forward. “Don’t you see, Joseph? I had to do it! I had no choice. Who could I tell? No one else in the country knew enough to understand whether I was right or not. The fate of the war depended on it. . . .”
Joseph was stunned. Was it possible? It made hideous sense—a scientist who boasted of what he could achieve, who overrated his own ability, brilliant as it was, but not genius of that splendor. Then, when he was at his wit’s end, staring failure in the face, and his own humiliation, he sold it to the enemy rather than admit the truth. What fatal arrogance!
“I tried to stop the spy as well,” Corcoran went on, his voice strengthening. “But I missed him. Blaine wouldn’t tell me, but I have no doubt now that it’s Morven.” He moved until he was almost close enough to Joseph to touch him. “You have to take it from here. I don’t know who to trust. Matthew’s at sea on Archie’s ship. He doesn’t trust Calder Shearing, he told me that himself. Hall won’t listen to me. You have to do it—for England—for the war. For everything we love and believe . . .”
Joseph looked at him. It hung in the balance, all the past love, the memories sweet and close, the desperate hunger to believe, like clinging to a dream as the shreds of it slip into waking.
But honesty forced itself on him. Corcoran was lying. It was there in the details, the pattern that shifted with each retelling of the story, always to lay the fault on someone else. He remembered Lizzie’s words about Blaine’s skills, and that Morven’s were not the same, but Corcoran’s were. And now he could see it in Corcoran’s eyes, the sheen on his skin. It was the same terror of dying that he saw in the trenches, but out there, for all the horror and pity, it was in a way clean.
He turned away, sick to his heart. “You’re lying, Shanley,” he said quietly. “Blaine might have finished it. It was you who stopped him so you could do it yourself and take the fame in history, the glory of saving your country. But you were willing to let the country lose rather than have Blaine crowned in your place.”
“You don’t know that!” Corcoran shouted at him. “There’s nothing to prove it, except your word! You could be wrong. . . .”
Joseph turned back. He hated meeting Corcoran’s eyes and seeing the terror and the self-pity in them, but to look away now could be a cowardice he would never be able to mend. “No, I’m not wrong. You didn’t kill Blaine to save the project; you killed him to prevent him from eclipsing you. You have to be the center, all eyes on you.”
“Don’t testify!” Corcoran’s voice cracked. “You don’t have to! You are my priest. You can’t be compelled to!” His face was slick with sweat now and he was trembling. “Your father wouldn’t have done. He understood friendship, the supreme loyalty.”
Joseph thought of all the arguments in his mind. He thought of Archie at sea, and of Gwen Neave’s sons, and the loss and the grief still to come. Whatever betrayal he felt for himself, he owed them better than to run away now. He turned and walked to the door. He reached it and banged with both fists.
The guard came and let him out. Only when he was outside in the sun and in the wind of the courtyard did he realize that his face was wet with tears, and his throat ached so violently that he could not speak.
It was the first day of June, warm and still. A few clouds drifted like bright ships across the sky, sails wide to catch the sun. In the orchard the blossom was over, the fruit setting. The garden was dizzy with color and perfume.
Joseph was in his shirtsleeves, working with pleasure. It was good to feel his fingers in the earth pulling the thick, lush weeds, and to move with only a slight awareness of an ache, no pain, no fear of pulling on a muscle or tearing open the healing flesh. He could not stay much longer, only until he had testified for Admiral Hall, and then all this would be forfeited again and become just a treasure in the mind.
Hannah came out of the back door toward him, her face pale, her voice breathless.
“Joseph, there’s been an enormous battle in the North Sea, off Jutland. Our whole Grand Fleet against the German High Seas Fleet. They don’t know what’s happened yet. They don’t even know if we’ve won or lost, but lots of ships have been sunk on both sides.” She stared at him, eyes wide.
What should he say? Hope? Cling onto the belief in good until the last possible moment? And if it was smashed, if Archie and Matthew were among the thousands lost, what then? Did trying to prepare yourself ever do any good? Was the blow any less?
No. It always hurt impossibly, unbelievably. Would it have been easier to bear, quicker to recover from if he had imagined his parents’ deaths, or anyone’s? Would he have missed Sam’s friendship any less, been able not to lie awake in his dugout in the mud of Ypres and not wonder if Sam was still alive, imagine hearing his laughter, or what he could have said to this, or that?
He touched Hannah gently, both hands on her shoulders, but softly; the slightest pulling away would have released her. “Far more will come home than have been lost,” he said. “Think of them and don’t face anything else unless we have to.”
She controlled her fear with an effort so intense he could not only see it in her face but feel the power of it through her body. She blinked several times. “Thank you for not telling me to have faith in God.” She smiled a little twistedly. “I want a brother, not a priest.”
“Have faith in God, too,” he answered. “But don’t blame Him for anything that goes wrong, or imagine that He ever said it wouldn’t. If He promised you that Archie and Matthew would come back, then they will. But I don’t think He did. I think He said we would have all that we need, not all that we want.”
“All we need for what?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“To realize the best in ourselves,” he answered. “To practice pity and honor until they become part of us, and the courage to care to the last strength we have, to give everything.”
She frowned, “Do I want all that? Wouldn’t ‘pretty good’ do? Does it have to be ‘perfect’?”
He smiled, widely, a warm, genuine laughter inside him. “Well, decide what you don’t want, and tell God you’ll do without it. Maybe He’ll listen. I have no idea.”
“You still think He’s there?” she said perfectly seriously. “Will you think that if they’re gone?” She wanted an answer, the gravity was there in her eyes.
“It’s still the best option I know,” he answered her. “Can you think of anywhere else, any other star to follow?”
She thought for a moment. “No. I suppose the alternative is just to stop trying. Sit down. There are times when that seems a lot less trouble.”
“You have to be pretty certain you like it where you are to do that!” He let go of her and touched her face, brushing a stray hair off her cheek. “Personally, I think this is a sod of a place, and I have to believe there’s a better one, fairer to those who hadn’t much of a chance here.”
She swallowed and nodded. “I’ll make lunch. There’s nothing to do but wait. Please don’t go out, Joseph.”
“Out? Don’t you think I care as much as you do?”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”
It seemed an endless afternoon, every minute creeping by. Time after time Joseph drew in breath to say something, and then found he did not mean it, or it was pointless anyway, only making more obvious the fears that crowded his mind. He looked at Hannah and she smiled, making a little grimace. Then she returned to her ironing, going over and over the same sheet until she was in danger of scorching it.
The news came in the early evening. The
Not just Archie gone, but Matthew as well. They would never know how: blown apart, burned to death, thrown into the sea to struggle in the water until their strength was gone, or worst of all, imprisoned in the ship itself as it plunged downward into the darkness of the bottom of the ocean until it was crushed and the sides caved in and the water suffocated them.
The loss was overwhelming, unbearable. Time stopped. The sun lowered in the sky and darkness came. The children went to bed and neither Joseph nor Hannah found any words even to begin telling them what had happened.
“There’s been a big battle at sea,” Hannah said, her voice oddly flat and steady. “We don’t know how everybody is yet.” It was a lie. She needed the time. Perhaps she needed to grieve alone and do her first, terrible weeping before she gathered strength to share it with them.
Joseph too needed time. He hurt for Hannah, and he hurt bitterly for himself. He had always loved Matthew,
