“And you don’t want me to say that Northrup was an incompetent officer and it’s a blessing for his men that he’s dead?” Mason raised his eyebrows. “His men are saying it themselves.”
“Possibly,” Joseph agreed. “To each other, but they wouldn’t write it down, or repeat it where his family will hear.”
“Perhaps that’s the problem?” Mason suggested. “We cover the errors, however disastrous, if it’s going to hurt someone’s feelings, especially if that someone is an officer.”
“We do it for the dead, whoever they are,” Joseph corrected him again.
“Ah.” Mason smiled. “That’s the point, isn’t it? Now he’s dead, his mistakes die with him. He’s no more danger, so why cause unnecessary pain?”
Joseph was beginning to feel cold in spite of the August sun burning outside and the close, overwarm air. “What is it you want, Mason? As you said, the man was arrogant and a fool, but he’s dead. Do you feel some moral obligation to soil his name and make his family’s grief the greater, just because it’s true? What about the families of the men who died because of his ignorance or bad judgment? Do you think knowing that will help their pain?”
“That’s what it’s about, isn’t it, Chaplain? Pain to other people?”
Joseph stared at him. The fierce intelligence in Mason’s eyes did not allow him to delude himself any longer. “Part of it, yes.”
“And is covering their sins the part you’ve taken on yourself?”
“Northrup’s sins are not my business, Mason,” Joseph told him. “Neither are they yours. He can’t do any more harm now.”
Mason straightened up. “It won’t work, Reavley. I’m not referring to Northrup’s sins, and you know that. I’m talking about how he died. I saw you look at the helmet. The bullet wasn’t there, was it?”
“Probably fell out.” Joseph still tried to evade the issue.
Mason walked over to the table and looked down at Northrup’s face. “He was shot by his own men, or at least by one of them. And the others are covering for him. You know that. Are you going to lie, by implication, so they escape with murder?” Now he was looking at Joseph, his eyes searching Joseph’s, probing for honesty. “Does war really change things so much, Chaplain?”
“I don’t know what happened yet,” Joseph answered him. “I want to find out before I jump to conclusions.”
“Liar,” Mason said quietly. “You want to find out if it was one of the men from your own village who killed him, so if it was, you can protect him.”
Perhaps a year ago Joseph would have lost his temper. Now he kept it tightly governed. “I want to find out what happened before I set in motion a chain of events I can’t stop or control,” he said gravely. “Perhaps moral issues are all black and white to you, although I doubt it. I know you’ve been prepared to sacrifice one goal to attain another.” He was referring to their argument in the Channel two years ago, and the implicit fact that Mason would allow some of his own countrymen to be killed in order to save the vast majority. Or was he naive enough not to know decisions like that faced military commanders every week?
Mason smiled. The expression softened his face, changing him. “But we are not the same, Reavley. I’m a war correspondent. I can observe, tell stories, ask questions. You’re a chaplain, supposedly a man of God. People think you know the difference between right and wrong. They look to you to tell them, especially now when the world is falling apart. If you won’t stand, Reverend, who will?” There was mockery in his face, but a wry, self-conscious sort of hope as well. He wanted Joseph to have the certainty and the faith he did not. He might have denied it—Joseph believed he would have, because it was too precious to put to any test. Fragile as it was, ephemeral, he would be lost without it.
“I did more than that before,” Joseph answered him. “And I’m not sure whether I was right or not.”
“Northrup was murdered.” Mason bit his lip. “If he hadn’t been, you wouldn’t argue the issue now, you’d just deny it.”
“I’ve only just seen the helmet.” Joseph told the truth, but it was still a prevarication, and the moment he had said it he was sorry. He should have known what to do, if right and wrong were as clear to him as Mason seemed to imagine. And not only Mason. Many of the men thought he should not be confused, as they were. They wanted answers, and felt let down if he could not give them. Priests were God’s authority on earth. For a priest to say he did not know was about the same as admitting that God Himself did not know; that He had somehow become confused and lost control. Life and death themselves became meaningless.
Mason was waiting.
“You are not naive,” Joseph told him. “Your faith doesn’t rest on me. Don’t blackmail me with it. I don’t know what happened to Northrup. Of course his own men might have killed him. It happens. I’d like to know more of the circumstances before I report it to Colonel Hook.”
Mason’s eyes were steady, unblinking.
“Why? In case the man who did it is someone you like, whose father and brothers you know? Or are you afraid the morale of the whole brigade will crumble if you tell the truth?”
“Aren’t you?” Joseph continued. “Or is that what you want? Truth at all cost? Whoever pays?”
“Who pays if the chaplain condones men murdering one of their officers because they don’t agree with his orders?” Mason asked.
“Is that how you see it?” Joseph said tensely. “If it’s as simple as that to you, maybe you should be the chaplain. You seem to have right and wrong very clearly labeled. You know far more about it than I do?”
Mason shrugged. “No. But I know what the men will say, and so do you. If you let Northrup’s death go, who’s next? I haven’t any faith that what we’re fighting for is worth the price. I think the whole bloody nightmare is madness. If I believed in the devil, I’d say he’s taken over.” He spread his strong, supple hands. “This has to be as close to hell as it gets. But you believe in something. You don’t have to be here. You could have stayed at home and looked after a nice quiet parish in the countryside, comforted the bereaved, and kept spirits up on the home front. But you’re here. Why? Just going down with the ship because you don’t know what else to do? Can’t find a way to admit you were wrong, or can’t face telling the men that?”
He had touched a nerve. How many nights had Joseph wrestled in prayer to find some sense, some light of hope in the endless loss? If God really had any power or cared for mankind at all, why did He do nothing?
Was Northrup’s murder just one more ugly and senseless tragedy for him, for his family, and most of all for the man who had pulled the trigger? Or would it be the catalyst for a general mutiny against the senseless daily slaughter?
Joseph could divert the attack against himself by attacking Mason in return, but it answered nothing, and Mason would know it, just as he knew it himself.
“You seem to think I should be the judge of what to do,” he said slowly. “And yet you have decided for me, before either of us knew what happened, or what result will come from pursuing it.”
“I know what result will come from not pursuing it,” Mason told him. “And so do you. Either you tell Hook, or I do.”
Joseph did not put him to the choice. If Hook had to be told, it would be his way.
“You’re quite sure, Captain Reavley?” Hook said unhappily. He was a lean man who had been spare to begin with and was now almost gaunt. He had been twice wounded, and the way he stood betrayed every so often that his shoulder still ached.
Joseph had said only what he had found, without drawing conclusions. “Yes, sir.”
“Any idea who is responsible?”
“No, sir. I’m afraid Major Northrup angered quite a few of the men.”
Hook gave him a dour glance. “He angered the whole bloody lot, Reavley. That isn’t what I asked.”
“I have no idea which of the men is responsible.”
Hook stared at him. His eyes were shadowed. He had seen too many of his men die, and he was helpless to do anything but go on ordering them forward in endless attack after attack. He wanted to avoid this one further pointless grief. He sighed. “See what you can find out when you have the chance.” He waited, trying to gauge if Joseph understood him.
“Yes, sir.” Joseph came to attention. “As soon as I have the opportunity.”
Hook relaxed a little. “I’ll write to his father. I should do it myself. Thank you, Reavley. You can go.”
Two days later, on the tenth of August, the rain burst like a monsoon over Ypres and Passchendaele, running in rivers down the slopes of the slight hills, filling the trenches till men were waist-deep in it. The fields became
