but socially as well.” His face was alight, his eyes burning.
It was a dream again. Mason had a sudden terror that he was being swept along in a fantasy in which everyone else believed, and only he could see the bitter truth. Individual ambitions would always play their part; men would build on towering visions and subsequently forget the details that would undo them.
The Peacemaker had lost sight of the individual in his sweeping plan, as if one man’s ideas could command the loyalty of millions, and their obedience.
For the first time Mason began to wonder if the Peacemaker was mad. No man had the power to do what he dreamed, and no man should.
Perhaps he had seen too many dead and become tired, his own passion exhausted. Judith would hate everything the Peacemaker had said. She would tell him it had nothing to do with reality, the way people actually were.
The Peacemaker would say her sight was too small, too ordinary.
She would say that his was too far from the human heart to see into it: too overweening, exercising not leadership but dominion.
“Mason!” the Peacemaker said sharply. “It is the beginning of the end! Can’t you see that? Peace! There need never be this abomination of war again!”
“Yes, sir,” Mason said a little flatly. “Well, not here anyway.”
The Peacemaker was not to have his spirits damped. “You’re tired. Go home and sleep. Write your article. Then go back to Passchendaele. Attend the court-martial and write the truth about it. The men deserve that. Cavan deserves it.”
Joseph and Morel, with Geddes in tow, made the crossing back through the German lines, over no-man’s-land and then through the French lines. They had great difficulty but achieved it in the same manner as they had crossed the other way: running, crawling, scrambling the moment it was dark enough between the star shells. Perhaps they had been a little less frightened, thanks to the schnapps, and for the same reason also a little clumsier.
They had found parting from Kretschmer and Wolff had occurred naturally because the German soldiers had had to report to their units. In the darkness and the tension before an attack, other people’s minds had been more preoccupied with what was to come than identifying individuals. Like the British and French armies, their regiments had also been decimated. The losses were staggering, and men were assigned anywhere just to fill in the numbers and make up a platoon or a brigade. There were more strangers than friends left. No one questioned Joseph or Morel closely, and the clerical disguise did the rest.
Getting through the French lines was more difficult. They were taken prisoner at the point of a rifle—in fact several rifles.
“We’ve got a German prisoner,” Morel said immediately, in French, indicating Geddes, whose mouth and lower face were still bound. He was still in his stolen German uniform, so there was nothing to make the statement appear untrue.
The French lieutenant in command looked dubious, but he accepted the story, at least on the surface. Joseph was so covered in mud that his dog collar was all but invisible.
When they had been taken farther back to a dry dugout suitable for interrogation, they told the truth, more or less.
The French lieutenant shook his head. “I suppose you want to take him back to Ypres now?”
Joseph smiled. “Yes, please. If you can help it would be enormously appreciated.”
The lieutenant shrugged. “Well, you can barely walk! And I don’t suppose your prisoner is very keen. We’d better have somebody drive you.” He rolled his eyes.
He must know, just as Joseph did, and any other soldier anywhere would, that war is frequent terror, occasional hideous violence, sometimes terrible pain, a lot of exhaustion and discomfort and hunger, but it is mostly boredom. It is the comradeship, the laughter, the stories and bad jokes that make it bearable, the sharing of the glorious and the absurd, the dreams and memories, and the letters from home through which one clings to sanity.
Thus it was with the help of the French lieutenant, after a meager but well-cooked meal, and armed with a new stock of tall stories, they were driven the long way back to Passchendaele. They arrived the following day, with Geddes still bound but no longer gagged since there was no necessity for it.
They thanked the French driver profusely and offered him a tin of Maconachie’s and a bar of decent chocolate, which he accepted reluctantly but with grace.
Before reporting to Colonel Hook, Joseph had a brief moment alone with Morel. There was a military police sergeant in the doorway; there would be no second chance to escape. He wanted to ask Morel what he intended to say about his original escape. Faulkner would ask, and if Morel refused to answer he would add to the original charge that of concealing the identity of his helpers who had committed a criminal act in aiding him.
It was a crime Joseph was guilty of as well.
Far more urgent, however, was the matter of what Geddes would say. It would have been pointless trying to persuade him not to betray Judith and Wil. He was already facing the firing squad. There was nothing they could offer him or threaten him with. It would depend upon what the other men said. There was a faint glimmer of hope that if they all stuck to the same story, it would be believed over Geddes’s testimony. It would be suggested that he named Judith as accomplice out of revenge, because it was Joseph who had brought him back.
But he could say none of that now. He and Morel had traveled together, shared laughter and pain. Each man’s survival had depended upon the other; but now Joseph was going to resume his duties, and Morel was facing court-martial and perhaps dishonor and death. Nothing was equal between them anymore.
“Thank you” was all Joseph could think of to say that was not condescending, false, and completely pointless. He offered his hand.
Morel took it, held it hard for a moment, then turned and walked over to the sergeant. Without looking back, he went out of the door.
Admiral Hall had given Matthew forty-eight hours before reporting back on Faulkner, and Matthew knew that they could afford no more. He toyed with the idea of simply asking Shearing why he had chosen him, but in spite of what Hall had told him of Shearing and his family, he still could not silence that last whisper of doubt. Sandwell’s words stayed with him. Whatever he learned, it must be from his own investigation, his own sources. And it must be discreet.
But all the searching he was able to do swiftly and discreetly only confirmed that Faulkner was an extreme disciplinarian, rigid in his interpretation of the law, a man who seemed unfailingly to have pushed for the letter of the law above mercy. He had served all his career in England and had, so far as was known, never seen the battlefield or had the slightest knowledge of life in the trenches, let alone death in no-man’s-land.
He seemed the worst possible choice to prosecute Cavan, Morel, and the others. If Faulkner was single and he had any weakness, or even any redeeming factors, whatever it was, Dermot Sandwell had not known of it. He believed Faulkner was invulnerable, and Shearing had agreed to him for precisely that reason.
Matthew had no time left, and now no alternative but to face Shearing.
As they sat facing each other in Shearing’s office, Matthew began without apology or preamble. “Sir, I recently had a matter which I took directly to Admiral Hall. He gave me instruction to investigate it and report to him within forty-eight hours. That time is up today, and I have no satisfactory answer. I need to know if you have any knowledge on the subject.”
Shearing put down his pen carefully and sat back, staring at Matthew. “I assume this is about your vast conspiracy again,” he said slowly, his face tight and wary.
Matthew evaded the answer. “It is about Lieutenant Colonel Faulkner, sir,” he said. “He is going to prosecute Cavan. And any of the other men, if they are found.”
Shearing’s eyes were cold. “I told you, Reavley, that matter is in hand. You are not to interfere with it. That is a direct order. If you disobey me, I shall have you transferred to the front—immediately. Do you understand me?”
Matthew felt the chill as if a window had been opened onto an ice storm. “Yes, sir. But I have been studying his past record…”
Shearing sat upright sharply. “Who gave you permission to do that? You could have jeopardized the whole
