was pretending to be a German soldier and running for the supply trench?
He turned back just in time to see Morel fall over the parapet and raise his gun to fire at him.
He froze. It was the final absurdity. They had made it, and were going to shoot each other! He started to laugh, crazily, idiotically.
Morel lowered the gun and came toward him. “Chaplain, are you all right?” he asked sharply.
“In German!” Joseph snapped back at him, using that language for the command. “Are you badly hurt?” he went on.
“I’m not…” Morel began, then as a German corporal came around the corner of the trench he doubled over and all but collapsed in Joseph’s arms.
Joseph took his weight with difficulty. “It’s all right, I’ve got you,” he said in German. “I’ll take you back to the dressing station. Here!” He half-lifted Morel over his shoulder and, ignoring the corporal, set out along the supply trench.
“Can you manage?” the corporal called after him.
“Yes, thank you,” Joseph answered. “I’ll carry him to the surgeon, then I’ll be back.”
Morel muttered something into his ear, but he did not catch enough of it to make sense.
Joseph kept his head down, easing Morel’s weight higher—both because it was easier to walk, and because it allowed him to hide most of his face without arousing suspicion. He hurried, as if Morel were bleeding to death and he had to get him out of the range of fire and then attend to him.
He passed other people: stretcher bearers, medical aides, even another priest. There was enough noise from gunfire to make conversation difficult and everyone had their own duties. Even so, there were more offers of help, which he refused.
It was eerily like a mirror image of the British trenches he was so used to where he knew every yard, every bend and turn, every rise to stumble over or pothole to turn your ankle in. He knew every ledge and shallow dugout where a man could curl up and snatch an hour of sleep.
These trenches were deeper, drier. He passed a dugout with electric lights. It was harder going out into the darkness again. Morel was growing very heavy.
Suddenly there were two figures black in the gloom ahead of him, talking softly in German. Cigarette ends burned brightly for an instant, then disappeared.
Suddenly panic seized him and he slithered to a stop. Morel dropped over his shoulders to land in the mud, cursing roundly, but having remembered to do it in German.
“Bless you,” Joseph replied. “Are you hurt?”
“Bruised to hell.” Morel stood up slowly, wincing. “You might have warned me.”
“Geddes,” Joseph whispered, pulling Morel away from the men. “Which way?”
Morel looked around carefully. “There.” He pointed forward. “He’s getting away from the lines as fast as possible.”
“Does he speak any German? He must, or he wouldn’t dare come through.”
“Picked up some, but he won’t want to put it to the test this close to the firing line.” Morel started along the trench again and Joseph caught up with him, moving swiftly now.
They kept out of sight as much as possible, but always as if priests ministering to the wounded. Reluctantly, Morel had gotten rid of his gun also. It was too dangerous to keep if he wanted to maintain his disguise.
By dawn they were two or three miles behind the lines. The light came early in a clear sky, which held only a few shreds of gray cloud, lit from beneath with pale brilliance. It showed a land shattered by war. Trees were splintered, their naked trunks leafless, some scarred black by fire. Farmhouses were roofless, walls fallen away. Fields were scoured up, crops ruined.
Joseph glanced at Morel but did not speak. It was time he thought more clearly. Now they were through the German lines they needed to plan, and first to deduce what Geddes would have done.
“Change clothes,” Joseph said slowly, thinking aloud. “Eat. More important, drink. Water would do, anything clean. Need strength.” He imagined Geddes giddy with freedom, but so tired he could barely stand, and knowing he was a fugitive who did not even speak the language and understood very little of it. “Might have to fight later,” he went on. “Need a safe place to rest first. Exhausted now, and need to plan.”
Morel was staring at him, frowning. “We have to find Geddes,” he said awkwardly, his face twisted with sudden and startling pity, so deep it gave him pain.
Joseph saw it and it took him by surprise. Morel had misunderstood, thinking he was speaking of himself. The pity was for him, and perhaps for what he had once been, in another age, in Cambridge. He realized something would be broken between them if he said the wrong thing now. The emotion must be acknowledged, then put away as if it had never happened. He looked over toward the fields and the road, away from Morel’s eyes. “You know him better than I do,” he went on, as if considering deeply. “What do you think would be his first priority?”
Morel answered after only a moment’s hesitation, and he kept his voice very nearly expressionless, as if he had known what Joseph meant from the beginning. “As far from the lines as possible,” he said, relief making his voice a little high. “He’s not a coward, but he wouldn’t look for trouble. He’s strong. He grew up in the country. If any man knows how to survive on the land, he does.”
Joseph turned to look at him for a moment, then at the fields again.
“I know.” Morel lowered his voice, almost as if in the presence of the dead. “It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it? I should think if there’s anything to eat in that, the locals will have had it. Turnips, wild berries, even roots, nettles. God! What a…” His voice caught. “I don’t know. I haven’t got a word for it.
“It’s mutilation, not death yet,” Joseph said softly, willing himself to believe it.
“Isn’t it?” There was little hope in Morel’s face.
Joseph started forward. “Let’s see if anyone’s encountered Geddes.”
They walked in silence for more than a mile. They passed only one person: an ancient man leading a plow horse, a dog at his heels.
Then Joseph picked up the conversation. “What are we going to say? I should be able to make them believe I’m a priest. And that I’m nearly forty. They’ll believe I’m that old.”
Morel gave him a wry look. He was in his mid-twenties, but he looked gaunt and there were deep lines in his face. “Or more,” he said drily. “But so are plenty of fighting men. I’d better think of something, and before we reach that farm.” He gestured toward a group of buildings perhaps half a mile away. One side was black from fire.
“The simplest is best,” Joseph answered, having already given the matter some consideration. “You are a priest also.”
“What happened to my collar?” Morel asked the obvious. “German priests wear them, too.”
“Swiss,” Joseph corrected him. “Your accent isn’t good enough for a native. You were helping someone and got blood all over it. You could wash yourself, but your collar and tunic were ruined. Don’t forget the tunic, nobody gets blood only on their collar. They’ll know you’re lying. Another tunic is no problem from a dead man, but he wouldn’t have a priest’s collar. You know enough from your prewar studies of biblical languages to pass as long as you don’t try to conduct a service.”
Morel smiled. “You lie better than I expected.”
“Thank you!” Joseph said sarcastically. “Geddes won’t get away with that. So what would you do in his place?”
The farm was only a hundred yards away now. It was dilapidated, mended with old boards and clearly whatever had come to hand. There obviously had been no glass to replace the shattered windows, and perhaps no putty either. It must take either courage or desperation for the inhabitants to have remained here.
“He doesn’t have more than a few words of German,” Morel said dubiously. “But he’s a fly bastard. He’ll have thought of something.”
“If you don’t understand, best to pretend you can’t hear,” Joseph observed. “Maybe he’ll pretend to be shell- shocked and deaf.”
Morel looked at him with a flash of respect, but he said nothing. They were at the entrance to the farmyard. An elderly woman was putting out kitchen scraps for a few scrawny chickens. She was rawboned and thin, her face seamed with grief. She looked up at them with alarm.
