he could repeat about the kaiser’s tantrums, his delusions that first his uncle Edward VII and now his cousin George V were deliberately snubbing him, ridiculing and belittling him. There were a great many it might be unwise to retell.
“He’s the king’s cousin and the czar’s,” Matthew began, and instantly saw the impatience in Shearing’s face. “He’s been writing to the czar for some time, and they have become confidants,” he went on more boldly. “But he hated King Edward and was convinced he was plotting against him, that he despised him for some reason, and he has transferred that feeling to the present king. He’s a temperamental man, very proud and always looking for slights. And he has a withered arm, which is possibly why he is rather bad on horseback. No balance.” He waited for Shearing to respond.
Shearing’s mouth flickered, as if he thought of smiling and decided against it. “His relationship with France?” he prompted.
Matthew knew what Shearing was expecting. He had read the reports. “Bad,” he replied. “He has always wanted to go to Paris, but the French president has never invited him, and it rankles with him. He’s . . .” He stopped again. He had been going to say “surrounded by awkward relationships,” but perhaps that was a bit presumptuous. He was uncertain of Shearing’s regard for royalty, even foreign. The kaiser was closely related to George V.
“More importantly,” Shearing pointed out, “he perceives himself to be surrounded by enemies.”
Matthew let the weight of that observation sink into his mind. He saw the reflection of it in Shearing’s face. “A conspiracy to start a war, beginning in Serbia?” he asked tentatively.
“God knows,” Shearing replied. “There are Serbian nationalists who will do anything for freedom, including assassinate an Austrian archduke—obviously—but there are radical socialists all over Europe as well.”
“Against war,” Matthew cut in. “At least international war. They are all for class war. Surely that couldn’t be . . .” He stopped.
“You overheard the remark, Reavley! Could it or not?” Shearing asked tartly. “What about a pan-European socialist revolution? The whole continent is seething with plots and counterplots—Victor Adler in Vienna, Jean Jaures in France, Rosa Luxemburg everywhere, and God knows who in Russia. Austria is spoiling for a fight and only wants the excuse, France is afraid of Germany, and the Kaiser is afraid of everyone. And the czar doesn’t know a damn thing about any of it. Take your pick.”
Matthew looked at Shearing’s dark, enigmatic face, filled with a kind of despairing humor, and realized that he had worked with him for over a year but knew almost nothing about him. He knew his intellect and his skills, but his passions he had not even guessed at. He had no idea where he came from, nothing about his family or his education, his tastes or his dreams. He was an intensely private man, but he guarded his inner self so well no one was aware he was doing it. One thought of him only in connection with his work, as if he walked out of the entrance of the building and ceased to exist.
“Perhaps I had better forget it unless something else develops,” Matthew said, aware that he had learned nothing and very possibly made himself look incompetent to Shearing. “It doesn’t seem to tie in with anything.”
“On the contrary, it ties in with everything,” Shearing answered. “The air is full of conspiracies, fortunately most of them have nothing to do with us. But go on listening, and advise me if you hear anything that makes sense.”
“Yes, sir.”
They discussed other projects for a further twenty minutes, particularly who might replace the minister of war, who had resigned over the mutiny. There were two primary candidates, one in favor of peace, even at a high price, the other more belligerent.
“Details,” Shearing said pointedly. “All the details you can, Reavley. Weaknesses. Where is Blunden vulnerable? It’s our job to know. You can’t protect a man until you know where he can be hurt.”
“Yes, sir,” Matthew agreed. “I know that.”
He left, forgetting the minister of war for a moment and pondering what Shearing had said about conspiracy. It seemed as if he did not believe that John Reavley had found anything that was of concern to England.
Matthew walked the long, quiet corridors back to his own office, nodding to this person, wishing a good evening to that one. He felt extraordinarily alone because he realized suddenly that he was profoundly angry. Shearing had in effect damned John Reavley’s perception of truth. If Shearing was right, then Matthew’s father had misinterpreted a piece of paper, and he had died horribly for nothing. Matthew was so fiercely defensive of the suggestion that his father was incompetent that his fists were clenched, and he deliberately had to loosen them in order to open the door of his office.
But John Reavley was dead! And there had been the rope on the tree and marks on the road, scars where a row of caltrops had ripped all four tires and sent the car veering one way and then the other until it crashed into the copse. Where did one buy caltrops in the modern world? Or had they been homemade? It might be simple enough, with strong fence wire, wire cutters, and pliers. Any man could do it with a few hours to spare and a knack with his hands.
Someone had searched the house in St. Giles, and his office.
But he could not prove it. The crushed foxgloves would grow back; the marks would be obliterated by rain and dust and other traffic. The rope end tied to the tree could have been put there for any of a dozen reasons. And no one else could say whether objects in the study or the bedroom had been moved or not. The evidence was in remembered details, a sense of disturbance, minute things not as they should be, marks on a lock that he could have made himself.
They would say that John Reavley was a man out of office and out of touch, who dreamed up conspiracies. Matthew and Joseph were deluded by grief. Surely the violent loss of both parents was enough to cause, and to excuse, disjunction of reason in anyone?
It was all true. And the anger inside him turned to a dull, inward ache of confusion. In his mind’s eye so clearly he could see his father’s keen face. He was an eminently reasonable man, his mind so quick, so very sane. He was the one who curbed Judith’s excesses, who was patient with Hannah’s being less fluent at expressing herself, who hid his disappointment that neither of his sons had followed the career he so longed for them to embrace.
He had loved the quaint and eccentric things in life. He was endlessly tolerant of difference—and lost his temper with arrogance, and too often with fools who stifled others with petty authority. The real fools, the simple- minded, he could forgive in an instant.
It hurt almost beyond intolerably to believe that his father had utterly misinterpreted one stupid, minor endeavor that would make not even a mark in history, never mind turn the tide of it to ruin a nation and alter the world!
The irony was that he would not have found it as hard to be wrong as Matthew found it for him. Matthew knew that, and it did not help. He stood in the center of his office and had to fight to stop himself from weeping.
CHAPTER
FOUR
Joseph slipped back into the routine of teaching again and found the old pleasure in knowledge easing a little of the pain inside him. The music of words closed out the past, creating their own immediate world.
He stood in the lecture room and saw the earnest faces in front of him, different in features and coloring, but all touched with the shadows of anxiety. Only Sebastian had voiced his fear concerning the possibility of war in Europe, but Joseph heard the echoes of it in them all. There were reports of a French airship making reconnaissance flights over Germany, speculation as to what reparation Austro-Hungary would demand of Serbia, and even discussion of who might be assassinated next.
Joseph had spoken once or twice on the subject to the other students. He had no knowledge beyond the newspaper reports available to everyone else, but since the dean was on a short sabbatical and therefore unavailable, he felt that he should fill his place with the spiritual resources that would have met just such a need as this. There was nothing better than reason with which to answer fear. There was no cause to believe that there would be a conflict involving England. These young men would not be asked to fight, and perhaps to die.
