Mason’s shadow across the door made one then another turn, and they froze.
He walked in. He could not help looking first at Judith. She was very slender, as if under the gray V.A.D. uniform with its long skirt she were thin enough to be fragile. She had been at the front for three years. She must be so weary of dirt and pain, and never having time for laughter, never dressing in pretty clothes, being admired, playing games and falling in love. There was something fierce and uniquely beautiful about her, a waiting passion that war had robbed her of living yet.
She was flushed and her eyes were bright. The men had been looking at her as they raised their mugs. Why? Had something happened, and he knew nothing of it?
They recognized him. Wil Sloan came forward, still smiling a little, but guarded now. “Hello, Mr. Mason. You looking for someone?” he asked.
Mason made up his mind immediately. “I was going to do a piece on your surgeon, Captain Cavan. I meant to last time I was here, but he was too busy. If he still is, I thought I’d ask other people about him. You must all have stories you could tell. It would be especially good for morale.” He would have to keep up the lie to Judith, and hope she never knew he had heard about the arrests.
They stared at him, the laughter dying out of their faces. Wil turned to Judith, as if seeking her permission to answer.
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” she said vigorously, looking at Mason with a bright challenge. “Captain Cavan is one of the best men in the whole Army Medical Corps, and they’re all good. We should tell you in detail about his holding off the German attack, which is why he’s up for the V.C. But there are lots of other stories as well.” Her voice was warm, vibrant with enthusiasm, her eyes shining. There was even a faint flush in her cheeks.
Mason felt an acute sensation of dismay, and then of inexplicable anger. Damn it, even after he was arrested for mutiny and murder, there was a fire in her when she spoke of Cavan that was there for no one else. Judith Reavley, the idealist, the unquestioning patriot, was going against all her convictions for this man! What was the matter with her?
Cavan was in his early thirties, and a good-looking man, fair-haired, strong, with an intelligent face. He remembered seeing him working with Judith, easily, as if understanding were there without the need for words. Should he have seen it then?
He felt shut out, cold to the core of his belly. He had been thinking of her far too often, allowing her to matter. He realized how much of the hope, the peace inside, the warmth that was worth having, had rested in the thought of her.
They were waiting for him to answer. He must control himself—hide the awful vulnerability inside him. “Thank you,” he said. “That would work very well. Then a few words with him will be enough.” He was not going to let them dupe him entirely. Apart from pride, he could not afford to appear a complete fool, which he would do if he wrote a piece about Cavan, apparently not knowing he was charged with mutiny and murder. When the court- martial began, that would be the biggest story of the entire British Army on the Western Front. The only thing that could overwhelm that would be for the army to break through and advance considerably. And at the moment they were paying in blood for every yard.
Judith began to organize it immediately. She directed one man to recount his memory of helping Cavan carry wounded men to shelter and set broken limbs right there in the forward trench with mortar fire all around them. Another she told to repeat his tales of good humor through long hours operating in the field hospital, patience teaching new men now to assist. And for good measure a good few long and rambling jokes were added.
Mason sat through them, making notes, watching thin, strained faces and hearing the laughter and the pain in their voices. He hated being an onlooker. There was something vaguely indecent about drawing such memories from men whose passion and nakedness of heart could be extinguished by blood and shellfire in the next week or two, while he went safely home.
And yet those who read his work were the families of those men, and countless more like them. They deserved to know.
He was very aware of their enthusiasm to keep him there, and he knew the reason. Judith might be directing the situation, but the men understood and were more than willing. The murder of Major Northrup was already known. Did they really imagine they could keep the arrest of twelve men secret? Why even attempt it? It must be only a matter of days until the court-martial. Since it was a capital charge, and twelve men accused, including two officers, the army would send a militarily appointed prosecutor from London. Even so, like every other sentence of death, it would still be referred right up to Field Marshal Haig himself before it was carried out. That rule applied to the newest private, let alone to an officer nominated for the V.C.
What a bloody horrible, senseless tragedy! Why on earth had they done such a thing? Had they really imagined for a moment that they would get away with it? Or were they driven by a power far beyond the capacity for thought?
He refused to decide at the moment exactly what story he would write, but possibilities crowded his mind. The one he knew the Peacemaker would want was to make Cavan the hero, betrayed by an incompetent and cowardly command. A bad officer had been put in charge, and a surgeon had had to get rid of him in order to stop even more pointless slaughter of his men. All the stories about Cavan that he was now hearing would help with that: the laughter and comradeship, the heroism in the face of madness.
He took it all down carefully, noting the name and rank of those who told him. Judith went outside and did some work on her ambulance, then returned an hour later. There was still the same suppressed excitement about her, and he began to realize that she was following a very definite plan of some sort. For a wild moment the thought flashed to him that it was the same as his and the Peacemaker’s. She had finally seen too much slaughter and was prepared to take a small step toward ending it. She was watching him now as he finished the last notes from the men. She came over toward him. She walked with grace, the weariness under such rigid control was completely hidden. He wondered when she had last slept properly in any kind of bed, or eaten a meal that wasn’t cooked in a Dixie can. She must be so tired of dirt, endless chores, and desperate jokes one hardly dared laugh at. And yet laughter and that all-consuming comradeship of those who share life and death were the only shreds of human sanity left.
“Did you get some good stories?” she asked Mason, sitting down at the other side of the small table.
“Yes, thank you. But I’d still like to hear about his stand against the German raiding party for which they’ve put him up for the V.C. You were there, weren’t you?”
She looked at him wryly.
“You know I was. Would you like me to tell you now? I’m not back on duty for an hour.” She pushed a strand of hair off her brow. “I can do it.”
“What about a chance to sleep?”
“Are you telling me I look tired?”
He studied her face. He was surprised at the strength in her, and the defensive challenge in her eyes in that question. How different she was from the girl who had worn the blue satin gown at the Savoy with such infinite femininity. She must know that, too, with a different kind of regret from his.
“Actually you look beautiful.” He said it deliberately, and yet it was totally sincere. “But reason says that, like everybody else, you must need to sleep.”
There was a moment’s confusion in her eyes, uncertainty whether to believe him or not. Then she flushed very slightly and he knew in that instant how much it mattered to her. It was a belief that if there were ever peace again she could still be the woman she was inside, before the war.
“I’ll sleep next break,” she answered. “You might have gone by then, and you need to get the story.” Without waiting for him to reply, she told him in vivid and dramatic detail exactly what the raid had been like and how Cavan’s remarkable courage had saved all their lives. He could simply take it down and rewrite it using her words, there was such a force of life in them. Never once did she hesitate or repeat herself.
As he wrote it, he began to understand at last what it was she was doing. She was re-creating in the readers’ minds the situation that had brought about Major Northrup’s death, and showing Cavan as a man who had had no moral choice but to act as he had. She was paralleling his courage and decision in the trenches with his decision to frighten Northrup into acting with some sense.
Did she really believe that all they had meant to do was frighten him? Or did she not care?
When she had finished, he asked the question that had waited at the back of his mind since the beginning.
