“Did you get hit—that last raid?” Barshey repeated carefully, searching Joseph’s face. “You all roight? You look koind o’ sick.”
“Just bruised,” Joseph replied. “Bruised inside, I think.”
“Hurts, doesn’t it,” Barshey said sympathetically, even though he was not sure what he was referring to.
“Yes,” Joseph agreed. “Yes, it hurts.” He wished now that he had taken Sam’s advice and not looked. He did not want to know, but you cannot undo knowledge. He knew who had killed Eldon Prentice. Thinking of Corliss still waiting to know if he was going to face the firing squad, perhaps it was not difficult to understand why. Maybe he should have known from the beginning. But he could not let it go just because it wounded him too deeply to deal with the pain of it.
There was no use hesitating. He would like to have avoided facing it altogether, but he knew that was not possible. Scruby Andrews’s words were in his head, and the knowledge of the truth of them would not leave him. It would not now, and he knew it would not later.
At stand-to, Sam would be at his usual place. Breakfast was not the time for such a confrontation, and straight afterward they would both be occupied with other duties. It must be before. There was no choice but to waken Sam now.
He walked slowly along the damp morning earth. The trench walls were studded with beetles. A rat ambled away, unconcerned. He went up the steps and along the supply trench. It was eerily silent just at the moment. Both sides had stopped shooting. He could hear a bird singing somewhere high above in the morning sky of soft, unblemished blue.
He had walked this stretch of Paradise Alley so often he knew every bend and dip in the ground, where the posts and the hollows were. Every other time it had been with a sense of expectancy, even pleasure. Now he had to force himself because delay was pointless. It would change nothing.
He reached Sam’s dugout and stopped. Every scar and nail hole on the wooden surround was familiar. There was nothing on which to knock, but one did not walk into a man’s living quarters at this hour without making some attempt at courtesy.
“Sam!” His voice was rough, as if his throat were dry. “Sam!”
There was silence. Was he relieved or angry that he had to put it off after all? Perhaps Sam was at a very early breakfast? No. Stand-to had not been called yet. Maybe he was asleep. “Sam!” he shouted.
A tousled fair head appeared through the gap in the sacking. “You’re looking for Major Wetherall? Sorry. He was transferred. Some sort of emergency along the line. No idea where.”
Joseph stared at him. He could hardly grasp that this strange, blank-faced man was in Sam’s dugout. Where were all Sam’s things? How could this happen without warning?
The man blinked, recognized Joseph’s insignia of rank and calling.
“Sorry, Chaplain. Not bad news for him, I hope?”
“No,” Joseph said slowly. He took a breath. “No. No news at all, at least not now. Thank you.” He turned away, tripping over a rut in the uneven ground. This was only a respite, it changed nothing, but for the moment he did not have to face Sam and deliberately destroy the friendship that was his lifeline to the laughter, the warmth of human touch, the hand that reached out and grasped his in the inner darkness of this seemingly universal destruction.
CHAPTER
TEN
The same evening as Joseph was talking to Marie O’Day, Judith was sitting in the kitchen of the chateau. She had been given an excellent dinner, but separately from Cullingford and the senior French officers with whom he had been conferring. She ate the last of the crusty bread, which was still warm, and the fresh Brie, finished her wine, then thanked the cook with an enthusiasm and a gratitude she did not have to feign.
Outside in the garden afterward in the balmy evening under the trees she could hear birdsong and smell the damp earth. To the north the glare of shells was marked against the evening darkness, and the sound grew louder as the firing increased.
Cullingford found her as the last light was fading in the sky. The heavy trusses of the lilac seemed more shadow than substance but the perfume was heady, snaring the senses and wrapping one around.
“Did they give you a good dinner?” he asked quite casually.
She turned in surprise. He was a couple of yards away and she had not heard his feet on the soft grass. “Yes, thank you. Best meal I’ve had in . . . since dining with Mrs. Prentice, actually,”
“What about with your brother, Matthew?” He smiled, his face toward the light, but there was no ease in it, and she thought no happiness. Was it because she had reminded him of his sister, and Eldon Prentice’s death?
“Honestly, I hardly remember what we ate,” she admitted. She wanted to ask him if everything was all right, but that would have been intrusive.
Perhaps he saw it in her face. He put his hands in his pockets, something she had learned he did when he was thinking deeply, and oblivious of his surroundings. It was relaxed, oddly intimate. He started to walk, quite slowly, and she fell into step beside him. Apart from the sound of guns in the distance, they could have been in an English garden, with fields of corn beyond the hedges.
“I have been thinking about what you told me of your father’s death,” he said, pulling a pipe out of his pocket and stuffing it with tobacco. “June twenty-eighth last year. And you said it was because he had discovered a conspiracy, but you didn’t tell me much more. You mentioned your brother’s friend who had actually caused the crash, but you said very little of the man behind it.” He turned to look at her. “He’s still free, isn’t he? And with whatever power and liberty he had before?”
“Yes.” Her voice was tight. The anger and the pain were still there, even the sense of surprise because everything that gave her life sense and value had been destroyed in one act. Perhaps she had deliberately sealed over some of the grieving, making herself too busy to allow it, but it was far from finished. She wanted to share it with Cullingford. He understood loneliness, emotions of horror and loss that form the shape of your mind, so powerful they were beyond control, deeper than words, consuming and too intimate to explain to those who had never felt such things themselves.
He had told his wife nothing of the reality of his own life here in Flanders: the daily, weekly risks, judgments, and duties that were his identity. Then what did they speak of? Household matters, mutual acquaintances, the weather? All that was passion and laughter and pain went unsaid, because she did not know his world, and he did not know hers? The loneliness of not knowing was sometimes like a weight crushing out the power to breathe.
“Yes,” she said again, aware that he was watching her intently, and with a hunger in his eyes that he could not know she read. She did not look at him, but it made no difference; his face was in her mind exactly as if she did, whether first thing on waking or last thing before falling asleep.
“And he won’t stop, just because he failed the first time,” she went on. “Matthew thinks he could be attempting to destroy morale at home to damage recruiting, and prevent Kitchener from raising a new army.” Then she remembered what Belinda had said about Prentice writing articles that would tell the truth about pointless deaths, and how it would affect those who were considering joining up. Perhaps Cullingford was aware of that. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, aware of how family loyalty must tear at him, pity for everything that was too late now. “I don’t suppose Prentice realized what he was doing with his articles. And it would have been censored anyway.”
“My dear, I knew Eldon,” he said gently. “He would not have taken the pains to find out. Too many men are dying now for us to pretend they were all good. That is a facet of decency that belongs to peacetime. Those of us who don’t have to make decisions can indulge in dreams, but those of us who do cannot afford to. Please tell me what you know about this . . . creator of peace, at the price of slavery and dishonor,” he asked.
In the growing dark she told him, as they walked along the paths which were now a little wild, since the gardening boys had been called up to the war. The unheeding earth had blossomed with its usual verdure as if oblivious that only miles away it was being poisoned and laid waste.
She had already told him something of the events themselves, and the search afterward as the fragments of meaning had come together, until finally, with Europe on the brink of war, they had discovered the conspiracy itself.
