there was a tight, brittle tension in their voices.
A hundred yards farther on he came to a connecting trench. Huddled along it, their backs to the walls, were a dozen men. He recognized Morel. He was standing a little apart from the others, bracing himself against the earth, his head back in a blind stare upward. The angles of his body were stiff, almost as if he were waiting to move, yet afraid to.
Joseph felt his chest tighten and his breath grew heavy in his lungs. He tried to go faster but the duckboards had rolled and were broken, and his feet could get little purchase in the mud.
No one took any notice of him when he stopped. He knew most of them. Bert Collins was there, caked in mud, his right arm blood-soaked. Cully Teversham and Snowy Nunn stood together with Alf Culshaw, who was smaller, narrow-chested, dapper when he had the chance. He always managed to scrounge whatever you wanted from rations—for a consideration, of course. He looked grim and tired, and there was a bandage wrapped tightly around his left arm. Stan Tidyman for once was not talking about his favorite food. He was shoulder to shoulder with George Atherton, who could mend anything if you gave him pliers, a bit of wire, and the time. The last one was Jim Bullen.
It was Cully who saw Joseph first, but there was no smile on his face. He did not even speak. No one saluted or came to attention.
Morel turned slowly but it was several seconds before his eyes focused and he recognized Joseph. His expression did not change. Snowy Nunn also stared unblinkingly.
They were covered in mud, wet to the waist, or—in the cases of Cully Teversham and Stan Tidyman—up to the armpits; all except Morel. In a blinding moment, Joseph understood: Barshey Gee had refused to take a party into no-man’s-land to look for survivors and bring back what dead they could find, but these were the men Nigel Eardslie had led.
“Eardslie?” Joseph’s voice was hoarse, almost unintelligible, except that they all knew what he was asking. He gulped air. “Wounded?”
“Dead,” Morel said huskily. “There wasn’t enough of him left to bring back. You want to bury one arm, a foot, Chaplain? Couldn’t even tell if it was left or right.” He could not control the tears running down his face.
Joseph was furious, raging against believing it, as if to refuse to acknowledge the fact could stop it being true.
“You went?” he said incredulously. “For God’s sake, what’s the matter with you?” He flung his arms out toward the sea of stinking, gas-soaked mud beyond the hastily thrown-up line. Then words choked him and failed.
“No, of course I bloody didn’t!” Morel shouted back at him, his voice so high-pitched it was almost a scream. His chest was heaving and he seemed hardly able to breathe. “That idiot Northrup ordered them and told them it was mutiny if they refused, and he’d charge them. And the stupid bastard would have, too!”
Joseph was overwhelmed. Grief and a terrible sense of helplessness stunned him. He had nothing left to say, no answers anymore. He stared at Morel and saw at the same time the young man he had first met at St. John’s: careless, hot-tempered, quick to laugh, and possessed of a hard, supple intelligence. The idealist in him was bruised to the bone, scorched with pain at the loss, and at the monstrous stupidity of it. Everything in Morel’s nature and his education told him it was his responsibility to stop it. He was bred to lead, to answer for actions and pay the price of them. It was naked in his face now, and he was teetering on the edge of mutiny. He would take Snowy with him—that was clear, too—and possibly several of the others.
How could Joseph tell them there was a God who cared? He felt his own belief slipping out of his grasp. He closed his eyes, his mind crying out, “Father, if You are there, if You still remember us, do something! We’re dying! Not just smashed and bleeding bodies, we’re dying inside. There’s no light left.”
“What do you say now, Reverend Reavley?” Morel’s voice cut across his mind like a knife edge.
Joseph opened his eyes and wiped a muddy hand across his face. “Barshey Gee refused to go,” he answered. “Northrup’ll have to back down. Did you find any wounded still alive?”
“Of course we bloody didn’t!” The tears streamed down Morel’s face. “Those that weren’t blown apart are drowned! And Northrup won’t back down. He’ll crucify the lot of us, if we don’t get to him first. There’s no point in waiting for God—Chaplain! How long does it take you to realize that there’s no God there? No God that gives a damn, anyway.” He turned and walked down the trench, blundering into the walls, bruising himself without knowing or caring.
Joseph had nothing to say. It even stole into his mind that perhaps Morel was right.
CHAPTER
FOUR
Gradually they inched forward. The guns roared all night, and star shells lit up the sky. The landscape looked like the surface of the moon. It was hard to believe anything had ever lived on it, or would again.
They were long past midsummer and the days were shortening. The dawn was heavy and dull, a drifting mist and occasional rain obscuring most of the newly gained land. The woods ahead, beyond no-man’s-land, were not even a darkening of the gray. It was ideal for going out to search for wounded.
“Bloody Jerry won’t see anyone in this,” Barshey Gee said cheerfully, swinging his rifle over his shoulder. “Ready, lads?”
“Roight,” Cully Teversham agreed. Behind him Stan Tidyman, John Geddes, George Atherton, and Treffy Johnson nodded.
“Captain?” Barshey looked at Joseph.
“Of course.” Joseph led the way up the fire step, across the parapet and down onto the slimy mud on the other side. They had to be careful because the winding path through the craters and bogs changed with every bombardment. Bodies floated beside it, grotesquely swollen, and the stench of rotting flesh and effluent flooding over from the latrines was hanging in the almost motionless air.
They went in twos, one man to help the other if either lost his footing. They spread out to cover as much ground as possible. No one spoke. The misty rain would probably deaden sound, but it was not worth the risk.
Cully Teversham went with Joseph. He was a big man with ginger hair that even the army barber couldn’t tame and hands that dwarfed everything he held. He moved calmly, picking his way, testing the ground under his feet, always looking ahead and then to the sides.
A long spike of barbed wire caught around Cully’s leg and he stopped, bending slowly to cut himself free. Joseph helped, and they moved forward again.
Ahead and to the left they saw Geddes and George Atherton. They were no more than shapes in the gloom, identifiable only by Geddes’s stiff shoulders and the swing of his arms.
It was half an hour before they found the first wounded man. His side was torn open by shrapnel and one leg was broken, but he was definitely still alive. Awkwardly, slipping and floundering in the mud, they got him back across the parapet and to the dressing station behind. Then they went back to look for more. The mist was clearing, and in another hour their camouflage could be gone.
This time they were more certain of the path, and the urgency was greater. Joseph moved ahead, his feet sucking and squelching, tripping over occasional broken equipment, spent shells, and now and then part of a corpse. He was sweating. It was warmer and there were patches of blue sky above.
He saw the body before Cully did. It was lying on its side, looking as if it were asleep rather than dead. There was no apparent injury. Joseph quickened his step, slithered the last few feet, and bent over him. It was then he saw the crown on one shoulder. It was a major! He turned the man gently, trying to see who it was, and where he was wounded. It was Major Northrup.
Cully was at his shoulder. “In’t no good, Captain. Look.” There was no emotion in his voice. He was pointing at the man’s head.
Joseph saw. There was a small blue bullet hole in his skull, just above the bridge of his nose, exactly in the middle.
