to go that far forward, will you? War correspondents don’t. They’d get in the way. You only have to watch what other men do, and then go off somewhere safe and talk about it.”
“And what do you do? Pray about it, Chaplain?” Prentice snapped. “God Almighty! You’re a joke!” His voice was shrill with contempt. “You’re no more use here than a maiden aunt in a whorehouse. If your God gives a damn about us, where is He?” He jabbed his hand viciously in the direction of the front line, and no-man’s-land beyond. “Ask him,” he pointed at Corliss, “if he believes in God when he’s down one of his saps!”
“If you had ever been out there at night, when they’re shooting, you would know there’s nothing else to believe in except God,” Joseph answered him with bitter certainty. “If there’s any real, physical place to convince you there is a hell, try no-man’s-land in winter. To sit in a nice warm pub with a glass of beer and write stories for the breakfast tables in England sounds like heaven in comparison.”
“Look . . .” Prentice began.
He was cut off by the sergeant. “I think you’d better go back to your pub and your beer, Mr. Prentice,” he said in a hard, level voice. “What the captain says is right. And you may believe in nothing at all, but you’ve got no place coming out here and making mock of other men’s faith. When it gets bad, it may be all you’ve got. But you wouldn’t know that, seeing as you aren’t a soldier.” He was a big man, heavier than Prentice, though not as tall, and he was seven or eight years older, probably nearer forty.
“Any officer can have you arrested at any time,” he went on. “King’s regulations. So it might be a good idea to be polite to the captain, don’t you think?”
Prentice stood facing him, measuring his resolve.
Joseph waited without moving.
Prentice retreated, his face tight with anger.
The sergeant smiled. “Ambulance’ll be here soon,” he said to Corliss. “Take you back to a proper hospital, then Blighty in time.” His voice was strong, comfortable, but Joseph knew from his face that he had no inner certainty that it was not a self-inflicted wound. He would not report it as such because Prentice had angered him. He was an outsider who had come in and tried to tell him his job. It was soldiers closing ranks against civilians.
Outside there was a splash and crunch as an ambulance drew up, and a moment later a loose-limbed young man came in. He was soaked and his dark hair dripped down his face. As soon as he spoke, it was obvious that he was American.
“Hi, you got anyone for me, Doc?” He saw Joseph. “Hi, Padre, how’s it going?”
“Fine thank you, Wil,” Joseph replied. “Yes, there’s one for you there.”
Wil walked over to Corliss. “Looks like it hurts,” he said sympathetically.
Corliss tried to smile. “Yes, but not too much,” he answered, his voice rasping between dry lips.
Prentice grunted, and smiled sarcastically.
“That’s what everyone says!” Joseph told him, not bothering to suppress his anger. “If they’re dying, they still say that!”
“But he’s not dying, is he, Chaplain?” Prentice responded. “And he won’t! In a week or two he’ll be home in England, warm and safe!”
“So will you!” Joseph told him. “Only you’ll have all your fingers.” And he turned to help Wil Sloan get Corliss to his feet and out to the ambulance in the rain.
Matthew Reavley drove along the open road in the April sunshine. He was heading south from London toward the outskirts of Brighton and he had a sense of exhilaration to be out of the city and at last, after nine months of frustration and failure, to be on the brink of a real step forward.
The events of the previous summer, even before the outbreak of war, had altered his life irrevocably. At the end of June, on the same day as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Matthew’s parents had been killed in a car crash, which at first had seemed simply an accident. On the previous evening John Reavley had telephoned Matthew to relate his discovery of a document that outlined a plan which, if carried out, would ruin England’s honor and change the history of the world. It was in motoring from his home in St. Giles to Matthew in London that the accident had happened.
But when Matthew and Joseph had examined their father’s possessions, taken from the wreck, there was no document. Nor was it in the shattered car. They had searched the house and found nothing even resembling such a thing.
The car crash had proved to be a careful and deliberate murder, although the police had never known that. John Reavley had also warned Matthew, in their last brief conversation, that the conspiracy touched even as high as the royal family, and he could trust no one.
Matthew and Joseph, seven years Matthew’s senior, had uncovered the painful and ultimately tragic truth of what had happened. They had found the document where John Reavley had hidden it, and it was far worse than he had painted it. Even as Matthew sped between the hedgerows with their new leaves translucent green, a soft veil of rain misting the copse of woodland in the distance, he remembered the numbing horror with which he and Joseph had read the paper. It was beyond anything they had imagined: a treaty between Kaiser Wilhelm II and King George V agreeing that England should abandon France and Belgium to the German conquering army, in return for which England and Germany together would form an empire to divide the world between them. Most of Europe would fall to Germany, who would then help Britain to keep its present empire and add to it the old colonies of the Americas, including the entire United States. It was a betrayal almost inconceivable.
And yet it would have avoided the slaughter that was now staining the battlefields of Europe. The British Expeditionary Force of less than a hundred thousand men was already all but destroyed by death and injury. If England were to survive, it must raise a million more men to go voluntarily into that hell of pain and destruction.
They knew who had killed John and Alys Reavley, and why. The killer himself was now dead, as was his brother, but the instigator of it all, almost certainly the man who had believed he could convince King George to sign the treaty, was still unknown, and free to continue in whatever way he could to further the creation of his empire of subjugation and dishonorable peace.
Joseph was serving in Flanders and had no opportunity to pursue the Peacemaker, as they had called him. Hannah had moved back to the family home in St. Giles, with her three children. Her husband, Archie, was in the Royal Navy and at sea most of the time. She had been the closest to their mother, and in many ways was trying to take her place in the village, close to the familiar lanes and fields of her childhood, the families she knew, the routines of domestic care and the small duties and kindnesses that were the fabric of life.
Matthew himself had naturally continued in his career in the Secret Intelligence Service which his father had so deplored. It surprised him how much it still hurt that the one time John Reavley would have turned to him for professional help it had been too late, and he still, nearly a year later, could not complete the task.
Judith, five years younger than Matthew, was using the only real skill she had and harnessing her aimless impetuosity somewhere in the Ypres area, as a VAD—Voluntary Aid Dispenser—driving ambulances, staff cars, whatever she was asked. Her letters sounded as if finally she had found a sense of consuming purpose, and even a fellowship, which gave her a kind of happiness in spite of the frequent danger and the almost perpetual physical hardship.
That meant it was only Matthew who was able to pursue the little knowledge they had in order to find the Peacemaker, not for personal vengeance or even some abstract of justice, but to stop him in whatever alternative way he was pursuing his goal. And none of them had ever imagined he would abandon it.
He drew up at the crossroads. A team of horses—heavy and patient creatures—were drawing a harrow over the field to his left and he could smell the turned earth, a rich, clinging fragrance. The rain had passed and the sunlight glittered on the dripping leaves in the hedge.
He accelerated and moved forward. He could trust no one outside the family, not even his own superior in the SIS, in fact possibly him least of all. He could only rehearse the facts that were indisputable and deduce from them what else had to be true.
John Reavley had finished his university education in mathematics in Germany, and had many German friends. One of them had been Reisenburg, the man whose calligraphic skills had been used to draft both copies of the treaty. Reisenburg had been appalled by what he saw, and stolen them, bringing them to England to the one man he trusted, and believed might be able to stop the conspiracy.
