“Oh . . . yes.” Her voice was hoarse, the words hard to form. “I remember you. A chaplain . . . weren’t you?” She stepped back a little.
“I still am,” he answered, following her in. “Mrs. Blaine drove me. Can she do anything to help . . . practical, perhaps? I’m afraid I’m still rather useless.”
She backed farther in toward the sitting room, but with a blank look as if she had not understood him. Lizzie followed, but went toward where she assumed the kitchen must be.
“Chaplain . . .” Gwen Neave responded. “I’m not sure that I want . . .” There was fear in her face, as if she thought he would start telling her something unbearable.
“It’s irrelevant,” he said. “Just to help you place me. You must have so many patients.”
“Military Cross.” She stared at him. “For bringing injured men back from no-man’s-land. I remember you.” She sat down, not so much in any kind of ease but simply because she was losing both her balance and her strength to remain standing.
What on earth could he say? This proud woman who had helped so many men in their extremity of physical distress, perhaps even death, did not want platitudes about suffering or resurrection. She must have heard it all. She might not even be a Christian, for all he knew. It would be a presumption of extraordinary insensitivity to start speaking as if she were. No words had helped him in the first shock of Eleanor’s death. There was only a vast, aching hole inside him where there had been light and love just a few hours before. What had he wanted to hear, to say? Nothing comforting, nothing prepared and necessarily impersonal. Other deaths had not mattered to him. Only Eleanor’s was real, eating into his heart. He wanted to talk about her, as if it kept her close and real a little longer.
“Tell me about your sons,” he asked her. “My brother-in-law is at sea, on a destroyer. For all the hardship and the danger, there’s a part of him that wouldn’t do anything else. The sea has a kind of magic for him.”
She blinked. “Eric was like that. He had a toy boat he sailed in the village pond when he was little. He had very fair hair, straight as stair rods. It flopped up and down on his head when he jumped with excitement. His father used to rig his boat for him and put it in the water, and when the wind caught it, it went right to the other side. Terrified the ducks.”
There was a moment’s agonized silence, then she went on, memories crowding her mind, falling over each other as she found words for them. Lizzie brought tea in and after she departed, Gwen continued to explore the terrible wounds of her love.
Then at last she could cry. She bent over, great wrenching sobs of raw, tearing loss for her children who were gone. Joseph said nothing, but very gently knelt on the floor, awkwardly because of his injured leg, and held her with his good arm.
When finally she was exhausted and pulled away, he was too cramped to be able to move.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “Here. I’ll help you up. No! Don’t do that, you’ll make it worse!” Expertly, accustomed to helping injured men, she eased him to a sitting position.
“Thank you,” he said again. “A good thing one of us is competent. Would you like Mrs. Blaine to stay with you? She will if you wish, if you’d rather not be alone.”
“Oh God! Didn’t the poor woman just lose her husband?” She was aghast.
“Yes. But she’ll stay, if you like.”
“Do you know who did it yet?”
“No. They’re still looking.”
“I saw him . . . I think.” She frowned. “I’d been to see Mrs. Palfrey. She lost her brother a month ago. Posted missing. I saw the man just on the edge of the woods, in the dark. He had a pale coat on. At first, I thought it was a woman, then he relieved himself, so I knew it was a man.”
He was stunned. “With a bicycle? A woman’s bicycle, coming from the track past the Blaines’ house?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It was very late. It must have been . . . after . . .” She stopped. “Does Mrs. Blaine want to stay?” she whispered. “I’d rather be alone, but if she . . .”
“No, I don’t think so,” he answered. “She just offered. If you want to talk again, or I can do anything for you, let Mrs. MacAllister know, and I’ll be here.”
“Thank you,” she said automatically, then paused for a moment, looking at him with full concentration. “Thank you, Captain Reavley.”
He could not sleep. At two o’clock he was still wide awake, seeing Gwen Neave’s shattered face in his mind —her consuming grief, not furious, not questioning or railing against fate, simply a kind of inner death.
He got up and went to the window, pulling the curtains back. The night was radiant with moonlight that flooded the sky, catching every flake of the mackerel clouds with silver. Just below the sill the first white roses were out, single flowers, pale as the moon, like apple blossom.
He stood gazing at the scene. The beauty was almost too intense to bear. Then he heard the piercing sweetness of a nightingale—once, twice—then the silence washed back again like a deep ocean, drowned in light.
He ached with a measureless hunger to hold the moment forever, make it part of him so he could never lose it.
He was needed here. It was a lifetime’s work to touch this grief and heal even a fraction of it. He must stay.
CHAPTER
NINE
Patrick Hannassey might be the Peacemaker. In fact, theprobability stabbed like a knife into Matthew’s thoughts no matter which avenue he followed. He told himself it was ridiculous. He had always known that Hannassey was an enemy of England, willing to resort to violence. But it was different to think that he could be the man behind the murder of his parents.
He and Joseph had done everything they could to learn the Peacemaker’s identity. They had considered all they knew that must define him: first, his access to both the king and the kaiser in a manner sufficiently confidential to present the treaty and its astounding contents for their consideration; second, John Reavley had to have known him well enough to have stumbled accidentally on the treaty and taken it. There were times when in order to commit other acts, the Peacemaker had to have been in London. Finally, there was little doubt that he had also had a powerful influence on Eldon Prentice, and upon Richard Mason. Therefore he had strong connections with the press—not the national newspapers who obeyed the government’s restriction notices, but the smaller, less responsible provincials.
How did these criteria apply to Patrick Hannassey? Matthew had to put them to the test, whatever the answer.
The appalling violence of the Easter Rising in Dublin and the British suppression of it gave him the opportunity he needed. On Easter Monday the gunboat
The next day Major-General Sir John Maxwell’s troops, sent by Prime Minister Asquith, and mostly untrained, began shooting Irishmen on sight, and the General Post Office went up in flames. It became obvious that even worse was to come. Questions about leading Irish Nationalists did not need to be explained.
Matthew was dining with a friend with whom he had been at school. It was a quiet restaurant and they sat in the corner discreetly, sharing a bottle of claret and a rather good game pie. He asked the questions that pounded in his mind, hoping for the answers, and dreading them.
“Hannassey?” Barrington said thoughtfully. “Do you think he’s behind this uprising? Behind Connelly and Pearse?”
“Can’t say,” Matthew replied, meaning to imply that he was.
Barrington smiled. “So what is it you want to know?”
Matthew began with the least controversial issue. “His history. For example, before the war what sort of influence did he have? Where did he travel?”
