He went to the hospital as soon as he had the chance, and asked Marie O’Day if the man Wil Sloan had brought in on the night of Prentice’s death was conscious yet.
“Yes, but he’s still in a lot of pain,” she said guardedly. “Are you still after finding out if it really was Wil who brought him all the way?”
“Yes. I’d like to know.”
“Well, don’t push him! If he doesn’t know, he doesn’t,” she warned.
But he did know, and he was happy to tell Joseph at some length how Wil had saved his life, at considerable risk, and how difficult the journey had been. His account was a little garbled, but it was clear enough to show that Wil could not have been anywhere near the length of trench known as Paradise Alley, where Prentice had gone over the top. He had been over a mile away, more like two.
Joseph left with a feeling of intense relief. Wil Sloan could not be guilty. For a moment he stood outside the Casualty Clearing Station in the sun and felt absurdly happy. He found himself smiling, and started to walk briskly back on the way to the supply trench again.
He was halfway along it, dry clay under his feet, rats scattering in front of him with a sound like wind in leaves, when he realized he had inevitably driven himself closer to the fear that it was one of Sam’s men. It was a thought he was not yet ready to face. There were other things he could learn first. One of them was how Prentice had gained permission to go so far forward, and which officer had allowed him to join the raiding party, and on whose orders.
He was in a trench known as the Old Kent Road when Scruby Andrews came limping toward him.
“Gawd, moi’ feet ’urt,” he said with a twisted smile. “Must ’a bin a bloody German wot made moi boots! If oi ever foind ’im, Oi’ll kill ’im wi’ me star naked ’ands, Oi will! Sorry, Captain, but it’s torture.”
“Are you soaping your socks?” Joseph asked with concern. A soldier survived—or not—on his feet. It was an old trick to use bar soap to ease the rough parts of hard wool over the tender skin.
Scruby pulled a face. “Oi should’ve done that better. Barshey Gee says as you’ve bin asking about that wroiter fellow what got drownded out there?” He jerked his hand toward the sporadic sound of machine-gun fire.
“What I really need to know is what he was doing out there anyway,” Joseph replied. “He shouldn’t have been.”
Scruby shrugged. “Shouldn’t ’ave bin a lot o’ things. Didn’t listen, didn’t care, an’ got ’isself killed. Serve ’im roight.” He sat on the fire-step and started to unlace his boots.
“I daresay in a way he deserved it,” Joseph agreed with reluctance. “But which of us can afford what we deserve? I need better, don’t you?”
Scruby looked up and grinned. “You’re roight, Captain, but it don’t work loike that. There’s some rules we gotter keep. If we don’t, there in’t no point. We got nothin’ left. It’s rules what should ’ave kept Jerry out o’ Belgium. It don’t belong to ’im, it belongs to the Belgians, poor sods.” He took his left boot off and rubbed his foot tenderly. “Oi seen an old man wi’ a broken bicycle the other day, tryin’ to push it up the road wi’ a bag o’ potatoes on it, an’ a little girl trottin’ along besoide ’im, carryin’ a doll wi’ one arm.”
His face crumpled up, and he put his foot back in the offending boot, relacing it now loosely. “Oi didn’t loike that bloke, Captain. Bastard, ’e were, but Oi s’pose rules is for them yer don’t loike. Yer won’t ’urt them as yer do. In’t that what God’s about, been fair to them as rubs your coat all the wrong way?”
“Yes, that’s pretty well how I’d put it,” Joseph agreed. “He rubbed my coat the wrong way, too, just about every time I saw him.”
“Oi don’t know for meself what’s true,” Scruby went on thoughtfully. “But Oi ’eard ’e were dead set on goin’ over the top—more so ’e could say ’e ’ad, if yer get me? But ’e swung the general’s name around summink rotten, loike the general were ’is pa, an’ no one ’ad better stand in ’is way. Said ’e ’ad permission, written, an’ all! Load o’ rubbish, if you ask me.”
“Actually the general was his uncle,” Joseph replied. “But I can’t imagine him giving a war correspondent permission to go over the top. I’d like to find out who he went with, exactly, and what this permission amounted to.”
“Oi dunno, Captain. Reckon as you’ll ’ave to ask the general ’isself. Oi don’t see nobody else goin’ to tell you, cos they don’t care.”
Joseph was forced to admit the truth of that. The captain who had led the raid had been killed, and everyone else had claimed that in the dark they couldn’t tell Prentice apart from anyone else. He had been very discreet about it, but he already knew most of the sappers could account for each other. It was with a cold, unhappy doubt gnawing inside him that he finally begged a lift on a half-empty ambulance and went to Cullingford’s headquarters in Poperinge to ask him outright. At this point he would like to have taken Sam’s advice and let it go, but Scruby Andrews was right, if morality were to mean anything at all, it must be applied the most honestly when it was the most difficult, and to protect those everything in you despised.
But when he reached the house just outside Poperinge and asked if he might speak with General Cullingford briefly, Major Hadrian told him that Cullingford was not there.
“You can wait for him, if you’ve time to, Captain, but I have no idea when he’ll be back,” Hadrian said with brief apology. “Can I help you?”
Joseph was undecided. He did not want his inquiries to become the subject of speculation any more than they already were, but how could he decide the question one way or the other if he had not the courage to ask? It might be days before he had the opportunity to speak to Cullingford privately. And whatever he learned, he might have to ask Hadrian for verification anyway.
“Yes, perhaps you can,” he said, choosing his words with care. They were alone in Hadrian’s office; this was as discreet as it was ever going to be. “You may be aware that before his death, Mr. Prentice was keen to gather as much firsthand information as possible about the war.”
Hadrian’s face was pinched with distaste. He stood behind his desk, small and extremely neat, his haircut immaculate, his uniform fitting him perfectly. “Yes, I know that, Captain.” He did not say that it was of no interest to him, it was in his expression. He was intensely loyal to Cullingford, and if Prentice had been an embarrassment to him, he would get no protection from Hadrian.
“He managed to get to several places much further forward than any other correspondent,” Joseph went on. “He claimed to have General Cullingford’s permission. Do you know if that is true?”
Hadrian looked carefully blank, his eyes wide. “Does it matter now, Captain Reavley? Mr. Prentice is dead. Whatever he did, it is not going to be a problem any longer.”
There was no avoiding the truth, except by simply surrendering and going away. He could not do that. “The problem will not completely go away, Major Hadrian,” he replied. “Mr. Prentice did not die by accident. He was killed, and at least some of the men are aware of it. For morale, if not for justice, there needs to be some accounting for it.”
Hadrian frowned. “Justice, Captain?”
“If we do not believe in that, then what are we fighting for?” Joseph asked. “Why do we not simply leave Belgium to her fate, and France, too? We could all go home and get on with our lives. If promises to defend the weak are of no value, why is Britain here at all? Why sacrifice our men, our lives, our wealth on something that was in the beginning essentially not our business?”
Hadrian was stunned. “Are you likening Mr. Prentice to Belgium, Captain Reavley?” His abstemious face was filled with distaste.
“I did not like him, Major Hadrian,” Joseph said. “And I gather you did not either, but that is hardly the point, is it? Most of the men who have died here in this mud had never been to Belgium before, and I daresay some of them couldn’t have found it on the map.”
Hadrian swallowed with a convulsion of his throat. “I take your point, but surely Prentice was killed by a German. If he was out in no-man’s-land, then he was a perfectly legitimate target. Even if he were not, there wouldn’t be anything we could do about it. He shouldn’t have been there.”
“No, he shouldn’t,” Joseph agreed. “Who gave him permission?”
Hadrian colored a deep red. “Is that your concern, Captain? If you feel you owe some kind of explanation to his family, General Cullingford is his uncle, as no doubt you are aware.”
“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, Mr. Prentice was not killed by a German soldier, he was killed by one of our own.”
