grief and absurdity that would break the spirit of some, and ignite others to the mutiny that had lain just beneath the surface in men like Morel. There wouldn’t be a serving soldier on the front who wouldn’t think Cavan was worth ten of Northrup, whatever the law said.
“Captain Reavley?” Punch said anxiously.
“Yes. Yes, I see. It was designed to frighten Major Northrup. What went wrong?”
“Oi don’t know, sir. Oi swear.”
“Thank you.”
“You aren’t going to go an’ tell Colonel Hook what Oi said, are you? Oi’ll deny it, sir.” His eyes were angry and frightened.
“No, I’m not,” Joseph said sharply. “I told you I wasn’t. But I can’t find a story the general will believe if I don’t know what the truth is. This way none of the facts anyone can discover will prove it false.”
“Roight. Yes, I see. Thank you, Chaplain.”
It was dusk as Joseph left in a staff car returning to the front. The air was motionless, wet and close to the skin. The sky leached the last tones of warmth out of the waterlogged land. Thin vapors of mist provided a curious softness but hid none of the desolation: the broken trees; the bare, scorched wreckage of houses and farms; the litter of broken guns and vehicles on the roads.
The car was on a cratered road now, and he smelled the familiar stench long before they reached even the outpost farthest back. The first star shells were bursting, and gradually the sound of the heavy guns blurred one raid into another. A stray eighteen-pound shell exploded fifty yards away, jarring the earth and sending eruptions of heavy Flanders clay high and dark into the air. Most of it was far in front of the car, over the woods toward Passchendaele itself.
As he alighted, he thanked the driver who had given him a lift, glad of a few hundred yards to walk. He felt battered by the noise, as if it were a physical assault, but he needed the time for a last arrangement of thoughts in his mind.
He found Hook in his dugout. He was looking at maps, although he must have known the whole of the Ypres Salient better than he knew his own garden. The photograph of his wife had been moved to the top of the gramophone, as if both had to be forgotten for the moment.
“Ah, come in, Reavley,” he said, looking up as if relieved to forget the advances and retreats for a while. “Did you learn anything?”
“Yes, sir,” Joseph replied, letting the sacking fall closed over the doorway and standing to attention as well as he could. It was raining again outside and his boots were heavy with mud, his legs soaked almost up to the knee. “I found Punch Fuller, and he told me a good deal of what happened.”
There was no light in Hook’s face. “As a confession?” Clearly he hoped it was; then Joseph could not tell him.
“No, sir—more or less theoretically, the sort of thing that could have happened,” Joseph answered unhappily. He stood to attention, refusing to sit. “I really think, sir, that General Northrup would prefer not to know this,” he said very clearly. “And it would serve no purpose at all to tell him. The major was an arrogant and inexperienced officer who inadvertently caused the deaths of several good men, and the serious injuries of others. It provoked intense ill feeling among almost all the men, not just an odd one here or there. Any action you take is going to have to involve at least a dozen men, sir. And I have reason to think that his actual death was not intended but was an accident.”
Hook looked weary. He gestured to Joseph to be seated on an upturned ammunition box.
“You can’t have it all ways, Reavley,” he said. “Either a dozen men were involved because he had angered them beyond their control, or his death was an accident. Which was it? And if you’re going to say it was an accident, then you are going to have to produce the man who fired the shot, and prove its accidental nature. What the hell was he doing pointing a loaded weapon at an officer anyway?”
“I don’t know who did it, sir,” Joseph said honestly. It was the one part of the story he had no need to blur.
“Don’t play games with me, Reavley!” Hook snapped. His uniform was crumpled and bloodstained. His face was haggard with exhaustion. “I’ve got men dying out there by the hundreds every day!” His hands were trembling. “I need to get Northrup off my back and out of the way! Either you know what happened or you don’t! What did Fuller tell you? You said a dozen men. Do you mean a kangaroo court-martial?”
There was no point in denying it. Hook obviously knew. Joseph felt the net of circumstance tightening around him, but he was determined to give Hook a way out. “Yes, sir, but only with the intention of frightening him into taking advice in the future. Not to kill him.”
Hook’s face was pale, his mouth pulled down with grief. “Who was involved, Reavley?” His voice dropped. “I have to know.”
Joseph looked straight back at him. He would not make the same mistake this time. He was prepared to lie, evade, whatever was necessary, and live with his conscience. “I don’t know, sir. Fuller told me what happened, not who was concerned. And I promised him I’d not betray him. I think the men may know, sir, but no one will say. You can’t blame them if their loyalty to each other is greater than to some military principle of obedience to an incompetent officer who, out of sheer stupidity, is going to cost the lives of their friends.” He chose his words deliberately. “We owe them more than that.”
Hook passed his hand across his face. Joseph could hear the faint rasping of dry skin over the stubble of his beard. “I don’t have the luxury of choosing my own morality, Reavley. I can tell Northrup this, but he won’t believe me. He can’t afford to, because it makes his son a disgrace to him. And it would set a precedent that would be impossible to live with. Truth or lie, the army can’t afford to grant that it is just.”
“Then tell him it was an accident,” Joseph demanded. “Let Major Northrup be buried with some semblance of honor. That would serve everyone.”
Hook gave a sharp bark, supposed to be laughter. “I’ll try!”
Joseph spent the night working with Cavan at the dressing station as casualties poured in. He snatched a few hours of sleep, then went to sit with the wounded or dying and do what he could for them. Mostly it was simply not leaving them to die alone.
At ten o’clock, Barshey Gee came and told him the colonel wanted to see him, and ten minutes later Joseph was back in Hook’s dugout facing General Northrup, white-faced and standing so ramrod-stiff it seemed as if his back was arched.
“Are you saying, Captain Reavley, that my son was murdered by the common consent of a dozen or more of his own men?” His voice rasped in his throat as if he could not gulp the air into his lungs. “What in God’s name has this army come to? Are we a crowd of barbarians, beyond the law? I will not surrender humanity and decency, sir, to a bunch of hooligans so demoralized by drink and terror that they turn on their own officers! Is there no morality left? How dare you stand there in the uniform of a man of God, and condone such…such evil!” His body trembled and he was obviously having difficulty controlling his voice.
“Sir, I did not say he was murdered,” Joseph replied as calmly as he could.
“What do you call it, then?” Northrup demanded passionately. “A dozen men with guns against one unarmed officer? Pray, what does that pass for in your terminology?”
“You obviously know more about it than I do, sir,” Joseph said stiffly. “What I heard was that the men pleaded with Major Northrup to listen to the evidence of more experienced soldiers, even though they were junior in rank. When he would not do so, and it was costing lives unnecessarily, they used force to make him listen, to save their own lives and those of their comrades. He was killed by accident, not intentionally. I don’t know how that happened, or who was involved.”
“The records of killed and injured should make that plain enough,” Northrup replied. “These men all come from the same villages, played in the same football teams or brass bands, or whatever. Even a half-wit could find out who conspired together for this, if they wanted to. Whatever it began as, it ended as murder! And I shall see justice.”
“Sir…” Hook began, but it was obvious in his face that he had already tried remonstrating with every argument he knew and had failed.
“It ended as tragedy,” Joseph corrected him. “Most things do out here, sir. I believe profoundly that it would be better for everyone if we allow it to remain an honorable tragedy. Major Northrup was an officer respected by his men, who mourn their loss. Does it serve anyone to say that he was so incompetent that his men feared for their
