know what else to do? Following orders, Chaplain? Aren’t you supposed to be leading?”
Joseph saw the rage and pain in him, the knowledge of darkness closing in, not just at Passchendaele, but everywhere.
“I think the most I can do is keep going,” Joseph told him.
Mason was silent for a long time. “Thank you at least for honesty,” he said at last. “I don’t know how you can survive on that—it isn’t enough.”
“As long as there’s somebody you can touch in the darkness, it has to be enough,” Joseph told him.
Mason did not answer. Slowly he drank the rest of his tea.
Joseph finished his also. He meant what he had said. The fact that he too needed more, just a glimmer of hope that one day there would be an answer he could understand, was none of Mason’s business.
“Yes?” the Peacemaker said urgently as Mason sat in the chair opposite him in the upstairs room in Marchmont Street. “I know all about the losses. It’s the epitome of all we sought so desperately to prevent. I would have given everything I’ve ever had, my own life if it would have helped, to prevent this. Even you don’t have words to describe the horror or the futility of it. What about this trial for mutiny and murder? They have twelve men arrested, you say?”
“Yes.” Mason looked up. He was haggard. His heavy black hair made his skin look even more pallid, almost bloodless, and there was a consuming grief in his eyes as if no passion would ever burn them alive again. The Peacemaker was concerned for him. Could a war correspondent suffer battle fatigue?
“The twelve men with the best motives, apparently, for wanting Major Northrup dead,” Mason answered. “Or—I should say more accurately—removed from command. And since those above him either didn’t know how incompetent he was, or didn’t care, death seems to have been the only way. I imagine, since he was a general’s son, it was beyond the power of Colonel Hook to remove him. The thing is, Captain Cavan, the surgeon up for the V.C., is one of them.”
“Perfect.” The Peacemaker breathed the word like a sigh. “It is so absolutely farcical we couldn’t have created anything more likely to make even the sanest and most blindly loyal of men rebel against this suicidal injustice.” He felt he was on the brink of something that could be used to turn the tide at last.
“There’s word that General Northrup will try to get the charge lessened to one of insubordination, and that Northrup’s death was more of an accident than intentional murder,” Mason warned.
“Really!” The Peacemaker felt a sudden chill. “Why?”
Mason sighed. “Because to prove intent they must prove motive. Doing that will automatically expose Major Northrup’s disastrous incompetence. His father does not want that. And believe me, the men are all loyal to the mutineers. If the charge is kept at murder, they’ll make damned certain Major Northrup is exposed.”
“And does the general know this?” The Peacemaker was fascinated. It opened up possibilities of further mutiny he had hardly dared hope for.
“Yes, of course he does,” Mason replied.
“This is very good,” the Peacemaker said decisively. “I shall make certain that the prosecutor appointed is a hard-liner. I have just the man in mind. He will make certain the full charge is retained, and prosecuted to the full. We need have no doubt of a capital sentence. Captain Cavan, V.C., will be put before the firing squad. It will be the spark that finally sets the tinder afire.”
He smiled slightly, an unexpected regret tugging at him. “The British troops will never stand for an injustice of such obscenity. And I think the country may even be behind them, if we handle it the right way. There comes a point when people will no longer be herded to slaughter like sheep. Believe me, Mason, the Russians are very close to that point now. If the tsar does not make peace with Germany, withdraw her troops from the battle front altogether, and institute radical social reform, the Russian people will rise up in a way we have not seen since the High Terror in Paris in 1793 when the gutters ran red with blood.”
“The tsar won’t change—not that much!” Mason looked stunned, almost buried by the enormity of the idea.
“I doubt it,” the Peacemaker agreed. “I think by next month, or the month after, we will see riot in the streets of St. Petersburg, and blood.” He felt the exultation surge up inside him, catching his breath and his throat. “We are at the beginning of the end, Mason! There will be peace by Christmas! Peace! Dear God, peace!”
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Hook looked up from the paper he had been reading. His skin was gray and an uneven stubble shadowed his jaw.
“Ah, Reavley. I’ve just been informed that London is sending a prosecutor for the court-martial. I was hoping we could have someone from one of the regiments near here. At least they’d understand the…the pressures. But they’re sending a man called Faulkner. I’ve heard of him.” He looked up at Joseph, frowning. “He has something of a reputation, very rigid, believes in the ultimate deterrent. I don’t think the bastard’s ever seen action.” He rubbed his hand over his head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t speak of him like that. I suppose he might be able to…” His voice tailed off. He sounded utterly without hope.
Joseph sat down without being asked. He cleared his throat. “What are the chances of General Northrup getting the charges reduced?”
Hook was surprised. “From Faulkner? None at all. He’ll make an example of Cavan and Morel. Reavley, I’m afraid of what the men will do when they hear. We’ve got just over three days; then it’ll be too late.”
Joseph did not need to ask him what he meant. Once the twelve men were charged with mutiny and murder—unless they were found not guilty, which was virtually impossible—there could be no other sentence but death. The chances were high that there really could be mutiny. With the resultant loss of morale, the lines would be smashed and the forces that survived would be driven back behind the last defenses. The Germans would simply carry on straight through to Paris, and France would fall.
After that there was nothing between the German Army and the beaches of England except twenty miles of flat summer sea. Defeat would be only weeks away.
Joseph looked up at Hook and saw understanding of exactly the same thing in his eyes.
“Is it worth telling Faulkner what it would be likely to do to the men?” he asked.
“It would if he believed it,” Hook replied. “Men like that usually have an excellent escape from situations they don’t want to be responsible for: They simply refuse to believe it. He would say the British Army never mutinies and never surrenders. It is only the occasional soldier who does, and that sort of man has to be weeded out…severely. He would consider this an excellent opportunity to make an example.”
“It won’t make an example of anything except ignorance and brutality,” Joseph said, hearing his own voice crack with emotion and something close to despair. “No matter how good men are, or how brave, there’s a point beyond which they break. There’s no point afterward in excusing yourself by saying you were too damned stupid to see it!”
“I know.” Hook looked down at the paper again. “I’ll try appealing to London, but I don’t know what good it’ll do.”
It was dismissal. Joseph stood, excused himself from the claustrophobic safety of the mud and earth, and the few familiar objects of Hook’s personal life, and went out into the faint, misty sunlight. He felt acutely guilty. At some point there must have been a time when he could have acted differently, hidden something, even lied outright so it would never have reached this stage.
He walked slowly along the track, his boots squelching in the thick mud. At this slightly higher level it was shallower, the water puddling rather than running along. Out in the craters of no-man’s-land either it would be steaming a little in the August heat, or there would be low-lying mustard gas again. It wasn’t always easy to tell.
If Mason had not seen Northrup’s body and known he had been shot by a British gun, there would have been no need for anyone to be aware that it wasn’t just another casualty. God knew there were enough of them!
