong.

Detta’s father!

She was looking at him, her odd eyebrow raised in bitter irony. “You didn’t know about that paper, did you.” It was a statement. “You thought it was all inevitable.”

“Given the political tides,” he said very quietly, “the alliances between Austria, Germany, and Russia—and ours with France and Belgium—yes, I thought there was no way to avoid it.”

“You aren’t asking me if I’m sure about it,” she pointed out.

“Would you say it if you weren’t?”

She avoided his gaze. “No. Is there a point where madness becomes so common we think it’s sanity?”

“I don’t know.” She was not going to say any more. He would not play the game of trying to make her. “Would you like to dance?” he asked. He wanted to forget about talking for a while. He simply wanted to hold her in his arms, feel the ease and grace of her movement, smell the perfume of her hair, and above all pretend for a few minutes that they were on the same side.

“Dance?” she asked, her voice rising. “Perhaps you do understand magic after all! What’s the difference between looking for a supernatural answer, and simply running away, Matthew?”

“Timing,” he answered. “At the moment I’m just running away.”

“Yes,” she agreed, laughter touching her eyes again, but only with self-mockery. “Yes, I’ll dance. What better is there to do?”

The following morning Matthew arrived at his office in a mood of optimism. This was dashed the moment he encountered Hoskins standing in the corridor, his thin face twisted with anxiety.

For a moment Matthew thought of avoiding asking him what was wrong, and simply going on to his own door, but he quickly resigned himself to reality. All bad news had to be faced.

“Good morning, Hoskins. What is it?”

“Morning, Reavley. Just another ship gone,” Hoskins replied miserably. “U-boats got it. It was carrying food and munitions. All hands lost.” Hoskins stood motionless apart from the slight tic in his left eyelid. “That’s the fourth this month.”

“I know,” Matthew said quietly. He could think of nothing else to say. There was no comfort to offer, and nothing to salvage.

“Shearing wants to see you,” Hoskins added. “I’d go there first, if I were you.”

Matthew acknowledged the message, left his coat in his office, and glanced at his desk to see if there were any overnight messages of urgency. There was nothing that Shearing needed to know, just the usual reports from his men in the eastern United States. Progress was slow.

He crossed the corridor and, after a brief knock, went into Shearing’s office.

Shearing looked up from his desk. There were hollows around his eyes, accentuating how dark they were. “What’s your progress with the Hannassey woman?” he asked.

There was a sour irony to the situation. Shearing knew of John and Alys Reavley’s deaths and Matthew’s belief that there was a conspiracy behind it, but because of John Reavley’s warning, Matthew had not told even his own superior in the Intelligence Services.

“Well?” Shearing barked.

Matthew could not tell him that Detta had in one wild explosion of anger let slip her knowledge of the Peacemaker’s conspiracy. It pounded in his mind as if it could drive out all other thoughts, and he composed his expression with difficulty. One realization flooded out every other. Surely Hannassey had to be the Peacemaker? It was someone who trusted Detta with his life. It could not be Shearing.

He cleared his throat. He was still standing more or less to attention in front of the desk. “I told her about the smoke bombs in the ships’ holds, sir,” he replied. “And that we have almost traced the money. We just need to turn one of their agents and we’ll be able to close it down.”

“I see. And how do you propose to convince her that you have done that?” Shearing’s expression was skeptical, his lips tightly compressed.

“With the information, and an appropriate dead body,” Matthew replied.

Shearing nodded very slowly, his eyes not leaving Matthew’s face. “Good. When?”

“Another week at the very least. I have to give it long enough to be believable.”

“I suppose you know we lost another ship last night? All hands.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did you last hear anything from Shanley Corcoran?”

“Two days ago,” Matthew replied. For just over a year now he had been the link between the Secret Intelligence Service in London and the Scientific Establishment in Cambridge where they were developing an underwater guidance system that would mean that torpedoes and depth charges would no longer randomly hit their targets but would strike every time. It would revolutionize the war at sea. Whoever had such a device would be lethal. No skill or speed would enable an enemy to escape, once they were found. The endless cat-and-mouse games that now meant a skilled and daring commander could outwit pursuit would avail nothing. Judgment of speed, direction, even depth, would be irrelevant. Every missile would strike.

And of course if the Germans were to have such a weapon, the U-boats now reaping such a terrible harvest would become unstoppable. Britain would be brought to its knees in weeks. The supplies of food and munitions would dry up. There would be no navy to take reinforcements to France, or even to evacuate the wounded, and in the end not even to rescue what remained of the army, beaten because it had no guns, no food, no shells, no medicine, no new men.

Shearing was waiting for an answer.

Matthew smiled a little as he gave it. “They are very close to completing it, sir. He said within a week.”

Shearing’s eyes were wide. “He’s certain?”

“Yes, sir.”

Shearing eased back a little in his chair. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow. “Thank God,” he breathed.

“Then if we don’t have any more lunatic action like the Santa Ysabel massacre, and Pancho Villa doesn’t lose his wits and storm over the Rio Grande, we just might make it. For God’s sake, be careful! Whatever you do, don’t jeopardize the code!”

“No, sir.”

Shearing made a small, dismissive gesture, and returned his attention to the papers on his desk.

In Marchmont Street in a discreet residential area near the heart of London, the man known as the Peacemaker stood in the upstairs sitting room facing his visitor. He hated war with a passion that consumed every other wish or hunger within him. He had seen the human misery of the Boer War in Africa at the turn of the century, the death and destruction, the concentration camps for civilians, even women and children. He had sworn then that whatever it cost he would do everything within his very considerable power to see that such a thing never happened again.

The passion of the man opposite was quite different. He was Irish, and the freedom of his country and its independence from Britain dominated every other emotion he felt, and justified all acts that served its end. But they could use each other, and both knew it.

The subject under discussion was money, which the Irishman was going to use to continue his bribery of union officials in Pittsburgh and in the East Coast docks of America to sabotage the munitions destined for the Allies.

“No more than five thousand,” the Peacemaker said flatly.

“Six,” the other man answered. He was unimpressive to look at, the kind of man no one would notice in a crowd, average in height and build, nondescript of coloring and ordinary of feature. He was capable of a score of appearances depending upon his stance and expression, and the clothes he wore. That was part of his genius. He came and went as he chose, and no one remembered him. Another gift was his almost flawless memory.

The Peacemaker replied with a single word. “Why?” He did not like the Irishman, nor did he trust him, and lately he had become too demanding. Unless he proved himself more valuable than he had so far, he would have to be disposed of. And since he had a great deal of knowledge, that disposal must be final.

“You want to stop the American munitions reaching England safely?” the Irishman asked, almost without inflection. He had no accent; he had deliberately eradicated the soft music of his native burr. It was part of his anonymity, and he had learned never to let it slip.

In contrast to him, the Peacemaker was highly memorable, a man whose dynamic appearance and extraordinary character no one forgot.

“And keep your very considerable interest in Mexico?” the Irishman continued. “It takes money.”

The Peacemaker had a strong suspicion that many of the guns in question, as well as the ammunition for them, were going to end up in Ireland, but just at the moment that was less important. “I do,” he answered. “It is in both our interests.”

“Then I need six thousand,” the Irishman told him. His face was expressionless, as if he were afraid of letting any fear or need show itself, anything at all that could be used against him. “For the moment,” he added. “We have to have men on all the ships, and they are taking a considerable risk planting smoke bombs in the holds. If they get caught they’ll likely be shot. I can’t rely on anyone doing that for love, or hate. We need at the least to guarantee that their families will be taken care of.”

The Peacemaker did not argue. He must handle this with exactly the right mixture of skepticism and generosity. Their goals were different, just how different he did not yet wish the other man to appreciate. He knew that his aim was a free and independent Ireland, and a touch of revenge thrown in would add to the savor.

The Peacemaker’s purpose was an Anglo-German Empire that would lay peace not only on warring Europe, but upon the entire world, such as the British Empire had across Africa, India, Burma, the Far East, and the islands of the sea. This would be greater. It would end the strife that had torn apart the cradle of Western civilization for the last thousand years. Europe and Russia would belong to Germany; Africa was to be divided. The rest, including the United States of America, would be Britain’s. They would have the best of the art and science and the richest culture in the world. There would be safety, prosperity, and the values of free exchange, law, medicine, and literacy for everyone. The price would be obedience. That was a fact in the nature of men and of nations. Those who did not obey willingly would have to be forced, for the sake of the vast majority whose lives would be enriched and who would be more than willing, eager to grasp such moral and social wealth.

Naturally, Ireland was included, and would have no more independence than it did now. It was by nature and geography part of the British Isles. But of course he would say nothing of this to the man opposite him.

“Very well,” he agreed reluctantly. “Make sure every penny is used well.”

“I don’t waste money,” the Irishman answered him. There was no emotion in his voice; only looking at the steady, pale steel-blue eyes did the Peacemaker see the chill in him. He knew better than ever to underestimate an enemy, or a friend.

The Peacemaker went over to his desk and withdrew the banker’s draft. He had had it made for six thousand, because he knew that was what he would have to settle for. He had made his calculations in advance.

“Some of that is for Mexico,” he said as he handed it over. The Irishman would never know if he had had two drafts there, one for each amount.

The Irishman took the paper and put it in his inside pocket. “What about the naval war?” he asked. “I’ve heard whispers about this project in the Establishment in Cambridge. Are they on the brink of inventing something that will defeat the German navy?”

The Peacemaker smiled; he knew it was a cold, thin gesture. “I will inform you of that if it should become necessary for you to know,” he answered. He was startled, uncomfortably so, that the Irishman had even heard of it. He obviously had sources the Peacemaker was unaware of. Was that his purpose in asking, to let him know that? Looking at his smooth, blank face now with its prominent bones and relentless eyes, he judged that it was.

“So it is true,” the Irishman said.

“Or it is not true,” the Peacemaker replied. “Or I do not know.”

The Irishman smiled mirthlessly. “Or that is what you wish me to think.”

“Just so. Travel safely.”

When he was gone, the Peacemaker stood alone. The Irishman was a good tool—highly intelligent, resourceful, and in his dedication incorruptible. No money, personal power, luxury, or office, no threat to his life or liberty would deter him from his course.

On the other hand he was ruthless, manipulative, and devious. He was impossible to control, which the Peacemaker both admired and recognized as dangerous. The time was fast approaching when disposing of the Irishman would become a matter of urgency.

Half an hour later the post arrived with several letters and the usual bills. One envelope had a Swiss stamp on it, and he tore it open eagerly. There were several pages written in close script, in English, although the use of words was highly idiosyncratic, as of one who translated literally from another language before committing it to paper.

At a glance it seemed ordinary enough, the account of daily life of an elderly man in a small village at least a hundred miles from any battlefront. Fellow villagers were mentioned by Christian name only, most of them Italian or French. It was full of gossip, opinions, local quarrels over small matters of insult, jealousy, rivals in love.

Read with the Peacemaker’s knowledge it was entirely different. The village in question was not some rural Swiss community but Imperial Russia; the local characters, the groups and players on that vast stage of tragedy and upheaval, war and mounting social unrest. New ideas were boiling to the surface and the possibilities were almost too huge to grasp. They could change the world.

But this was just one man’s thoughts, sensitive and acutely observed as they were. The Peacemaker needed more information, a better ally, a man who could travel freely and make informed judgments, one who had the breadth of experience and the idealism to see the humanity beneath the cause. The Irishman’s intelligence was acute, but his dreams were narrow and self-serving. There was too much hatred in him.

The Peacemaker thought again with regret of Richard Mason, whose commitment had been wholehearted a year ago. Mason too had witnessed the abomination of the Boer War, and been sickened by it. And in this present conflict he had seen more than most men. His occupation as war correspondent had taken him from the trenches of the Western Front to the blood-soaked beaches of Gallipoli, the battlefields of Italy and the Balkans, and even the bitter slaughter of the Russian Front. He had written about them all with a passion and humanity unequaled by any other journalist, and with unsurpassed courage.

He had been not only the ideal ally, but the Peacemaker had honestly liked him. Losing him last year had been a double blow. He could still remember his shock even more than his anger when Mason had stood here in this room, exhausted and beaten, and told him that he had changed his mind.

That had been the doing of Joseph Reavley, of all people! Reavley, whom he had discounted as a useless dreamer, a man who would wish well, and lack the nerve to act.

Damn Joseph Reavley and his stupid and desperately misguided emotionalism. He was exactly like his father, and he had cost the Peacemaker his best ally.

Nothing he could say afterward had changed Mason’s resolve. But now, a year later, it was time to try again, even harder, to swallow his own pride and win him back. Argument did not work. He must use emotion, as Reavley had, and his very considerable charm. It might be inwardly humiliating, but for the sake of the greater peace it would be infinitely worth it. And such peace would not come without cost to them all. He should not expect to be immune, professionally or personally.

He moved away from the window. He would begin tonight.

CHAPTER

FOUR

Hannah heard the front door bang, and Luke came running up the hall. She had told him a score of times not to run inside the house. She turned to tell him again just as she heard the vase topple off the hall table and crash to the floor. She knew from the sound of it that it had smashed, not into a couple of pieces, but dozens.

Then she heard Jenny’s voice, strident and sharp.

Hannah stormed into the hall. “Jenny! I’ve told you not to use that word! Go to your room!”

Jenny’s face crumpled. “That’s not fair! It was Luke who broke the vase, it wasn’t me!”

“Tell tale tit! Tell tale tit!” Luke sang, hopping up and down.

“And you go into the garden and pull the weeds in the vegetable patch until I tell you it’s enough!” Hannah barked at him. “Now!”

“But I . . .” he started.

“Now!” she repeated. “If you want any supper.”

“It’s not fair!” he complained. “It was an accident! She called me . . .”

“If I have to tell you again, you’ll have no supper,” Hannah warned him. She meant it. She was furious and frightened. Loss seemed to be crowding in on every side, like a darkness falling, and she knew no way out.

Both children went to obey, Jenny crying, Luke stifling his misery as a matter of pride.

Joseph came in through the side door, holding it open for Luke, who did not even glance upward at him.

“Thank you!” Hannah called after him. “Where are your manners?”

Luke ignored her and disappeared.

Just as miserable herself, she bent to pick up the pieces of the shattered vase. It had been her mother’s, and was not just beautiful, but full of memories. There were too many fragments even to think of mending it. She felt bereft, as if a part of her history had been taken from her. In spite of all she could do, the tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

Joseph bent down beside her and, with his good hand, picked up some of the shards and put them on the table. He said nothing about her shouting at the children, nor did he go after either one of them to undo the pain she had caused.

“Say it!” she charged him accusingly as she stood up. “You think I’m unfair, don’t you?”

He looked at her, smiling, and it was a moment or two before she realized it was not kindness but amusement.

“You think it’s funny!” she said furiously. She was ashamed of herself. Alys would have done so much better, but she was damned if she was going to tell him that.

His smile did not lessen in the slightest. “You’re just like Mother,” he answered. “I remember her flying off the handle at Matthew when he was late home from a football match, and some other boy had been hurt. She was afraid it had been him. Judith came in complaining about something else, and she shrieked at both of them and told them they’d get no tea. Mrs. Appleton took them up plum pie and custard, but it was Mother who asked her to. I think it always was, it was just a fiction that it was Mrs. Appleton’s soft heart.”

“Are you inventing that to make me feel better?” she demanded, terrified how much she needed it to be true. She wanted above all to be like her mother—to create safety, warmth, a sense of peace out of the uncertainty.

“No,” he assured her, then his smile vanished. “They’ll pick up your fear, Hannah, even if they don’t know what about. They won’t be frightened as long as they think you aren’t, but if you crumble, so will they.”

She looked away from him. He was right, but she needed more time. “Do you want to be the hero?” she asked.

“Hero?”

“Take up the pie and custard. It’s Mrs. Appleton’s day off.”

“Yes . . . I’ll do that.” He touched her gently on the arm. “I’m sorry about the vase. I’ll see if the antique shop in the village has something like it.”

“It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t be the same.”

“It wouldn’t to you. It might be for Luke,” he pointed out.

Tears threatened to choke her again, and she said nothing. She was still frightened, still hurt, but her anger was at herself.

Joseph went to bed early. He was tired after a very short time up, and the pain in his arm and leg was constant. He had said nothing, but Hannah knew it was there by the shadows in his face.

She sat alone mending sheets, turning their sides to middle. It was a job she hated because she was always acutely aware of the seam when she lay along it, and she imagined others were as well. On the gramophone she was playing Caruso singing “O Sole Mio.” It had been a tremendous success a month ago. She knew that if Joseph could hear it upstairs he would like it, and she had left the door open on purpose. She was startled to hear the front doorbell ring. She put down her sewing and went to answer it, taking the needle off the record carefully as she passed. The sudden silence was breathless.

The woman on the step was in her late twenties, but grief and weariness had added years to her. Her hair was pretty, but she had tied it up and back without care and pulled the wave out of it. In the light from the hall, her skin seemed to have no color. She was dressed in a plain dark blue blouse and skirt, and it was apparent at a glance that she had lost weight since Hannah had last seen her.

“Abby! How are you?” she said quickly. “Do come in.” She stepped back to make the invitation almost a command. “You must have time for a cup of tea, or something.”

Abigail Compton hesitated, then agreed as if the battle against such determination were one she knew she would lose. “I only came to ask if you could help to organize people for knitting more socks,” she said awkwardly. “It doesn’t matter how little time they can give, anything at all will help. Sometimes even children can do the straight bits, if an adult can turn the heel.”

“Of course,” Hannah agreed. “Good idea. Would you like a cup of tea? I’m doing the mending and I hate it. I’d love an excuse to stop.” She smiled hopefully.

“Just for a moment or two,” Abby accepted. “I’d like to sit down, I admit.” She looked ready to drop.

“Kitchen all right?” Hannah led the way without waiting for an answer. Abby looked so wretched she determined to get her hot pie and cream as well. Her husband had been killed in France several months ago, but she looked as if the reality of it had struck her only now. There was an awkwardness in the way she moved, almost a clumsiness, as if she were only half aware of her limbs.

The oven was still warm. Hannah took the apple pie from the larder without asking if Abby wanted any, and opened the damper for the heat to increase enough to crisp the pastry again. Then she filled the kettle and set it on the hob to boil.

“I heard about Plugger Arnold,” Abby said softly. “Gangrene. Is that true?”

“Yes. That’s what they said.”

“Paul never told me about that sort of thing.” Abby gave the ghost of a smile. “Have you noticed how the newspapers have changed lately? They don’t write about heroics so much. They don’t use the sort of language that comes out of King Arthur anymore. I like to read Richard Mason, even though it leaves me in tears sometimes. He makes people so real; they’re never just figures.”

“I know what you mean,” Hannah agreed. “You feel as if even the dead are not left without dignity. He must be a very fine man.” She indicated the chairs and they both sat down.

“Talking about fine men,” Abby went on. “Polly Andrews told me your brother Joseph was wounded. Is that true?”

“Yes, but he’ll be all right. I haven’t seen Polly for ages. You mean Tiddly Wop Andrews’s sister? He’s in Joseph’s regiment.”

Abby smiled. “I used to be crazy about him when I was fourteen.”

“He was awfully good looking,” Hannah agreed.

The kettle boiled and Hannah made the tea and served the warm, crisp apple pie. The custard was gone but she had a little cream. They ate in silence. Perhaps from pleasure, but more probably from good manners, Abby finished everything on her plate.

“Thank you,” she said with a smile. “That’s the best I’ve had in a long time. Are they your own apples?”

“Yes. This time of the year they’ve been stored all winter and they’re not much good for anything but cooking,” Hannah replied. She wanted to be more help than memories of the village and remarks about housekeeping, but she had no idea how to reach the pain that was so obvious in Abby’s face and the crumpled bowing of her thin shoulders. What did one say or do to touch the loss of her husband? Perhaps that was the ultimate loneliness; everyone was helpless in the reality of it and frightened because they knew it could happen to them, too, tomorrow or the day after.

Alys would have known what to say that would offer some kind of healing, a moment’s respite from the drowning pain. How did people survive it? They went to sleep with it, and woke up with it. It walked beside them close as their skin for the rest of their lives. What could Hannah offer that was not facile or intrusive where it would be blundering in, making it all worse still? She remembered the name of Abby’s son. “How is Sandy?” she asked.

Abby’s eyes filled with tears. “He’s well,” she answered. “He’s starting to enjoy reading and always has a book with him.”

Hannah seized the subject, realizing that Sandy was about the same age as Luke. “Has he favorites? Tom used to love all sorts of imaginative fiction, but Luke’s a realist.”

Abby hesitated, and then answered slowly at first, trying to think of titles. Then as they shared their observations about boys curled up in bed reading in the middle of the night, it became momentarily easy.

But all the time Hannah had the increasing feeling that there was something Abby wanted to say, and yet dreaded it.

Outside in the spring night, the wind rustled the leaves with a heaviness as if it might soon rain. Inside, the heat from the oven was close on the skin, making the room seem oddly airless.

Finally the tension cracked within Hannah. She leaned forward across the table, reaching her hand toward Abby’s. “What is it?” she asked. “You can talk about Paul, if you want to. Or anything else. You can carry it alone if you want, but you don’t have to.”

Abby’s eyes were swimming with tears. She wiped them fiercely, staring at Hannah through the blur, trying to make the decision.

Hannah did not know whether to speak or not. She waited while the silence settled. A few spatters of rain struck the window and she stood up to pull it closed.

“Someone from Paul’s regiment came to see me about a week ago,” Abby said suddenly. “He was on leave. He . . . just came.”

Hannah heard the agony in her voice and turned around slowly. Abby’s face was twisted in pain. Her body was rigid, shuddering with the effort of trying to control herself and knowing she was failing.

Hannah felt her own stomach clench. What terrible thing had this man told her? Had he described the body of the man she loved blown apart, but perhaps still leaving him conscious to be hideously aware of it? Worse? Cowardice? A memory Abby could scarcely bear to live with? Was that why she looked as if she longed for death herself?

Hannah went over to her, uncertain whether even to attempt to put her arms around the fragile, stiff body, or if it would seem like an unthinking intrusion. She stopped and simply took Abby’s hands instead, kneeling in front of her awkwardly. The floor was hard.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“He told me about Paul,” Abby answered, her eyes desperate. “He told me how much he had liked him. What they did, what they talked about during the long days when they were bored stiff and had lots of time to be frightened, to think of what sort of night it would be, how many would be injured, or killed. He said Paul used to tell jokes, awful ones that went on and on, and sometimes he’d forget the end and have to make it up. Everyone knew he’d lost his place, and they all joined in, getting sillier and sillier.” She gulped. “He said no one else ever made them laugh the way Paul did.”

Hannah felt the fear slip away from her. It was only pain that tore at her. Abby was missing him all over again, the sharpness renewed. It wasn’t any terrible revelation after all.

“It’s good his men liked him,” she said aloud. “He was with friends.”

There was no comfort whatever in Abby’s eyes. “This man—his name was Miles,” she went on. “He told me about one concert party they had, all dressed up like women and singing songs. He wouldn’t tell me the words because he said they were racy, but Paul had a gift for rhymes, and he wrote a lot of them, even though he was an officer. He didn’t take credit for it, but the men knew. All sorts of absurd rhymes, he said.” She tried to smile. “Actually ‘ridiculous’ and ‘meticulous’ was one, and ‘crazy horse,’ ‘pays, of course’ and ‘could be worse,’ only he pronounced it ‘worss.’ It was all incredibly silly, and it made them laugh.” She looked at Hannah wretchedly. “I never heard him do that!”

Hannah was lost for words. She could see that Abby was hurt almost more than she could bear, but not why. Everything this man had said about Paul was good.

“He told me Paul was incredibly brave,” Abby went on. “The men were filthy a lot of the time, mud and rats and things, and lice. Can’t get rid of the lice. They shaved every day, but not enough water to wash any more than their faces.” Her voice was rising and getting faster. “Miles told me you can smell the stench of the front line long before you get there. Paul never said that.”

Hannah waited.

“Miles said he’d never liked anyone more than he liked Paul.” Abby did not even try to stop her tears now. “His men trusted him, he said. He was hard. He had to be. But he was always fair. He agonized over decisions he made which could have been wrong. Miles told me about once when he had to send almost twenty men over the top, and he knew they had hardly any chance of coming back, but he couldn’t say that to them. It haunted him afterward, that he had to tell them only part of the truth, so it amounted to a lie.”

She swallowed hard. “They knew that, and they knew what he felt, and why he couldn’t do anything else, but he still had nightmares about it. He’d wake up white-faced, with his body aching. I try to imagine him there alone in a tiny, cramped dugout—thinking about looking men in the eyes and ordering them out to be killed while he stays behind. And they still loved him!”

“I expect they knew he had no choice,” Hannah spoke at last.

“That’s the point, Hannah!” Abby cried, her voice almost strangled with emotion. “They knew him! They really knew him—they understood! I didn’t! To me he wasn’t that man at all. I never saw that kind of honor in him, that kind of laughter, or pain. I just knew him as he was at home, and that was so little. And now it’s too late. I never will. . . . I can’t even tell Sandy what his father was really like.” She closed her eyes. “It’s all gone, slipped away, and I didn’t grasp it when I could. I was too busy with my own life. I didn’t look.”

“You couldn’t have known what he was like in France,” Hannah said gently. “None of us at home know what it’s like for them.”

Abby jerked her head up. “But I didn’t want to!” she hissed. “Don’t you understand? I knew it was terrible out there. I can read the casualty figures. I’ve seen the drawings and the photographs in the newspapers. I didn’t want to hear the details—the sounds and smells, how cold it was or how wet, how filthy, how hungry they were.” She gasped in her breath. “And now some man I never even met before arrives and tells me what Paul was really like. And I listen to him and try to remember every word, because that’s all I’ll ever have.” She leaned forward and bowed her head in her arms across the table and sobbed, racked with a regret for which there was no healing.

With a fearful clarity Hannah knew exactly what she meant. If Archie never came home, how much would she know about what his life was really like? What would she understand of the joy or the pain he felt, how he weighed his decisions, what guilt kept him up all night? Who was he, inside the carefully painted shell? Why did she not know? What would she tell her children of their father, if he was one of those who died?

She wanted to say something comforting to Abby, but this was not the time for salvaging tiny pieces. She needed to face the emptiness and recognize it now; then perhaps it would not have to be done again. This time she was quite certain it was right to take Abby in her arms and simply hold her until she had wept out her strength.

Afterward she took her to the bathroom and left her to wash her face and straighten her clothes. She made no mention of what either of them had said, as if they had quietly agreed that it had not really happened.

“Thank you,” Abby said, almost under her breath, as she stood by the front door to leave. “The apple pie was lovely. You . . . I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you are very like your mother.” And with that ultimate compliment, she walked out into the darkness, leaving Hannah with a tumult of emotions.

She went back inside and found Tom in his pajamas on the stairs. He looked worried. “You all right, Mum?” he said anxiously.

“A friend came by and she was upset,” she said.

“Why?” he asked, coming down the last few steps. “Has someone she loved been killed?”

“Yes. A little while ago now, but she just needed to talk about it a bit. Not everyone wants to listen.”

He smiled. “I’m glad you did that for her.” He turned to go back up again, then stopped. “Uncle Joseph’s still awake, Mum. I’ve seen his light go on and off a few times. I think maybe he can’t sleep either.”

“Thank you. I’ll take him a cup of cocoa, or something. Good night.”

“Good night, Mum.”

Hannah did not tell Joseph about Abby Compton’s visit other than simply that she had called. But she could not extinguish Abby’s words from her mind.

She could just as easily have been the one to realize in a single dreadful hour that she had turned her back on the chance to share the reality of all that love might be. It could still become her, if she did not confront Archie soon and face the things she did not want to know, and it seemed he did not want to tell her. But if she stayed shut out where it was safe, when she was ready to come in it might be too late. She would be excluded forever, as Abby was.

She was frightened that she would not have the courage to press him against his will. It would be so much easier to accept denial. She did not know what to ask, when to insist and when to keep silent. If she said something stupid, insensitive, or without understanding, she would never be able to take it back and pretend it hadn’t happened. Perhaps it was already too late?

Why couldn’t life have remained as it used to be? She had understood the problems then: love affairs that went wrong, childbirth and sometimes loss, quarrels, disloyalties, sickness, fractious children, long nights up watching the ill. Perhaps there had always been loneliness, but the long, quiet grayness of separation, not the searing scarlet of grief. But it had all been on a smaller scale, in homes and schools, churches and village greens; not on battlefields and in warships. It did not contain enough horror to drive people mad and divide men from women by gulfs they did not know how to cross. But there was no point in thinking further about it now.

Arranging the flowers in church the day before a service was one of the duties her mother had performed, and it would give her a sense of comfort to do it herself, as if at least some things had not changed. Before she left she checked on Joseph.

“Don’t try to make tea yourself,” she told him, looking at his arm. “Jenny’s around and she can do it, if you stay in the kitchen with her. I won’t be long.”

He smiled patiently, and she realized she was fussing. “It’s important,” she explained, hugging the daffodils she had picked, stems wrapped so they did not bleed onto her clothes.

“Of course it is,” he agreed. “Daffodils always seem brave and beautiful, like a promise that things will get better. It doesn’t matter what winter’s like, spring will come, eventually.”

All kinds of thoughts crowded her mind about those who would not see it, but he knew that better than she, and it was maudlin to say so.

Was this a time to ask him about some of the things he had experienced, but never spoke of? When, if ever, would it be easier?

“Joseph . . .”

He looked up.

She plunged in. “You never say much about Ypres, what it’s like, how you feel, even the good things. . . .”

His face tightened, almost indefensibly, but she saw it. “I’d like to understand,” she said quietly.

“One day,” he replied, looking away from her.

It was an evasion. She knew from his eyes and the line of his mouth that there would always be a reason why not. She turned quickly and went out of the door.

She walked along the village street in bright sunshine, but against a surprisingly cold wind. April was a deceitful month, full of brief glory, and promises it did not keep.

Inside the old Saxon church with its stained-glass windows and silent stones, the wooden pews were dark with age. Under each were hand-stitched hassocks to kneel on, donated by village women down the generations, some as long ago as the Napoleonic Wars. She began to get out the vases and fill them with water from the outside tap and carry them back in one at a time.

Mrs. Gee came into the vestry, red-eyed and shivering against the cold. She brought some blue irises, just a handful. Every time Hannah saw her she thought of Charlie Gee, who had died in Ypres last year. Mrs. Gee did not know how horribly he had been maimed. Neither did Hannah, but she had seen the shadow of it in Joseph’s face every time his name was mentioned. The anger and the grief still haunted him more than for others dead.

Hannah thanked Mrs. Gee for the flowers and separated them to put a little of their rich color in among the yellows. She needed to say something more than mere acknowledgment. “I don’t have anything blue,” she said with a smile.

“There’ll be bluebells in the woods next month,” Mrs. Gee reminded her. “But they don’t sit well in a vase. Oi s’pose woild flowers don’t loike to be picked. Oi haven’t been down to the woods in a while.” She did not add any more.

Hannah did not need to ask. The haze of blue over the ground, the sunlight and call of birds made it a place of overpowering emotion. She would not be able to go there in a time of grief herself. Odd how some kinds of beauty did not heal, but hollowed the pain even deeper.

“How’s the chaplain?” Mrs. Gee asked, concern in her voice.

“Much better, thank you.” That was more optimistic than the truth, but Mrs. Gee needed every good word possible.

“Oi’m glad to hear it. Oi don’t know what our boys would do without him. Tell him Oi was asking.”

“Yes, of course I will. Thank you.” Hannah felt a stab of fear again, as if she had deliberately excluded herself from the bond of knowledge other people shared.

Mrs. Gee waited a moment longer, then turned and walked away between rows of seats, her footsteps heavy, her shoulders bowed a little.

Betty Townsend brought some yellow and red early wallflowers. It was a shame to put them in the cool church; in a warmer room in someone’s home the perfume would have been far richer. Hannah thanked her for them, then noticed how pale she looked, as if she had not slept for many nights. She did not need to wonder what caused it. Everybody’s problems were the same—bad news, or none at all when there should have been.

“How is your brother?” Betty asked, her voice a little husky.

Hannah held the wallflowers without beginning to arrange them. “Getting better, thank you,” she answered. “But it will be a while yet. He was lucky to keep his arm. And how are you?”

Betty turned away quickly. “Peter’s been posted missing in action. We heard two days ago.” Her voice trembled. “I don’t know whether to keep up hope he’s alive somewhere, or if that’s just stupid, putting off the truth.”

Hannah wished with all her heart she knew something to say that would help. She stood there holding the flowers in her hand as if they mattered. Her mother would have said the right thing! Why did loss hurt so unbearably? Standing here in this building where people had come in joy and grief for a thousand years, she should have had some sense of the promise of eternity, a resurrection when all this would not matter anymore.

Betty gave a little shrug. “The vicar came round, of course. He was trying to be kind, but I think he made it worse. Mother thanked him, but I just wanted to push him out of the house. He talked about glory and sacrifice as if Peter were somehow not real, a sort of idea rather than a person. I know he meant well, but all I wished to do was hit him. I wanted to shout, ‘don’t tell me about faith and virtue, it’s real and it hurts. It hurts! It’s Peter, who taught me how to climb trees, and not to cry if I skinned my knee, and ate my rice pudding when I hated it, and told me silly jokes. It isn’t just some hero! It’s my brother—the only one I had!’ ”

Hannah jammed the flowers into the vase. Why was Hallam Kerr so useless? If religion wasn’t any help now, what point was there in it? Was it really no more than a nice social habit, a reason for the village to meet and keep up the pretense that everything would be all right one day? Kerr was just as lost as the rest of them, perhaps even more so.

Was Joseph as empty and useless as that, too? She did not think so. It was not just because he was her brother. There was an inner strength to him; a place within him where his faith was real, and strong enough to bear up others. He was needed here at home. He should stay to help people like Betty, Mrs. Gee, and God alone knew how many more before this was finished.

“All we can do is keep going, and help each other,” she said aloud. “The vicar is just another cross to bear.”

Betty sniffed and gave a choking little laugh. “He wouldn’t like to be referred to like that,” she said, searching for a handkerchief to blow her nose.

“I know,” Hannah admitted. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”

By the time Betty went, Hannah was almost finished with the flowers she had, and thinking they needed a little greenery to fill them out. Then Lizzie Blaine came in with some catkin branches and budding willow. She was a dark-haired woman with a hot temper and bright blue eyes. Her husband was one of the scientists at the Establishment.

“Thank you.” Hannah accepted the additions with satisfaction. They gave bulk and variety to the yellow.

Lizzie smiled. “I’ve always liked branches. They don’t seem to know how to make an ugly shape.”

“You’re right!” Hannah agreed with surprise. “Even the knobbly bits look good.” She glanced at Lizzie again. There seemed to be a hidden excitement in her, as if she knew of something good that would happen, just beyond the sight of the rest of them. Would it be intrusive to ask what it was? “You look well,” she said pleasantly.

“I like Sundays,” Lizzie replied, then gave a little shrug. “Theo doesn’t usually work on Sunday, although he has once or twice lately. They’re doing something critically important at the Establishment. He doesn’t say anything, of course, but I know from the way he walks how alive he feels. It is as if his mind is racing on the brink of solving the final problems and finishing whatever it is. Please God, it will be something that will make a real difference to the war. Perhaps it will even be over soon. What do you think?” Her eyes were bright, her cheeks a little flushed. “The men would come home. We could start to rebuild things again. . . .” Her face tightened suddenly; perhaps she was remembering those who would not come back.

Hannah had no idea if Lizzie had other family far less safe than her scientist husband, perhaps brothers or friends. “I can’t think of anything better to pray for,” she said softly. “And it would be right to pray for it, for everyone. We could all start again, making things instead of smashing them. And the Germans could, too, of course.”

Lizzie nodded quickly, afraid to think of such a thing too long, and tempt fortune with words. Then she turned and walked away swiftly and almost soundlessly up the stone aisle and out of the door into the wind and sun.

Hannah finished the last of the vases and put them each in the right place, then went out as well. She almost bumped into Mrs. Nunn coming up along the path through the graves.

“Hello, Mrs. MacAllister,” the older woman said with a smile. “Where’s the chaplain?” She also spoke of Joseph by his occupation, because to her that was who he was. She had sons and nephews in the regiment at Ypres, and they wrote to him of Joseph often. “Tell him Oi was asking after him, will you please?”

“Of course,” Hannah said quickly. “He’s recovering quite well, but it will be a few weeks before he can think about going back.”

A shadow crossed Mrs. Nunn’s face. “But he will, won’t he? Oi mean, he’ll be alroight?” She was echoing Mrs. Gee’s words.

Hannah hesitated. She was overwhelmed by the power of her longing that he should stay. They needed Joseph’s faith here to lean on if they were to survive. Kerr was useless. More loss, loneliness, and pain lay ahead. She thought of Betty Townsend and Mrs. Nunn. They were only two of hundreds. “I don’t know,” she answered. “He’s thirty-seven, and he was pretty badly injured. They may not send him back.”

The color and light vanished from Mrs. Nunn’s expression. “Oh, Oi do hope that’s not true. What will moi boys do without him?” She shook her head a little, her face crumpled. “They don’t tell us much, you know, but it’s awful out there. Some o’ them doi real hard. An’ none o’ them come back loike they went. They need men loike your brother worse’n we need them. We’re safe in our own beds, an’ with food on the table in the morning, an’ clean water to drink.” She looked very hard at Hannah. “Oi’d be out there for moi boys, if Oi could, an’ keep them safe here. What mother wouldn’t? But at least Oi knowed Captain Reavley were there for them. He’d be with ’em in the worst, day or noight, winter or summer aloike.”

She smiled and her gaze was far away. “He were hurt getting moi boy Tucky back out o’ no-man’s-land, you know? Saved his loife, the chaplain did.” She took a deep breath. “God speed him back, Oi pray. Oi’m sorry, Mrs. MacAllister, but the boys come first. They’re foighting for England, an’ we got to do our part.” Sniffing fiercely, she turned and picked her way back through the graves.

Hannah stood still on the path for a few moments longer. Then with her mind in increasing turmoil, she walked slowly toward the lych-gate and out into the street.

She walked more rapidly. She had been sure, listening to Betty Townsend, that Joseph should stay here. He was needed to help with their faith, grief, loneliness, and fear of change.

Then listening to Mrs. Nunn, seeing her tired, wounded face and the strength in her, the gratitude that Joseph was there with her boys, wanting him at home had become utterly selfish, the cry of a small, spoiled child.

But what about Joseph himself? Would his arm heal well enough for him to be able to go back? Perhaps it wouldn’t. He might have to stay. That would be the best answer of all. He would be here, safe, able to help her and the whole village, and honor would be satisfied. Was that selfish? If it were her sons out there, she would want the best chaplain for them: the one who was strong enough to keep faith; brave enough to try to rescue the wounded, whatever the cost; the one who would not look away and leave them to die alone.

She opened the front door and went into the familiar hall. Mrs. Appleton was in the kitchen; the smell of baking drifted through the house. The dining room door was open, the bunch of daffodils on the table reflected on its polished surface. She could smell their warm, heavy scent.

She found Joseph upstairs in his bed. His eyes were closed, but there was a book open upside down on his lap. It was one of those days when his arm was hurting more than usual; she could see it in the shadow on his face.

He must have heard her step, light as it was, because he opened his eyes.

“Hurts?” she asked with a half smile.

“Not much,” he answered.

“It might not get strong enough for you to go back?” She lifted her voice at the end, as if it were a question. “The vicar isn’t much good. There’d be a lot for you to do here. Everything’s changing, and we don’t know what’s right as easily as we used to.” She drew in her breath. “The vicar hasn’t the faintest idea what the men have been through, but you have.” Without meaning to, she was putting all the arguments at once. She could hear the urgency in her own voice, and knew she had said too much.

There was indecision in his face. He must feel the warmth around him, smell the clean cotton of the sheets, the flowers on the dresser, bright in the sunlight through the window. He must hear the sound of birdsong outside, and the wind in the branches, sweet off the fields.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. She was ashamed. His decision, whatever it was, would be hard enough. He was the one who would be cold, tired, hungry, perhaps injured in Flanders, not she. She was being unfair.

“I think Kerr will become better at it,” he said quietly. “With practice.”

“Yes, I expect he will,” she agreed, and went out again before she made any more mistakes, even if it was just to let him see her tears.

In the upper room in Marchmont Street the Peacemaker finished reading the letter on his desk and burned the pages one at a time. It was a letter from his cousin in Berlin, one of the few men in the world he trusted absolutely. It was wiser to leave nothing to chance. German plans for the United States were crucial to success in the war. If America could be persuaded to join the Allies, the forces against Germany would be vastly increased. The American army was small as yet, but their resources were virtually inexhaustible. They had coal and steel enough to supply the world, and food, of course. In time it would tip the balance of the war fatally against Germany.

That was why America had to be kept occupied with the Mexican threat at its southern border, and possibly even with a Japanese base on the Pacific coast, just to the south in Baja California. Germany had brilliant men throughout the North American continent, agents who kept Berlin constantly in touch with every move of President Wilson and of the Congress, of public and private feeling in every state. With great skill and secrecy they moved money and guns into Mexico and judged the ambition and the violence in that turbulent country to an exactness.

The Santa Ysabel massacre was a piece of extraordinary good fortune, but with care it could be repeated on a scale large enough to keep America’s attention focused entirely on their own affairs, but not so large as to precipitate a full-scale invasion of Mexico.

Detta Hannassey was becoming more and more useful. No doubt her principal aim was to free Ireland, but she was a far better tool in helping Germany to keep control of the sabotage in America than he had thought she would be. She was resourceful, clever without arrogance, and she had sufficient sense of humor never to betray herself by posturing or losing her temper. She was not as dangerous as her father, and therefore in many ways a better weapon to use.

He took the poker and crushed the ashes of Manfred’s letter so there was nothing left.

The war at sea was the more urgent issue now. That could be won or lost on the invention being worked on in the Establishment in Cambridgeshire. He knew about its progress from the agent he had planted there over a year ago, a highly intelligent, eager man, as passionately against the war as he was himself. But he did not entirely trust him. Lately he had sensed a different mood in him, something more personal, a more particular emotion rather than the general horror against the destruction of war. It might be a weakness.

But it was Russia, that other giant not yet fully awake, that crowded his mind now. Europe had never conquered it with armies. Napoleon had tried, and it had been for him the beginning of the end. Now, a century later, it was a slow attrition eating away at the might of the German Empire, bleeding men and materials it would be far better to use toward the west, where victory could be complete and fruitful, the beginning of lasting peace and all that that meant.

What of Tsar Nicholas II, and his queen with her obsession with that unwashed lunatic, Rasputin? And the only heir to the throne a hemophiliac boy who bled at the slightest bruise! The whole vast, sweeping country was riddled by centuries of oppression and corruption, injustices crying out for retribution, factions fighting one another, hunger and war slaughtering people by the thousands. The whole rotten structure was ready to collapse, and there were men who longed to bring it about, men of passion and dreams only awaiting the chance.

Whatever it took, however much latitude he had to give him, whatever flattery or yielding it required, he must get Richard Mason back. He had the passion, the courage, the intelligence, and the supreme daring to pull together the pieces of the plan that was beginning to form in the Peacemaker’s mind. As yet it was just a vague shape—huge areas were missing yet—but so supreme, so sublimely daring it would change the tide of history, carry it forward not only to peace, but to a justice undreamed of before.

He strode over to his desk, opened it, and sat down to write.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Joseph picked up a fresh newspaper and read a long article by Richard Mason, the man regarded by many as the best of the war correspondents. He was writing from the Balkans. It was vivid, immediate, and tragic in its evocation of courage and death. There was an anger in him at suffering that came through all the measured words.

Joseph remembered working beside him on the beach at Gallipoli. He thought of the cheerful Australian voices with their desperate jokes, their inventiveness, irreverence, and good-humored stoicism. He remembered the sinking ship afterward, the cold, and facing Mason in the open boat as the wind rose, and the terrible decision he had made. For all the rage he had felt, oddly enough he had not personally disliked Mason, even then.

He knew that Hannah wanted him to stay at home after he was better, but he had refused to consider the possibility seriously until now. He thought about the men he knew who were still in the trenches, men from the village and from Cambridge itself. Some of them he had taught at St. John’s. In his dreams he was there also. He still woke with surprise to find himself in the quiet, familiar room of his childhood, birdsong in the silence outside, no guns, no soldiers’ voices.

Could he stay? There was certainly plenty for a man of the church to do here, grief to comfort, confusion to try to ease, even anger and specific evil to fight against. He had been nearly two years at Ypres. No one would blame him if he said it was enough. He was thirty-seven, far older than the vast majority of the men. Even most of the officers below the rank of colonel were in their twenties, some even younger.

He would never again have to face the noise—incessant, battering the mind until thought and sense were almost impossible. He need never see another rat, another mutilated body, or watch another young man die and try to find meaning or hope in the closest one could see of hell.

Of course the suffering and the loss would be just the same. It would simply be that he did not have to share the physical reality. He could stay at home and only hear about it, imagine it, remember, and of course see the results in the faces of the women. And after it was over, he could help to rebuild again, whether they won or lost.

Was that what he wanted? With every nightmare, with every aching bone or stab of pain, yes! Yes, he longed to find a reason never ever to go back. He longed to stay here where he was safe and clean, where he could sleep at night, where he could see the slow, sweet spring blossom over the earth, watch the patient horses pull the plow, walk with his dog and see the birds circle in the sky at sunset and fly low to roost in the elms.

Could he do that with an easy heart, knowing his men in Flanders expected him back? No one wanted to return after leave. The only ones who imagined war in heroic colors were those like Hallam Kerr who had never been there. Even most of them were a little wiser, a little more sober now.

The morning post had brought him a letter from Isobel Hughes. He was surprised how much it had pleased him to see her handwriting on the envelope. He had torn it open eagerly.

She was concerned for his injuries in case they were more serious than he had said. They were. But then he would have felt childish telling her the pain had been so consuming he had, at the beginning, even wished he could die of it to escape. That sounded so cowardly now he was intensely grateful he had not said anything.

As always, she told him of village life in Wales, the changing seasons, a little gossip about those she knew and cared for, making light of the hardships without denying them. Only this time there was something darker, a story she introduced quite casually, but her choice of words was different and even her handwriting had an urgency about it.A young man here on leave from the front has deserted. They say he has run away, but those are simple words. I don’t think they tell anything like all the truth. I saw his face when he was in the village shop. He spoke to me quite pleasantly, but his eyes looked beyond me to some hell I could not see, but perhaps I had a glimpse of it for an instant.I know there are a million men out there who are staying and facing everything there is, no matter what, and that many of them will not come back. Every reason in my mind tells me that if I knew where he was hiding in the hills, then I should tell the authorities so they can hunt him out. I imagine he will be court-martialed and then shot. I can see how that is necessary, or maybe thousands would desert, leaving only the bravest to face the enemy alone.His father is so ashamed he won’t go to chapel anymore. His mother weeps, but for him, I think, not for herself or for shame. Perhaps it is something in us because we are women, we admire the strong and the brave, but we protect the weak. Is that pity, or simply that we do not think far enough ahead to see the damage it does?I have troubled myself about this quite a lot. I ask you because I hunger for the answer and I know no one wiser or more able to weigh the matter from the view of both the army and the kinder and greater judgment of God as well. Or at least as much of God as it is given us to know.

Joseph had thought about the letter, rereading it to make sure his first impression was right. She did not dare write it openly, but he was convinced she knew where the deserter was, and wanted his opinion as to whether she should betray him or not.

Then he realized with a jolt that by the very use of the word betray he had allowed his sympathies to be as engaged as hers were. He knew the blind stare on young men’s faces when they had seen too much for the mind to bear, when their ears never ceased to hear the roar of the guns, even in the silence of the fields or the chatter of a village street.

And yet if she knew and sheltered him, even by her failure to report it, she would be held accountable for aiding a deserter. At the very best she could be shunned by her own people, at worst she could be charged with a crime. His instinct was to protect her, urge her to take no risks.

But there were other risks, to the conscience, the grief and the shame afterward, to the belief in one’s own compassion or morality. All her life she would remember whatever she did about it, and the life or death of this young man, and his family. One wanted to save everyone—and it was impossible.

He folded up the letter and put it away. He must answer it today. It would not wait. But he was not ready yet. If he was right and she wanted his judgment, then he too would never escape the consequence of it. He drifted off to sleep, the newspaper on the floor beside him.

He was jerked awake by the sound of shouting in the hallway. It was excited voices, high-pitched, over and over again, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” and Henry barking.

He stood up stiffly, papers sliding to the floor, just as Archie came through the door, Jenny on one side of him, Luke on the other, and Tom and Hannah behind him. Archie was smiling. He was still in uniform and there was something enormously impressive about the navy with the gold braid. Tom’s eyes were blazing with pride, and Jenny looked up at her father as if he were close to a god.

But the momentary joy did not hide the fatigue in Archie’s face, and Joseph recognized it with aching familiarity. He had seen that battle-weariness countless times before, the slowness to refocus the eyes, the way the shoulders were tight as if movement was not quite coordinated. Archie’s skin was wind-chapped and there was a razor cut on his left cheek. His dark hair had a touch of early gray at the temples.

“Joseph!” He held out his hand. “How are you?” His glance took in the heavily bandaged arm and the awkwardness of stance as he stood up. He understood injury.

“Good to see you, Archie,” Joseph replied, gripping his hand firmly. He met his eyes only for a moment, giving away nothing.

Tom carried his father’s case upstairs. Luke stood around, longing to ask questions and not sure how to begin. Archie sat down and Jenny slipped onto his lap and leaned against him. Hannah went to get hot tea and cakes.

“How long do you have?” Joseph asked, hoping it was at least a week.

Archie shrugged very slightly. “Three or four days,” he replied. “We’ve lost a few men. Had one or two nasty scraps. Gun turret caught fire.” He did not add that there were no survivors. Joseph knew enough about such things not to need explanation and he did not want the children to hear. There was so much that was better unsaid. Nor would Archie ask Joseph about whatever shell-fire or explosion had caused his injuries. One did not relive it; there was no point, no explanation, nothing eased.

Tom came back into the room silently.

“I hear the Duke of Westminster’s unit has reached Bir Hakeim and rescued the crews of the Tara and the Moorina,” Joseph observed, struggling to think of something hopeful.

Archie smiled. “That’s good. All I heard in London was the political news, and word about Verdun. We’re taking bets as to whether Lloyd George will be prime minister by autumn.” He stood up restlessly, sliding Jenny onto her feet, and began walking around the room, looking at the familiar ornaments, pictures, the way the afternoon light fell slanting through the windows onto the worn patches in the carpet.

Joseph knew what he was doing. He had done it also, making sure in the deeper parts of his mind that he was really home, that it all remained the same, whatever happened to the world away from here. Later, alone, he would probably touch those things, steeping his senses in their feel and their smell, to carry with him when he had to leave.

“Last bets I heard were on conscription by the middle of the year,” Joseph said quietly.

Archie was by the mantelpiece. He turned, glancing at the children, seeing their faces as they watched his every move and gesture. “Which way is your money?” he asked.

“For it,” Joseph replied. “About sixpence.” He made himself smile. He knew the news was bad and he was reading in Archie’s eyes the things he would not say in front of anyone else. There was a tacit understanding that one never spoke of defeat, or even its possibility, in front of women or children.

“Sounds about right,” Archie agreed.

“I’m going to join up,” Tom announced. “Navy, of course. Sorry, Uncle Joseph, I don’t mean to be insulting. Of course the army’s good, too, but we’re naval, aren’t we Dad?”

Archie’s face tightened, but he knew better than to argue, especially in front of anyone else. “Yes. But we’re officers, not ratings, so you’ll study properly first.”

“But, Dad . . .” Tom started.

Archie gave him a quick smile. “And you’ll obey the captain! You’ll not discuss it over tea!”

Luke turned to see if Tom would obey.

“Yes, sir,” Tom said reluctantly.

It was a strange, unnatural evening. Everyone was overwrought emotionally, uncertain what to say. One moment they were silent, the next everyone speaking together.

“Dad, what’s the worst battle you’ve ever seen?” Tom asked, his face tense, eyes unwavering.

“Was it terrible?” Luke added immediately.

Hannah drew in her breath, then changed her mind and said nothing. Her eyes also were on Archie, waiting.

Even before he spoke, Joseph knew Archie was going to evade anything like the truth, just as he would have done himself. So far he had used his injuries to deflect any such discussion.

Jenny sat next to her father, squashed up in the armchair. He had his arm around her with a gentleness that was intensely concentrated, as if in the softness of her hair and the angular grace of her young body, he touched the infinite value of life itself.

“We’re patrolling most of the time,” he answered lightly. “We meet the odd U-boat, but the main German fleet has stayed in port so far, you know.” He smiled. “I think they’re scared of us.”

Luke believed him. “Are they?” he said with pleasure. “Good, eh?”

Tom was more doubtful. “But they sink a lot of our ships, Dad. We’d be winning if they didn’t. There are a couple of boys at school whose fathers went down.”

Hannah looked quickly at Joseph, then at Archie. She needed truth, but she was afraid of it, afraid of the nightmares. She would be the one left at home to find the answers, the comfort, to make going on possible.

“Not a lot of ships,” Archie replied, considering as he spoke. “It just seems like a lot because we hear about it, and it hurts. But most of the Grand Fleet is still here. We can’t persuade the Germans to come out of harbor and face us.”

“But the U-boats do,” Tom persisted.

“Oh, yes. They’re pretty nasty, but we’ve got a few tricks of our own, and getting more all the time. And don’t ask me what they are, because it’s secret stuff, and I don’t know all of it myself. Now tell me about school. I’m much more interested in that.”

Tom gave up and dutifully answered the questions, but the enthusiasm was gone from his eyes. Half an hour later Luke and Jenny went to bed and Joseph walked alone down toward the orchard.

He did not hear Tom’s footsteps on the grass and was startled when he spoke.

“Sorry, Uncle Joseph,” Tom apologized, his voice laden with misery.

Joseph turned and saw him. His young, smooth face was solemn, his eyes shadowed in the dappled light through the trees.

“Why doesn’t Dad talk to me about anything real?” he asked quietly. “Is it because we are going to lose the war?”

Joseph had been half waiting for the question, but now that it had come it was more difficult than he had expected.

“I don’t know,” he said simply. “I don’t think so, but of course it’s possible. We won’t give up, ever, but we might be beaten.”

Tom looked startled. Joseph realized he should not have been so candid. Tom was only fourteen. Now he would have nightmares Hannah would not be able to comfort, and it was Joseph’s fault. How could he undo it?

“I don’t think we’ll be beaten,” Tom said clearly. “We won’t let it happen. But Dad was just trying to protect us, wasn’t he? A lot of people are being killed. I heard in school today that Billy Arnold’s elder brother was killed. They heard yesterday. He was twenty. That’s only six years older than I am. Did you know him, Uncle Joseph? Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you like that. I’m sorry.”

Joseph smiled. “People aren’t going to stop being killed just because I’m here on sick leave. And I knew him, but not very well. I don’t think we’ll be beaten either, actually. I just don’t want to tell you lies.”

Tom was silent for a while. They stood side by side, watching the light fade beyond the elms.

“Why won’t Dad tell me that?” Tom said at last, his voice thick with hurt. “Does he think I can’t take it?”

“We all try to protect people we love,” Joseph answered. He watched as in the distance a shire horse walked gently over the slope of the rise, the light catching on its harness. It moved slowly, head low with weariness at the end of the day. “We don’t think about it. We just do it,” he added. “It’s natural.”

“You don’t! Don’t you love me?” Tom asked.

Deliberately, Joseph did not look at him. He knew there would be tears on his face, and it was better they were private.

“Yes, I do, very much,” he answered. “But not in quite the same way. I’ve seen boys not much older than you in the trenches, and I know you can take a lot. However bad it is, not knowing is sometimes worse. At least that’s what I think. But your father may think differently.”

“I suppose so. It seems like Jenny’s the only one he’s really pleased to see!” That last was raw with hurt. “Is that because she’s a girl?”

“Probably. And too young to go and drive ambulances, like your aunt Judith.” The horse disappeared under the may blossom in the lane, and a flock of birds whirled up in the sky, startled.

“Is that dangerous?” Tom asked.

“Not most of the time, but it’s very hard work, and you see a lot of badly injured people.”

“I wouldn’t like that.”

“No, but it’s better to help them than stand around doing nothing much.”

“What do you do, Uncle Joseph? You can’t pray all the time, people don’t want that, do they? Anyway, it doesn’t work, does it!”

Joseph turned to look at him. There was pain and disillusion in his face, oddly naked in the warmth of the evening light. “What would you like God to do?” he asked.

Tom drew in his breath. “Make it stop, of course.”

“How?”

Tom blinked. “Well . . . I don’t know. Can’t God do anything He wants to?”

“He could force us, I suppose. But if you are made to do something, is it any good?” Joseph asked. “Is it worth anything, if you had no choice?”

“Well . . . well, we’ve got no choice about fighting! We have to, or get beaten—and killed.”

“I know. The only decision for us is whether we do it well or badly, whether we’re brave, and even at the worst times, remember what we believe, and the kind of people we want to be.”

Tom bit his lip. “Is that what you pray for?”

Joseph looked out over the fields again. There was nobody there anymore, just an emptiness of plowed earth and fading sky.

“Mostly. But I don’t spend a lot of time praying. Mostly I fetch and carry, dig the broken trenches along with everyone else, try to help the wounded, and write letters.”

“Is that what you got the Military Cross for?” There was sharp pride in Tom’s voice now.

“That sort of thing.” The sunset breeze smelled of the earth and in the distance the elms were little more than shadows against the sky.

“I’m going into the navy as soon as I can,” Tom said as if challenging Joseph to argue.

“Yes. I expected you would,” Joseph agreed.

Tom let out a sigh of satisfaction and they stood together silently, but now it was comfortable.

In the sitting room Hannah was glad to be alone with Archie. There was only one lamp on and the gathering darkness outside cast long shadows, leaving the glow like an island of warmth, picking out the familiar shapes of chairs, books, pictures on the wall.

Time was infinitely precious. She might never have a better chance than this to ask him about the things she needed to know.

She thought of Paul Compton, the friends who knew him, and the wife who did not. Where could she begin?

“I wish you could tell us something about your ship,” she started. “Tom is longing to know.”

“He already knows all about destroyers,” Archie answered, looking a little beyond her. “He can tell you length, tonnage, size, and number of guns, range, and complement of men.”

“I don’t mean that!” She tried to keep the loneliness out of her voice, and the anger that he seemed to be willfully misunderstanding her. “That doesn’t tell him what it feels like! Anybody can read the facts out of a book. He wants to know it from you. I do! What is your day like? What do you care about? What does it taste like? What’s funny? What’s horrible?”

He smiled, his face wrinkling in the old laughter lines she remembered. “It tastes pretty much the same as at boarding school,” he replied wryly, passing it off as a joke, still keeping her from the pain. “Bit staler, and it smells like salt, engine oil, old rooms with windows that have never been opened.”

She swallowed. She was touching reality at last, even if obliquely. “And in battle?”

His face changed so subtly she could not have named the difference, something in the tautness of the skin across the planes of his cheek, the line of his lips. “It smells of smoke, cordite, burnt rubber, and the sweat of fear,” he answered. “I’m on leave, Hannah. I don’t want to spend it talking about war. I want to be at home. Tell me what you’re doing. Tell me about the children.”

The door to his inner self was closed and locked. She knew from the set of his face and the way his eyes avoided hers that he would not allow her into that part of him where fear or pain were real, or any of his passionate and vulnerable self. They were alone together in the familiar room with the light fading outside, the last birds circling in the sky, everything exactly as it had always been. They could talk of their children, and nothing could be dearer or of more meaning, yet it would be only the often-used words, so predictable as to add nothing. The gulf between them was infinite. She could have said the same things to a stranger.

When Joseph came back in from the garden, Tom went to bed and a short while afterward she followed, weary but wide awake, ridiculously close to tears. But she must not weep, or when would she stop, and how could she explain it to anyone?

Joseph sat across the room from Archie and saw his tired, closed-in face. Archie was in command of a destroyer in the most desperate and crushing war England had known. There were no great victories like Nelson’s a century ago, just the slow erosion of sudden attack, and loss. It was his job never to show fear or doubt, regardless of what he felt, or the greater weight of what he knew. He protected his men from the demons of the mind as well as the violence of the seas. Hannah would not understand that any more than she could understand the blood-soaked trenches of Flanders. Why should she? Her own responsibilities were enough.

The next day was quiet. Archie took Henry for a walk in the early evening. Joseph could understand if the sheer silence of the countryside offered him a kind of healing that nothing else could, and perhaps he needed a time of solitude away from the questions and the unceasing hunger for his company. The dog was a happy and undemanding friendship.

Joseph knew that he could no longer put off writing to Isobel. He went into his father’s study to do it. He had never taken it as his own, and was grateful that Archie had not even placed anything of his there either.

He opened the door and went in. It was clean; there was no dust on the polished surfaces, but it had a forsaken feel which was surely more than just his knowledge that John Reavley would never come back to it again. The Bonnington seascape still hung where it always had, its gray-green water almost luminous, its lines small and delicate.

Joseph stood for only a moment before sitting down at the desk and pulling out paper and opening the inkwell. He could not even know if his advice was right or not, but he must have the courage to give it. Indecision was a choice as well. Better to be in error than to take the coward’s way of silence.Dear Isobel,Thank you for your letter. I was delighted to hear from you. I am recovering rather more slowly than I wish, and so I expect to be here for several more weeks.

He would not yet tell her that he was considering not returning at all; somehow it was not a thought he wished her to know of. Of course if he followed it through, then he would tell her in the future. He had considered describing the slow, sweet fragrance of the spring, longing to share it with her, but it seemed a luxury out of place with the urgency of her question.I am sorry to learn of the young soldier you write about. I have seen that look on men’s faces. We call it “the thousand-yard stare.” It happens to men who have seen more terrible things than the mind can bear. Some of them are very young. I wish I knew of a way to reach the agony and ease it, touch with healing what is broken inside, but I have not found it. All I know for certain is that I cannot bring myself to blame anyone that is so terribly wounded, and through no fault of their own. I would be no man’s judge in what I can barely understand, even though I have heard the incessant, beating noise myself, and seen the mud and the death. Who knows what hell another man walks through?But others may think very differently. Their own losses, or their anger, fear, and ignorance may make them wish for a violent resolution that they feel represents justice. In any decision you make, please never forget this, and take the greatest care.

Then he went on to speak of his own village, the garden, the orchard, and the fields. He hoped he had made his advice plain enough that she would understand. He dared not be clearer. There was always the possibility the letter would be censored, and greater clarity would in itself prevent her from doing anything but turning in the young soldier.

He could not tell her even that he had indecision in his mind. He sat alone in the study and stared at the small, exquisite painting of the sea. And he prayed.

The following morning Joseph was barely dressed when Hannah knocked hard and peremptorily on his bedroom door, calling his name.

“Come in,” he said, alarm too swift for irritation. “What is it?”

She stood in the doorway, her face pale. “The vicar is here to see you,” she said breathlessly. “He looks absolutely terrible, and he says it can’t wait. He won’t even sit down. I’m sorry, but you’d better come. He looks beside himself, but he won’t tell me anything at all. Joseph, do you think the Germans have landed?”

“No, of course not,” he answered suddenly, moving toward the door. “The vicar wouldn’t be the only one to know. Where’s Archie?”

She swallowed. “He’s still asleep. Should I waken him?”

“No! No. I’ll go and see what he wants.” He was annoyed at the disturbance. “It might be nothing much. He panics rather easily. But just in case it’s someone in the village lost a son or brother and can’t cope, you’d better keep the children busy. We don’t need them frightened.”

“If it is, you’d better tell me who . . . in case I can help.” Her face was even whiter, her voice husky.

“I will.” He moved to go past her onto the landing.

“Here.” She reached out to retie his sling where it was roughly done. “It needs to be taut or it won’t support your arm.”

He stood obediently while she redid it, then went down to the sitting room with a feeling of sickness in his stomach. He realized how good it had been not to have to face death, maiming, grief, not to be the one who had to be first there and try to deal with the pain of it and make sense to the people left.

Hallam Kerr was standing in the middle of the room, his body rigid, his hair wet and sticking up in spikes. His face was pale. Joseph was used to the signs of shock, but it still caught him by surprise.

Kerr took a swaying step toward him. “Thank God you’re here!” he gasped. “Something terrible has happened! Ghastly!” His breath caught in his throat, his chest heaving. “I simply don’t know where to begin. . . .”

“You had better sit down and tell me,” Joseph said firmly. He closed the door. “What has happened?”

Kerr stood rigidly, flapping his hands as if trying to grasp something that eluded him. “There’s been a murder, right here in the village!” His voice was high pitched and unnatural. “Theo Blaine from the Establishment! Found dead in his own garden. He was a scientist! One of their best, I believe. Who would do such a thing? What’s happening to us?”

Joseph was appalled. He had thought nothing violent could shock him anymore, but this did. A scientist! One of Shanley Corcoran’s men. Fear chilled him to the pit of his stomach. Did the Germans know about the invention? Was this their way of stopping Britain from winning, even from surviving? No. He was being hysterical. There could be any number of reasons.

He sat down slowly. Kerr could remain standing if he wanted to. “How did it happen?” he asked. “Who is responsible?”

Kerr flopped into the chair opposite him, clasping and unclasping his hands. “No one knows,” he said wretchedly. “The police have been sent for, of course. I mean someone from Cambridge. There’ll have to be an investigation. It’s going to turn the whole village upside down. There’ll be scandal. As if we hadn’t enough to . . .” He covered his face with his hands. “What can I say to his wife? I can hardly go in with condolences as if she had lost him in France. This is hideous . . . personal hatred so terrible . . .” He looked up, his skin blotched from the pressure of his fingers. “What do I say?” he pleaded. “How do I explain this, and tell her there is some kind of God who is in control and can make sense out of it all? What can I do to comfort her?”

“You won’t know until you see her,” Joseph answered. “There’s no formula.”

“I can’t do it! I don’t know the words. . . .” He gestured helplessly. “If he’d died in the army, or the navy, I could say he made a great sacrifice and God would . . . I don’t know . . . watch over him, take him home. . . .” He floundered to a stop.

Joseph wanted to argue the futility of saying such things however anyone had died, but Kerr was not listening to him. He wanted Joseph to do the job for him—and for Mrs. Blaine’s sake, as well as for Kerr’s, he must. “You’ll have to drive me,” he answered, and saw the flood of relief in Kerr’s face, and then apprehension. “I haven’t got a car, and I couldn’t drive it with one hand if I had,” Joseph pointed out.

“Oh! Yes, yes of course.” Kerr stood up. “Thank you. Thank you. Will you . . . er . . . come now?”

“I must tell my family, then I’ll accompany you.” Joseph stood also, finding himself oddly stiff and a little dizzy. “I shall be back in a moment.” He left Kerr in the sitting room and went through to look for Hannah.

She was in the kitchen. She turned to face him as soon as she heard his footsteps, even before he was through the door. She had a dish cloth in one hand, dripping unnoticed onto the floor. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

“One of the scientists at the Establishment has been murdered,” he answered gently. There was no point in trying to protect her. The whole village would know in an hour or two. “Kerr wants me to go with him to see the widow.”

“You don’t have to.” She put the dish cloth down and took a step toward him. “You’re still sick.”

“Yes, I must, for Mrs. Blaine’s sake.”

She drew in her breath to argue, then let it out again, the struggle over before it began. “Can I help?”

“Maybe later.” He turned to leave.

“Joseph?”

“Yes?”

“Is that going to stop Shanley from completing the invention?” She was frightened and it was naked in her face.

He knew the fear, tight gripping in the stomach, shivering cold. It was far bigger than one life or death, however terrible. It could be the loss they all dreaded, the beginning of the final defeat.

“I don’t know.” He tried to sound calm, braver than he felt. “This man might not have even been working on it.”

“Shanley’s going to be so distressed—either way. Don’t forget him, will you!” she warned.

“No, of course not.” He hesitated a moment more, touched her briefly with his good hand, then went out into the hall.

He sat silently beside Kerr as they drove along the main street of St. Giles. It was the first time Joseph had seen it since his last leave in October. In the ambulance from Cambridge he had been lying down, and in too much pain to think of peering out. Now he looked at the familiar buildings whose shape he could have drawn in his dreams with the name of every shop, and who owned them, the post office, the school, the village pond, and of course the lych-gate to the church and the graveyard beyond. John and Alys Reavley were there. He missed them with a slow ache that never entirely left him, but he was also grateful that they did not have to see the gathering darkness of this time, or fear for those they loved.

Once again he was dealing with murder, the shock and grief of it, and the anger that would certainly follow. And he thought of Mrs. Prentice. He had loathed her son. He could have imagined killing him himself, especially the night of Charlie Gee’s injury. That still sickened him almost beyond bearing. He understood Sam. God!—how he understood Sam! And missed him still.

At least he did not know the poor woman he was going to see now, and whoever had killed her husband would also be someone he did not know. This time he would be a bystander, and perhaps he could be of some help. He might eventually even help Kerr! He needed it as much as anyone.

Kerr drew up abruptly alongside a flowering hedge, white with early blackthorn blossom. “The house is just the other side of that,” he said, nodding toward it. “I’ll wait here. I don’t want to seem to be watching. It would make the poor woman feel even worse.”

Coward, Joseph thought, but he said nothing. He opened the car door with his good hand and stepped out. The air was cool and sweet and the earth slightly damp as he walked to the gate and then up the path. He loathed doing this and was prepared to be told pretty briskly to go away.

He knocked on the door, and waited long enough to believe it would not be answered. He stepped back and was about to turn away, both disappointed and relieved, when it pulled open slowly and he saw a slender, dark-haired woman with a face bleached by shock.

“Mrs. Blaine?” He did not wait for her answer. It could be no one else. “I am Mrs. MacAllister’s brother, Joseph Reavley. I’m a chaplain in the army, home on sick leave.” His bandaged arm in the sling was obvious. “If I can be of any help or comfort to you, please call on me.”

She stared, then looked past him as if to make certain he was alone.

He waited without moving.

“I don’t know what anyone can do,” she said helplessly. “It’s . . .” She made a small gesture of complete loss.

He smiled very slightly. “Well, I’m not a lot of practical use at the moment,” he admitted. “I couldn’t even make you a decent cup of tea. But I can write letters, or get in touch with solicitors or banks, or anyone else you need to notify. Sometimes doing that sort of thing is terribly hard because you have to keep on repeating the same things, and it doesn’t get any easier. It’s like hammering home the reality of it.”

Her blue eyes widened very slightly. “Yes . . . it . . . it will be. I hadn’t thought . . .” She gave a little shake of her head. “I suppose you do this all the time.”

“No. I just write letters to tell people that someone they loved is missing or lost,” he answered. “Sometimes it’s just that they are wounded and can’t write themselves.”

“You sound as if you know. . . .”

“I lost my own wife.” He did not want to add anything more. It was over three years ago now, and the whole world had changed in that time, but it still hurt.

“I’ll make the tea.” She pulled the door wider. “Please come in. I suppose I need advice, and I’d rather not do this alone.”

He followed her through to the kitchen. It was an ordinary house, tidy but obviously lived in. There were coats hanging in the hall, a basket of clean laundry on the bottom of the stairs ready to be carried up. An open book lay on the hall table and letters were waiting to be posted. There were two umbrellas in the stand next to outdoor shoes, and a pair of binoculars.

The kitchen was immaculate. She must have found the body before starting to make breakfast. What had she done since then? Perhaps nothing, just moved from one place to another aimlessly, suddenly without purpose, too stunned to care about anything.

Now she had something to do, tea to make for a visitor. Her hands were shaking slightly but she managed, and he allowed her to do it without interfering. She offered him biscuits and he accepted. All the time he talked, just trivia, letting the conversation wander wherever she wished it to, half sentences, irrelevances.

“We came here because of Theo’s work at the Establishment,” she said as she sat down at the wooden kitchen table opposite him. “He’s brilliant. Mr. Corcoran isn’t going to know how to replace him. Of course he won’t be able to. Theo was unique. He seemed to be able to get ideas out of the air, to think sideways.” She looked at him questioningly to see if he understood what she meant. It seemed to matter to her that he believed her. Small pieces of sense seem to, absurdly, at such times. He knew that.

He nodded. In a while he would ask her about letters, people to tell, anything that needed canceling. The practical things could be very hard to do alone. Even sorting through a dead person’s clothes was desperately painful. The very familiarity of it was overwhelming, the smell, the remembered touch of someone you loved. With only one useful arm he would be little physical help, but he would at least be there.

They were discussing such things, when to do it, which charity to give them to, when they were interrupted by another knock at the front door. Lizzie Blaine answered it and returned to the kitchen followed by a very ordinary looking man of barely average height. He was wearing a suit of indeterminate brownish gray and brown leather shoes scuffed at the toes. His hair was sprinkled with gray and definitely receding. When he spoke, one could see that his teeth were crooked, and two were missing.

“Morning, Captain Reavley,” he said with slight surprise. “Home on sick leave, are you? Hope it’s not too bad. That your driver outside, reading his Bible?”

A tide of memory washed over Joseph. It was as if for a moment he were back in Cambridge before the war, and it was Sebastian who was dead, not some brilliant young scientist full of promise whom he had never met, never taught or cared about, or whose work he had loved and believed in so fiercely. All the ugliness of suspicions came back to him, the angers, the jealousies uncovered, the hate where he thought there had been friendship, the shabby deeds that life could have left covered, and death had exposed.

“Good morning, Inspector Perth,” he replied, his voice suddenly scratchy. “It’s the vicar. Yes, I suppose you could say he is my driver. How are you?” He had found Perth intrusive then, worrying at injuries and hidden pain like an animal with an old bone. He had returned to the vulnerabilities again and again, but in the end he had not been without compassion. Now he looked tired and anxious. Probably the police were short-handed, as all the fit young men had gone to France. “I expect you are here to see Mrs. Blaine,” he concluded. “Am I in the way?”

“Please stay!” Lizzie Blaine said quickly. “I . . . I’d like you to, if you don’t mind?” She looked frightened and on the edge of losing the fragile control she had managed to cling to so far.

Joseph did not move. He met Perth’s eyes.

“If you don’t interrupt, Captain,” Perth warned. He nodded his head fractionally. There was a respect in his eyes as if Joseph were in uniform. He was a man from the trenches, the front line of battle, and in a country at war that meant he was a hero. He could ask for and receive almost anything. It was an artificial role, and he disliked it. The heroes were the men who went willingly to the front, to live and all too often to die on the line, the ones who went over the top into no-man’s-land and faced the bullets, the shells, and the gas. A lot of the time they did it with a joke, and so often when they were injured appallingly, if asked if it hurt, they would say, “Yes, sir, but not too much.” By the next day they might be dead. Many of them were not yet twenty.

He forced his attention back to the present and the white-faced woman of perhaps twenty-five or so, looking at Perth and trying to find the words to tell him what had happened.

“When did you last see your husband, Mrs. Blaine?” Perth said calmly, waiting until she sat down in one of the kitchen chairs, then doing the same.

“We quarreled last night,” she admitted, her face flushed with shame. “About half past nine. He went out into the garden. I went up to bed about half an hour after that. I . . . I didn’t see him again.”

“What did you quarrel about?” Perth asked, no expression in his voice or his tired, ordinary face.

“Nothing, really,” she said miserably. It was a lie. Joseph knew it as he watched her, but not a guilty one. Perhaps it was defensive—to hide the foolishness of a man already dead. “It was stupid, just tiredness and short temper,” she went on. “He’d been working very hard at the Establishment. He didn’t often get home before eight or even nine in the evening.”

Perth’s expression was unreadable. Had he seen the lie as well?

Joseph did not believe Lizzie Blaine this time, either. There was a change in the way she sat, not a movement but a lack of it, as if she were rigid inside, guarding herself. The quarrel had been specific, and she did not want to admit it. Did she know who had killed her husband?

Perth looked at her curiously. “Were you angry that he worked late so often, Mrs. Blaine?”

She hesitated. “No, of course not.” She met his eyes. “It’s for the war. It’s something we all have to do. It would be worse if he were in the army, or the navy, wouldn’t it?” Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. “At least it might have been,” she corrected herself.

Perth glanced at Joseph, then he nodded again. “I’m afraid, Mrs. Blaine, that terrible as it is out there, we’ve got our own troubles at home, too. Crime doesn’t stop just ’cos of the war. Wish it did. You went to bed, you say? Did you hear Mr. Blaine come back inside?”

“No.” She swallowed.

“That didn’t worry you?” There was skepticism in his face.

She looked at him defiantly now. “No. He used to stay up sometimes, thinking. He was a scientist, Inspector, not an office clerk. He was always thinking.”

Perth’s face tightened. Not many people worked office hours these days, certainly not police, but he did not say so aloud. “And you didn’t wake up in the night and wonder where he was?”

“No,” she answered. She was sitting stiff-backed on the wooden chair, her shoulders rigid, her knuckles white on the tabletop. “I slept right through. I’d worked pretty hard during the day, too, and I was exhausted.”

Perth’s eyes flickered around the tidy kitchen. Had he noticed that there was nothing belonging to children downstairs, and no mention of them? “Working?” he asked.

“With the VADs,” she answered. “We had a garden party where everybody brought a blanket. We got nearly three hundred, but it took a long time afterward to fold and pack them.”

“I see. So you would have been late home also?”

“Half past six. I wanted to cook dinner for him.”

His voice dropped a little and became gentler. “And this morning, Mrs. Blaine?”

Her lips quivered and she swallowed as if there was an obstruction in her throat. “When I woke up and saw he still wasn’t there, I knew something was wrong. We . . . we have a shed at the bottom of the garden, where the walk is at the end under the trees.” She shivered although it was warm in the room from the black lead stove still alight from the night before. “I thought he might have been so angry that he had slept down there,” she went on. “I know that’s ridiculous. It’s far too cold for that, but I went down anyway, after I knew he wasn’t in the house. I . . .” She dragged her hand over her face, pushing her dark hair back. “I found him lying on the earth just by the path, and the . . .” She stopped. Every trace of color left her face. Joseph could only imagine the horror in her mind.

“I see. And what time was that?” Perth asked.

“What?” She looked lost, as if the meaning of what he said had evaded her.

“What time was that?” he repeated. He was uncomfortable, aware of the clinical coldness of the question.

“I’ve no idea.” She blinked. “It was light so it must have been after six o’clock. I don’t know. It seems like ages ago, but maybe it wasn’t. I came back up to the house. We have a telephone for Theo’s work. I called the police.”

“Yes. The constable said so.” He went on asking her questions, quiet and persistent, about her husband’s habits, his friends, anyone who disliked him, anything else she could think of. Joseph listened as a picture emerged of a quiet, somewhat impatient young man with a dry sense of humor, a love of the late chamber music of Beethoven, and a rather impractical desire to have a dog, preferably a large one.

In spite of every effort not to, Joseph felt a wave of grief for him. Considering the number of men who were dying in war, it was foolish, irrelevant, and made him less able to think clearly and be of help, but he had no power over it. He looked at Lizzie Blaine, and perhaps she saw something of his emotion in his face, because for an instant there was gratitude naked in hers.

“Thank you, Mrs. Blaine,” Perth said at last. “I’ll go down and look at this shed now.” It was odd to hear him being so delicately oblique. It was ridiculous, but Joseph liked him better for it.

Perth stood up. “You stay here, ma’am. Captain Reavley can take me down.”

“He doesn’t know . . .” she started, then realized it did not matter. They could hardly get lost in the small, slightly overgrown back garden.

They went out of the back door and walked down the lawn bordered on either side by walls with espalier trees and low shrubs in front, some of them chosen for flowers, others for leaves. Beyond the garden was a wood stretching perhaps half a mile to the right, and rather less to the left. There was a gate in the fence behind the potting shed, so apparently there was a path on the other side. A uniformed constable stood by the wall, his face pale. He recognized Perth with a slight stiffening to attention.

The body of Theo Blaine had been moved an hour or so before, and the place where he had been was marked out very carefully with little sticks in the wet earth and tape tied to them. Perth regarded the scene with tight lips, shaking his head.

“Garden fork right through the neck,” he said, his voice quiet and sad. “Savage. Never seen anything like it, to be honest.” He glanced sideways and away again. “That’s it over there, propped up against the wall.”

Joseph looked at it. It was a perfectly ordinary piece of garden equipment such as he had himself, gray steel with a wooden shaft and green handle at the top, now heavily smeared with mud. Three of the prongs were stained with blood. There was something obscenely brutal about such a domestic tool used to tear a man’s flesh and veins apart until the red, arterial blood gushed out onto the ground.

“How . . .” His mouth was dry. “How could you swing that to . . . ?”

Perth went over and picked it up, his mouth twisted in distaste. “No fingerprints as we could use on it,” he said. “Not with all this mud. S’pose that’s why they did it.” He picked it up with one hand at the top, the other where the shaft met the metal tongues of the tines to hold them on. He swung it around as if to hit Joseph on the side of the head. “Damn!” he swore. “Sorry,” he apologized instantly. Repositioning his grip, he then stabbed it into the ground. “When his man fell down he must have pierced him something like that.” He replaced the fork where it had been and wiped most of the mud off his hand with his handkerchief, then examined it ruefully.

“Hurt yourself?” Joseph asked.

Perth grunted. “Just a scratch. Must be a screw high on it with a rough edge. But useful, that. If I cut myself, then he might have, too. Or she, I suppose. More likely a man, though. Man’s sort of thing to do.” He looked at the gate. “What’s the other side of there, Constable?”

“Lane, sir,” the constable replied. “Goes along past the houses, all the way to the river, then up to the main road. Down to the road to Madingley the other way.”

“So whoever it was probably came along it one way or the other?”

“Yes sir, ’less they came through the garden, or from one o’ them other houses.”

“Did you look along the path? Ask anyone?”

“Yes, sir. Nobody saw anyone, but then if it were after dark, they likely wouldn’t. But there was tracks here an’ there in the earth, like a bicycle’d bin down very recent. Somebody of a fair weight, to judge by the depth o’ the marks.”

“Good work.”

“Thank you, sir.” He straightened his shoulders.

“No one seen a bicycle, by any chance?”

“Not yet, sir, but we’re still looking. There moight have bin someone out walking late—courtin’ couple, or someone with a dog. Never know.”

“Good. Don’t stop.” Perth turned back to Joseph, his voice lowered, his eyes anxious. “I understand this Mr. Blaine was one of the top scientists at the Establishment. This isn’t good, Captain Reavley.”

“You think it had to do with his work?” Joseph asked. Corcoran would miss Blaine appallingly if he was really one of his best men. Would it actually affect the invention he had spoken of, and the time in which it could be completed?

Perth chewed his lip. “Don’t know about that, sir. Could be German spies, an’ no doubt that’s what some folks’ll think. But seems a bit odd to me. Why the garden fork, eh? Looks more like a crime of opportunity, don’t you think?”

“You mean a German spy would be better organized?” Joseph asked. The morning air smelled of damp leaf mold and it was muddy underfoot, but there was nothing left to mark what had happened except the dark patch of blood pooling and soaking into the earth. Joseph looked at it, and thought he must arrange for somebody to come and perhaps lay a stonework path over it. It shouldn’t be left like this. There were plenty of men in the village who would do that, as a kindness, a mark of decency. Albie Nunn, Tucky’s father, or Bert Arnold. They were good with their hands. “Perhaps he was better organized,” he said aloud. “But he saw the fork, and used it precisely so we would think it was impulse, a passion of some sort.”

Perth looked sideways at him. “You’re getting clever at this, Captain Reavley. If that arm of yours don’t get really right, mebbe we could use you in the police force.”

Joseph had no idea if Perth was being sarcastic or not, and he could think of no sensible reply. He was painfully conscious that a young man had died here, suddenly and violently, and that someone, for whatever reason, had committed a crime that would surely mark him forever, too.

They walked slowly back up to the house. Perth spoke briefly to Lizzie Blaine, then took his leave. Joseph stayed another half hour to help her with some of the most immediate arrangements, simple things like informing the bank, her solicitor, and placing her notice of bereavement in the newspapers. Then he too left, but promising to return, and giving her his telephone number in case she needed him for anything.

Hallam Kerr had waited patiently in the lane, reading his Bible, as Perth had observed. He looked up, startled and unhappy, when Joseph reappeared, but he asked no questions, as if the entire visit fell within the realm of confidentiality, and in truth, Joseph had no wish to confide in him. They drove back in silence.

Hannah was waiting in the hall. She must have been listening for the car.

“You look terrible,” she said urgently as Joseph came in. “I’ll get you a cup of tea and something to eat. How about a boiled egg and some toast?”

He smiled in spite of the grief inside him. “I’m all right,” he assured her. “I did what I could to help Mrs. Blaine. There’s not a great deal, other than assist with a few practical things, and be there to sit beside her while she goes through the ordeal of telling people. I’m afraid it’s going to be very ugly. Because of Theo Blaine’s work, it is possible he was killed by a German spy.”