Angels in the Gloom

“I came to tell you about Billy Hopgood,” he said a little awkwardly. “I thought you would like at least to know about it. He wasn’t in your regiment, but you probably know him.”

“Yes . . . slightly.”

Kerr hesitated, his eyes searching Joseph’s. “I’m . . . I’m going to see him,” he said. “I’ve no idea what I can say—God help me! But I swear I’ll stay as long as he wants me to. If . . .” He swallowed as though there was a lump in his throat. “If he tells me to get out, should I go?”

Joseph smiled in spite of himself. “I don’t know any better than you do. Maybe wait until he’s told you three times, that should mean he’s sincere.”

“I’ll be there all night, if that’s what he needs,” Kerr promised. “Two in the morning can be a terrible hour to spend alone. I . . . I know. I’ve done it. I still have my arms and legs, but I felt as if God had abandoned the world.” He gulped again. “He . . . he hasn’t, has he?” He looked at Joseph with pleading eyes.

Joseph looked back at him, racking his mind for what he should say. Was Kerr strong enough for honesty? Perhaps he was too weak to survive anything else, and forgive? “I don’t know,” he answered. “There are times when I look at what’s happening, young men crushed and dying, the land poisoned and turned to filth, corruption of what I used to trust utterly, and I’m not sure.” He met Kerr’s haggard eyes. “But the things that Christ taught are still true, of that I’m absolutely certain. Meet me at the end of the world when we stand at the abyss, I’ll tell Satan to his face just as certainly: Honor is still worth living or dying for; no matter how tired or hurt or frightened you are, face forward and seek the light, even if it’s gone out and you can’t remember where it was, keep going. It’s always right to care. It’s going to hurt like hell at times, you’ll think it’s beyond bearing, but if you let go of that then you have lost the purpose of existing at all.”

Kerr stared at him, a slow, almost beautiful dawn of understanding in his eyes, as if he had seen something at last that made sense, one firm step on which to build.

“Yes,” he said simply. “I’ll go now. Thank you, Captain Reavley.” He held out his hand. “Thank you for everything.”

Joseph took it and gripped it hard, and felt an answering firmness. “Good luck,” he offered, meaning it profoundly.

Kerr nodded. “You too, sir.”

The next day Orla telephoned again, and this time it was not possible to put her off with evasion. Her voice was harsh with fear and exhaustion, and unquestionably with anger as well.

“Joseph? Shanley has asked me to speak with you. He sounds terribly ill, and he won’t tell me what is wrong. He says that he has some information about an enemy in the Establishment. I suppose he must be referring to whomever murdered poor Theo Blaine.” Now the anger in her was very forceful. “I think that Shanley has realized who it is that is betraying us to the Germans. He dare not trust anyone except you. He says he cannot even speak to Matthew, and you will know why, but it is extremely urgent. You have to go to him, Joseph. He sounds dreadful. I’ve never heard him like this before.” Her voice dropped. “I think it must be someone he is very fond of, someone he really trusted. Disillusion is one of the most painful of all human experiences, especially for a man like Shanley, who cares for people so much. Please go immediately, Joseph. Promise me?”

She spoke of disillusion! What searing irony. It was the very last thing he wanted to do. There was nothing to say, nothing to add except recriminations, and excuses neither of them would believe.

Was it conceivable that Corcoran knew anything about information going from the Establishment to the Germans? From whom? Ben Morven? There was nothing new in that. Surely naval intelligence would get everything from him that there was?

Or could it be that Corcoran knew something that Morven would never betray?

He did not believe it. But he would go, not for Corcoran to tell him anything from naval intelligence, but because he wanted to look at Corcoran again and see if he could understand how he had been so blind all these years to the truth of him. Had the weakness always been there? How had he missed it? What did he really understand of human good or evil if he misread a man so close to him so badly?

And had his father been so blind as well? Had he chosen not to see, or not to believe it? Should the deepest friendship close its eyes deliberately? Was that what loyalty was, or ought to be?

He was standing at the telephone in the hall. Everyone else was in the kitchen. He could smell bread baking.

“Yes,” he said, clearing his throat. “Yes. Of course I’ll go. I imagine they will let me in. Where is he?”

There was a moment’s silence. “Don’t you know? Shanley said you did!”

“No, I don’t. But I imagine I can find out. It may not be today, but I’ll go.”

“Thank you.” She did not press him or ask him to swear or promise. She believed his word. It made him feel worse.

It took him several telephone calls and a lot of waiting before finally someone in Admiral Hall’s office told him where Corcoran was, and gave him permission to visit because he was an ordained chaplain in the army. Corcoran would not be permitted a civilian lawyer, but he would be allowed a military one, and the military priest of his choice. Apparently that was Joseph. A car would pick him up the following afternoon, and return him afterward. He was to speak of it to no one, most particularly not to Orla Corcoran. Joseph gave his word; it was a condition of the visit. And he was to wear uniform so there could be no misunderstanding of his status.

The countryside was glorious, dappled sunshine over the fields, hedges still white with blossom, trees billowing in the wind, their skirts flying. There were shire horses leaning into the harrow, necks bent. Clouds piled up, scudding away in long mare’s tails, like spindrift off the sea. For once he did not see it.

It was a long journey and he lost sense of direction, except that it was generally toward London. It took over two hours. When he finally arrived at the building, he found it was an old prison made of stone and smelling as if it was always wet. It seemed to carry with it the darkness of old griefs, bitterness, and lost dreams.

Joseph identified himself again, and was taken inside.

“I have been told to allow you an hour, Chaplain, but it will only be this once,” the officer in charge told him. “I don’t know what he’s here for, but it’s very serious. You must give him nothing, and take nothing from him. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I’ve seen military prisoners before,” Joseph replied miserably.

“Maybe, but this one’s different. Sorry, Chaplain, but we’ve got to search you.”

“Of course.” Joseph submitted obediently, then finally he was conducted along a narrow corridor. His footsteps, instead of echoing as he had expected, were eaten by the silence, as if he had not really passed that way at all.

Corcoran was in an ordinary room, indistinguishable as a cell except for the fact that the window was above head height, and the glass was so thick that nothing was visible through it. The single door was made of steel with no features at all on the inside, no hinge, no handle.

Corcoran himself was sitting on a bunk bed with a bare mattress.

He looked up as the door closed and Joseph was left alone with him. He was an old man, his face withered, his skin without life. His eyes seemed smaller, more deeply sunken into his head.

Joseph felt a wrenching pity inside him like a cramp in the stomach, and even a kind of revulsion. It would have been unimaginable a week ago. This was Shanley Corcoran! A man he had loved all his life, whose face and voice and whose laughter were woven into the best of all his memories. And he had killed Theo Blaine, not in anger or passion, not in defense of anything good, but because Blaine was going to achieve the glory of saving Britain, leaving Corcoran to be no more than a footnote on the pages of history.

That glory in other men’s minds had mattered to him more than the project itself, more than Blaine’s life, and God forgive him, more than the lives of the sailors who would have used the device, whatever it was. Had he thought of them?

Joseph stopped just inside the door, standing because there was nothing on which to sit. He had to say something, keep up the pretense.

“What is it you know, Shanley?” he asked. He could not bring himself to say “how are you?” That would be absurd now, and dishonest. His state was painfully obvious, and Joseph could do nothing to help, even if he wished to, and he was not sure that he did, or what it was he felt now, except misery.

Corcoran gave a bitter little laugh. “Is that all you care about, Joseph? After all these years, the sum of it is ‘what do you know?’ ”

Joseph felt a stab of pity and disgust that almost made him sick. It was like a physical twisting of the stomach. “That’s why you sent for me,” he replied. “And incidentally, why they let me in.”

“And the only reason you came?” There was accusation in Corcoran’s face.

It was even worse than Joseph had feared. The room was not hot, but it was airless, and he could feel the sweat running down his body. He could not ask him when the corruption had started, or if it had always been there. He played the farce. “Is there another spy in the Establishment, Shanley?” he asked.

Corcoran looked up at him. “You know, I have not the faintest idea. There might be. It could even be one of the technicians or guards, for all I could say.” Now there was anger in him, as if he had been let down. “But I knew you wouldn’t come unless you thought there was some glory in it for you, some prize to take back to Admiral Hall.” His mouth twisted in a sour grimace. “You’re nothing like your father, Joseph. He knew the value of friendship, through fair weather or foul. He would never turn his back on a lifetime of loyalty, all the human passion and treasure of the past. But for all your pretense of religion, your self-righteousness going out to the trenches where you can pose the hero, you’re shallow as a puddle in the street.”

It was ridiculous that it should hurt! It was grossly unfair, distorted by fear and, please God, by guilt as well, but still it left Joseph gasping with the pain of it. “Don’t use my father’s name in this,” he said between his teeth. “Most of the time I miss him with a constant emptiness. I keep thinking of things I want to ask him, things to tell him, or just to share. But I’m glad he doesn’t have to see you now. He would have found it unbearable because you’ve betrayed not only the future, but the past as well. Nothing looks the same as it used to. All my life I’ve thought that you, above all men, were honest. You’re not; you’re a liar to the soul. I just wondered if you had always been, and somehow we missed it!”

Corcoran stood up, easily, the aches and stiffness forgotten. “You’re ignorant, Joseph, and with the arrogance of all people who think they speak for God and morality, you judge without understanding. I had no choice.” He stared at Joseph, his eyes burning with anger. “When I said I had no idea who the spy in the Establishment was, that was only half true. I don’t know who’s left now, who smashed the prototype and who could still be in touch with the Germans.” His voice rose a pitch. “Theo Blaine wasn’t nearly as clever as everyone thought he was, not anywhere near! Oh, he was bright!” He said it bitterly, as though it were somehow a condemnation. “Very advanced in his field, but there’s all the difference in the world between bright and genius. Like Icarus, he flew too close to the sun. Thought he could design a machine that would guide torpedoes and depth charges so they would hit their target every time. He said so!”

Joseph’s mind swam. The idea was vast! It really would have changed the war forever. Whichever side had such a thing would destroy the other out of the sea. That was what Archie was testing now, and Matthew with him. Did they know the truth—that it was useless? Why in God’s name had Corcoran killed Blaine, if Blaine had not had the genius to do it?

“It makes no sense,” he said aloud. “If he couldn’t finish it, why kill him?”

“Now you doubt I did it?” Corcoran was raging. “Suddenly you’re sorry, and on my side again?”

Joseph was staggered. Could he have been so immensely wrong? It was a moment’s wild, beautiful hope. But Blaine had certainly not torn his own throat out with a garden fork!

“Because he couldn’t finish it, he was going to sell it to the Germans, you fool!” Corcoran spat. “Anything rather than admit he wasn’t up to it. That way we would never have known. It was his chance to cover himself. But maybe the Germans could have finished it, built on what we had! They have brilliant men.” He leaned farther forward. “Don’t you see, Joseph? I had to do it! I had no choice. Who could I tell? No one else in the country knew enough to understand whether I was right or not. The fate of the war depended on it. . . .”

Joseph was stunned. Was it possible? It made hideous sense—a scientist who boasted of what he could achieve, who overrated his own ability, brilliant as it was, but not genius of that splendor. Then, when he was at his wit’s end, staring failure in the face, and his own humiliation, he sold it to the enemy rather than admit the truth. What fatal arrogance!

“I tried to stop the spy as well,” Corcoran went on, his voice strengthening. “But I missed him. Blaine wouldn’t tell me, but I have no doubt now that it’s Morven.” He moved until he was almost close enough to Joseph to touch him. “You have to take it from here. I don’t know who to trust. Matthew’s at sea on Archie’s ship. He doesn’t trust Calder Shearing, he told me that himself. Hall won’t listen to me. You have to do it—for England—for the war. For everything we love and believe . . .”

Joseph looked at him. It hung in the balance, all the past love, the memories sweet and close, the desperate hunger to believe, like clinging to a dream as the shreds of it slip into waking.

But honesty forced itself on him. Corcoran was lying. It was there in the details, the pattern that shifted with each retelling of the story, always to lay the fault on someone else. He remembered Lizzie’s words about Blaine’s skills, and that Morven’s were not the same, but Corcoran’s were. And now he could see it in Corcoran’s eyes, the sheen on his skin. It was the same terror of dying that he saw in the trenches, but out there, for all the horror and pity, it was in a way clean.

He turned away, sick to his heart. “You’re lying, Shanley,” he said quietly. “Blaine might have finished it. It was you who stopped him so you could do it yourself and take the fame in history, the glory of saving your country. But you were willing to let the country lose rather than have Blaine crowned in your place.”

“You don’t know that!” Corcoran shouted at him. “There’s nothing to prove it, except your word! You could be wrong. . . .”

Joseph turned back. He hated meeting Corcoran’s eyes and seeing the terror and the self-pity in them, but to look away now could be a cowardice he would never be able to mend. “No, I’m not wrong. You didn’t kill Blaine to save the project; you killed him to prevent him from eclipsing you. You have to be the center, all eyes on you.”

“Don’t testify!” Corcoran’s voice cracked. “You don’t have to! You are my priest. You can’t be compelled to!” His face was slick with sweat now and he was trembling. “Your father wouldn’t have done. He understood friendship, the supreme loyalty.”

Joseph thought of all the arguments in his mind. He thought of Archie at sea, and of Gwen Neave’s sons, and the loss and the grief still to come. Whatever betrayal he felt for himself, he owed them better than to run away now. He turned and walked to the door. He reached it and banged with both fists.

The guard came and let him out. Only when he was outside in the sun and in the wind of the courtyard did he realize that his face was wet with tears, and his throat ached so violently that he could not speak.

It was the first day of June, warm and still. A few clouds drifted like bright ships across the sky, sails wide to catch the sun. In the orchard the blossom was over, the fruit setting. The garden was dizzy with color and perfume.

Joseph was in his shirtsleeves, working with pleasure. It was good to feel his fingers in the earth pulling the thick, lush weeds, and to move with only a slight awareness of an ache, no pain, no fear of pulling on a muscle or tearing open the healing flesh. He could not stay much longer, only until he had testified for Admiral Hall, and then all this would be forfeited again and become just a treasure in the mind.

Hannah came out of the back door toward him, her face pale, her voice breathless.

“Joseph, there’s been an enormous battle in the North Sea, off Jutland. Our whole Grand Fleet against the German High Seas Fleet. They don’t know what’s happened yet. They don’t even know if we’ve won or lost, but lots of ships have been sunk on both sides.” She stared at him, eyes wide.

What should he say? Hope? Cling onto the belief in good until the last possible moment? And if it was smashed, if Archie and Matthew were among the thousands lost, what then? Did trying to prepare yourself ever do any good? Was the blow any less?

No. It always hurt impossibly, unbelievably. Would it have been easier to bear, quicker to recover from if he had imagined his parents’ deaths, or anyone’s? Would he have missed Sam’s friendship any less, been able not to lie awake in his dugout in the mud of Ypres and not wonder if Sam was still alive, imagine hearing his laughter, or what he could have said to this, or that?

He touched Hannah gently, both hands on her shoulders, but softly; the slightest pulling away would have released her. “Far more will come home than have been lost,” he said. “Think of them and don’t face anything else unless we have to.”

She controlled her fear with an effort so intense he could not only see it in her face but feel the power of it through her body. She blinked several times. “Thank you for not telling me to have faith in God.” She smiled a little twistedly. “I want a brother, not a priest.”

“Have faith in God, too,” he answered. “But don’t blame Him for anything that goes wrong, or imagine that He ever said it wouldn’t. If He promised you that Archie and Matthew would come back, then they will. But I don’t think He did. I think He said we would have all that we need, not all that we want.”

“All we need for what?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“To realize the best in ourselves,” he answered. “To practice pity and honor until they become part of us, and the courage to care to the last strength we have, to give everything.”

She frowned, “Do I want all that? Wouldn’t ‘pretty good’ do? Does it have to be ‘perfect’?”

He smiled, widely, a warm, genuine laughter inside him. “Well, decide what you don’t want, and tell God you’ll do without it. Maybe He’ll listen. I have no idea.”

“You still think He’s there?” she said perfectly seriously. “Will you think that if they’re gone?” She wanted an answer, the gravity was there in her eyes.

“It’s still the best option I know,” he answered her. “Can you think of anywhere else, any other star to follow?”

She thought for a moment. “No. I suppose the alternative is just to stop trying. Sit down. There are times when that seems a lot less trouble.”

“You have to be pretty certain you like it where you are to do that!” He let go of her and touched her face, brushing a stray hair off her cheek. “Personally, I think this is a sod of a place, and I have to believe there’s a better one, fairer to those who hadn’t much of a chance here.”

She swallowed and nodded. “I’ll make lunch. There’s nothing to do but wait. Please don’t go out, Joseph.”

“Out? Don’t you think I care as much as you do?”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

It seemed an endless afternoon, every minute creeping by. Time after time Joseph drew in breath to say something, and then found he did not mean it, or it was pointless anyway, only making more obvious the fears that crowded his mind. He looked at Hannah and she smiled, making a little grimace. Then she returned to her ironing, going over and over the same sheet until she was in danger of scorching it.

The news came in the early evening. The Cormorant was among those ships lost. Joseph and Hannah stood together in the sitting room, holding each other, numb, minds whirling over an abyss of grief, struggling uselessly not to be sucked into it.

Not just Archie gone, but Matthew as well. They would never know how: blown apart, burned to death, thrown into the sea to struggle in the water until their strength was gone, or worst of all, imprisoned in the ship itself as it plunged downward into the darkness of the bottom of the ocean until it was crushed and the sides caved in and the water suffocated them.

The loss was overwhelming, unbearable. Time stopped. The sun lowered in the sky and darkness came. The children went to bed and neither Joseph nor Hannah found any words even to begin telling them what had happened.

“There’s been a big battle at sea,” Hannah said, her voice oddly flat and steady. “We don’t know how everybody is yet.” It was a lie. She needed the time. Perhaps she needed to grieve alone and do her first, terrible weeping before she gathered strength to share it with them.

Joseph too needed time. He hurt for Hannah, and he hurt bitterly for himself. He had always loved Matthew, but it stunned him how intensely Matthew was inextricably woven into the fabric of his life. It was as if John Reavley had died again, a large piece of him gone in a new and heart-numbing way. He had not expected that Matthew could be in any danger, even going to sea to test the prototype. The loss was too vast to take into his mind. Matthew could not be gone!

Was it like this for everyone? The world falling apart, reason and joy disintegrating into an all-engulfing darkness?

And that created the need for another decision. Could he go back to the trenches now and leave Hannah and the children alone?

He found her in front of the looking glass in her bedroom. She had an old dressing wrap on and her hair down around her shoulders. Her face was bleached of all color, every shred of blood drained away, but she looked quite composed. She just moved slowly, as if afraid her coordination would not keep her from knocking into things, or perhaps even falling over.

She looked exactly as he felt. He understood completely.

“I won’t be going back to Ypres,” he said quietly. “I expect you know that anyway, but I thought I’d tell you, just in case.”

She nodded. “We’ll tell Judith . . . but not yet. I’m . . . I’m not ready.” She looked at him curiously, her face crumpled. “Joseph, how does everybody do it, how do they keep on, how do they live? Everything I’ve said to other women who’ve lost husbands or sons is idiotic!” She frowned in amazement. “How did I dare? Were they kind to me, or just too beaten and numb to care about anything else?”

“I’m not sure that anything we say touches people in those times.” He corrected himself: “These times. It’s worse when the shock wears off and feeling comes back. But I’ll be here. I won’t leave . . . or let you leave me.”

She turned away from him quickly. “Go to bed,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m not ready to weep yet. If I do I won’t be able to stop, and I have to think how to tell the children, especially Tom. Please!”

He obeyed silently, closing the door behind him.

He slept fitfully. He heard Hannah up and down the stairs, he lost count how many times. At five o’clock he got up as well and went down to the kitchen, knowing he would find her there.

She was dressed, scrubbing out the pantry. The whole large cupboardlike room was empty, nothing left on the shelves. It was all piled on the kitchen table and on the bench above the flour and vegetable bins and the cutlery drawers. There were boxes, bags, tins, and barrels everywhere. She had her sleeves up to her elbows and an apron on over an old dress. She had not bothered to put her hair up, but it was in a loose braid, like a schoolgirl’s.

“Can I help?” he offered.

“Not really,” she replied, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m doing it, it’s just better than lying in bed.”

“Do you want a cup of tea?”

“If you can find the kettle and the tea, yes.”

Half an hour later all the shelves were scrubbed but still wet, and Joseph had made some sort of order out of the piles of groceries. They were both sitting at the kitchen table and it was broad daylight, the sun shining in through the window as if it were any other day.

The telephone rang.

Hannah gripped her cup so tightly she slopped tea over onto her dress and arm. The sight of the mess upset her, tears gleaming in her eyes, simply because it was a hair crack in the façade and cost all her strength to keep from letting go.

Joseph went into the hall and picked up the receiver. “Joseph Reavley,” he said quietly.

“Good morning, Captain Reavley,” a voice said on the other end, sounding tinny and far away. “This is Calder Shearing.”

Joseph did not want to speak to this man. He could not cope with talking of Matthew’s death, not yet.

“Mr. Shearing . . .” he began.

“I have news you will want to hear,” Shearing cut across him. “There were quite a number of survivors from the Cormorant. Captain Reavley and Commander MacAllister are among them. Their injuries are trivial. They spent some time in the water, but they will be perfectly all right.”

Joseph found his voice was gone, stuck in his throat, his mouth dry.

“Captain Reavley?”

He coughed. “Yes . . . are you sure?”

“Of course I am sure,” Shearing said testily, as if some emotion had drained him as well. “Do you imagine I would have called you if I were not? The battle was appalling. We estimate casualties of over six thousand men, and at least fourteen ships. Your brother and brother-in-law will be home within two or three days.”

“Thank you . . . yes . . .” Joseph gulped. “Thank you.” He replaced the receiver and walked back to the kitchen, bumping into the jamb of the door and numbing his elbow. It should have been painful, but he was unaware of it.

Hannah stared at him. There was no fear in her face, there was nothing else left to hurt her, the worst had already happened.

“It was Shearing. . . .” he began.

She frowned. “Who is Shearing?”

“Intelligence service. Hannah, they’re alive! They saved a lot of the crew, and Archie and Matthew are among them! He’s sure! It’s no mistake, he’s absolutely certain.”

She looked at him, eyes wide. Now she was afraid again, afraid to believe, to grasp the pain of hoping, going through all the torture of love and fear and waiting and dreading. “Is he?”

“Yes! Yes he is! Absolutely!” He strode around the table and pulled her to her feet and put his arms around her, clinging onto her and feeling her cry, great gasping sobs of all the emotion, the agony she had held in, and now at last was letting go.

He was smiling, tears on his face as well. Archie was alive—above all, Matthew was alive! Matthew was alive—he was all right—he would be coming back.

And that meant, of course, that Joseph would have to return to Ypres. But not yet, not today.

There were twenty-four hours’ respite, then Joseph went to London to testify at the trial of Shanley Corcoran. He was charged with high treason. The trial was held in a closed room; the only thing to make it different from a place where any kind of business might be conducted was the situation of the chairs, the height of the windows above the ground, and the armed and uniformed men at the doors.

As with any other trial, Joseph did not hear the testimony previous to his own. He waited in an anteroom alone, pacing the floor, sitting for a short time on the hard-backed chair, then pacing again. He turned over and over in his mind what he would say, if he would simply answer what was asked of him, in a sense leave his contribution to truth or justice in someone else’s hands. That would take from him the final responsibility, the blame for Corcoran’s fall, and whatever happened to him because of it. It should not be Joseph’s decision to weigh his guilt.

The door opened and a small, quiet man in a dark suit told him it was time.

Joseph went with him.

The room was silent as he entered. He saw Corcoran immediately. There were only a dozen or so people there, no jury. This was not a trial at which any member of the public could be present. Both its evidence and its findings would remain secret. It reminded him of a court-martial.

He had not intended to meet Corcoran’s eyes, but his gaze was drawn in spite of himself. Corcoran sat at a small table with his defender beside him. He looked ashen and stiff-bodied but somehow smaller than Joseph remembered him. But then at heart he had been different from the way Joseph remembered him for a long time, perhaps always.

Now he was angry, his dark eyes brilliant, still a question, a demand in his expression—would Joseph finally measure up to the loyalty his father would have given, the loyalty to all past love and laughter, passions shared, and which he was convinced he deserved?

The prosecutor began. “Please state your name, your present occupation, and where you live,” he directed. His voice was soft, very polite. He was a rather elegant man.

“Joseph Reavley. I am a chaplain in the army. I live in Selborne St. Giles, in Cambridgeshire.”

“And why are you not with your regiment now, Captain Reavley?”

“I was injured, but I am due to return as soon as you permit me,” Joseph replied.

“When your duty here is completed, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Just so. How long ago were you wounded, and when did you go from hospital to St. Giles?”

Joseph gave the answers, and detail by detail the prosecutor drew from him his involvement with solving the murder of Theo Blaine, his acquaintance with Blaine’s widow, his conversations with Hallam Kerr and with Inspector Perth. It was a meticulous, almost dry, account, but then there was no jury to impress, no emotion to manipulate. The three judges would deal only with facts.

Throughout it all it was a battle between Joseph and Corcoran, who sat staring as if Joseph were the betrayer and he the victim, a man in an impossible situation who had been beaten by circumstance, and in the end turned on by the one person he trusted like a son. Such was the agony in his face that Joseph became more and more certain that he had actually convinced himself it was so.

Worse was to come. The defense lawyer, a lean man with fair, receding hair, stood up and walked toward Joseph, stopping a couple of yards in front of him.

“Would you like to sit down, Captain Reavley?” he asked courteously. “I know you received serious wounds which must be barely healed. We do not wish to cause you unnecessary pain.”

Joseph straightened his shoulders and stood even more crisply to attention. “No, thank you, sir. I am perfectly recovered.”

“I understand you have been awarded the Military Cross for your heroic efforts in bringing back dead and injured soldiers from the mud of no-man’s-land in Flanders?”

Joseph felt himself color. “Yes, sir.”

“Is that part of an army chaplain’s duty?” The defense seemed surprised.

“Not technically, sir, but I believe it is morally.”

“So you are willing to define your moral duty outside the army’s terms of reference?” He smiled very slightly, his voice still soft. “The army tells you one thing, but you have added to it others far more dangerous, risking your own life and very nearly losing it, because of the way you perceive your own duty?”

Joseph could see the pitfall ahead; he had dug it himself and there was no honest way to avoid it. “Yes, sir. But I am far from the only chaplain to do that.”

“Ah, I see. Soldiers must obey orders, but chaplains have a higher master, a different morality, and can do as they themselves think fit?”

Joseph could feel the heat in his face and knew it must be plain to others. “Most soldiers will risk their lives to save their friends, sir,” he replied stiffly. God, he sounded self-righteous. He loathed it. “If you had someone you were responsible for,” he went on, “some young man of nineteen or twenty who had gone out to fight for his country, was lying injured, bleeding in the mud of no-man’s-land, and you had it in your power to go and look for him, perhaps bring him back alive, wouldn’t you?”

There was a faint rustle of movement in the room, a kind of sigh.

“What I would do is immaterial, Captain Reavley,” the defense replied, shifting his weight and then taking a step or two to face Joseph from a different angle. “We are establishing what you will do. It is quite clear from what you have said that you make your own rules, answering to what you believe is a higher authority than human law.”

The prosecutor rose to his feet.

“Yes, yes,” the central judge agreed. He turned to the defense. “Mr. Paxton, you are drawing too high a conclusion. We take your point that Captain Reavley is a man who follows his belief in morality without being ordered to. Please proceed.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Paxton turned to Joseph again. “I shall not ask you to repeat your testimony regarding the death of Mr. Blaine, or your growing acquaintance with Mrs. Blaine after her widowhood. It all seems to be perfectly clear. But I will ask you to repeat what she said about her husband’s ability. And then, if you would be so good, tell us what you did to ascertain for yourself that it was indeed true. What is Mrs. Blaine’s knowledge of the situation at the Establishment, other than what her husband told her? And it is regrettably beyond doubt that he was more than willing to deceive her in matters surely more important to her than his professional skill, relative to that of Mr. Corcoran.”

Joseph had no choice. Reluctantly he admitted that he had accepted Lizzie’s word, without corroboration.

“You seem somewhat gullible, Captain Reavley,” Paxton observed. “Well meaning, but easily led where your affections, or your own perceptions of your duty, are concerned.”

“Is that a question, my lord?” the prosecutor demanded, his voice edgy, his face pale.

“Perhaps it should be,” Paxton rejoined immediately. He looked at Joseph. “You seem to wish to be all things to all men, Chaplain. No doubt a noble and Christian desire, but you may well end in betraying one in order to be loyal to another. And I fear in this instance it is your lifelong friend, Shanley Corcoran, who is going to suffer for your very mixed emotions, and what you feel to be a higher duty than that which you have been given. My advice to you would be to do what you have been commanded to, and do it well. Leave the rest to others, before you meddle where you do not understand, and end in doing irretrievable harm, not only to individual men, but to your country.”

Joseph stood rigid. Was it true as he had feared? He tried to be all things to all men, and was in truth nothing inside, empty? He looked at Corcoran. There was sweat on his face, but his eyes were gleaming. He had seen hope, and he would allow Joseph to be destroyed if he had to, to save himself. In that ugly, final moment Joseph was certain of it: Corcoran would survive at all costs.

Joseph turned away, sick at heart. He faced Paxton. “That is very good advice,” he said distinctly. “And it is what I did. Mr. Corcoran had said to me that he had killed Theo Blaine because Blaine was incapable of finishing the project they were working on, but to protect his own scientific reputation he was going to sell it to the Germans.”

Paxton’s eyebrows shot up. “Even though it did not work?”

“I didn’t believe it either,” Joseph replied, and saw Paxton’s face flame. “I went to Admiral Hall of naval intelligence and told him all I knew. He would be able to check on Theo Blaine’s abilities, and those of all the other men working at the Establishment.”

Paxton shifted his position again. “And if Blaine could not complete the work, Captain Reavley, but intended to betray what there was of it to our enemies, what would you have done in Mr. Corcoran’s place? You, who exceed your own orders and go over the top into no-man’s-land to bring back the dead? Is this not actually what you received your Military Cross for? Was not the journalist Eldon Prentice actually dead? It was a corpse you risked your life to bring back, was it not?”

“Victoria Crosses are given for a specific act of extraordinary valor,” Joseph corrected him. “Military Crosses are for a number of lesser acts. Lots of men go out to bring back the injured. You can’t always tell if they’re dead or not until you reach your own trenches. It’s wet and cold and dark out there, and you’re being shot at. Sometimes men die before you get them back.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Very moving,” Paxton said. “But irrelevant. There are many kinds of courage, moral as well as physical. I repeat, if you knew for a certainty that the most brilliant scientist in your Establishment was also a traitor, but you could not prove it to others, what would you do, Captain Reavley?”

Joseph closed his eyes. This was the moment. Corcoran was sitting rigid, staring at him. He could feel his eyes as if they burned a scalding heat onto his skin. “I would do what I have done,” Joseph replied. “I would take the evidence to naval intelligence and let them deduce from it what they would. I could be mistaken.”

“And was Mr. Corcoran mistaken, in your opinion? Did he act in error?”

Joseph’s mouth was dry, his heart pounding. “No. I do not believe so. He described a scientist whose ambition and hunger for glory was so consuming that he would betray everything and everyone else, rather than yield the ultimate achievement to another. He would sooner have Britain lose than win with someone else’s invention. But it was not Theo Blaine he was describing, it was himself.”

Paxton flung out his arms. “You have known the man all your life!” His voice cracked with incredulity. “He was your dead father’s best and dearest friend, and this is what you think of him?” Now there was derision in him, and stinging contempt. “What changed your mind, Reverend? A loss of faith in everything, perhaps even in God? What happened to you in the trenches, in the no-man’s-land you describe so well, the cold, the wet, the agony, being shot at?” He waved his arms. “And you were hit, weren’t you? Are you lashing out at a God the Father who did not protect you from all this?” He gestured again toward Corcoran. “Or at the father who died and left you to face this horror and deal with it alone? What changed you, Chaplain? What turned you into a betrayer?”

What had been the moment, exactly? Joseph searched in his mind and he knew.

“You are right when you said I tried to be all things to all people,” he replied with a strange, aching calm. “It was when I was talking with the minister in St. Giles, about what to say to a young soldier who has lost both his legs. Sometimes there is nothing you can do, except be there. He asked me if I was sure that there is a God, quite sure. Sometimes I’m not!”

There was a movement in the room. Corcoran’s stare did not alter.

“But there are things I am sure of,” Joseph went on, leaning forward a little. “The things Christ taught of honor, of courage, and of love are always true, in any imaginable world. And whether you choose to follow them with all the strength you have or not has nothing to do with anyone else. And if you stand alone, then you do. You don’t do it to give to this person or that, as a command, or out of obedience, and certainly not for reward. You do it because that is who you choose to be.”

Paxton started to interrupt him.

“You will never know how it hurts me to look at Shanley Corcoran and see him as he is,” Joseph overrode him. “But my alternative is to betray the good I believe, and I can’t do that out of loyalty to anyone. If I were to, then I would have nothing left inside me to offer to the men in the trenches, to those I love, or to myself. Judgment is the court’s, not mine, but I have told you the truth.”

Paxton knew he had lost, and he gave in with grace.

The verdict was immediate. Shanley Corcoran was found guilty of treason and sentenced to be hanged. He faced it with terror and self-pity, the sweat running down his face. He seemed to shrivel inside his clothes. For all the laughter, the warmth, and the intelligence he had had, there was a core of emptiness inside him, and Joseph could not bear to look at his nakedness.

Three Sundays must pass before the execution, but something had died there that day. An illusion of warmth and beauty had finally evaporated, leaving only a void.

As Joseph walked out onto the steps in the sun, he knew that he had acknowledged betrayal and survived. He had been forced to look within himself and had seen not a weak man trying to find his purpose in becoming whatever others needed of him, but a knowledge of good that did not depend upon anyone or anything else. He would love, and he would need people for many reasons, but not to heal his own doubts or to fill an emptiness within himself.

He walked into the street smiling, to return to his friends and his purpose.

About the Author

ANNE PERRY is the New York Times bestselling author of the World War I novels No Graves As Yet and Shoulder the Sky, as well as three holiday novels: A Christmas Journey, A Christmas Visitor, and A Christmas Guest. She is also the creator of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England. Her William Monk novels include Death of a Stranger, Funeral in Blue, and Slaves of Obsession. The popular novels featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt include Long Spoon Lane, Seven Dials, and Southampton Row. Her short story “Heroes” won an Edgar Award. Anne Perry lives in Scotland. Visit her website at www.anneperry.net.

By Anne Perry

(published by The Random House Publishing Group)

FEATURING WILLIAM MONK

The Face of a Stranger

A Dangerous Mourning

Defend and Betray

A Sudden, Fearful Death

The Sins of the Wolf

Cain His Brother

Weighed in the Balance

The Silent Cry

A Breach of Promise

The Twisted Root

Slaves of Obsession

Funeral in Blue

Death of a Stranger

The Shifting Tide

FEATURING CHARLOTTE AND THOMAS PITT

The Cater Street Hangman

Callander Square

Paragon Walk

Resurrection Row

Bluegate Fields

Rutland Place

Death in the Devil’s Acre

Cardington Crescent

Silence in Hanover Close

Bethlehem Road

Highgate Rise

Belgrave Square

Farriers’ Lane

The Hyde Park Headsman

Traitors Gate

Pentecost Alley

Ashworth Hall

Brunswick Gardens

Bedford Square

Half Moon Street

The Whitechapel Conspiracy

Southampton Row

Seven Dials

Long Spoon Lane

THE WORLD WAR I NOVELS

No Graves As Yet

Shoulder the Sky

Angels in the Gloom

THE CHRISTMAS NOVELS

A Christmas Journey

A Christmas Visitor

A Christmas Guest

Angels in the Gloom is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2005 by Anne Perry

All rights reserved.