At Some Disputed Barricade

“Rubbish!” Northrup snapped. “To blame an officer for necessary orders is close to mutiny, sir. Which you must know as well as I do! You may be a man of the cloth, but you are in the army. How long have you been out here?” His eyes narrowed and he looked Joseph up and down critically.

“Since September 1914, sir,” Joseph answered him equally curtly.

Northrup swallowed. It was far longer than he had been there himself. In that instant Joseph knew it, and Northrup saw that he did.

“With these same men?” Northrup asked more quietly.

“Yes, sir, those that are still alive. A lot of them are replacements, recently recruited. Half the old regiment’s gone.”

Northrup sighed, his face ashen. He swallowed convulsively. “They are still at fault, Captain. They have no right to question an officer’s order in the field. That is not the worst of it. I have…I have even heard suggestions that his own men are glad he is dead.” He did not add the last fearful thought to that, but it was in the air unsaid.

Joseph had to face it. “If you are asking what I think you are, sir, then that is nonsense. There is always some degree of loose talk. The men are facing death. Most of them will not come back, and they know it. They have two or three weeks to live, at most. Some will die easily, by one bullet through the head, like Major Northrup. For others it will be far harder. I think we should ignore the more foolish things that are said.”

General Northrup’s voice was hoarse. “Do you? Do you indeed? Well, I do not. Stupidity I can allow. They are, as you say, ordinary men facing a grim death. But I will not have my son’s name slandered. And if you will not stop it, then I will speak to Colonel Hook.”

“General Northrup!” Joseph knew the man was going to provoke the very disaster he most feared. Of course he could not bear to think his son was a fool, or that his men had hated him, but by forbidding them to say so, he would force the truth into the open. Someone’s temper would snap, and he would say it simply to defend himself or, more probably, to defend someone else.

“What is it, Captain?” Northrup said tersely.

“Sir, you can command men to obey you, and shoot them if they don’t. You cannot command them to respect you. That you have to earn, especially after you have given orders that have cost lives and achieved nothing.”

Northrup’s face mottled dull red. “Are you saying that my son gave such orders, Captain Reavley?”

“I’m saying that no one can govern what the men think, sir. When people speak foolishly, because they are exhausted, beaten, and afraid, it is better to overlook—and forget.”

“That is the coward’s way, sir,” Northrup replied. “If you will do nothing, then I shall speak to Colonel Hook. Good day, Captain Reavley.” He turned and went out without a salute, leaving Joseph standing alone.

That night the bombardment was heavy. The rain never ceased. It looked like it would be the wettest August anyone had ever known. By morning the casualties were heavy, some of them from drowning.

By midday Joseph was so bone weary his body ached, his head throbbed, and his eyes felt as if they had burning grit in them. His clothes were stiff with blood and his skin was rubbed raw.

He had worked with Cavan in the field hospital most of the night, helping in every way that he could. The man seemed never to cease working. His eyes were bloodshot, his face ashen, but he moved from one broken body to the next like a man in some terrible dream.

That afternoon Joseph was standing in the supply trench, eating a heel of bread and trying to keep it out of the rain, when Barshey Gee came up to him.

“Sorry, sir,” Barshey said, screwing his face up. “Colonel Hook would like to see you, sir. Right away.” He looked unhappy. There was a scar down his cheek oozing blood which was washed away instantly. His right arm moved awkwardly because of the thickness of the bandage beneath his tunic.

Joseph put the rest of the bread in his mouth. “Right,” he acknowledged.

“Sir…” Barshey began, then stopped.

“Yes?”

“General Northrup’s with him, Chaplain.” He said no more, but Joseph understood. There was no avoiding it now.

“I’ll do what I can,” Joseph promised. He knew Barshey would understand what he meant.

Hook was waiting for him in the command dugout. General Northrup was sitting on the other decent chair, which left an old ammunition box for Joseph to sit on, after he had saluted and been told to be at ease. It was hot and airless inside the confined space, but it was relatively dry.

Northrup looked like a man who had won a bitter victory, exhausted but justified.

“Captain Reavley,” Hook began miserably, “General Northrup informs me that there is considerable talk among the men that his son, Major Howard Northrup, did not die as a result of enemy fire.”

Northrup shifted his weight in the chair impatiently, but he did not yet interrupt.

Hook was aware of it. “If that is so, of course,” he went on, “then it is an extremely grave matter….”

Northrup could not contain himself any longer. “It is more than grave, Colonel Hook,” he cut across him. “It is murder, plain and simple. It means you have men who under ordinary law are guilty of the most terrible of all crimes, and under military law are also guilty of mutiny, and must face a firing squad.”

Hook kept his courtesy with a very obvious effort. He remained looking at Joseph, as if desperate for his help. “If that is so,” he continued, “then it is, as General Northrup says, a capital crime. I can’t imagine why any of our men would do such a thing.” He spoke carefully, enunciating every word. “Major Northrup had been here only a matter of a week or two. I can’t think how he could have made an enemy of that depth in so short a time.”

“Of course he didn’t!” Northrup snapped. “Your men are out of control! On the verge of mutiny. Major Northrup exerted some discipline, perhaps for the first time, and they resented it. Or possibly there was mutiny planned, and he discovered it, and would naturally have had them arrested and shot. Have you considered that? It is a perfectly obvious motive. A child could understand it.” His eyes were watery and he blinked several times.

“Even a child would require that you prove such a thing before exacting punishment,” Hook told him, then turned back to Joseph. “Captain, I regret the necessity for this, most particularly now in the middle of one of the hardest offensives we’ve ever experienced, but I have no alternative other than to investigate the possibility of a crime, even though I do not believe it to be so.”

Joseph understood exactly what Hook was saying. Everything about it was bad. Even the suggestion of such a crime would damage morale irreparably. It was already fragile with the appalling losses, the failure to make any significant gain of land, the disastrous weather, the whispers of mutiny among the French troops—even if there was very little real evidence. Even though at least outwardly the men condemned the idea of mutiny, inwardly they had a profound natural sympathy.

And the additional tragedy was that in Northrup’s efforts to avenge his son’s death and protect his reputation, he was actually going to expose him far more. Now only his own immediate men knew he was incompetent. Soon his name would go down in history as having provoked a murder among the very men he led, murder in order to save their own lives from his stupidity. Joseph knew there was a pity in Hook that wanted to rescue Northrup from himself.

“Yes, sir,” he said aloud. “I can see that such rumors, however untrue, must be investigated and silenced, one way or the other.”

“One way or the other?” Northrup challenged him sharply, swiveling in his chair to face him. “There is only one way, Captain Reavley, and that is with the truth, and the justice that comes from it.”

“I meant, sir, whether there is any charge resulting from what we find, or if it is no more than careless talk,” Joseph corrected him. “I’ve heard nothing more than the usual grumbling and bad jokes. The men always complain, usually about petty things. It’s a way of making it bearable.”

“I am perfectly acquainted with front line humor, Captain,” Northrup said bitterly. “It does not extend to blackening the name of a dead officer.”

Hook drew in his breath, but Joseph preempted him. He looked at the general. “What are they saying of Major Northrup that is more than the usual complaints that fly around of any officer, sir?”

Northrup’s face was bright pink, his cheeks burning. “That he was an incompetent officer and gave orders that cost lives unnecessarily,” he said between his teeth, his voice trembling. “It is to cover their own cowardice.”

“My men are not cowards!” Hook said furiously, his thin body stiff, the color rising in his haggard face. “And deeply as I regret the death of your son, sir, I will not tolerate any man, of any rank, saying that they are. That is inexcusable, even in grief.”

Northrup glared back at him. “If they murdered my son in cold blood, then they are worse than cowards, sir. They are traitors!” His voice trembled. “And I will see every last one of them shot. Do you defy me, Colonel Hook?”

Hook was shaking. “No, sir, I charge you to make your accusations after they are proved, and to treat my men with the honor they deserve unless and until that time.”

“Then prove it!” Northrup’s voice was close to a shout. “Don’t hide behind your chaplain’s protection. Institute a proper inquiry.”

“By whom?” Hook could not keep the sarcasm from his tone. “I have no fighting men to spare…sir! Captain Reavley is the best man to do it. He is both liked and trusted, and he has known most of these men since they joined up. If anyone can find the truth and prove it, he can!”

“I want military police,” Northrup replied, gulping. “The chaplain is not qualified to investigate murder, and his profession makes it impossible either to be practical and insist that men speak to him and answer his questions, or that he should repeat what they say if they do. He might very well learn the exact truth, with a confession, and be unable to act on it.”

“That’s my answer, General Northrup,” Hook told him. “If you want to take it to the general in command of the Ypres Salient, then you must do so. I think it extremely unlikely he will spare men at the moment to investigate any front line soldiers on the possibility that there may, or may not, have been a crime, when there is no evidence beyond some ugly talk.”

“We’ll see,” Northrup retorted, rising to his feet. His face was ashen but for the flaming spots of color in his cheeks.

“Sir!” Joseph stood up, turning toward Northrup and barring his way out. “Major Northrup was very new to this section of the front. He made some bad decisions, specifically sending men out across no-man’s-land to look for wounded or dead when the weather and visibility made it recklessly dangerous. No one was rescued, and Lieutenant Eardslie, a well-liked and decorated officer, was killed. I would rather not have told you that. All men make mistakes, but this was a particularly foolish one, and he was told by the experienced men here that it was wrong, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Northrup was shaking; his whole body trembled. He stared wordlessly at Joseph, grief and incredulity naked in his face.

Joseph was furious with him and pitied him at the same time. It was a uniquely painful conflict within him.

“If I investigate his death, sir,” he continued, “I shall bring my findings to Colonel Hook, and any stories that are unnecessary to repeat, I shall make no written record of, and repeat them to no one. I think it would be wiser, and fairer, if we were to learn all we can before we make any decisions at all.”

Northrup stood silently for so long that Joseph thought he was not going to answer, then finally he spoke. His voice was hoarse, little above a whisper.

“Do so. But I will see my son’s name cleared, and if any man in the British Army, whatever his rank or his record, had a part in his death, I will see that man shot, and alongside him anyone who defends him or lies for him.” He snapped to attention, then before anyone else could speak, he strode the three steps to the entrance and went out.

“Thank you, Reavley,” Hook said with intense feeling. “For God’s sake, be careful what you find. We’re losing thousands of men a day to the Germans, or to the bloody rain. The men are on their last legs. Most of them will be killed anyway. The French weren’t cowards; they were just driven beyond human endurance. But Northrup looks readier to face a firing squad himself than see the truth, God forgive him.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be very careful,” Joseph promised. He gave a very faint smile. “I’ve done this before.”

Hook looked up at him. “Oh, yes, the murder of that bloody awful correspondent, Prentice, or whatever his name was, in ’fifteen. I heard about it. You didn’t ever find out who killed him though, did you?”

Joseph did not answer him.

Hook put both his hands over his face and let his breath out slowly. “I see.”

Joseph knew it would be difficult even to find a place where he could make himself heard, never mind to frame the questions. He was acutely conscious of disturbing men in their few moments’ peace to ask pointless questions. And if he was honest, he was not sure he wanted the answers. He had been just as appalled by Northrup’s stupidity as they were. He had prayed for some kind of release from it—but not this.

He began with Tiddly Wop Andrews. He found him standing on the fire step up to his knees in water, drinking tea out of a Dixie can. It was early evening.

“Hello, Chaplain,” Tiddly Wop said between the bursts of artillery fire. He always spoke quietly. He was a handsome man but profoundly shy. “Looking for someone?”

Joseph was on the trench floor. The duckboards had been swept away and he found it difficult keeping his balance in the mud. Because he was lower than the fire step, he was up to his thighs in it.

“Anyone who might know exactly what happened to Major Northrup,” he replied.

Tiddly Wop grinned. “He got shot,” he replied cheerfully. “That’s one Jerry whose hand Oi’d loike to shake. Moight even give ’im a cup o’ moi tea!” He pulled a face. “’Cepting Oi’ wouldn’t want ter poison the poor bleeder.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know.” Joseph kept his own face straight with an effort. “The general thinks he was shot by one of our men. Colonel Hook has asked me to make inquiries.”

Tiddly Wop’s blue eyes opened wide. “You going to, then?”

“If he was murdered, don’t you think I should?” Joseph countered.

Tiddly Wop thought about it. “You know, Chaplain, Oi used to think Oi knew pretty good what was roight and what wasn’t. But nothing much looks the same as it used to. Oi’m not so certain anymore.” He frowned. “Oi hated Major Northrup ’cos of the men who died ’cos he wouldn’t listen. Oi didn’t shoot him, but if Oi knew who did, Oi’m not saying Oi’d tell you. Oi ’spect Oi’ll be facing whatever judgment there is in a few days, an’ most of moi mates with me. Oi’d rather answer to them than to General Northrup.”

So would Joseph, but he could not admit it. He did not know what to say.

“If Oi knew, and Oi told you, what’d you think of me?” Tiddly Wop asked gravely.

“Maybe it’s just as well you don’t know,” Joseph answered him. He would never be sure if that was the truth or not, nor did he wish to be.

“Chaplain,” Tiddly Wop started as Joseph turned to leave.

“Yes?”

“It’s koind of hard at the moment. Oi’d be careful if Oi was you…about asking, Oi mean.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. Thank you.” Joseph waded away, sliding and squelching through the mud.

He sat in his dugout the second evening, tired and cold to the bone because he was wet. He had spent two days asking questions and heard more stories of Northrup’s ignorance. There was little sympathy for him, sometimes even open hostility without any disguise that Joseph was wasting his concern on the dead instead of doing what he could for those still alive. He had no argument to rebut it: simply that Colonel Hook had ordered it, and better he than the military police.

Night had come, violent and full of pain. The next day had been the same. A few yards were gained, and they were closer to Passchendaele than before. But another thousand men were dead, with twice as many injured.

He had been told stories of Northrup’s last leadership of the men into no-man’s-land. No one had seen him fall. No one had been there at the time. Everyone accounted for everyone else. Friendship and its loyalties were the beacons that towered above the darkness. Joseph knew they were lying because in several instances they actually contradicted each other in their eagerness to protect everyone. He realized with surprise that he would have accepted it all and relayed it to Colonel Hook exactly if he had thought there was the slightest chance of his believing it.

He shivered and stared around him. He had lived in this hole in the ground for more than a year, like some hibernating animal. Half a dozen of his favorite books were here, his picture of Dante, the writer of The Divine Comedy. Could his vision of hell have been as bad as this reality?

What of Dante’s beliefs, his searing portraits of good and evil? Would he be so certain of it if he had seen this welter of terror, heroism, loyalty, and death? Joseph wasn’t. He ought to be unequivocally for the law, sure of the few absolutes of justice and the perceived order that had sustained them for more than a thousand years.

Surely there was a constant morality, values beyond any questions, no matter what? Were the truths that spanned the abyss not the surest evidence of God’s existence, and His continuing governance of the world? Sometimes in darkness such as this they were the only evidence.

He was lying to himself. The sure theories of the past broke before the need to save lives now, to understand whatever it was that had happened to Howard Northrup, and to the men who had brought it about. The answers did not obey rules. Compassion, loyalty to the living who trusted him to understand, swept away the old faith in rules.

Or was it just a simple and very human matter of who you liked, and who you didn’t, who belonged to your pack, the old bonds of loyalty again? He had prayed for understanding, some answers to make the slaughter comprehensible, so men at least knew what they were dying for, and he had received this, which only made it worse.

There was a parcel from Hannah with cake, raspberry jam, a bundle of books, and new socks. There was a note with it where briefly, almost self-consciously, she described the familiar, heart-stopping beauty of the countryside, the harvest-gold fields, the soaring poplars, leaves fluttering in the sunset breeze, the heavy elms, skirts down to the ripe corn heads, the starling whirling across the evening sky.

He pulled out paper to answer her, and wrote possibly too much. Sharing his confusion with her only made him see more clearly how uncertain he was, and his reasons sounded like excuses. In the end he tore it up. It sounded too much as if he were expecting her to find a solution for him. He would thank her properly later.

Instead he wrote to Lizzie Blaine again. He smiled as he remembered how quick she had been to understand last year, how she had had the wisdom not to offer false comfort when he had at last found the awful answer, and had to accept it, and his deep and bitter disillusionment.

The physical pain of his shattered arm and ripped-open leg had almost gone; only now and then did it ache and remind him. But the wound to his faith in people and in his own judgment, the destruction of old loves and old certainties would not ever be forgotten. The truth about Shanley Corcoran had broken something in him.

Lizzie knew that things were never solved, only a little better understood, the doubts faced, courage gripped a little more tightly. It was easier to admit to her than to Hannah that he was troubled by his own sympathy with the men more than the law, that he could conceal the truth, turn away from it, in the needs of mercy.

Perhaps he cared less what she thought of him than he did about Hannah. Or it could be that Hannah was his sister, and might need to believe that he knew more of the answers than he did. He had been there all Hannah’s life, when so much else had been ripped away. She had found the loss of her mother particularly hard. And the war had taken all the old certainties she had loved, the way of life she had grown up believing would last forever. She was not like Judith, hungering for adventure. She loved the sweetness of what she had, village life, her home and family, giving the quiet service of a good neighbor—food for the hungry, time with the lonely, a quiet hand for the sick or afraid. She did not want glory; she wanted peace and the assurance of a tomorrow.

There was none, especially for a woman whose husband was at sea, whose eldest son was fast approaching the age when he could join the navy also—not to speak of both a brother and a sister on the Western Front.

To Lizzie he would not matter so much, and he could write honestly, without fear of hurting her. Her friendship seemed a clean and precious thing. He wrote with ease.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Matthew spent a wretched afternoon at the police station with the officers in charge of prosecuting Alan Wheatcroft, and now of prosecuting Tom Corracher as well. He had hoped they would have some information to indicate who had set the scandal in motion, and that it would eventually lead back toward the Peacemaker. Matthew was more and more convinced it was he behind the dismissal of all four ministers.

“Sorry, sir,” the young policeman said with extreme discomfort. “We’d ’ave ’eld off if we could. Fine man, Mr. Wheatcroft. Rather not know these things, as long as no one’s ’urt. But we ’ad no choice.”

“Really? Someone important, Constable?” Matthew had asked hopefully. “I thought it was the boy himself who complained. And you believed him?”

“It was, sir. That’s the thing of it.” He looked apologetic. “You see, it wasn’t the first time we had a complaint about Mr. Wheatcroft. First time the boy was younger, and we thought as possibly ’e’d got ’old o’ the wrong idea, so to speak. It was all dealt with very quietly. We couldn’t do it a second time.”

“Oh!” Matthew was startled. It was not something he had foreseen at all. “Who knew of this original claim?”

“No one, sir. For the boy’s sake, we said nothing.”

“But possibly his parents knew.”

“His father, sir. We didn’t want to distress his mother with it.”

“What was his name?”

“I can’t tell you that, sir. Discretion, confidence, you understand?”

Matthew had not argued. It would be easy enough to get to know from Wheatcroft himself tomorrow. There was now no way of avoiding seeing him.

However, before he did that, there was one last man he would see who had known Wheatcroft as a student in Cambridge, fifteen years ago: Aidan Thyer, Master of St. John’s. It was a calculated risk. Matthew had once believed Thyer himself might be the Peacemaker. He certainly had both the intelligence and the influence. He had been a brilliant scholar in his youth, and now as master he had the position and the charisma to mold generations of students who would be the future teachers, philosophers, scientists, and governors of the nation. He might even have access to members of the Royal Family and friends in power throughout Europe and the Empire. And of course he was a Cambridge man whom John Reavley would have known. He was fluent in several languages, an idealist with a vision quite broad enough to have conceived the Anglo-German Empire the Peacemaker envisioned.

Was he also ruthless enough to commit murder to bring it about? In the name of peace, in the cause of saving the millions of lives already lost, and the bleeding away of thousands more every day across the Channel, would he have destroyed a few, a handful?

Somebody had!

Matthew left the police station and walked quietly up the street. The August afternoon was still and damp, the road surface glistened in the late sun, and after the downpour the gutters were running deep. There was little traffic. People either took the underground trains or walked where possible.

He wished he could go to the cinema and escape for a couple of hours. He would sit in the dark with strangers and laugh animatedly at Charlie Chaplin, with his absurd walk, his cane, his courage, his defiance, and the individuality that would not be crushed. Or at Fatty Arbuckle and his fights with custard pies that were so brilliantly choreographed they were almost like ballet.

Or perhaps it would be fun to see a real melodrama. Someone had told him that Theda Bara would soon be appearing in Camille. That would be something to see.

He crossed the road, oblivious to a speeding motorcar. The vehicle passed him by mere inches, and he staggered, lost his balance, and tripped. There was a screech of tires and brakes as he sprawled into the street, wrenching himself so hard his shoulder was twisted in its socket.

An engine accelerated and tires squealed again.

Struggling to catch his breath, he started to clamber to his feet, feeling more than a little ridiculous. Anger boiled up inside him.

Someone offered him a hand and pulled him up. It was an elderly gentleman with a white mustache and military bearing.

“That was a close shave, sir,” he said with a shake of his head. “Damn fool driver! Must have been drunk as a newt. Are you all right? You look a trifle shaken.”

Matthew was damp from the pavement and there were smears of mud on his elbows and knees. His left foot was wet where he had stepped in the gutter, but other than the wrench to his shoulder and a few bruises, he was unhurt.

“Yes, sir, thank you. I didn’t see him coming at all.” He felt extremely foolish.

“You wouldn’t, sir,” the other man said crisply. “Come round the corner driving like a Jehu! Straight for the pavement. If it weren’t ridiculous, I’d say he was aiming straight for you. I’d thank your stars, sir, and go home and have a hot bath, if there is such a thing available to you, and a large whisky.”

“Thank you,” Matthew said sincerely. “I think that’s exactly what I will do.”

But when he was back in his flat, sitting in the armchair with a single lamp shedding a soft light over the familiar room, and a glass of whisky in his hand, he was still cold, and his mind was racing. Was it possible that the incident in the street was not an accident?

Surely not? It was just somebody drunk, or even distracted perhaps with bad news. There was certainly enough of it about. Matthew was angry because he had been frightened, for a moment, and made to look vulnerable and ridiculous.

He telephoned Aidan Thyer and made an appointment to see him the next day. There was no point in wasting time going all the way to Cambridge, and then finding that Thyer was too busy to see anyone, or even not there at all. But telephoning did mean he was warned. If he was the Peacemaker, then he might already know what Matthew was doing, and the reason he was coming.

If it proved to be Thyer it would hurt Joseph. He had liked the man and trusted him. It would be a double betrayal because of Sebastian Allard’s death as well, and the manner of it, as well as the murder of John and Alys Reavley.

Matthew went over in his mind yet again the course he had followed in seeking the Peacemaker. It had to be someone with connections to the Royal Families of both Britain and Germany. Although since the king and the kaiser were first cousins, with Queen Victoria as a common grandmother, a connection with one might well open doors to connections with the other. He had also to be a man of extraordinary intelligence, boundless ambition, an understanding of world politics, and an idealism he could follow with ruthless dedication regardless of all cost.

Because John Reavley had found a copy of the treaty that proposed this monstrous alliance, and been murdered in the attempt to expose it, the Peacemaker had to be someone who knew him sufficiently well to predict his actions, even his daily routine.

But Matthew and Joseph had considered Aidan Thyer, Master of St. Giles; Dermot Sandwell, senior government minister and confidant of royalty; and Ivor Chetwin, Secret Intelligence agent and longtime friend of John Reavley, until an ethical difference over the morality involved in spying had divided them. Matthew had once dreaded that it might be Shanley Corcoran, brilliant scientist and lifetime friend of John Reavley. He had not even dared suggest that to Joseph. It would have wounded him desperately. But then Corcoran’s betrayal last summer had wounded him even more deeply. And he was dead now, hanged for treason.

Matthew sipped the whisky again, and did not taste it. He barely felt its fire slip down his throat. He himself had been sure it was Patrick Hannassey who had been the Peacemaker, and he had seen him die. Even up to a couple of weeks ago he had believed it was he. But this new conspiracy was too like the Peacemaker’s work to cling on to that false comfort anymore.

And of course there was always his own superior, Calder Shearing. Matthew liked Shearing. He understood his sudden explosions of temper when stupidity caused unnecessary loss. He admired both his intelligence and his emotional energy, the strength of will that drove him to work until he was exhausted, the patience to pursue every chain of reasoning, to wait, to watch and go over and over details meticulously. He was honest enough to admit his errors, and he never took credit for another man’s work. But more than any of these things, Matthew liked his dry wit, the laughter he saw in Shearing’s eyes even when the appreciation was wordless.

None of these things altered the fact that even after five years working with him, he did not know anything about Shearing beyond those boundaries. He seemed to have no personal life. He never spoke of family either past or present. He was widely knowledgeable but he never spoke of a school or university. Nothing seemed to be known of him but the present.

Could he be the Peacemaker? Yes, of course it was possible. The thought was both frightening and painful, like so much else.

“Matthew! How good to see you.” Aidan Thyer came into the Master’s Lodge sitting room, his hand outstretched. He was a slender man with flaxen-pale hair, which flopped forward onto his brow, and a sensitive, highly intelligent face. Matthew remembered now with sudden regret that Thyer’s beautiful wife, Connie, had loved another man. It was honor and probably affection that kept her loyal. But it was not love, and Thyer knew it.

“How are you, sir?” he asked aloud, taking Thyer’s offered hand. The courtesy title came to him naturally. Matthew had not studied at St. John’s, but the respect for a master of college was innate.

“Well, thank you,” Thyer replied. “Although the casualty lists are worse than any nightmare. I heard just the other day that Nigel Eardslie was lost in Passchendaele. He was one of Joseph’s students, you know.”

“I’m sorry.” There was nothing more to say.

“Sit down.” Thyer waved to a chair, and took the one opposite. “I’m sure you must have lost friends as well. There’s no one in England who hasn’t. Europe has become an abattoir. But no doubt you didn’t come here to discuss that. What can I do for you?”

“Alan Wheatcroft was a student of yours some time ago,” Matthew began. Thyer knew he was in intelligence; there was no purpose whatever in being overdiscreet.

Thyer sighed. “Unfortunate,” he said quietly. “Yes, I heard about it, of course. Very foolish. End of a fine career.”

“You think he was guilty?” Matthew asked.

“Probably of nothing more than indiscretion,” Thyer replied. “And a startling naïveté. What did he imagine a good-looking boy was doing hanging around in a public toilet? He should have given the boy a wide berth and not even spoken to him, let alone indulged in a conversation.”

“And Corracher?”

“Corracher? Tom Corracher?” Thyer’s fair eyebrows rose. “How is he involved?”

“Wheatcroft’s defense is that the whole episode was set up to blackmail him, by Tom Corracher,” Matthew replied.

Thyer was incredulous. “For God’s sake, what for? Money?”

“Yes, to begin with. Once you’ve paid money to keep quiet over something, then you establish a precedent. It’s as good as an admission. After that, other things can be asked for: favors in office, information, the right vote. The list is endless.”

“What a damnable mess.” Thyer’s face was filled with distaste but his eyes never left Matthew’s. “What is it you imagine I can do that would be of service to intelligence?”

“Wheatcroft is going to take Corracher down with him,” Matthew began.

“You don’t think Wheatcroft will survive this?” Thyer asked. “No, probably not. That sort of mud sticks once it’s public.” He pulled his mouth down at the corners. “Still, if he was ill-advised enough to get caught out in such behavior and leave himself open to blackmail, then guilty or innocent of the charge of approaching the boy, he’s guilty of unforgivable stupidity.”

“Apparently his wife is very handsome, and an heiress, and he has two sons,” Matthew pointed out.

“Yes, of course,” Thyer said guardedly, a shadow of pain crossing his face. “If he loves her, or his sons, he may be far more concerned with their feelings, and belief in him, than any continuance in high office. Blaming Corracher might seem the obvious escape.”

Matthew looked at him. If he were in truth the Peacemaker, and had engineered this whole tragedy, knowing each man’s weaknesses, then he was a superb actor. But the Peacemaker was superb. Time and again that had been only too evident.

“Do you think he’s deliberately lying in order to save himself?” Matthew asked. “It’s a pretty filthy thing to do.”

Thyer stood up, walked over to the French windows and looked out. The lavender was buzzing with bees; the scent of flowers and crushed herbs filled the air. Beyond the hedges, the mellow walls of St. John’s rose into a blue sky. It had looked like this in 1914, and probably in 1614.

“If you don’t know that men lie and betray when they are frightened of losing what they most want, Matthew, then you are unfit for intelligence work—or much else,” Thyer said softly. “The average priest or schoolteacher would tell you as much.”

“It doesn’t occur to you that Corracher could be guilty of blackmail?” Matthew asked.

“Frankly, it doesn’t. I know Wheatcroft. He is…susceptible,” Thyer said regretfully. “Can you help Corracher? Is that why you are interested?”

“Partly.” Should he tell Thyer the truth, and see what his reaction was? Saving Corracher was important. Finding the Peacemaker might be vital. Or was he allowing his own vendetta to blind his judgment? Had he lost perspective?

Thyer did not prompt him, but waited quietly, his fingers propped in a steeple, the sunlight shining on his pale hair.

Matthew plunged in. Caution had gained him nothing. “The rest is to see if you consider it likely that there could be someone else behind it, pulling the strings, as it were.”

Thyer looked startled. “I have no idea. To what end? Do you imagine Wheatcroft is sufficiently important that someone would do all this in order to get rid of him? Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“Both Wheatcroft and Corracher,” Matthew pointed out. “I think possibly Corracher is the more important.”

Thyer was suddenly motionless. Matthew could hear the birds singing outside.

“Do you mean a German, or at least a German sympathizer?” Thyer said slowly.

“They were two of the strongest standing in the way of a settlement of peace before total obliteration of one side or the other,” Matthew pointed out.

Thyer sighed. “Do you really think that is realistic, Matthew, after all we have lost? Is there not too large a section of the country who have paid in blood for victory, and will feel betrayed by any government that settles for less?”

“Does that make them right?” Matthew parried.

Thyer was watching him almost unblinkingly, his pale eyes brilliant. “It makes them the voice of the majority,” he said. “And whether that is correct or not, it is moral, since we are a democracy.”

“Is government to follow rather than to lead?” Matthew asked.

Thyer thought for several moments. “In matters where it is the people who have fought and died, yes, I think perhaps it is. Government may argue a case for something different, or lay before them arguments, facts, and reasons, but in the end we must abide by their decision. And before you argue that point, consider the nature of leading without reference to public wish. Would that not be dictatorship? I imagine most dictators believe themselves to have superior wishes to those of the people, and certainly superior information. That may even be true in the beginning, but eventually it leads to government by oppression rather than consent, and finally to tyranny.”

He flexed his fingers as if they were stiff. “And it is also supremely impractical,” he added with an oddly gentle smile, “unless you have a very great force at your command. And believe me, we have all had enough of bloodshed. We do not need civil war after this…if there is an afterward? From what I read, a German victory is far from impossible. We seem no closer to defeating the kaiser than we were in 1914, and half of an entire generation is mutilated or dead. What man who has seen this war in its hideousness will ever return from it whole in mind, even if his body seems preserved?”

Matthew did not answer. Either Thyer was far from the Peacemaker in his philosophy, or his mask was impenetrable. Matthew was driven back again to consider Dermot Sandwell, or Shearing. He had excluded Sandwell once, because evidence had made it seem impossible, but everything within him recoiled from believing it was Shearing.

And yet in his own way the Peacemaker had begun as an idealist. It was not his ultimate aim—peace—that was intolerable, it was the means he was prepared to use, even from the beginning, to obtain it: a betrayal of France and eventually of America, and dominion, in the cause of an enforced peace, that would extend across half the world. Was that better or worse than war?

“Could there be someone behind Wheatcroft’s accusation against Corracher?” he asked aloud.

“Of course there could,” Thyer replied. “But I have no idea who. I can make some highly discreet inquiries, if you wish?”

How much was there to gain, or to lose? Matthew had committed himself already. “Thank you,” he said. “Yes. But be careful, they will think nothing of killing you, should they feel you threaten them.”

Thyer gave the ghost of a smile. “War is full of death,” he said very softly. “It is an occupational hazard.”

Since he was already close, Matthew took the local train to Selbourne St. Giles and spent the night in the old family home with Hannah. It was her husband Archie MacAllister, who had commanded the Cormorant at the Battle of Jutland, where Matthew had killed Patrick Hannassey, just before the burning ship had gone down. Several times he had drifted in and out of consciousness before being picked up. He still woke in the night fighting for breath, beating his way out of a darkness that threatened to crush his lungs, his face, everything in him that longed for life.

It had given him a new closeness to Archie and an understanding of both the horror and the comradeship of the men who faced the real violence of the war, not just the crushing fear of defeat that came from knowing the casualty figures better than most people. He saw reports that the public did not, and knew the shortages, the ever-shifting political alliances and the new threats internationally. He read the reports from agents in Europe and the rest of the Empire.

Before the Battle of Jutland he had only imagined the numbing horror that Joseph saw every day in the trenches. He had had no experience of the exhilaration and the horror of battle, no idea what it did to the mind and body to watch another human being—a man with whom you had shared jokes, food, the long tension of waiting—broken to a bleeding, unrecognizable pulp at your feet. He had never even imagined physical pain of that degree, the indescribable noise, the smell of blood and burning flesh.

After supper he sat quietly with Hannah in the soft summer dusk and watched the last light fade beyond the elms. The fields lay wide and quiet. The garden was overgrown. She had not had time to pull weeds, or to prune, and there were no young men to hire. They were either dead or in France, or like Archie, at sea. There were no delivery boys anymore, hardly any men in shops or banks or even on the land, only those too old to fight, or too ill. Women did the work now, in hospitals, factories, and farms, and they had no time for private gardens. They drove buses, cycled all over the place delivering things. He saw dozens of them on the country roads or out in the fields.

Hannah knew that Matthew’s visit was not simply for pleasure. “The Peacemaker again?” she asked with a twisted little smile. She knitted automatically as she sat, the needles almost soundless in her hands.

He had not told her about Hannassey, at least not all. He still found it hard to talk about. Part of the pain he felt was because of the price Detta had paid. She had been spying for her cause, just as he was for his. One of them had had to lose. If it had been he, and he had done so deliberately, then he would have betrayed both himself and his country.

“I thought he was dead,” he replied to Hannah’s question.

“I know you did,” she said with a tight little smile. She was looking more like her mother as she reached her mid-thirties. Something of Alys Reavley’s inner calm was there in her features in repose. Matthew liked it, but it tugged at memories, reminding him of an old safety that could never return.

“Then why do you ask?” he said aloud.

“There’s an excitement inside you, an edginess,” she told him. “And what else would bring you back here now?”

“Any number of things,” he said.

She looked up from her work. “You mentioned St. John’s. Is that to do with Aidan Thyer? Do you still think it could be him?”

He was startled. Had he been so transparent?

She continued knitting, the faint click of her needles an intensely comfortable sound in the quiet room. All three children were upstairs, either in bed or doing homework.

He thought of denying it.

“It doesn’t matter.” She dismissed it. “I expect you can’t tell me. Just don’t lie.”

“I don’t know whether he is or not,” he admitted. “I thought I knew who it was last year, and that he was dead—after Jutland. Now things have happened that make it look as if I was wrong, and he’s still alive.”

She looked up quickly. “Be careful, Matthew!” There was fear in her voice, and in her dark eyes so like Alys’s.

He did not think of her words again until two days later. He had returned to London the morning after and pursued all the further information he could. It was distasteful, the sort of investigation into who had been seen offering or accepting illicit sexual activity that was one of the sadder and grubbier sides of police work. But he needed to know if Wheatcroft was guilty of seeking an escape from scandal by trying to blame Corracher, saying that he had deliberately set a trap for him in order to blackmail him, and he was entirely a victim. There seemed no doubt he had behaved extremely foolishly, at the kindest judgment. But was his blaming of Corracher a ploy he had thought up for himself? Or had the idea been planted in his mind, directly or indirectly, by someone else?

The only way to answer that was to see Wheatcroft himself, in spite of all his excuses that he was ill and had nothing to say. Matthew used the power of his Intelligence authority to force the issue. Even when he arrived at Wheatcroft’s house, the servant at the door, an elderly, obviously infirm man, refused to admit him.

“No, sir,” he said resolutely. “Mr. Wheatcroft is unwell, sir. He is not receiving visitors. Doctor’s orders.”

“I am from the Intelligence Service, and my orders supersede the doctor’s,” Matthew answered. “I can return with the police, if you oblige me to resort to such extremes. But I am sure that since you are as patriotic as the next man, you would wish Mr. Wheatcroft to assist the country’s forces as much as he would wish to himself.”

“Well…” the man said, confusion filling his face. “I…I’m sure I would, but I have my orders, sir. I can’t just let anybody in here because they say so!” But he backed away several steps to allow Matthew to enter the hallway, and closed the front door behind him. It was a larger house than average, graciously furnished. Even in these restricted times, the marks of elegance were easy to see: the paintings, the gilt-framed mirrors, the crystal vase of roses on the table near the bottom of the stairs below the carved newel post.

“Sir!” The manservant’s voice rose a little in protest as Matthew came farther in.

A door opened and a slender woman in a fashionable blue dress stood in the entrance. She was handsome in a fair, brittle way, but Matthew did not mistake the delicacy of her coloring for any fragility of mind or will.

“Mrs. Wheatcroft?” he asked, stepping around the manservant.

“Of course,” she said coldly. “Oh, do be quiet, Dobson,” she said to the manservant. “I can see what has happened.” She waved her hand in dismissal without looking at him. “Who are you?” She regarded Matthew’s uniform with distaste. “What are you doing forcing your way into my home?”

“Captain Matthew Reavley of the Secret Intelligence Service, Mrs. Wheatcroft,” he replied. “I am sorry for disturbing you, but matters have arisen about which I need to speak to Mr. Wheatcroft.”

“I’m afraid whatever you have to ask him will have to wait!” she replied. “My husband is unwell, as I believe Dobson has already told you.”

“It is a matter of information necessary to the Intelligence Service, Mrs. Wheatcroft,” he insisted. “It cannot wait.”

She looked at him icily. “My husband has served his country all his adult life, and been repaid for it by vile accusations which are distressing to him and to all his family. Now you come here and push your way into his home demanding he answer your questions? You are brutal, Captain…I forget your name. The answer is no. You will have to wait for a more fortunate time.”

“Reavley,” he said again. “Undoubtedly your husband has served his country. So have we all. Some of us are fortunate that it has cost us no more than a little discomfort. I have a brother in the trenches at Passchendaele, and a sister out there driving ambulances for the few wounded they have some chance of saving. Now go and find Mr. Wheatcroft in his bedroom, and tell him I need to see him immediately. He may come down, or I shall go up.”

She glared at him, her body trembling, searching wildly for an answer to hold him at bay, and finding none. She wheeled around, her skirt swinging, and marched away.

Five minutes later she returned. Without speaking she led Matthew up the stairs and across a spacious landing whose long windows gave a view of a sunlit lawn. Then, after a brief knock, she opened the master bedroom door. She stared at Matthew, leaving him to go in unannounced.

“Thank you,” he said pointedly. He closed the door behind him, but he did not know if she waited outside it.

Alan Wheatcroft was sitting in a chair by the window, not in a dressing gown as Matthew expected, but fully dressed. He was ash pale and his skin shone with sweat. For a minute Matthew wondered if perhaps he really was ill, then he saw the hands clenched, white-knuckled, and decided it was more probably fear that made the man look so wretched.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Wheatcroft, but the matter cannot wait.” He spoke very quietly, only sufficiently to be heard, aware that Mrs. Wheatcroft might be only just beyond the door.

“My wife said so.” Wheatcroft also kept his voice low. “Although I can’t imagine what I might know that would be of interest to the Intelligence Service. I haven’t been in my office for…for several weeks.” His hands clenched even more tightly on the rug over his knees.

Matthew sat on the edge of the bed, more to avoid towering over him than for comfort. “It is nothing to do with your office,” he replied. “It is a matter of possible treason.”

“Treason!” Wheatcroft was stunned. There was no comprehension in his eyes, not even fear, simply total bewilderment. “I know nothing about anything remotely treasonous. I haven’t been out of my house since…” He drew in his breath sharply and then let it out without finishing his sentence.

“Since you were accused of approaching a young man for homosexual favors at the men’s convenience on Hampstead Heath,” Matthew completed it for him.

A tide of color washed up Wheatcroft’s neck and face. He started to speak, and stopped again.

“I’m sure the charge is profoundly embarrassing,” Matthew said with some sympathy. “Any man would find it so. Whose idea was it to save your reputation by saying that Tom Corracher set up the whole scene in order to blackmail you?”

Wheatcroft stared at him in horror, as if Matthew had physically struck him.

“Presumably not only to salvage something of your career, but to save your wife’s feelings,” Matthew added. “Whether you actually approached the boy or were merely naïve is not my concern. I don’t wish to know.”

“You…you are assuming…” Wheatcroft began.

“That it was not your idea? Yes, I am,” Matthew agreed. “Your record up to this suggests you are a man of honor.”

“I did not approach that boy,” Wheatcroft said in a whisper. “I…I may have been foolish, but that’s all! It is…inadvisable. Perhaps I deserve to lose my government position for such stupidity. That I can accept. But I have committed no crime!”

“No,” Matthew agreed. “But blackmail is very definitely a crime, and you are accusing Corracher of that. If he is found guilty then he will not only lose his position, he will go to prison.”

Wheatcroft looked so wretched, it was hard to believe he was not physically ill. “What has that to do with Intelligence? What is it you think I know? For God’s sake, don’t you think I’ve done enough to him? I don’t believe he’s a traitor. I’ve nothing more to say about it.”

“I don’t believe so, either,” Matthew responded. “I don’t know who it is behind the charge, but I believe you can help me find out.”

Wheatcroft did not look up. “If I knew of any treason, I’d have reported it! I haven’t sunk so low as that.”

Matthew felt brutal, but there was no alternative. Neither affection nor pity were excuses to add to injustice. “What made you think of accusing him of blackmail?”

“I…” He stopped.

“Didn’t,” Matthew finished for him. “Someone else suggested it to you?”

“It wasn’t that…simple!” Wheatcroft’s face was ashen and glistening with sweat. “Corracher came to see me a couple of days after…after the…event. We quarreled over something else, stupid. They were putting a man called Jamieson to take over my work temporarily. Eunice, my wife, seemed to…she…assumed the quarrel was about the incident. She leaped to conclusions. I…I allowed her to. It…” He gave up helplessly. His eyes beseeched Matthew to understand without forcing him to put it into words.

Matthew felt both disgust and pity. Wheatcroft was trapped. It was his cowardice in allowing himself to be used in turn to trap Corracher that Matthew despised.

“Withdraw the charge,” Matthew told him. “I doubt you can restore his career. People don’t forget. But you can save yourself some honor out of it.”

“I can’t!” Wheatcroft protested. “It would be as good as saying that I was guilty! And before God, I wasn’t!”

“And it is unjust to be punished for something you didn’t do?” Matthew had asked.

“Yes! And my family ruined!”

“I imagine Tom Corracher feels the same way.”

Wheatcroft stared at him as if he stood on the edge of an abyss.

Matthew opened his mouth to apologize, then said nothing. He could not withdraw his words. They were true. There was some agony within Wheatcroft that he could not share—a guilt, a fear for himself or for others—but Matthew could not let him escape it at the price it would cost.

Did Wheatcroft know who had manipulated his wife? Probably not. Certainly he would not tell Matthew. He remembered her icy face, the fear in her and the immediacy to attack. She would tell him nothing, maybe even warn the Peacemaker, knowingly or not.

He left the Wheatcroft house with a feeling of oppression and went back to his office.

He worked late to learn all he could about Eunice Wheatcroft, searching for a connection to anyone who might be the Peacemaker, dreading the link that would tie them, however tenuously, to Shearing. But if it was there, whatever it cost him, he could not look away.

By the time he left he was tired. His neck and shoulders ached with tension and his mouth was dry. He walked outside in the dark to get a bus home. He alighted two or three streets away and took a shortcut through an alley to save himself a hundred yards.

He heard the noise behind him. It was no more than a loose pebble kicked, but he swung around, losing his balance a little. A figure fell hard against him and metal clanged on the brick.

Some deep memory of those last minutes on the Cormorant awoke in him the feel of Hannassey’s relentless strength as they struggled at the railing with the German destroyer looming out of the darkness. He lashed out hard and straight with his left fist, all his weight behind it. It connected with the man’s face and he felt bone break. Still he followed it with a lunging kick to the groin and the man went down, letting out a scream that was almost instantly choked with blood.

Matthew hesitated. He must have broken the man’s nose. Should he stay and see if the injury was worse than that? What if he couldn’t breathe—if he died?

He looked down. He could see little more than movement, a writhing on the pavement. Perhaps the man was reaching for whatever had fallen and clanged against the brick. A knife? Matthew turned and ran, feet echoing on the alley cobbles until he emerged into his own street.

Even upstairs in his flat, with the door locked, he found he was shaking uncontrollably. The memory of the violence washed over him until he was gulping for breath. It was as if he could feel the strength of Hannassey again, the struggle, then the sudden victory. In his mind he saw Hannassey falling, spinning, arms and legs wide, until he hit the dark water, and a moment later the German destroyer squashed him like a fly.

Matthew poured himself a whisky, spilling a little, and tossed it down his throat so its fire could calm his stomach. He had not killed the man in the alley; he had seen him still moving frantically, arms groping. If Matthew had not hit back, then it would be he who was lying on the cobbles, possibly bleeding to death.

Was that what it was? An attempt to murder him? Was that really why he was shaking like this, because he knew it was not a robbery? Thieves might knock you over the head; more likely they would simply lift your wallet without you knowing it. The car driver the other day was not an accident, either.

Did this mean that at last he was enough of a nuisance to be worth killing? Even too close to the truth to be left alive? That made his heart race with excitement.

Was the Peacemaker Aidan Thyer after all? Or Calder Shearing? That was an ugly and viciously painful thought—one that made nausea grip his stomach and the sweat break out on his body. It was a strange friendship, almost tacit, and yet its depth was uniquely precious. There was a wealth of understanding between them that needed no words, and the comfort of that was immeasurable, the betrayal would be infinite. He remembered Joseph and Corcoran, and then pushed the thought from his mind.

Or could it be Dermot Sandwell, in spite of Matthew having ruled him out before? That would be far more bearable. Or someone he had not even thought of yet, but somehow had come close to without realizing it?

In Marchmont Street, the Peacemaker was woken in the small hours of the morning by his manservant. He dressed because he would not receive any visitor at the disadvantage of not being properly clothed.

He knew as soon as his guest entered the upstairs sitting room with its graceful proportions and lean, elegant furniture that the news was bad. The man who stood in the center of the floor reeked of failure.

The Peacemaker waited for him to speak.

“He got away,” the man said simply. “I thought my fellow was good, but he said Reavley fought like a tiger. Broke his nose and ruptured his spleen. He’s lucky to be alive.”

The Peacemaker was astonished. “Are you sure he had the right man? Reavley’s a thinker, not a doer.”

“I’m perfectly certain,” the man replied. “He’s been followed on and off for weeks. Discreetly—he was never aware.”

The Peacemaker raised his eyebrows skeptically.

“He wouldn’t have gone alone down an alley at night if he’d been aware he was followed,…sir,” the man replied.

The Peacemaker was annoyed with himself. He had allowed the failure to kill Reavley to rattle him, and now he had displayed a weakness in reasoning in front of this man, a rat of a creature who must be kept under tight control. He loathed having to use such people, and the necessity that drove him to it.

“You have failed twice,” he pointed out. “I cannot afford a third error. Leave him alone. I shall think of a way of dealing with him that does not depend upon your very dubious skills. I’ll send for you if I need you again.”

The man opened his mouth to argue, then met the Peacemaker’s eyes, and changed his mind. He left without speaking further.

The Peacemaker returned to his bed, but sleep eluded him. It required all his concentration and discipline of mind not to allow the Reavleys to dominate his thoughts and become an obsession. They were a nuisance, but peripheral to his main activities. The great cause was peace: first with Germany, then with the world. Never again would there be pointless slaughter like that going on at this moment at Passchendaele. The thought of it was enough to make humanity tremble and weep.

It was the night after that, with the air close and damp, and promising thunder, when Richard Mason returned from the Western Front and reported in the upstairs room. His face was gray with exhaustion. He had obviously shaved hastily and cut his chin. But it was the emotional tension in him, the grief in his eyes, the nervous tic at his temple that moved the Peacemaker to pity and a sense of the enormity of the horror. Mason had seen almost every battlefield of the war, not only in Europe but in Russia and the Middle East. He had never looked as haunted as he did now.

“Sit down,” the Peacemaker said quietly. “Whisky? Tea? Have you eaten? What can I get you?”

Mason smiled bleakly. It was no more than a bare curving of the lips, hardly noticeable. “Tea would be nice. I can’t afford to be light-headed. And a sandwich. Bread that isn’t moldy. And a clean cup to drink out of.”

The Peacemaker rang for the manservant. They spoke of trivialities until the food and drink came and they could close the door and be assured of privacy. He allowed Mason time to eat and drink before he approached the subject of his report.

“Thank you,” Mason said. He met the Peacemaker’s eyes. “It’s beyond description. It’s beyond human suffering. It is hell itself.”

“But you have come with something to tell me.” The Peacemaker had seen it in Mason’s patience, his assurance. He had watched the man report on one atrocity after another over years, and he knew every mood of his mind and read its reflection in his face. Mason had brooding, sensitive features, powerful and yet more expressive than perhaps he himself realized. The depth of his emotion was mirrored too easily.

Now he answered slowly, measuring his words. He described Howard Northrup and his appointment to replace the much-respected Penhaligon. With no more than a trace of anger, he told of his stubborn incompetence. Watching him intently, the Peacemaker saw in Mason not only fury but pity as well for a man placed beyond his depth both of experience and of character.

Then, still slumped in the armchair, Mason told of Northrup’s body being found with a single bullet through the brain, fired from right in front of him, and Joseph Reavley’s unsuccessful attempt to learn from the men exactly what had happened.

“Reavley, the chaplain?” The Peacemaker kept his voice devoid of emotion with the greatest effort. He had not forgotten how Mason had thrown away his article on the nightmare of Gallipoli, with all its propaganda value, because of Reavley’s sense of futile, narrow patriotism. “And what did Reavley find?”

Mason laughed. It was a jerky, painful sound that said more vividly than words how lacerated he was inside. “Nothing! Which I imagine was what he wanted, and intended. He’s learned since Prentice’s death. He’s investigating because he has to. Neither he nor the Colonel wants anyone charged. The whole army in that section is facing slaughter. It will take both genius and lunacy to keep them facing forward and over the top, God help them! And God forgive us!” He left the words brittle and sharp in the air, unsaid between them, that they could have prevented it all, if any of their plans had succeeded.

“There’s open talk of mutiny, and it won’t take much to bring it about,” he went on. “Then they’ll have to fire on their own men. They’ll have no choice.” There was absolute certainty in his eyes. “Reavley will have more sense of right and wrong, and of survival, than to find anything.”

“Write your article,” the Peacemaker said earnestly. “Write up the action in which the surgeon saved his men. In the men’s own words: all their comradeship, loyalty to each other, their courage, and how they were betrayed by arrogant and incompetent leadership. For readers far away from the battle you must write the tragedy of it, and the sacrifice. Paint the loss as you saw it.”

Mason stared at him, eyes shadowed and uncertain. “The noise, the mud, and the slaughter are unimaginable.”

“But of course,” the Peacemaker said grimly. “If we here at home knew what it was like, without the poetic words of sacrifice and honor to gild it for us, we would never allow it to go on. We would be sick with shame that we had ever tolerated it in the beginning. We sit in clean withdrawing rooms of quiet houses and weep into our handkerchiefs, and we talk to each other about glory. Write it as it is, Mason! For the love of God, write the truth!”

Mason sat still, the trouble still heavy in his face.

The Peacemaker leaned forward. “I know the figures, Mason. I know we have barely gained a few yards of mud at the price of a hundred thousand lives. It has to stop. The government won’t do it; they’ve staked too much on victory to settle for less than that now. They’re old men, dedicated to war. We need new men, with a vision of peace and the courage to pay what it costs in pride.” For an instant he thought of Wheatcroft and Corracher standing in the way, young men with old men’s vision. But they had been dealt with! Eunice Wheatcroft’s pride would see to that. “But they can’t do it without the truth,” he went on, intent upon Mason again. “Doesn’t the vast mass of our suffering people deserve to decide on truth, not lies? If not for them, then for the men you’ve seen paying the price of their folly. Is their enemy really the German soldier opposite, suffering the same hunger, the same horror and pain? Or is it the blind cowards behind them driving them forward?”

The argument died in Mason’s eyes. The Peacemaker saw it and knew he had won.

Matthew reached a decision. Detection of facts had achieved very little. All his inquiries into Eunice Wheatcroft’s connections had gained him nothing. He still had no proof who the Peacemaker was. He would carry the battle to Sandwell, and perhaps spur him to action, which would show him innocent or guilty.

He contrived to have himself invited to a dinner party Sandwell was giving at his home in order to discuss intelligence matters. As a senior minister, it was part of his responsibility. This was an elegant occasion with all the glamour and discreet good taste of the years before the war. The meal was abstemious, as became men who led a country where some of the poor actually starved. The talk was somber. There was no pretense made that victory was certain, only that surrender was unthinkable. The dead had paid too much for the living to betray them.

After the coffee and brandy had been served, Sandwell rose to his feet. He was slender, almost gaunt now, his fair hair gleaming in the subdued light from the lamps. He asked the others to excuse him, and gestured to Matthew to follow him into one of the smaller side offices.

It was tidy, gracious, and sparsely furnished. Sandwell sat down in one of the armchairs and invited Matthew to the other. He crossed his legs, his polished shoes shining for an instant as he moved. His eyes were almost electric blue, curious, amused. He waited for Matthew to speak.

Matthew began his well-rehearsed discourse. “Thank you, sir. I’ll not waste time with prevarication. I imagine you are aware of the original prosecution against Alan Wheatcroft, and now that against Tom Corracher as well?”

“Naturally,” Sandwell agreed. “Is that of interest to the intelligence service?”

“I believe so. Corracher is not guilty of any attempt to blackmail Wheatcroft. The accusation is Wheatcroft’s way of escaping the consequences of either a very naïve action, or possibly a minor offense, but one with major effects upon his career, and probably more important to him, his marriage.”

Sandwell was watching Matthew intently. Matthew tried to read the emotion in the brilliant eyes, and could discern nothing. It was like looking into a mirror.

“You mean Wheatcroft laid the charge of blackmail falsely, as a way of becoming victim rather than offender?” Sandwell grasped it immediately. “I’m surprised. It shows rather more nimbleness of mind than I thought he possessed.”

Matthew smiled in spite of himself, and saw the answer in Sandwell’s face.

“Yes, sir, I think it does, which is why I believe the idea may not have originated with him.”

“I assume you asked him?”

“Yes. He told me it was his wife’s suggestion.”

“Ah. The redoubtable Eunice.”

“You know her?” Suddenly the air was electric. Had Sandwell stiffened? Was Matthew at last facing the Peacemaker in a ridiculously civilized, lethal fencing match with words? Or wasting time talking in riddles to an innocent man?

The Peacemaker was an idealist: passionate, ruthless, believing utterly in his cause. He would crush Matthew as he had his father, with regret, but without hesitation.

“Do you know Mrs. Wheatcroft, sir?” Matthew reiterated.

“I have met her,” Sandwell replied. “But I was speaking of her reputation. Elegant but chillingly cold.”

“My impression exactly,” Matthew agreed. “I think if I were Wheatcroft I would not wish to incur her displeasure, let alone her contempt.”

“Sufficiently to accuse a friend of blackmail, falsely?” Sandwell asked with a lift of surprise. “That is a particularly squalid thing to do.”

“It is a particularly squalid charge,” Matthew pointed out.

“I don’t see how it concerns Intelligence, even so. Or what I could do to be of assistance.”

Matthew had hoped the question would arise and he had prepared for it. “Tom Corracher is an able man, with unique connections in Hungary. We can’t afford to lose him so easily. Apart from the damage to morale of such a sordid scandal just now when the army is taking the most hideous losses. We need strength and honor at home.”

“I see.” Sandwell sat silently for some time. Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and a burst of laughter came from the dining room where the men were still passing the port and brandy.

Somewhere a clock chimed and then struck eleven.

“You wish me to intervene on Corracher’s behalf. I assume you believe him innocent? Although perhaps that is not the major issue. You are right, a scandal would damage morale when we are too vulnerable to bear it easily. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, Reavley. I shall do what I can. Your argument is persuasive.” He smiled and rose to his feet, holding out his strong, narrow hand with its long fingers.

Matthew took it, still not certain what he had learned. “Thank you, sir.”

They stood for a moment, neither moving. Then Sandwell let go and turned to the door. Was his smile a shade less certain? Or was it only a change in the light and Matthew’s imagination?

Matthew was a little late the next morning and was still eating a slice of toast when the telephone rang. He picked it up to hear Shearing’s voice. It sounded tense and very formal, as if he might have been aware of being overheard.

“Morning, Reavley. Will you go to Wheatcroft’s house, please. Immediately. Take full identification with you.”

Matthew drew in his breath to ask why, and then let it out again. “Yes, sir.”

He took his car this time. A taxi would have had to fight traffic just the same, and he knew London almost as well as any cab driver. It took him half an hour, even though he had to break the speed limit in several places and cut a dozen red lights too fine.

He was met at Wheatcroft’s door by an elderly policeman who was well past the age at which he would usually retire. He looked distressed, which was sufficient to warn Matthew that whatever had happened was very grave.

“Yes, sir?” the sergeant said stiffly.

“Captain Reavley, Intelligence Service,” Matthew identified himself.

“Yes, sir. Sergeant Roberts. I was expecting you. Mr. Wheatcroft’s in the bedroom, sir. But there’s no question how it happened.”

“How…?” Matthew began.

“Suicide, Captain.” Roberts swallowed. “There’s a letter. Wife said it’s his handwriting, and we compared it with other papers we know were his. There’s no doubt.”

Matthew felt a wave of guilt rise up and choke him, tightening his chest till he could hardly breathe. He was gasping, his lungs struggling for air.

“You all right, sir?” Roberts’s voice came from a distance.

“Yes, thank you. What did the note say?”

“That he was innocent, but he couldn’t face the shame of the prosecution. That he’d been haunted over a piece of foolishness, his career was finished and there was no use or happiness left for him. For his family’s sake he wasn’t going to begin on a downward path which had no end.”

Matthew cleared his throat awkwardly. “Those words?”

“Yes, sir. The note’s up there beside him. Room’s locked. Doctor’s with the wife. Very strong woman, taking it with great courage, no hysterics, but looks like she should be buried alongside him, right enough, poor thing.”

“Thank you.” Matthew held out his hand for the key, then turned and walked up the stairs, leaving the sergeant at the bottom. He knew where the bedroom was. It seemed only hours since he had been there.

He opened the door, fumbling for a moment before he could turn the lock, then went in and closed it behind him. The curtains were drawn to a twilight gloom, but rather than pull them back he switched on the electric light.

Wheatcroft was lying on top of the bed. He had either not undressed last night or he had risen and dressed this morning. He had apparently shaved also. Matthew touched the bloodless face. It was cool. Had he died hours ago? He looked ravaged now, wasted as if by disease, his flesh sunken.

Was it despair that had driven him to this? And how would it reflect on Corracher? Was that another blow waiting to fall? This certainly would not stop the prosecution.

He picked up the note. It was quite long, and not addressed to anyone in particular—not even to his wife, as might have been expected. It mentioned his work and how he had believed in it, and that his successor, Marlowe, lacked the connections in Hungary to carry it through.

After that, it was pretty much as Roberts had said. He proclaimed his innocence and said he could not face the humiliation and would not publicly fight a battle he could not win, but significantly, he did not blame Corracher.

Matthew folded the note and put it in his pocket. He searched the papers, letters, notes of meetings, diaries, but there was nothing else there to help or hurt Corracher’s cause.

Finally he left to go back and report to Shearing. He felt miserable, guilt-dogged, and yet confused as to what he could or should have done differently. Perhaps Wheatcroft was guilty after all, and the whole thing was a catalogue of small errors and profound tragedies, and the Peacemaker had simply seized the opportunity to use his weakness and destroy Corracher with it.

Was this suicide now a result of Wheatcroft’s guilt over accusing Corracher? He had not openly admitted the lie; perhaps that was too much to ask, for his family’s sake. But the prosecution against Corracher would have to be dropped.

Another victim of the Peacemaker, intentionally or not.

Had Matthew’s conversation with him provoked the guilt? Or had it been brought about subtly, ruthlessly, by Sandwell, after Matthew’s discussion with him last night? Probably he would never know.

CHAPTER

SIX

By now Joseph had concluded his fruitless questioning about Northrup’s death. He had gone through the motions so that Hook could tell General Northrup honestly that they had done everything they could to ascertain the truth of his son’s death. But if anyone had known it and was willing to speak, they must have been among the casualties, which increased by the thousands every day.

After seventy-two hours Joseph went to see Hook in his dugout. It was yet another gray morning, with a weeping pall of cloud across the sky. The rain seemed to have soaked into everything. There was no dry ground, no food or equipment untouched. Everything dripped and was clammy to the touch. Bread was moldy before it arrived at the forward trenches, battle tunics never dried out, socks and boots were permanently sodden. Men’s hair was plastered to their heads, and their pale skins shiny wet, streaked with mud and blood.

Joseph slipped on the step and jarred himself against the wooden lintel on the way down to the dugout. Hook looked up as he heard him and called out to come in.

“Morning, Reavley,” he said a little huskily. His face was colorless and lined with exhaustion.

Joseph let the sacking fall back over the entrance and stood to attention.

“Morning, sir.” He gave the casualty figures as he knew them, and mentioned the names of those men he was aware Hook had known personally. Then he moved on to close the issue of Northrup’s death. “I’ve made all the inquiries I can, sir. If it was the sort of thing we feared, no one is saying anything. Of course it shouldn’t have happened, but in the face of the circumstances, I strongly recommend that we close the issue. There seems to me to be two possible answers: either the whole thing is no more than loose talk by men angry and demoralized, speaking out of turn. This could be the best answer for all of us, especially Major Northrup himself. Or there was a piece of very regrettable indiscipline, but those concerned are themselves dead now. We can’t now determine what it was, and in respect to Major Northrup, who can’t defend himself, we should mention it no further.”

Hook regarded him with a bitter humor in his eyes. “You did actually ask?”

“Yes, sir.” That was the truth, although he had neither expected nor wanted an answer.

“Thank you, Reavley. I’ll inform General Northrup. I don’t imagine he’ll be pleased, but he’ll have to accept it.”

But Northrup did not accept it. He sent for Joseph personally and demanded a more detailed explanation, and there was nothing Hook could do to protect him from it. It was in Hook’s dugout again, in the early afternoon. Joseph had spent almost twenty hours helping wounded and dying, endlessly carrying stretchers. He had struggled through the mud and round the awkward corners of the few trenches that were still negotiable in the ever-deepening water. He had watched young men he knew and cared for die in indescribable pain.

He had managed to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep, his body bruised, wet to the skin and shivering. Now he fumbled to straighten his clothes, splash his face with moderately clean water, and report back to Hook again. There was no time to shave, none even to try to light a flame and heat water for a cup of tea.

Outside, the earth smelled of death. The light was gray and the air close and warm.

Inside the dugout one oil lamp was burning, the light red and green on the backs of a pile of books. He saw General Northrup immediately. He looked thin, a little stooped; his face was tight with anger.

Joseph drew himself to attention, pulling his shoulders back with an effort. The muscles in his body shot through with pain and he could not fill his lungs with air.

Hook’s voice was rough-edged. “I gave your report to General Northrup, Captain. However, he has made certain inquiries himself and he is not satisfied that we have exhausted all possibilities.”

“I know of no others, sir,” Joseph said doggedly. He knew that Hook was prepared to back him, and the men.

Northrup did not wait for Hook to reply but cut across him looking straight at Joseph. There was both pain and contempt in his voice. “I can understand your desire to shield your men, Chaplain. I even have some sympathy with your reluctance to believe any of them capable of such a crime. But if we have any right to claim that we fight for civilized values, a way of life acceptable to man and God, then we do not look away from the truth because it is not what we wish it to be or find comfortable to deal with.”

Joseph was speechless with fury. The word comfortable was a blasphemy in this blood-soaked gateway of hell. He croaked the word, almost unintelligibly, like an animal sound in the back of his throat.

Hook heard the warning in it, the self-control fraying and coming apart. He intervened. “Chaplain, General Northrup has been speaking to the men also, and he believes that Corporal Fuller may have been involved and knows what happened. He insists that we ask him, under pressure if necessary.”

“Punch Fuller?” Joseph was startled. “I haven’t seen him for days. He must be…” he blinked, trying to hold back his emotion. “Among the dead.” He had liked Punch with his pleasantly ugly face and his inexhaustible memory for the words of every song, orthodox and otherwise.

A nerve twitched in Northrup’s cheek. “He is not dead, Chaplain! Not even wounded. Corporal Fuller is on leave in Paris, and no doubt enjoying himself. If we fight for anything, it must be for honor. If we have lost that, then there is nothing else left worth winning—or losing.” His voice thickened. “I will not bury my son the victim of a cowardly murder and keep silent about it. I do not know if you would—that is not my concern—but if you would, then I pity you, and those who love or trust you I pity even more. What use are you to your men, sir, if you have neither the courage nor the strength to uphold the truth or the honor of the God you chose to serve?”

“General…” Hook began to protest, leaning forward a little, his skin yellow now in the lamplight.

Joseph could not allow Hook to fight in a defense he was not prepared to make for himself. “General Northrup.” He turned to face him. “If Corporal Fuller knows something of Major Northrup’s death, then with Colonel Hook’s permission, I will go to Paris, find him, and learn what it is. Supposing you believe that is of more service to my men than remaining here to help them.” He stared at Northrup’s tired, wounded eyes without wavering.

Northrup blinked.

It was Hook who answered. “I think you had better try, Reavley. You could get a little sleep on the train, some dry clothes, maybe hot food. Give it a couple of days anyway.”

“Yes, sir. Immediately?”

“Might as well,” Hook replied. “If Fuller comes back and you miss him, you might not get another chance.” He gave Northrup a sidelong glance, but Northrup was impervious. He could see only justice; the near certainty of death in battle seemed not to touch him.

“Yes, sir.” Joseph saluted and left.

He was tired enough to sleep most of the journey from Ypres to Paris, jammed into a seat between other soldiers going on leave, a few staff officers, and several silent and uncomfortable civilians in cars rattling and jolting over the tracks. He was barely aware of them. Exhaustion lent him a few hours of oblivion, and when he finally disembarked at the station and pulled his thoughts together it was to consider at which of the many places the men on leave stayed in Paris he should begin to look for Punch Fuller.

He had heard many of the men joke about the music halls that were still open, the nightclubs, the cafés, and the brothels.

He stood on the platform outside the railway station looking at the street, hearing the clip of horses’ hooves and the hiss of tires on the wet cobbles, the blare of motor horns and someone singing loudly and offkey, miserably drunk. A boy with a cap too large for him was selling newspapers, black headlines counting more losses at Passchendaele, Verdun, the Somme, and right along the front. A group of sailors swung by, with trouser legs flapping around their ankles. An ambulance passed, driven by a woman.

Joseph felt an overwhelming sense of being lost, even though he had been to Paris many times, both before the war and then on leave. He had spoken French passably since school. It was not that he did not care about France, or appreciate the country’s wit, history, and culture; he just ached for the familiar, the idioms of his own people. He longed for things he did not need to think about, places his feet would find unguided. He was too tired to begin a search for one man in all this weary, grieving city that had lived the last three years with the enemy on its doorstep, trying to keep a brave face while smiling at disaster, pretending it wouldn’t really happen. God knew how many of its sons would never return. Did they hear the guns in their sleep?

It would be dusk soon. He must find a billet of some kind for the night, maybe three nights. He did not really want to find Punch Fuller, but he had to try. Damn Major Northrup for his stupidity, a father too blind to let his son lie buried in peace.

He found a room; it was small and expensive, but quite clean. The landlady made him an omelette with herbs and charged for it extortionately. But it was the best meal he had eaten since the early spring and he told her so with gratitude. There was no tea, and the coffee was bitter, but at least it was served in a cup, not a Dixie can, and there was no taste of oil to it.

He slept late, vaguely discomforted by the physical ease of a bed, and the silence compared with the guns he was used to. It should have wrapped him round in peace, but it didn’t.

He went out again, asking first at the half dozen or so small hotels he knew the men used when in Paris. He kept his chaplain’s collar showing to allay suspicion that his search had any ill intent, but it didn’t help. He spoke of Punch Fuller by name, and described him fairly closely: his long nose and sharp chin, his slightly rolling walk, his ready wit. They all stared at him with blank faces, many openly hostile.

Then he tried the cafés, bars, and other drinking places—all without success. By near midnight again he was nursing a glass of rough red wine in a nightclub in the cellar of one of the older hotels. There were several other British soldiers there. They seemed determined to stay awake for every precious hour of leave, savor it to the last breath of smoky, wine-filled atmosphere, hear every aching note of the music from the three-piece band. A middle-aged woman with a thin body sang in a languorous voice filled with heartbreak.

Suddenly Joseph could no longer keep from his mind the awareness of how everything had changed since he was last here on leave himself, too short a time to go home. It was only three months ago, but now it was all just a little shabbier; a few more chairs were broken and not mended, and the tables more deeply scarred. Windows were cracked, lamps missing pieces of colored glass. It was this room he could see as he sat, but in his mind it was everywhere. Coffee was thin and bitter. Women’s faces were bleak, numbed with loss. Clothes were patched and repaired, the few shreds of style left a little more desperate. Outside there was uncollected rubbish blowing in the gutters, and windows were boarded up where there was no glass to mend them.

The comradeship was still there, the anger and the pain, and a shred of the old ironic wit. But the shell was thin, and too near to breaking.

Joseph sipped his wine again and watched the group of Tommies at the bar. None of them looked more than twenty, several far younger, maybe sixteen or seventeen. They were laughing too loudly. They thought they were pretending to be brave, knowing that tomorrow or the next day they were going back to be killed. Joseph knew the courage was real—but behind the stupid jokes, white faces were slicked with the sweat of uncertainty and fear. Finally, Joseph realized, each man was desperately alone.

The three-piece band started a Cole Porter song. Porter himself was somewhere here in Paris, so Joseph had heard, but he would be in a better place than this, more sophisticated.

He should start looking for Punch Fuller again. He had to tell General Northrup that he had tried. Stupid man. The truth would hurt everyone, himself most of all.

And yet Joseph knew that some Englishman had shot Major Northrup on purpose, to save him from bringing on them even more destruction, and more of his friends sacrificed for nothing. Did duty require you to die pointlessly? If Punch were to ask him that, what would he say?

He had no idea. Too many of the old certainties were gone. Once he would have known exactly what to say to Morel about honor and leadership. Now he understood Morel’s belief that his duty was toward the men whose lives were in his charge, to save them from incompetents who would take their loyalty and sacrifice it hideously and for nothing, unaware even of what they were asking.

He had tried again to argue with Morel. He could hear the words in his mind—“You can’t lead them to mutiny! Think what it means. They’ll be shot.”

“How terrible,” Morel had said sarcastically. “Good men shot.”

Joseph had floundered, seeking something to say, a core of belief within himself to cling to and give him fire and conviction. He had found nothing sure enough, and Morel knew it as much as he did. He had failed.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see a man smiling at him. He was tall and dark with a long nose and a mercurial, ironic laughter in his eyes. Just now there was a strange gentleness in him, an instant of naked emotion.

“Sam?” Joseph’s voice was hoarse. Amazement and joy welled up inside him. It was Sam, wasn’t it? Sam Wetherall, whose grave he had wept over, even though he knew it was not his friend’s body in it, but someone else’s wearing his tags. They had arranged it. It had been the only answer to Prentice’s death and the knowledge afterward.

Sam grinned. “You look like hell, Joe. But it’s still good to see you. Don’t make a fuss.”

Joseph’s heart raced with fear, hope, intense, pounding relief. There was no question anymore. Sam was alive. “What are you doing here?” He managed the words although his lips were dry and his throat tight. Sam was not in uniform. “Are you on leave?” Surely he could not have left the army, even in his new identity, not deserted? It wasn’t possible, not the Sam he knew. He realized he was shaking with fear. His belief in Sam was one of the few certainties he relied on. He did not want it tested.

Sam eased himself into the stool beside him. “Took a leaf out of your brother’s book,” he said very quietly.

Joseph stared at him, struggling to understand. Intelligence? But Sam was a sapper, one of those who dug under the enemy lines, listened, set mines, blew up defenses. Perhaps the tight spaces and the claustrophobia had gotten to him at last. It got to most men, sooner or later. Too many were buried alive in collapses, drowned in the mud and debris, crushed by falls.

He found himself smiling simply because Sam was alive. Memories poured back of conversations they had had on the line in 1915, when it had all been so new. They had thought then that the war wouldn’t last a year. It had been talk of glory, of heroism and sacrifice. Now it was just death, endlessly and pointlessly ever more death. The soldiers were even younger.

“Here in Paris?” he asked aloud, his voice almost level.

“Mostly.” Sam’s eyes were far away for a moment. “How’s the regiment?” He did not ask for anyone by name, but Joseph thought of the men Sam had known who were dead now. There was no need to tell him.

Sam interrupted his efforts to concoct a good answer. “You were never a good liar, Joe. Who’s gone? Everyone?”

“No!” Joseph denied too quickly, thinking of those whose comradeship had been so precious. “Only a few: Tucky Nunn, Eardslie, Chicken Hagger, Lanty and Bibby Nunn both, Doughy Ward, both the Arnold brothers.”

Sam’s hand tightened on his arm. He said nothing. He had never wasted words.

The barman poured him some absinthe and he ignored it.

“I’m looking for Punch Fuller,” Joseph said quietly.

“Deserted?” Sam said with slight surprise. “Poor sod. Is that really the best use they can find for you, to send you to Paris after the poor devils that reached the end of the line?” He frowned. “If he’s really cut and run, Joe, there’s no point in finding him. He’s a casualty of war. You can’t save him.”

“No, he’s not a deserter,” Joseph said slowly. Perhaps he should not tell Sam about it, but he knew he was going to. He had no idea what Sam had done in the dreadful years since they had parted, just before Sam went over the top that day in spring of 1915. But he was the same man with whom he had shared the chocolate biscuits, sitting in the dugout, and told stories of the laughter and the memories that mattered, of the England they loved and the past that was slipping a little further away each day.

Sam was waiting, watching him. His face was leaner than before, more deeply lined. Joseph could barely even guess at the pain losing his identity must have caused him, hollowing out places of loneliness, character, and grief he could not imagine. He could never return to England, the familiar hills and fields, the villages, the rhythm and music of speech, the common history that framed even the simplest things.

Had Joseph been wrong to offer that way out? He had so desperately wanted Sam to live, and the decision had seemed right at the time, the only thing possible.

“We had an incompetent officer shot,” he said aloud, looking at Sam again. “It might have passed off without any fuss, considering the overall losses, but another damn war correspondent saw it and left me no way out. The man’s father is a general, and he’s determined to see justice done and his son’s good name reinstated, and of course whoever murdered him tried for it, and face the firing squad.”

“What has Punch Fuller got to do with it? Don’t say you’re playing detective again, Joe!”

“Not willingly,” Joseph answered, more memories almost drowning him. If he had been wiser last time, Sam would still be in the British Army, under his own name, and if he survived the war, free to go home to his brother.

Sam saw it in his eyes. He smiled. “Don’t blame yourself for being who you are, Joe. I don’t. I never wanted you to betray yourself, and that’s what it would have been.”

“I don’t want to know who killed Northrup,” Joseph retorted. “And I already know why. The man was a fool, and dangerous.”

“All this old question of loyalty,” Sam said softly. “Do you violate the old standards to save your friends? Or do you keep your conscience, and let them die?”

“I used to think I was sure of lots of things,” Joseph answered ruefully. “Now I’m only sure of the values of humanity, of courage and honor and pity. Keep your word whatever it costs. Face forward, even if you’re so terrified your guts turn to water. Help someone if you can, anyone, doesn’t matter who they are or what you think they’ve done. Don’t think, just help the pain. Stay with them, don’t let go. Don’t judge.”

Sam’s eyes were very gentle.

“And what happens if you go back without finding Punch Fuller?” he asked.

“General Northrup will go on looking for whoever killed his son, and trying to prove it was murder, until one day he finds out his son was an ass and the men hated him. Then he’ll pin the blame on someone and his vengeance will be satisfied.”

“You mean he’ll settle for lies as long as he extracts the solution he wants?”

“Something like that.”

“I assume you’ve already considered blaming someone who’s dead?” Sam asked. “God knows, there must be enough of them.”

Joseph smiled, aware of the irony. “Yes, I thought of it. But I wouldn’t have much chance of getting away with it if I don’t have any idea what actually happened. Punch Fuller might be able to tell me that.”

Sam rolled his eyes very slightly. “Come on, Joe! If he does, it’ll be in the nature of a confession! You won’t be able to use it. For God’s sake, have a little sense!”

“I won’t be able to use it to prove anything,” Joseph agreed with a pained smile. “But then I really don’t want to!”

Sam’s eyebrows rose.

“Don’t you? You’ll let them get away with murdering an officer because they think he’s incompetent! God, you have changed!”

Joseph realized with a sense of amazement that in spite of the mockery, the chaffing, and the laughter, Sam wanted Joseph to cling to his belief. That he didn’t share it, or professed not to, was irrelevant. Perhaps as long as Joseph did, Sam felt there was something certain. As a last resort, something to trust. When everything else was destroyed, then perhaps it would stand.

Maybe that was what a chaplain’s job really was—not to teach others to believe, but to be seen to believe oneself. To stand not so much for a specific faith, but for the endurance of faith, for its power to outlast everything else. He must do it now, a gift for Sam, after all he had taken away from him.

“It’s a matter of weighing one loyalty against another,” he began delicately. “It’s a matter of the men’s loyalty to each other, after three years in the trenches living together, and before this is over, dying together. Weigh that against Northrup’s answering for the truth of his incompetence, and I’m not so certain whoever did it was wrong that I’d be willing to force the issue and see them hang for it. Especially now. You may not know it here in Paris, but the whole of the British line is too close to mutiny to stomach a glaring injustice like that. I don’t know if I’m right, Sam. There are a lot of things I don’t feel so sure of that I’d ask another man to pay the price of it. I’ll pay it myself. I want to know what happened. When I do, I’ll go back and tell Colonel Hook—and General Northrup, if he wants to know.”

“Are you sure the dead officer was an idiot, more than most?” Sam asked thoughtfully.

“I am. I saw some of his handiwork myself. Nigel Eardslie died as a result of it. Edgar Morel is ready to lead a mutiny, I think.”

Sam smiled and his eyes were surprisingly bright. “I apologize. You haven’t changed. Just a little more complex, that’s all. You’ll make a regular Jesuit, if you survive the war.”

“Jesuits are Catholic,” Joseph pointed out, but a tiny flicker of warmth was back inside him. “Can you help me find Punch Fuller? You must know Paris a hell of a lot better than I do. Have you got people I can ask? I haven’t much longer to look.”

Sam sat still for several moments before he answered. “Yes, there’s someone I can ask,” he said at last. “If I tell her you need to know for a good reason, she’ll help. But you’ll have to trust me, Joe. No questions, nothing reported to anyone, not to prove a point, not even to save a man’s life. There are far more lives hanging on it. Your word?”

“My word,” Joseph agreed, holding Sam’s gaze.

Sam considered the absinthe for a moment, and decided against it. He put a few coins on the counter, then stood up, and Joseph followed him out of the club and up the narrow steps into the street. It was dark and still raining very slightly, a sort of drifting mist that covered everything with a sheen that gleamed bright and wet in the few lights that were still on.

“You all right to walk?” Sam asked quietly. “It’s mostly alleys. We need to cross the river.”

“Of course I’m all right to walk!” Joseph said tartly, but without ill temper. “Carry you, if you need it!”

“We have some problems,” Sam said cheerfully, his voice on the edge of laughter in the dark. “Don’t always know who our friends are. Keep up, and say nothing.”

They went together through the old part of the city, along alleys and byways that predated Napoleon’s grand redesign—places that echoed to the footsteps of revolutionaries, and had run with blood then. Now they held the furtive whispers of different secrets, fears, and griefs.

They crossed the river to the Île de la Cité. The rain had eased, and the water glistened in the faint moonlight. A string of barges was black on its shining surface. Everything was wet. A thin strain of a saxophone drifted and was lost. Someone laughed.

Sam spoke to someone, their voice murmuring, and a few minutes later they crossed the river at the far side onto the left bank. There were more whispered exchanges with people, sometimes no more than a few words.

It must have been after two in the morning when at last Sam led the way down steep flagged steps into a cellar. One flame burned in a glass lamp, leaving most of the room in shadows.

“Monique?” he said in little more than a whisper.

She answered him in French, only one word to acknowledge that she was there. Joseph, straining his eyes to discern through the shadows, was certain there was at least one more person there.

“We need to find a British soldier,” Sam told the woman and whoever it was beside her. “This is Chaplain Joseph Reavley. I’ve known him since ’fifteen. You can trust him.”

“Deserter?” Monique asked. “If so, I’m surprised you came. I can’t do that, and you know it. Not when he has information about German plans. Sapper, is he?”

Joseph drew in his breath to speak, then remembered he had promised Sam to remain silent.

“Knows the truth of an execution,” Sam replied. “Wants to avoid the wrong man going to the firing squad. Better right now if no one does. Man from a Cambridgeshire regiment—name of Punch Fuller. On leave in Paris right now.”

The woman turned to look very carefully at Joseph, moving the light closer, studying his face. He did not avert his gaze but looked back at her. She was beautiful, in a soft, intense way, with a strong nose, wide, gentle mouth. Her cloud of dark hair accentuated the pallor of her skin and the shadows around her eyes.

She turned back to Sam. “You swear for him?”

Sam did not hesitate. “Yes.”

Monique turned to the man beside her and for a moment the light swayed a little toward him. Joseph had a glimpse of wide, light gray eyes and a thin face of extraordinary intelligence; then Monique moved the light away and everything became indistinct again.

“If he is still in Paris, we’ll find him,” Monique answered. “Have lunch in the Café Parnasse at one o’clock.”

Sam thanked her and took Joseph by the elbow, leading him back up the steps into the street again. “Where are you staying?” he asked.

Joseph told him.

“I’ll take you back close enough for you to find your way. The Café Parnasse is in the Rue Mazarin, near the river. Be there. That’s the best I can do for you.”

“Thank you.”

Sam did not ask him what he would do if he discovered Punch Fuller was involved with the murder of Northrup. It was a delicate balance between them, understood that even if he were, Joseph would not instigate any court-martial that involved him. The success of the intelligence network for which Sam worked depended upon freedom of information, and trust that it was never used for police work, for private gain, or for vengeance.

From the very little Sam had said, Joseph assumed that what they dealt in was information about German troop movements. Sam had made a laughing reference to carrier pigeons, and Joseph knew their use in war. He could only imagine the courage and patience of scores of men and women posted all over Europe watching, listening, making notes, and risking their lives to report everything to one source, here in Paris, where it could be collated to form a picture.

They walked together speaking little. There was too much to say, and too little time even to begin. Perhaps most of it they already understood, and the rest did not matter tonight. Facts, details were irrelevant. They had the same understanding of the enormity of the change since the comparative innocence of the time when they had fought in the same trench, side by side.

Joseph asked a few questions about Paris, although nothing that could be secret; he simply wanted to picture Sam’s life.

“Do you get reasonable food?”

Sam shrugged. “Most of the time. Better than you do! I’d back any Frenchman alive against an army cook, any day of my life!”

Joseph smiled, but he heard the moment of hollowness in Sam’s voice. He remembered the chocolate biscuits Sam’s brother had sent, and the rotten, scalding hot tea.

“It’s important work,” he said, then wondered if it sounded condescending. “And dangerous. It must be hard to know who you can trust. At least I know which way the enemy is.” Then he wished he had not said that, either. The old comradeship was so precious that the memory of it now seemed almost like golden days, and yet those days had frequently been nightmare awful.

“It’s which way he’s going next we’re working on,” Sam said drily. “It’s a sort of mental puzzle putting the pieces together. There are some decent chaps, and women, too. Different kind of courage. Paris isn’t home, but it has charm, like a beautiful woman who falls ill. It’s worth fighting to see her recover, get back the color and the wit again, to see her dress with style.”

“See you in the Café Parnasse, after the war!” Joseph said impulsively.

Sam slapped Joseph on the shoulder, gently. “Done!” he agreed. “First anniversary.”

They came within sight of Joseph’s lodging. Sam gave a small salute, a smile, and without any more words he was gone into the shadows. The night was empty again, the warmth and the safety of it gone.

Joseph went to his room. The chill in his flesh—into the bones—had nothing to do with the weather, or even his tiredness: It was a knowledge of loss.

Punch Fuller was in the Café Parnasse at one o’clock. He was flirting shamelessly with a French girl who was perhaps no more than fourteen, a beautiful, self-possessed child-woman with a magnificent head of curly hair. She was very patient with him, brushing him off with easy skill.

“Hello, Punch,” Joseph said when he was almost beside him. “May I have soup and bread, please, mademoiselle?” He sat down on the seat next to Punch.

Punch was startled. “Hello, Chaplain! You come to keep me out of the paths of sin? That’s downright unsporting of you.” He looked at Joseph narrowly to see if he understood that it was a politely worded request to go away.

Joseph smiled. “I didn’t find you by accident, Punch. Colonel Hook sent me.”

Punch froze, not even turning his head toward Joseph. He was twenty-three, plain with his hooked nose and sharp chin, but quick-witted and an easy, loyal friend. “Whoi’s that then?” he said guardedly.

Joseph had intended to be direct; he needed Punch to believe him. “Because Major Northrup’s father, General Northrup, is tearing the regiment apart determined to find out who shot his son,” he replied.

“Oi got no oidea who that’d be, sir,” Punch said immediately.

“No, of course not,” Joseph agreed. “Nor have I. Not sure that I really want to. The man was an ass. But the thing is, the general isn’t going to go away until he has an answer, even if it’s a wrong one, and some innocent man ends up before a firing squad.”

Punch turned to look at him, his blue eyes troubled. “So what is it you reckon Oi can do about that then, sir?” The suspicion was sharp in his face that Joseph was trying to manipulate him into giving someone away.

Joseph had his answer planned. “He won’t leave until he gets an answer. I want to find one he’ll accept, and stop looking.”

“Loike wot, Chaplain? If it weren’t a Jerry, it had to be one of us.”

“True,” Joseph conceded. “With our casualty rate, probably someone who’s dead, too, by now.”

“Roight.” Punch nodded. “But still won’t be very good for his family, though, will it? An’ d’yer think the general’ll believe it? Sort of convenient, don’t you think? An’ apart from that, Chaplain, who’s going to tell him a loi? You aren’t!”

Joseph was both pleased and frustrated by Punch’s faith in him. The next part of his plan was very carefully judged. “I realize you don’t know exactly what really happened, Punch,” he began. “But let’s create a sort of working model, for something that’s close enough people would believe it. The major was a liability. He didn’t know what he was doing, and he wouldn’t be told. It cost several good men’s lives, plus a smashed leg here and there, the odd amputation.”

“That’s roight,” Punch agreed guardedly. “We all know that.”

“So far General Northrup doesn’t,” Joseph corrected him. “He’s still denying all such accusations.”

“So whoi does he think we shot him, then?” Punch said reasonably.

“That’s a good point,” Joseph said vehemently. “I can find chapter and verse of that easily enough. And when I do, the people who suffered most, or those whose friends did, are going to be suspect. That’s the reason I haven’t made a point of looking very hard so far. I hoped he’d realize it’s going to be ugly. Do as much damage to his son’s reputation as anyone’s. But he isn’t listening.”

“Don’t necessarily follow!” Punch protested. “You can’t say as it was this man or that just because of who got killed!”

“I know that.”

“Could’ve been lots of people!” Punch emphasized.

An idea was crystallizing in Joseph’s mind. “Do you mean lots of people together, Punch, or just any one of lots of people?”

Punch was thinking hard.

Joseph waited.

“How would it be…” Punch said very slowly, “if you was to tell him that it was lots of men, dozen or more. Not one man gone mad who wanted to murder him, but a dozen who’d all had enough, and could see that more an’ more men were going to get killed if the major didn’t stop and listen to someone with experience? And it was only meant to scare some sense into him.”

“How was shooting him going to scare sense into him?” Joseph said dubiously.

“Not shoot him, Chaplain. Set up a trial, loike. Make him sit an’ listen to what a fool he was, evidence. Foind him guilty of incompetence, causing other men’s deaths, an’ pretend to shoot him. Scare the hell out of him.” He studied Joseph’s face earnestly, searching for understanding.

It was beginning to be very clear. “You mean a kangaroo court-martial?” Joseph said very softly.

“I’m only suggesting it!” Punch protested. “D’you think the general moight believe that?”

“Private soldiers court-martialing an officer?”

“Not just privates, nor corporals neither.”

“Officers?” Joseph was not really surprised. “Captain Morel?”

“An’ Captain Cavan. He were the one who had to amputate poor Matheson’s leg, just ’cos that idiot sent him to cart a bloody great field gun through the mud. Everyone told him it was dangerous!” He stared at Joseph, challenging him to argue.

Joseph sat numbly, no longer even aware of his surroundings. It was worse than he had thought. They were speaking theoretically, but both knew that what Punch was really saying was the truth. If Cavan had been involved and Northrup ever found out, it would be a court-martial that would tear apart more than just the regiment. Cavan was one of the best surgeons on the Ypres Salient, and one of the bravest men. His recommendation for the V.C. had heartened every man who knew him. If he were now court-martialed for Northrup’s murder, it might be the final grief and absurdity that would break the spirit of some, and ignite others to the mutiny that had lain just beneath the surface in men like Morel. There wouldn’t be a serving soldier on the front who wouldn’t think Cavan was worth ten of Northrup, whatever the law said.

“Captain Reavley?” Punch said anxiously.

“Yes. Yes, I see. It was designed to frighten Major Northrup. What went wrong?”

“Oi don’t know, sir. Oi swear.”

“Thank you.”

“You aren’t going to go an’ tell Colonel Hook what Oi said, are you? Oi’ll deny it, sir.” His eyes were angry and frightened.

“No, I’m not,” Joseph said sharply. “I told you I wasn’t. But I can’t find a story the general will believe if I don’t know what the truth is. This way none of the facts anyone can discover will prove it false.”

“Roight. Yes, I see. Thank you, Chaplain.”

It was dusk as Joseph left in a staff car returning to the front. The air was motionless, wet and close to the skin. The sky leached the last tones of warmth out of the waterlogged land. Thin vapors of mist provided a curious softness but hid none of the desolation: the broken trees; the bare, scorched wreckage of houses and farms; the litter of broken guns and vehicles on the roads.

The car was on a cratered road now, and he smelled the familiar stench long before they reached even the outpost farthest back. The first star shells were bursting, and gradually the sound of the heavy guns blurred one raid into another. A stray eighteen-pound shell exploded fifty yards away, jarring the earth and sending eruptions of heavy Flanders clay high and dark into the air. Most of it was far in front of the car, over the woods toward Passchendaele itself.

As he alighted, he thanked the driver who had given him a lift, glad of a few hundred yards to walk. He felt battered by the noise, as if it were a physical assault, but he needed the time for a last arrangement of thoughts in his mind.

He found Hook in his dugout. He was looking at maps, although he must have known the whole of the Ypres Salient better than he knew his own garden. The photograph of his wife had been moved to the top of the gramophone, as if both had to be forgotten for the moment.

“Ah, come in, Reavley,” he said, looking up as if relieved to forget the advances and retreats for a while. “Did you learn anything?”

“Yes, sir,” Joseph replied, letting the sacking fall closed over the doorway and standing to attention as well as he could. It was raining again outside and his boots were heavy with mud, his legs soaked almost up to the knee. “I found Punch Fuller, and he told me a good deal of what happened.”

There was no light in Hook’s face. “As a confession?” Clearly he hoped it was; then Joseph could not tell him.

“No, sir—more or less theoretically, the sort of thing that could have happened,” Joseph answered unhappily. He stood to attention, refusing to sit. “I really think, sir, that General Northrup would prefer not to know this,” he said very clearly. “And it would serve no purpose at all to tell him. The major was an arrogant and inexperienced officer who inadvertently caused the deaths of several good men, and the serious injuries of others. It provoked intense ill feeling among almost all the men, not just an odd one here or there. Any action you take is going to have to involve at least a dozen men, sir. And I have reason to think that his actual death was not intended but was an accident.”

Hook looked weary. He gestured to Joseph to be seated on an upturned ammunition box.

“You can’t have it all ways, Reavley,” he said. “Either a dozen men were involved because he had angered them beyond their control, or his death was an accident. Which was it? And if you’re going to say it was an accident, then you are going to have to produce the man who fired the shot, and prove its accidental nature. What the hell was he doing pointing a loaded weapon at an officer anyway?”

“I don’t know who did it, sir,” Joseph said honestly. It was the one part of the story he had no need to blur.

“Don’t play games with me, Reavley!” Hook snapped. His uniform was crumpled and bloodstained. His face was haggard with exhaustion. “I’ve got men dying out there by the hundreds every day!” His hands were trembling. “I need to get Northrup off my back and out of the way! Either you know what happened or you don’t! What did Fuller tell you? You said a dozen men. Do you mean a kangaroo court-martial?”

There was no point in denying it. Hook obviously knew. Joseph felt the net of circumstance tightening around him, but he was determined to give Hook a way out. “Yes, sir, but only with the intention of frightening him into taking advice in the future. Not to kill him.”

Hook’s face was pale, his mouth pulled down with grief. “Who was involved, Reavley?” His voice dropped. “I have to know.”

Joseph looked straight back at him. He would not make the same mistake this time. He was prepared to lie, evade, whatever was necessary, and live with his conscience. “I don’t know, sir. Fuller told me what happened, not who was concerned. And I promised him I’d not betray him. I think the men may know, sir, but no one will say. You can’t blame them if their loyalty to each other is greater than to some military principle of obedience to an incompetent officer who, out of sheer stupidity, is going to cost the lives of their friends.” He chose his words deliberately. “We owe them more than that.”

Hook passed his hand across his face. Joseph could hear the faint rasping of dry skin over the stubble of his beard. “I don’t have the luxury of choosing my own morality, Reavley. I can tell Northrup this, but he won’t believe me. He can’t afford to, because it makes his son a disgrace to him. And it would set a precedent that would be impossible to live with. Truth or lie, the army can’t afford to grant that it is just.”

“Then tell him it was an accident,” Joseph demanded. “Let Major Northrup be buried with some semblance of honor. That would serve everyone.”

Hook gave a sharp bark, supposed to be laughter. “I’ll try!”

Joseph spent the night working with Cavan at the dressing station as casualties poured in. He snatched a few hours of sleep, then went to sit with the wounded or dying and do what he could for them. Mostly it was simply not leaving them to die alone.

At ten o’clock, Barshey Gee came and told him the colonel wanted to see him, and ten minutes later Joseph was back in Hook’s dugout facing General Northrup, white-faced and standing so ramrod-stiff it seemed as if his back was arched.

“Are you saying, Captain Reavley, that my son was murdered by the common consent of a dozen or more of his own men?” His voice rasped in his throat as if he could not gulp the air into his lungs. “What in God’s name has this army come to? Are we a crowd of barbarians, beyond the law? I will not surrender humanity and decency, sir, to a bunch of hooligans so demoralized by drink and terror that they turn on their own officers! Is there no morality left? How dare you stand there in the uniform of a man of God, and condone such…such evil!” His body trembled and he was obviously having difficulty controlling his voice.

“Sir, I did not say he was murdered,” Joseph replied as calmly as he could.

“What do you call it, then?” Northrup demanded passionately. “A dozen men with guns against one unarmed officer? Pray, what does that pass for in your terminology?”

“You obviously know more about it than I do, sir,” Joseph said stiffly. “What I heard was that the men pleaded with Major Northrup to listen to the evidence of more experienced soldiers, even though they were junior in rank. When he would not do so, and it was costing lives unnecessarily, they used force to make him listen, to save their own lives and those of their comrades. He was killed by accident, not intentionally. I don’t know how that happened, or who was involved.”

“The records of killed and injured should make that plain enough,” Northrup replied. “These men all come from the same villages, played in the same football teams or brass bands, or whatever. Even a half-wit could find out who conspired together for this, if they wanted to. Whatever it began as, it ended as murder! And I shall see justice.”

“Sir…” Hook began, but it was obvious in his face that he had already tried remonstrating with every argument he knew and had failed.

“It ended as tragedy,” Joseph corrected him. “Most things do out here, sir. I believe profoundly that it would be better for everyone if we allow it to remain an honorable tragedy. Major Northrup was an officer respected by his men, who mourn their loss. Does it serve anyone to say that he was so incompetent that his men feared for their lives, and shot him in what they believed to be self-defense?”

Northrup winced as if Joseph had struck him, but he did not retreat. “I daresay that is what you would prefer, sir, but it is not the truth,” he said hoarsely. “He was murdered by men who panicked and lost their discipline. I will find out who they are! If you will not assist me, I shall do it alone! And Headquarters will know that you endeavored to cover it up, to your eternal disgrace.”

He gulped.

“I am forced to believe it is because the surgeon, Captain Cavan, was involved, and you are jealous of your regiment’s chance of gaining a V.C. Captain Morel, who is a renegade if ever a man was, used to be your student in Cambridge, and you are deliberately shielding him. It will not be difficult to find the others, and when I do, you will have no choice but to arrest them! Sir!” He snapped to attention, saluted Hook, then pushed past Joseph and went up the steps and out into the mud.

Hook sat down and buried his head in his hands.

Joseph said nothing. He knew Cavan and Morel at least would be arrested by morning, probably all the others within another twenty-four hours. He had done everything he knew—and he had failed.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

Judith jolted abruptly into wakefulness. She was lying on an ambulance blanket on the floor of the tent where she had fallen asleep. She had no idea how long ago that was. Day and night had blurred into one long cacophony of guns and engines, rain-soaked darkness split by star shells and the flash of explosions.

Now it seemed to be murky daylight, and comparatively quiet, just a distant rumble. She shivered because her clothes were wet and her bones ached from the hard floor.

“Is it time?” she said automatically, blinking and trying to clear her head.

Wil Sloan was bending over her, his grip still hard on her shoulder. His face was pale and slicked with rain, his hair dripping. There were bruises of exhaustion around his eyes.

“Something terrible’s happened,” he said huskily.

Fear boiled up in her like a wave of nausea. Was he going to tell her that Joseph had been killed? It was the thing she dreaded most of all. She found her throat was closed and the words wouldn’t escape her lips.

“They’ve arrested twelve men for killing Major Northrup,” Wil said. “Harrison came and told me.”

“Twelve!” She was both relieved and appalled. “Twelve?” She propped herself on one elbow. “That’s ridiculous. How could twelve…all of them?”

“Kangaroo court-martial,” he replied, just as she realized it herself.

“And shot him?” she whispered.

“That’s what they’re saying. But the thing is…Cavan was one of them.”

Now she understood his horror. “Cavan?” It was too awful to grasp. “But they can’t take our doctor away! What about the wounded? That’s…monstrous! They…they can’t!”

“They have,” he said. “And Captain Morel.”

She sat up straight, pain shooting through her muscles. “Why? How do they know it was them?”

His face was bleak. “I’m sorry, Judith. The chaplain went to Paris and found one of the men who knew, and got it out of him somehow.”

“I don’t believe it!” She refused to. Joseph would not do that. “You must be wrong,” she insisted. “Anyway, if the man confessed to a priest, you can’t use it! Joseph would never repeat a confession. He couldn’t!”

“He didn’t say who it was.” Wil shook his head. “Just that it was twelve. Northrup worked out who was angriest with the major and took it from there.”

Judith struggled to her feet. “We’ve got to do something about it. This is terrible.”

Wil stood also. “Right now we’re on duty. And we’ll have to take the wounded all the way back to the field hospital because there’ll be no one able to do much in the dressing station.”

“What a bloody nightmare.” She sighed. “We’ll have to do something about it! We can’t let this go on, Wil. The men’ll mutiny! To lock up our best surgeon over some idiot like Northrup! Are we trying to lose this war?”

“Keep your shirt on, Judith,” he said anxiously. “Don’t do anything rash. We can’t afford to get ourselves locked up, too. That won’t help. I’ll get a cup of tea. It’s going to be another bad night.”

It was. Judith drove in a daze, fighting to keep the ambulance on the shell-pocked road and not get mired in the mud on either side or break an axle in one of the craters. It took all her strength to hold the wheel, and twice she had to get out and crank the engine to life again after a particularly violent stop.

All the time her mind was wrestling with the thought of Cavan in military prison awaiting trial. She could picture him as clearly as if she were looking at him. She could hear his voice in her mind. If they found them guilty of having mutinied and shot Northrup, they would all face a firing squad. There was no possible alternative. The worst thing was that she knew that he could have done it. He cared for the wounded above all things; he would put them before anything else. He had the anger and the courage.

How could Joseph have let it happen? He must have known General Northrup was rabid for revenge. Why had he not simply said he couldn’t find out who was responsible? Even General Northrup couldn’t arrest the entire regiment.

She peered through the windshield, trying to discern what the dark shapes ahead were. The shellfire was getting heavier. The last one had landed only fifty yards away, and the debris had fallen heavily on the roof.

Maybe if she found out every stupid and dangerous thing Major Northrup had done she could widen the field of men likely to want him dead so far that they couldn’t possibly arrest all of them. There couldn’t be exactly twelve who had lost someone. How did they know they had the right twelve? Wasn’t there some legal principle about it being better to let ten guilty men go free than punish one innocent one?

Surely the general would not want his son’s name to go down in history as an officer so incompetent his men had had to kill him to save their own lives? He was refusing to believe that now, but if there was proof, he would have to. Or at least he would know that others would believe it, and that was what mattered.

They were near the front line. She slewed to a stop as a couple of soldiers ran toward her, their Red Cross armbands catching the headlights. Wil leaped out and threw the ambulance doors open. Someone was scrambling through the mud, sliding and floundering, waving his arms at stretcher bearers. Someone else was staggering across the lights, bandaged around the head and eyes, blood on his hands.

She tried to keep the engine running as she felt the weight go into the back and the balance alter. A shell exploded so close that the metal of flying shrapnel clanged on the ambulance sides. A gout of mud slapped against the window and spurted into her face.

More figures drifted across the headlights, blurred by mud and rain, and the weight jolted again.

Then Wil appeared at the door. “We’re full! You’ll have to back out, there’s water everywhere! Don’t lose the engine, you might never get it going again in this. I’ll get in when you’ve turned.” He disappeared.

It took her ten minutes, with considerable help, before she was back on the road facing in the opposite direction. She heard the door slam, and opened the throttle to push the engine as hard as she could. They lurched forward, splashing up sprays of water, hesitated a moment, then caught a purchase on the mud and gravel and moved forward.

She drove as hard as she could, knowing that because Cavan was locked up in some French farmhouse far behind the lines, they would have miles more to go before they could find help.

It was dark except for the occasional flares, and the rain became worse. They hit a deep crater in the mud, which was masked by water until it was too late. She was fortunate not to break the axle. There was no help for it but to turn off the engine and get out.

Wil came around from the back. He could see at a glance what was wrong, even if the violent lurch had not told him.

“It’s too deep,” she said desperately, wiping the rain out of her eyes. “You’ll have to get at least some of them out. We’ll have to lift it. I’ll see if there’s a piece of wood or something we can use as a lever, get it up, if someone else pushes.” She looked around to see if there was any other light or sign of movement.

Wil pushed his hand through his sodden hair and left a smear of blood on his face. “Alf Culshaw’s blinded, but he’s still got both legs and arms. If we point his hands in the right place he can lift. The others are too far gone. One poor devil will be lucky if we get him there alive.” His voice caught. “Jesus wept! This is so bloody senseless!” He turned and plowed back through the mud to the back of the ambulance and pulled the door open.

Judith started after him. It would take both of them to help the injured men out to lighten it enough to lift. They were heavy, awkward, and in desperate pain. Her hands slipped on the wet stretcher handles and her back ached unbearably as she tried to keep her balance and carry the heavy bodies to the side of the road.

“I’m sorry,” she said to them over and over. “Got to lighten it so we can lift it out.”

The first man was peacefully unconscious, blood soaking through his bandages in the rain.

“It’s not too bad,” the second said, trying to smile. “Don’t worry, miss.”

She felt the hot tears on her face as she bent to touch his hand. “Won’t be long. Just got to lift a little, then we’ll get you back.”

Together with Wil she lifted two more out, leaving only the worst injured behind. Alf Culshaw she led slowly, warning of the puddles and ruts, until he and Wil were on either side of the stuck wheel. She placed Culshaw’s hands under the edge of the frame. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked him. “I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t have to.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “Just don’t ask me to guide you where we are going.” He gave a dry, hacking laugh.

“You lift. I’ll drive,” she replied. “Better that way. I can’t lift for toffee! Thanks.” She had the wood ready—broken pieces from a dead tree and a couple of lengths of old sacking.

“Go on then,” Wil directed. “One, two, three!”

The ambulance rocked and heaved level. Judith threw the wood and sacking in and it settled down again. She ran to the driver’s seat and scrambled in. Wil moved Culshaw out of the way, then cranked the handle and they moved forward at last.

“Right!” Wil yelled, jumping backward. “Let’s get them in again!”

She left the engine on, brake tight, and scrambled back to lift the stretchers in again to a cheer, and then to help Culshaw back into the seat.

She drove without incident the rest of the way. It seemed to take hours—but it was probably not more than forty-five minutes longer. A strange doctor, white-faced and obviously harassed, took the wounded in. The last man was already dead. Judith and Wil got back into the ambulance and started for the front again, this time with Wil in the front.

“We’ll get Cavan back,” he said when they were half a mile from the dressing station. “We’ll find a way. He can’t have been the one who shot Northrup. He must be covering for someone. It’ll come out.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, glancing sideways at him, although she could see nothing more than his outline in the dark.

“We’ve got to make it!” he said grimly. “If General Northrup could find out who the twelve most likely are, then we have to be able to find out why, as well. They’d never have done it without a hell of a good reason. We’ve got to find the people who’ll swear to it.”

“And take it to Northrup?” she asked. Her stomach knotted up with fear at the thought of it.

“You game?” Wil said, touching her arm for a moment.

She swallowed and felt her heart beating in her throat. “Of course.”

On the final trip of the night she found Joseph at the field dressing station. He helped her with the last stretcher. The man was already dead from his wounds. Defeat overwhelmed her, and a sense that everything was slipping out of the last trace of control that she had.

“If we could have taken him to Cavan’s dressing station he’d have been alive!” she said furiously, tears choking her. “But those men are bleeding to death because he’s locked up in some damn farmhouse waiting to go on trial and be shot over that idiot Northrup!” She stared at him defiantly. “Why couldn’t you leave your stupid conscience out of it and just keep your mouth shut? You didn’t have to tell Colonel Hook it was a kangaroo trial! You could just have said you didn’t know! Why can’t you ever leave well enough alone?”

Joseph looked so tired his skin was gray in the early daylight, the stubble dark on his chin. There was no light in his eyes at all.

“I had to tell him something close to the truth, or he could too easily find out I was lying,” he answered her.

“Don’t tell him anything at all!” she shouted back. “Why didn’t you just say you didn’t know? He can’t force you!”

Joseph looked down at the muddy boards they were standing on. “I thought if General Northrup knew it was at least a dozen men, a court-martial, not a private murder, he’d be so ashamed he’d let it drop rather than leave his son so disgraced. It would have been better for everyone. Otherwise he could just have found the worst enmity, the man he thought unjust, and blamed him. He isn’t going to let it go.”

“He isn’t now!” she retorted. “He’s charged Cavan, and we’ve got to take wounded men twice as far to get them treated—and they’re dying, Joseph! They’re dying, when they don’t have to!”

“I know….”

She felt guilty for attacking him when he was so obviously blaming himself anyway, but she was too angry and too frightened to stop. “We’ve got to save Cavan. What are we going to do?” She tried to moderate her voice a little, hearing the shrill edge to it. “Does Northrup really want it to come out that his son caused all those people’s deaths? If we can prove it, find all the evidence of what a fool he was, who’s dead because of him, and why there were twelve men willing to risk their own lives in order to get rid of him, wouldn’t he want that silenced?”

They could both hear the sounds of movement inside, voices giving orders, stifled murmurs of pain.

“He wasn’t meant to be killed, only frightened,” Joseph explained.

“So who shot him?” she demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“Then they won’t believe it. It sounds like an excuse. Were they really going to let him go again, after they’d put him on a mock trial?”

“I don’t know, Judith. That’s all I could get out of the man who told me.”

Another ambulance pulled up outside. They saw the lights and heard the squelching in the mud, and voices shouting. Joseph moved aside and she followed him.

“Was he there? Is he in prison now?” she urged. “Why should anyone believe him? And if he told you in confession, why did you report it? He betrayed all his fellows!”

“He wasn’t one of them,” Joseph corrected her. “He knows because I think lots of the men do. Consider, Judith—if there were twelve men as a jury, surely others kept watch for them and covered what they were doing. There are a lot more than twelve men involved.”

She saw a glimmer of hope, just a thread. “Then that’s better. Everyone agreed Major Northrup was a disaster! Can’t we take that to the general, and show him what it’ll do to his son’s reputation? Even to his own, for that matter?” Men started carrying stretchers into the dressing station. She stepped closer to Joseph. “Joe, in the general’s place wouldn’t you forgo revenge rather than have the name of someone you loved publicly vilified and all their mistakes proved?”

“Of course I would. Revenge is worth nothing anyway. But General Northrup doesn’t feel that way.”

“Then we’ll have to make him!”

He looked at her blankly, anxiety puckering his brow, but he did not argue. It was only then that she realized he had intended to do it anyway; he merely needed time to gather the evidence. Perhaps her pain had made her too quick to judge.

“Hurry!” she urged. “The general could leave, and then it’ll be too late. I’ll help. I know Wil Sloan will, too, and others.”

He drew in his breath to argue and—realizing the futility of it—let it out again without speaking.

Judith knew there was no time to wait for Joseph to speak to General Northrup. Northrup was somewhere far behind the lines. She and Wil knew who was involved and they had transport. It was not difficult to arrange to be the drivers who took several patients back to the hospital at Lille, and then divert on the way back and find Northrup’s headquarters. Certainly they would be away longer than they should be, and they would have to commandeer petrol for the extra miles, but no one would have to be asked to cover for them or tell the necessary lies. A score of men were only too eager, vying for the privilege.

It required a little more bravado and finesse to find herself actually standing in the general’s presence in the small French farmhouse in which he was currently headquartered. It was a comfortable place, gently domestic, once somebody’s home. He was immaculately smart: boots polished, face pale and shaved to a perfect smoothness.

“You say you have further information on the death of my son, Miss…Miss Reavley?” he said stiffly. “Are you in a position to testify to this at the court-martial? It will not be easy for you. The whole regiment is of a sullen and mutinous nature. Discipline has been allowed to fall into laxity. Your fellow V.A.D. volunteers may make it difficult for you. Are you prepared for that?”

She had already weighed her answers. She stood to attention. “I am prepared to tell the truth, sir, because it is the truth, whoever likes me or dislikes me for it.” Her gaze did not waver from his. She saw a tired and grieved man, the skin around his eyes paper thin, his shoulders held square by little more than pride.

She felt a wave of pity for him, for his arrogance and blindness, for the fragility that had stopped him seeing his son as he was, and his need to believe a lie and cling on to it even at the cost of other men’s lives. But if she did not break him, then he would break Cavan, and all the others. Worst of all, he would have broken all the men’s belief in justice and the bonds of loyalty here and now. And here and now those were almost the only things left that were good.

Northrup’s voice was hoarse with emotion when he spoke. “You are a fine woman, Miss Reavley. You have more courage and honor than your regiment’s chaplain. Is he related to you?”

“Captain Reavley is my older brother, sir.” His insulting Joseph made it easier. She was angry with him herself, but that was quite different. She would have defended him to the death against anyone else. With one sentence Northrup had taken away the impediment to striking the blow.

“What is it you know, Miss Reavley?” he asked.

She replied without hesitating.

“Well, sir, in order to prove beyond question why these twelve men in particular should do such a…dangerous and terrible thing, the court will have to show something very special. All the hardship and loss the men have faced over the last three years has never made them…mutiny. And I suppose that’s what it is?”

“That is what it is, Miss Reavley,” he agreed. “Make no mistake.”

It was time to tell him the truth, before someone interrupted them.

“Well, sir, in the case of Captain Morel, it was the order Major Northrup gave to move a field gun from one position to another across half a mile of plowed clay. The men argued that it would get stuck. They might lose the gun itself, and the wagons and the horses, possibly even some of the men, if it slipped.” She watched his face and saw the muscles tighten in his neck. He knew it was a stupid order, born of inexperience and too much pride to listen to lesser ranks.

“They argued, perhaps insolently,” she went on. “Major Northrup insisted. They obeyed and got stuck. They saved the horses, but two men were injured, one man’s leg was broken so badly Captain Cavan had to amputate it.” She hated continuing, but it was like a gangrenous limb: It must all come off or it was pointless having begun. “And Captain Morel was very upset about sending out a rescue party into no-man’s-land on a day when the German snipers could simply pick them off. Some refused to go, but others did. Several men were injured. Captain Eardslie was killed. He was one of my brother’s students in Cambridge, and he and Morel were great friends.”

Northrup’s face was ashen. She felt as if she were killing a man already wounded fatally. Still she drove it home. “I have details for all of them, sir, and men prepared to swear to every incident sufficiently to prove a motive for each one of the twelve, especially Captain Cavan. It took a great deal to break him, but I can—”

“Yes!” he interrupted her. “I see you have taken a great deal of care to have every point documented, Miss Reavley. It will not be necessary.” His voice was shaking and the muscles in his neck and jaw were so tight he could not control the tic in his cheek.

Her stomach was knotted until she felt nauseous. “Don’t you want to prove the guilt of all of them?” she asked quietly. “Not just the one who pulled the trigger? He may simply have panicked. Aren’t they all equally to blame? The whole twelve?”

His voice was barely audible. “What is it you want, Miss Reavley? You are not a fool! Are you trying to have my son’s name dishonored, to have revenge for your…your mutinous friends?”

She swallowed.

“No, sir. As I said in the beginning—and you praised me for it—I want the whole truth to be told, to be fair to everyone. Nobody is going to believe that good soldiers—especially exceptional ones like Captain Cavan—mutinied unless we can show what reason they had…or imagined they had.”

He stared at her, knowing he was being manipulated. He was certain in his own mind that it was Cavan she was trying to save, and yet he could see no way out, nothing with which he could accuse her. “They are already charged,” he pointed out. “Are you so bent on revenge?”

She hesitated. Was it necessary to strike the last blow? Yes it was. She dared not stop in case she was just short of victory. “Not revenge, sir, surely? Is it not justice?”

His voice dropped to a whisper.

“My son does not deserve to be buried with dishonor. Is it not enough for them that he is dead?”

“It is terrible that he is dead, sir. And Captain Eardslie, and all the others. Over half a million of them, I believe. Not counting the French, and of course the Austrians and Germans, and the Italians, and Russians. And I suppose we have to start counting the Americans, too, now.”

“I will speak with the prosecutor. Perhaps the charge can be lessened.”

She smiled very slightly, afraid to say anything in case she spoiled it. “Permission to return to my ambulance, sir?”

“Granted, Miss Reavley.”

Mason arrived back at Passchendaele to find it worse than before. It had rained almost without ceasing, the wettest August in human memory. Men lived and died in a hell past sanity to imagine. It went on day after day, night after night, with no victory and no end in sight except the possibility that there would be no life remaining—human, animal, or plant—and finally the mud would claim everything.

He thought of his beloved Yorkshire with its wild fells, shining tarns beneath wind-ragged skies, and steep villages with cobbled streets. But the memory was too all-consuming: It robbed him of words powerful enough to capture the passion and tenderness of a love so deep. Instead he began writing of England in general.

“It doesn’t seem possible.” He started a rough draft. “At home the trees tower green like clouds over the gold of the harvest fields. Horses bend to the plow and the fruit ripens in the orchards. Poppies burn scarlet grazing the corn with hot color. The men are gone. Women now get ready to reap and bind, laughing with each other, growing used to their new tasks.

“Here there are no trees, only a few shattered trunks and the scarlet is blood as men are crushed and trodden back to the all-consuming clay from which we are told we were fashioned by a deity who has grown tired of us and turned away. These few terrible miles hold so much human flesh you cannot set foot without standing on some man’s rotting body.”

Then he tore it up and wondered how to start again. Words needed to be simple for this, clear of all sentimentality. But what was there for anyone to say? For the first time in his life, words seemed pointless, his own too small, too shallow for the burden.

“We died in hell—they called it Passchendaele.” He could only quote others. “Oh, Jesus, make it stop!”

But it seemed no God was listening.

He heard the news of the arrests of Cavan, Morel, and the other ten before he reached the section where it had happened. He wanted to speak to Colonel Hook when he had the chance and to Joseph Reavley. He needed the whole story to write up, all the information he could find before the court-martial began. And of course he wanted to see Judith as well. That was at the forefront of his mind, as it had been lately, too often for his emotional comfort.

He found the ambulance parked outside a first aid station, just behind the supply trenches. It was covered with mud; he saw several scars and dents on it, and a few bullet holes. The air was soft and muggy, full of flies and the ever-present stench. The occasional fine rain did nothing to help.

He asked for Judith and was told that she and Wil Sloan were both inside the makeshift tent. There were several other men with them, all with apparently minor injuries, and they were clustered around Judith, looking at her and laughing. Most of them had mugs of tea, held up as if in a toast.

Mason’s shadow across the door made one then another turn, and they froze.

He walked in. He could not help looking first at Judith. She was very slender, as if under the gray V.A.D. uniform with its long skirt she were thin enough to be fragile. She had been at the front for three years. She must be so weary of dirt and pain, and never having time for laughter, never dressing in pretty clothes, being admired, playing games and falling in love. There was something fierce and uniquely beautiful about her, a waiting passion that war had robbed her of living yet.

She was flushed and her eyes were bright. The men had been looking at her as they raised their mugs. Why? Had something happened, and he knew nothing of it?

They recognized him. Wil Sloan came forward, still smiling a little, but guarded now. “Hello, Mr. Mason. You looking for someone?” he asked.

Mason made up his mind immediately. “I was going to do a piece on your surgeon, Captain Cavan. I meant to last time I was here, but he was too busy. If he still is, I thought I’d ask other people about him. You must all have stories you could tell. It would be especially good for morale.” He would have to keep up the lie to Judith, and hope she never knew he had heard about the arrests.

They stared at him, the laughter dying out of their faces. Wil turned to Judith, as if seeking her permission to answer.

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” she said vigorously, looking at Mason with a bright challenge. “Captain Cavan is one of the best men in the whole Army Medical Corps, and they’re all good. We should tell you in detail about his holding off the German attack, which is why he’s up for the V.C. But there are lots of other stories as well.” Her voice was warm, vibrant with enthusiasm, her eyes shining. There was even a faint flush in her cheeks.

Mason felt an acute sensation of dismay, and then of inexplicable anger. Damn it, even after he was arrested for mutiny and murder, there was a fire in her when she spoke of Cavan that was there for no one else. Judith Reavley, the idealist, the unquestioning patriot, was going against all her convictions for this man! What was the matter with her?

Cavan was in his early thirties, and a good-looking man, fair-haired, strong, with an intelligent face. He remembered seeing him working with Judith, easily, as if understanding were there without the need for words. Should he have seen it then?

He felt shut out, cold to the core of his belly. He had been thinking of her far too often, allowing her to matter. He realized how much of the hope, the peace inside, the warmth that was worth having, had rested in the thought of her.

They were waiting for him to answer. He must control himself—hide the awful vulnerability inside him. “Thank you,” he said. “That would work very well. Then a few words with him will be enough.” He was not going to let them dupe him entirely. Apart from pride, he could not afford to appear a complete fool, which he would do if he wrote a piece about Cavan, apparently not knowing he was charged with mutiny and murder. When the court-martial began, that would be the biggest story of the entire British Army on the Western Front. The only thing that could overwhelm that would be for the army to break through and advance considerably. And at the moment they were paying in blood for every yard.

Judith began to organize it immediately. She directed one man to recount his memory of helping Cavan carry wounded men to shelter and set broken limbs right there in the forward trench with mortar fire all around them. Another she told to repeat his tales of good humor through long hours operating in the field hospital, patience teaching new men now to assist. And for good measure a good few long and rambling jokes were added.

Mason sat through them, making notes, watching thin, strained faces and hearing the laughter and the pain in their voices. He hated being an onlooker. There was something vaguely indecent about drawing such memories from men whose passion and nakedness of heart could be extinguished by blood and shellfire in the next week or two, while he went safely home.

And yet those who read his work were the families of those men, and countless more like them. They deserved to know.

He was very aware of their enthusiasm to keep him there, and he knew the reason. Judith might be directing the situation, but the men understood and were more than willing. The murder of Major Northrup was already known. Did they really imagine they could keep the arrest of twelve men secret? Why even attempt it? It must be only a matter of days until the court-martial. Since it was a capital charge, and twelve men accused, including two officers, the army would send a militarily appointed prosecutor from London. Even so, like every other sentence of death, it would still be referred right up to Field Marshal Haig himself before it was carried out. That rule applied to the newest private, let alone to an officer nominated for the V.C.

What a bloody horrible, senseless tragedy! Why on earth had they done such a thing? Had they really imagined for a moment that they would get away with it? Or were they driven by a power far beyond the capacity for thought?

He refused to decide at the moment exactly what story he would write, but possibilities crowded his mind. The one he knew the Peacemaker would want was to make Cavan the hero, betrayed by an incompetent and cowardly command. A bad officer had been put in charge, and a surgeon had had to get rid of him in order to stop even more pointless slaughter of his men. All the stories about Cavan that he was now hearing would help with that: the laughter and comradeship, the heroism in the face of madness.

He took it all down carefully, noting the name and rank of those who told him. Judith went outside and did some work on her ambulance, then returned an hour later. There was still the same suppressed excitement about her, and he began to realize that she was following a very definite plan of some sort. For a wild moment the thought flashed to him that it was the same as his and the Peacemaker’s. She had finally seen too much slaughter and was prepared to take a small step toward ending it. She was watching him now as he finished the last notes from the men. She came over toward him. She walked with grace, the weariness under such rigid control was completely hidden. He wondered when she had last slept properly in any kind of bed, or eaten a meal that wasn’t cooked in a Dixie can. She must be so tired of dirt, endless chores, and desperate jokes one hardly dared laugh at. And yet laughter and that all-consuming comradeship of those who share life and death were the only shreds of human sanity left.

“Did you get some good stories?” she asked Mason, sitting down at the other side of the small table.

“Yes, thank you. But I’d still like to hear about his stand against the German raiding party for which they’ve put him up for the V.C. You were there, weren’t you?”

She looked at him wryly.

“You know I was. Would you like me to tell you now? I’m not back on duty for an hour.” She pushed a strand of hair off her brow. “I can do it.”

“What about a chance to sleep?”

“Are you telling me I look tired?”

He studied her face. He was surprised at the strength in her, and the defensive challenge in her eyes in that question. How different she was from the girl who had worn the blue satin gown at the Savoy with such infinite femininity. She must know that, too, with a different kind of regret from his.

“Actually you look beautiful.” He said it deliberately, and yet it was totally sincere. “But reason says that, like everybody else, you must need to sleep.”

There was a moment’s confusion in her eyes, uncertainty whether to believe him or not. Then she flushed very slightly and he knew in that instant how much it mattered to her. It was a belief that if there were ever peace again she could still be the woman she was inside, before the war.

“I’ll sleep next break,” she answered. “You might have gone by then, and you need to get the story.” Without waiting for him to reply, she told him in vivid and dramatic detail exactly what the raid had been like and how Cavan’s remarkable courage had saved all their lives. He could simply take it down and rewrite it using her words, there was such a force of life in them. Never once did she hesitate or repeat herself.

As he wrote it, he began to understand at last what it was she was doing. She was re-creating in the readers’ minds the situation that had brought about Major Northrup’s death, and showing Cavan as a man who had had no moral choice but to act as he had. She was paralleling his courage and decision in the trenches with his decision to frighten Northrup into acting with some sense.

Did she really believe that all they had meant to do was frighten him? Or did she not care?

When she had finished, he asked the question that had waited at the back of his mind since the beginning. “Can you arrange for me to see Cavan himself, even if only for a few moments? I have to have a quote from him.” He watched her, wondering what she would do.

“You can’t.” She looked back quizzically, trying to judge whether he was testing her, or if he really did not know.

“Can’t I?” he said aloud.

“No one can,” she replied, her eyes unwavering. “General Northrup found the twelve men with the best cause to kill his son, and had them all arrested, including Captain Cavan. No one confessed, and no one denied it. We don’t know whether they’re guilty or not. General Northrup said he would try and get the charge reduced from mutiny and murder down to insolence, disobeying an order, and accident. But it hasn’t happened yet. It’s bloody chaos. He was our best surgeon, and men are dying he could have saved.” The misery in her voice was savage. He flinched at the sound of it.

“Why would General Northrup try to get the charge reduced?” he asked, puzzled.

She looked at him with a twist of defiance, even pride. “Because in order to prove deliberate murder he’ll have to show motive, of course! Why on earth would twelve loyal soldiers without a blemish on their records get together and murder an officer?”

“Because he’s a dangerously arrogant and incompetent idiot!” he responded.

“Exactly. Which I can prove. But General Northrup is not so keen to have that demonstrated. When he realized just how—”

“Yes, I see,” he said quickly. “Was it you who pointed out to him how unfortunate that would be?” He knew the answer. That was the source of the fire in her eyes, and why the men were toasting her in Dixie cans of tea. No doubt it was also why she was keen that Mason should write a piece just now extolling Cavan. Was it because she cared for Cavan with more than friendship, or simply that she was brave and driven by the same passionate loyalty to her friends that bound all the fighting men together? She had charged in blindly to the rescue, without thinking of the cost or the chances of success. That is who she was, like Joseph: all pointless idealism, and dreams that were fragile and idiotic, and desperately beautiful.

The lock of hair had fallen forward again across her brow. Without thinking, he reached across and pushed it into place, only afterward realizing how intimate the gesture was.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, feeling self-conscious.

She colored as well, suddenly aware of his physical nearness.

“You’re still going to write about him!” she said urgently. “Nothing that Northrup says changes that. And Cavan might have had nothing to do with it. They’ve just arrested the most likely twelve.”

Mason reflected that, in a different age, she would have been married to some nice local doctor or landowner by now, probably with a couple of children. Her days would have been spent in a little socially admirable work, probably connected with the church, and the occasional society party, or hunts ball. Instead she was watching the carnage of a generation. It was not happiness but a kind of sublime lunacy that kept her going. It was all pointless, and it would break her in the end, and that was something he dreaded. It would be like the very last lights going out as the darkness consumed everything.

He loved her for it with a kind of hunger he dared not face. It was precious beyond his reach and like the reflection of a distant fire, a warmth he could not touch or hold. It was an illusion, what she believed in was not real, and yet the beauty of it haunted him too fiercely to let it go.

“I’ll write the best I can,” he promised. “But it won’t change anything, Judith. I wish I could say it would. I expect it’s out of Northrup’s hands by now.”

Her mouth tightened; she bit her lower lip. “Are you warning me to give up?” she said a little huskily.

“Never,” he whispered. “Just be prepared to be beaten, at least this time.” He put his hand over hers where it lay on the tabletop. Her hands were very slender, stiff now in resistance. “Cavan won’t escape, unless he can prove he wasn’t part of it.”

“And leave the others?” she said indignantly. “He’d never do that.”

Of course not. Cavan was just like her! Quixotic…absurd.

“Oh, Judith! Can’t you…” He stopped. He would be asking her to deny her very nature. “No, of course you can’t.” He rose to his feet and leaned across the table, kissing her softly on the mouth. For a long moment of infinite warmth, as if a new fire melted every aching shard of ice inside him, he clung on to her. Then slowly he pulled away, leaving her behind, but never the memory. He turned and walked out into the incessant, clinging, suffocating rain.

Judith was right, of course; he had no opportunity to speak to Captain Cavan, or any of the other imprisoned men. He did not tip his hand to the authorities by asking for it when he knew it was an impossibility. Instead he went forward to the front line and gathered all the factual information he could. He saw how they were struggling to manage without Cavan, as Judith had told him—and for that matter, without Morel, who had been a good officer.

He asked men about Morel, and gained perhaps a slightly biased picture. But even accounting for that, he emerged as a brave and widely experienced man, which was unusual in these times of sweeping casualties. A front-line officer with three years’ service was rare. He was joked about because it was the easiest way of defusing the emotion, although the men knew he was burning with anger and emotionally unreliable. However, neither his courage nor his judgment of a military situation were ever doubted. They felt his loss keenly.

Still Mason could not stand by and simply make notes of it all, like some recording demon—angels were beyond the power of his imagination. Useless or not, he went out with the stretcher parties as he had done in Gallipoli, or the Italian Front facing Austria where men also died in the tens of thousands, and on the bitter Russian Front in the east, and the sands of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The weather was different, and the terrain; death was the same.

He saw Joseph on the third day. They had both returned from no-man’s-land, up to the armpits in mud from digging men out of the craters and attempting to carry them back. Off balance with the weight of the unconscious wounded, they had floundered and fallen. They had helped each other up again awkwardly, picked up their burdens again and finally reached the front-line trench. It was filled with water like a stagnant canal, with broken pieces of duckboard, and corpses of rats and men.

Still helping each other, they made it at last to a drier stretch and passed the wounded over to an ambulance crew. Then they sat shivering with exhaustion in one of the dressing station tents. Someone put blankets around them and passed the Dixie cans of hot tea laced with rum.

Joseph looked at Mason and smiled.

“Still think all this is a good idea, Chaplain?” Mason asked, waving his hand to indicate everything around them.

Joseph could see in Mason’s face a darkness that would not now be won over by any word or act as it had been in the small boat back in 1915. “I think it’s hell,” he answered the question.

Mason looked at him curiously, an urgency behind his probing.

“I was talking to Judith,” he began; his eyes flickered away, self-consciously, then back again. “She still believes there’s some point to all this, some moral purpose that makes it worthwhile. Do you?”

Joseph hesitated a moment, not only as to the truth of any answer, but even to how honest he should be to Mason. “There can’t be a heaven if there’s no hell. But I admit, I hadn’t envisioned having to spend so much time in hell.”

Mason’s mouth twisted a little but his eyes remained steady. “I wasn’t looking for a metaphysical answer, Reavley—something a little more from the heart and the belly. Not what you want to believe, or what you think you ought to believe! What is there inside you, really?”

“When? Now? Just bewilderment and exhaustion,” Joseph replied. “Tomorrow morning, or next time I see someone I love, or an act of total unselfishness, or courage more than I could manage myself? Then yes, I believe there’s something wiser and better than I am, and infinitely greater. Do I know where I’m going? No. Do you?”

“I’m not sure if anywhere I wish to go exists,” Mason replied.

“Then build it,” Joseph replied. “If you survive, of course,” he added with a smile.

“Is that what you tell your men when they’re dying?” Mason would not give up.

“If it’s what’s needed. Usually it isn’t. Just being there, talking about anything, so they’re not alone.”

“Saying what they need to hear.” Mason turned the words over, still looking at Joseph steadily. “Because you’ve nothing else to say? Charging the guns, obediently, like the Light Brigade at Balaclava, because you don’t know what else to do? Following orders, Chaplain? Aren’t you supposed to be leading?”

Joseph saw the rage and pain in him, the knowledge of darkness closing in, not just at Passchendaele, but everywhere.

“I think the most I can do is keep going,” Joseph told him.

Mason was silent for a long time. “Thank you at least for honesty,” he said at last. “I don’t know how you can survive on that—it isn’t enough.”

“As long as there’s somebody you can touch in the darkness, it has to be enough,” Joseph told him.

Mason did not answer. Slowly he drank the rest of his tea.

Joseph finished his also. He meant what he had said. The fact that he too needed more, just a glimmer of hope that one day there would be an answer he could understand, was none of Mason’s business.

“Yes?” the Peacemaker said urgently as Mason sat in the chair opposite him in the upstairs room in Marchmont Street. “I know all about the losses. It’s the epitome of all we sought so desperately to prevent. I would have given everything I’ve ever had, my own life if it would have helped, to prevent this. Even you don’t have words to describe the horror or the futility of it. What about this trial for mutiny and murder? They have twelve men arrested, you say?”

“Yes.” Mason looked up. He was haggard. His heavy black hair made his skin look even more pallid, almost bloodless, and there was a consuming grief in his eyes as if no passion would ever burn them alive again. The Peacemaker was concerned for him. Could a war correspondent suffer battle fatigue?

“The twelve men with the best motives, apparently, for wanting Major Northrup dead,” Mason answered. “Or—I should say more accurately—removed from command. And since those above him either didn’t know how incompetent he was, or didn’t care, death seems to have been the only way. I imagine, since he was a general’s son, it was beyond the power of Colonel Hook to remove him. The thing is, Captain Cavan, the surgeon up for the V.C., is one of them.”

“Perfect.” The Peacemaker breathed the word like a sigh. “It is so absolutely farcical we couldn’t have created anything more likely to make even the sanest and most blindly loyal of men rebel against this suicidal injustice.” He felt he was on the brink of something that could be used to turn the tide at last.

“There’s word that General Northrup will try to get the charge lessened to one of insubordination, and that Northrup’s death was more of an accident than intentional murder,” Mason warned.

“Really!” The Peacemaker felt a sudden chill. “Why?”

Mason sighed. “Because to prove intent they must prove motive. Doing that will automatically expose Major Northrup’s disastrous incompetence. His father does not want that. And believe me, the men are all loyal to the mutineers. If the charge is kept at murder, they’ll make damned certain Major Northrup is exposed.”

“And does the general know this?” The Peacemaker was fascinated. It opened up possibilities of further mutiny he had hardly dared hope for.

“Yes, of course he does,” Mason replied.

“This is very good,” the Peacemaker said decisively. “I shall make certain that the prosecutor appointed is a hard-liner. I have just the man in mind. He will make certain the full charge is retained, and prosecuted to the full. We need have no doubt of a capital sentence. Captain Cavan, V.C., will be put before the firing squad. It will be the spark that finally sets the tinder afire.”

He smiled slightly, an unexpected regret tugging at him. “The British troops will never stand for an injustice of such obscenity. And I think the country may even be behind them, if we handle it the right way. There comes a point when people will no longer be herded to slaughter like sheep. Believe me, Mason, the Russians are very close to that point now. If the tsar does not make peace with Germany, withdraw her troops from the battle front altogether, and institute radical social reform, the Russian people will rise up in a way we have not seen since the High Terror in Paris in 1793 when the gutters ran red with blood.”

“The tsar won’t change—not that much!” Mason looked stunned, almost buried by the enormity of the idea.

“I doubt it,” the Peacemaker agreed. “I think by next month, or the month after, we will see riot in the streets of St. Petersburg, and blood.” He felt the exultation surge up inside him, catching his breath and his throat. “We are at the beginning of the end, Mason! There will be peace by Christmas! Peace! Dear God, peace!”

CHAPTER

EIGHT

“Sir?” Joseph stood in Colonel Hook’s dugout, assuming from the message that had summoned him that the news was dire.

Hook looked up from the paper he had been reading. His skin was gray and an uneven stubble shadowed his jaw.

“Ah, Reavley. I’ve just been informed that London is sending a prosecutor for the court-martial. I was hoping we could have someone from one of the regiments near here. At least they’d understand the…the pressures. But they’re sending a man called Faulkner. I’ve heard of him.” He looked up at Joseph, frowning. “He has something of a reputation, very rigid, believes in the ultimate deterrent. I don’t think the bastard’s ever seen action.” He rubbed his hand over his head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t speak of him like that. I suppose he might be able to…” His voice tailed off. He sounded utterly without hope.

Joseph sat down without being asked. He cleared his throat. “What are the chances of General Northrup getting the charges reduced?”

Hook was surprised. “From Faulkner? None at all. He’ll make an example of Cavan and Morel. Reavley, I’m afraid of what the men will do when they hear. We’ve got just over three days; then it’ll be too late.”

Joseph did not need to ask him what he meant. Once the twelve men were charged with mutiny and murder—unless they were found not guilty, which was virtually impossible—there could be no other sentence but death. The chances were high that there really could be mutiny. With the resultant loss of morale, the lines would be smashed and the forces that survived would be driven back behind the last defenses. The Germans would simply carry on straight through to Paris, and France would fall.

After that there was nothing between the German Army and the beaches of England except twenty miles of flat summer sea. Defeat would be only weeks away.

Joseph looked up at Hook and saw understanding of exactly the same thing in his eyes.

“Is it worth telling Faulkner what it would be likely to do to the men?” he asked.

“It would if he believed it,” Hook replied. “Men like that usually have an excellent escape from situations they don’t want to be responsible for: They simply refuse to believe it. He would say the British Army never mutinies and never surrenders. It is only the occasional soldier who does, and that sort of man has to be weeded out…severely. He would consider this an excellent opportunity to make an example.”

“It won’t make an example of anything except ignorance and brutality,” Joseph said, hearing his own voice crack with emotion and something close to despair. “No matter how good men are, or how brave, there’s a point beyond which they break. There’s no point afterward in excusing yourself by saying you were too damned stupid to see it!”

“I know.” Hook looked down at the paper again. “I’ll try appealing to London, but I don’t know what good it’ll do.”

It was dismissal. Joseph stood, excused himself from the claustrophobic safety of the mud and earth, and the few familiar objects of Hook’s personal life, and went out into the faint, misty sunlight. He felt acutely guilty. At some point there must have been a time when he could have acted differently, hidden something, even lied outright so it would never have reached this stage.

He walked slowly along the track, his boots squelching in the thick mud. At this slightly higher level it was shallower, the water puddling rather than running along. Out in the craters of no-man’s-land either it would be steaming a little in the August heat, or there would be low-lying mustard gas again. It wasn’t always easy to tell.

If Mason had not seen Northrup’s body and known he had been shot by a British gun, there would have been no need for anyone to be aware that it wasn’t just another casualty. God knew there were enough of them!

He stepped and banged into a piece of broken riveting where the earth wall had collapsed.

It was Mason again. This was playing straight into the Peacemaker’s hands. Was he behind it? Or was Joseph just indulging his delusions? The last letter from Matthew had said he was chasing down the old enemy at last. There was no other way to interpret that. Now it looked as if thanks to a catalogue of stupid mistakes, the Peacemaker was going to win after all. Britain would be in mutiny and defeat, with the best part of a million men dead, countless more wounded in body and crushed in mind and spirit. It was a defeat he could not even have imagined when they first left for France three years ago, thinking they would be home for Christmas. It had been all heroism and honor then, dreams of glory. Now there was only despair.

It would have been better to have turned a blind eye to Northrup’s murder, better even to have shot the man himself, than have it come to this. What was the point at which he had made the wrong judgment? Perhaps that was the secret of life, knowing when was the precise moment at which you decide to do something irrevocable, rather than being a coward, a man always thinking, poised on the edge of decision, and never making it.

Joseph went to bed in his own dugout a little after midnight and slept more deeply than he had expected. However, just before dawn he woke with a jolt, his heart pounding, the sweat pouring off his body. Everything was familiar—the books, the picture of Dante, his chair and desk—but there was rifle fire close at hand and men’s voices, high-pitched, shouting.

He rolled off the bunk and stood up, his body shaking. There were more shouts, and bursts of fire rather than controlled aiming.

There was a noise immediately outside on the steps, then the sacking curtain was yanked aside and a figure blocked out the shred of light.

Joseph half expected to see the spike-crested helmet of a German officer. He made a supreme effort to calm himself and look, and realized it was a British Tommy, but bareheaded.

“Capt’n Reavley! You there, sir?”

“Yes, I am.” Joseph swallowed. “What is it, Tiddly Wop?”

“They’re gone, Captain. All of ’em, ’cepting Captain Cavan. Gawd knows how it happened, but they’re gone!” Andrews replied.

Joseph struggled to grasp what the words meant. It could not possibly be true. “Gone?” he repeated foolishly. “You mean they’ve been taken somewhere else? They’re going to have the court-martial at another regiment?”

“Oi don’t mean been took, sir. Oi mean gone themselves! Nobody knows where they are. They escaped. Could ’ave gone anywhere.”

Now Joseph was cold, as if his hands and feet hardly belonged to him. “They couldn’t have got out of the farmhouse. What happened to the guard? How could they get out?”

“Guards are all tied up like turkeys for dinner, but not a hair of their head broke.”

“You said Captain Cavan is still there?” Joseph was bitterly disappointed. For a moment he had believed the impossible, and now reality plunged him back even deeper. “That doesn’t make sense, Tiddly Wop.”

“Since when did anything in this bleeding war make sense, Chaplain? If it does to you then, whoi in’t you telling anyone else?”

“The other eleven have gone? How did they get out?”

“No idea,” Tiddly Wop said with a shadow of anger. “An’ if Oi did, Oi wouldn’t be telling. Oi just thought you’d loike to know.”

“I do! I…I just wish Captain Cavan had gone, too.”

A faint glimmer of light caught Tiddly Wop’s teeth gleaming as he grinned. “Sorry. Oi shouldn’t have said that, Chaplain. Course you do.”

There was more shouting outside but the rifle fire had stopped. Tiddly Wop turned around and made his way out, Joseph on his heels. It was relatively quiet, the heavy guns only sporadic. Joseph stared around at the figures sprinting across the open ground, and others standing almost idly. There was a military car parked on the driest piece of ground. A man in officer’s uniform stood beside it, waving his arms, apparently giving directions to the others.

“Got to look loike we want to find them,” Tiddly Wop said sententiously.

“How long ago did they go?” Joseph asked.

Tiddly Wop shrugged. “How do Oi know? They could be on their way to Paris by now. Only more likely they’ll go to Switzerland. Oi would.”

“The Swiss border’s hundreds of miles away,” Joseph retorted.

“Then Oi hope they get a lift. Not that they would, of course!” he added hastily, taking a nervous glance at Joseph.

“They might have gone the other way altogether.” Joseph entered the conspiracy without hesitation. “Maybe making for the sea.”

“Back to Blighty?”

“No, more likely Sweden.” Joseph found himself smiling. He knew it was stupid to be amused. They would be found and brought back. Cavan was probably showing more sense in staying. And it might buy more time. It could take several days to catch them all, if they ever did. Some might get killed, in the ordinary course of the war. “I wonder if we can help,” he added aloud.

“Roight!” Tiddly Wop agreed. “Oi’ll go an’ see if Lieutenant Moore wants a hand. He don’t know north from south, that one. If someone don’t give him a hand he’ll end up in Switzerland himself!”

Joseph offered to look for the escapees, and he spent the next hour pretending to search. Like the rest of the men, he generally made sure that all signs of which way they might have gone were thoroughly obliterated.

He shared a Dixie can of tea with Colonel Hook, sitting in the back of the supply trench on a couple of sandbags.

“Find any trace?” Hook asked, eyebrows raised.

“None at all,” Joseph said immediately. He met Hook’s eyes with complete candor.

“No,” Hook replied. “Didn’t think you would.”

By midday it was a very different matter. General Northrup had returned, and word had come up the line that Lieutenant Colonel Faulkner would arrive before sunset. Northrup was furious.

“How can you be so totally incompetent?” he shouted at Hook. His face was pinched and two blotches of color stained his cheeks. “Don’t you mount some kind of guard? For God’s sake, your command is falling to pieces around you! Pull yourself together, man!”

They were in the small command post. It was little more than a room in a farm outbuilding, furnished with a table and half a dozen chairs. Northrup was pacing the floor, his boots scratching on the wooden boards. He swung his arms and jabbed the air.

The accusation was grossly unjust, and both tragic and absurd. Joseph intervened, although both of them outranked him.

“The men are exhausted, sir,” he said to Northrup. “No one is getting more than a few hours’ sleep any night. The wounded are pouring back from the battlefront and we are finding it more than we can do to get them to hospital, keep any sort of supplies coming forward of either food or ammunition. The only men we’ve got to spare for guarding prisoners are those who are wounded already. We don’t know what happened, and blaming them is premature and deeply unfair. In any other circumstances they’d be invalided out and taken care of in a decent hospital.”

“I know the conditions are hard, Captain Reavley,” Northrup said with a tight little grimace. “This is not the only part of the line battered almost to breaking—although I grant you it is the worst. But it’s all the more important we keep up our standards, for the sake of morale.”

“If somebody is found to be culpable, it will be attended to.” Hook broke his long silence, rising to his feet and picking up a pile of dispatches. “Now, sir, if you will excuse me, I must go and see to some of these things.”

As soon as he had left, Northrup stared at Joseph. “This is a preposterous situation, Captain. I realize that your sympathies are with your men, and perhaps that is how you see your calling, but this cannot be ignored as if it were not a capital offense.” He stared at Joseph accusingly. “You must realize that? Now, of all times, we must stand fast to those principles we believe in, when there is the greatest temptation to give in, or to cut and run. Officers must set an example. It is what we are here for.”

Joseph drew in breath to argue, to tell him forcefully how absurd and cruel and utterly pointless he was, that he had lost all touch with reality.

Any day now they would lose the battle of Passchendaele, and the whole Western Front could buckle and break apart. The last thing on earth the army needed was an idiotic prosecution of one of its few heroes still alive.

Then suddenly he saw General Northrup as an old man, perhaps in years not more than fifty, but worn out in heart and mind, trying to keep up a belief in his son that he knew was false. He might deceive others, or they might concede to his view out of fear or respect—or more than that, pity—but in the end he would be left alone with the truth. He faced forward and he spoke of duty because it was the only road he had left in a world that was slipping away from him and taking with it all that he had believed in.

“Yes, sir,” Joseph said gently. “I think all the men are trying to do what they think is right. When you are facing death it becomes terribly important. There isn’t going to be time to try again.”

Northrup stared at him, blinking rapidly several times. “What are you saying, Captain Reavley? That there is some kind of justice other than a court-martial?”

“I am saying that the men are afraid that finding Captain Cavan and the other men guilty of murder, and having them shot, will damage morale more seriously than we can survive, sir, and may even give the Germans the chance to break through and run for Paris. We have fought too long and too hard, and lost too many of our friends, for that.”

“Take an easy way,” Northrup retorted, his eyes never leaving Joseph’s. “A wrong way, because we cannot face the enemy and stand for what we believe, for justice, and the rule of law, and each man to account for his own sins? Is that what you are saying?”

“No way is easy, sir,” Joseph answered him. “And who judges what is a sin, and who is responsible for it? It is seldom only one of us at fault over anything.”

Northrup shifted his weight slightly, his eyes hard and troubled. He seemed about to challenge what Joseph had said as soon as he found the words for it.

“War strips a man naked of all the ideas his brain was taught, but didn’t really believe,” Joseph went on. He was compelled to argue, just in case there was still a chance Northrup could plead for Cavan, and the other men if they were caught. It might be hopeless, but he could not stop trying. “These men, ultimately, were loyal to each other, and to the will to win rather than to blind obedience.”

Northrup’s lips were pressed tight. His eyes reflected his racing mind, and emotion filled his face, the confusion and pressure of anger and doubt inside him. Still he could not find the words.

“Legally, Major Northrup was in the right,” Joseph began again. “He was the senior officer, and that gave him the power to command, whether his orders were brilliant or suicidal. But it did not make him militarily right. The men who obeyed were legally correct, and then obedience caused some of them to be killed or mutilated. Those who disobeyed are alive, but it looks as if we ourselves will kill them. And in doing so we will destroy the trust and the morale of those who look to us to lead, because they have no other choice.”

Northrup was shivering very slightly; it was just a tic in his right temple, a tremor in his hands.

“With being an officer comes the duty to be right,” Joseph added, knowing what he was doing to the man in front of him. “To put your men’s lives before your own vanity. In peacetime you can order obedience, regardless of your own qualities, but in war you have to earn respect. Moral courage is required as well as physical—the more so of officers.”

Northrup lowered his eyes. “You have no need to labor the point, Captain. I have been obliged to accept that my son’s qualities fell short of the command he held, and that the army offered his men no recourse but to obey or rebel.” He stood almost motionless. “And I am accountable to God for whatever part of his character made him refuse to be guided by junior men who knew better from experience. If he was weak, that was my failure—perhaps more than it was his. Perhaps I allowed him to believe that being in command is a matter of rank, not of knowing your job, or that honor is what other men say of you, not what is true even when you stand alone. If that is so, then I will answer to God, and to my son, but I will not answer to you, sir.” He blinked rapidly, his face flushed and his eyes bright with tears.

Joseph ached, almost physically, to find anything to say that could comfort him. The only way to ease the pain would be to deny the truth of his part in the private tragedy of a son who had proved unequal to the final test.

“In the end it is only God’s judgment that matters for any of us,” Joseph said. “And it looks as if the end could be rather soon.”

Northrup drew in his breath sharply as if to deny it, then let it out in a sigh and said nothing. He seemed drained of everything inside himself, as if only a shell were left which kept up the façade as an act of will. If he had been wrong and, without realizing it at the time, destroyed the son he had loved, in his own way, then at least he would not now lose the only virtue of which he was certain: courage.

“I am sure you have duties, Captain. Thank you for your time.”

Joseph accepted the dismissal, saluted, and turned to leave.

Lieutenant Colonel Faulkner arrived before sunset, as he had said he would. Joseph did not see him, but he heard the comments of the men.

“Looks loike one o’ them guard dogs who can’t find his dinner,” Alf Culshaw said sourly. “Reckon we’re it!”

Barshey Gee shook his head and winced. He had a heavy bandage on his right arm, but the wound was not serious enough to send him off the front line. “Why is it they send the decent blokes up here with the guns to shoot at Jerry, poor sod, and keep the real bastards back o’ the lines to shoot at us? Who thought that up, d’you suppose?”

“Some bloke as thought up hard rations an’ Sunday drills and…” Snowy offered.

“An’ his Ma must’ve knitted moi socks!” George Atherton added with his characteristic jerky laugh. “Got more lumps in ’em than Lofty’s porridge.”

“That’s what Oi’d loike,” Barshey said longingly, his eyes dreamy. “A noice hot bowl o’ porridge, with sugar an’ the top o’ the milk on it.”

George threw a dollop of mud at him.

Bert Collins arrived to tell Joseph that Colonel Hook wanted to see him. He pulled his face into an expression of disgust. “An’ the new man, sir, Lieutenant Colonel Faulkner. You’ll know which one he is, sir, ’cos he looked like he just ate a wasp, ’cept it’s too wet for wasps. If it don’t stop soddin’ rainin’ soon we’ll all drown. What I want to know, Chaplain, is why aren’t you buildin’ an ark, eh?”

“No wood,” Joseph said with a tight smile. “And no animals to put in it.”

“An’ no women,” Barshey added. “Koind of more loike no point!”

Several of them laughed.

Joseph followed Bert Collins back to the command post, and went into the small room with its bare floor and sparse furniture. It smelled of damp, like everything else. He stood to attention and waited.

Hook was freshly shaved, a nick on his cheek still oozing a little blood. His uniform was comparatively clean, no more than a couple of bloodstains on the arms and mud splattered up to the thigh. He had probably worn it no more than a day.

Beside him was Faulkner. He had very short, fair hair and a thin, powerful face that seemed all brow and bone. And yet it was not a face without imagination or a degree of emotion. His uniform was immaculate, tailored to fit his square shoulders and lean body.

“Captain Reavley,” Hook began, his voice formal, a warning in his eyes. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Faulkner, who is going to be prosecuting the case against the men accused of shooting Major Northrup.”

“Yes, sir,” Joseph acknowledged.

“As you are aware, we presently have in custody only one of those men.”

Faulkner made a noise in the back of his throat. It was wordless, but his disgust was as plain as if he had spoken.

“Unless we can find those who have escaped within the next two days, we are going to have to delay the court-martial—” Hook began.

“We can try Captain Cavan,” Faulkner interrupted. “And we can try the others in absentia for desertion. There can be no question as to their guilt of that.”

“No, we will not try Captain Cavan separately,” Hook said curtly. “And we will not try the other men for anything in their absence. Every man has the right to face his accusers and defend himself….”

“They chose not to do that,” Faulkner pointed out. “They gave it up; it was not denied them.”

“Nevertheless, we will not try them in their absence,” Hook repeated. “You are appointed prosecutor, not judge. Captain Reavley will do all that he can to trace the men’s whereabouts, and—”

“For God’s sake, man!” Faulkner snapped. “They’ve deserted! They are probably halfway to Switzerland by now.”

“They may be,” Hook agreed. “Or not. All we know is that they are not here, except Cavan.” He looked at Joseph.