“Corporal Teague, one of the reasons we fight this war is because we believe in the rule of law, not of barbarism. We appreciate that you have been tested to the extreme by seeing the deaths of your comrades, some of them perhaps unnecessary deaths, but you will apologize to the court for your disrespect, and then answer Captain Reavley’s questions, should he have any for you.”
Teague controlled himself with an effort. “Sorry, sir.” His voice was strangled. He turned attentively to Joseph, his expression changing to one of utmost respect.
Joseph stood up, an overwhelming sense of belonging surging through him, and a passionate will to succeed.
The tension in the room was teetering, willing Joseph to defeat Faulkner, but the law was even more tightly around the accused men now than before Teague had spoken. But Joseph’s mind was racing with fear for Judith. Did everyone know it was she who had rescued the prisoners, just as surely as they all knew Northrup was a fool?
They would not execute Judith, but they’d send her to prison. Even after all she had done here, the years of hardship and danger, pushing herself to exhaustion, living in hunger and filth. Would prison finally destroy her? Would bitterness at the injustice of it break her spirit?
“Corporal Teague,” he began. What could he ask this man who so fiercely wanted to help?
“Yes, sir.” Teague stood smartly to attention.
“You guarded these men during their imprisonment?”
“Yes, sir.” There was disappointment in Teague’s face. He had been hoping for something brilliant.
An idea flashed in Joseph’s mind, partial, a hope only. “Did you hear them talking to one another at all?”
Teague hesitated. “Yes, sir.” His eyes were wide, tentative. He wanted to be led.
It must be done with exquisite care. Joseph breathed in and out slowly, steadying himself. “Were they always aware of you overhearing them?”
“Er…no, sir.”
Good. He dared not smile, not give the slightest encouragement. “Did you ever hear them say that they had intended to kill Major Northrup?”
“No, sir.” The disappointment was back again in Teague’s face, deeper.
Faulkner gave an exaggerated sigh of exasperation.
The silence prickled in the room.
Joseph plunged on. “Did you ever hear them say that they had wished he would listen to advice from men who were familiar with the battlefield? With horses, for example? Or the peculiar nature of the clay mud here?” Faulkner objected, but Joseph ignored him. “Or when it was more dangerous,” he said clearly, “or
Teague was following him now. “Yes, sir,” he said cautiously. “Yes, I did hear them say as it would’ve been better if he would’ve listened, but no one could make him. ’E were dead stubborn….” He blushed. “Sorry, sir. But ’e were a very proud, unbending sort of man. The ignorant ones often are.”
There were several gasps in the room, followed by a moment’s silence.
“Why did they want him to take advice, Corporal?” Joseph needed him to nail it home.
Teague blinked. “’Cos we were getting hurt bad, or killed,” he said with incomprehension at Joseph’s stupidity. “No man sees his mates getting killed for nothing an’ stands by with his fingers up his arse…sir.”
“You mean the army is built on loyalty to the men beside you, whose lives depend upon you and yours upon them, even more than upon obedience to discipline?” Joseph made it doubly clear.
“Yes, sir, I do mean that,” Teague agreed. “Being obedient isn’t enough. When you’re out there with Jerry firing everything he’s got at you, you got to be right as well.”
“Yes,” Joseph agreed. “Yes, I know. I’ve carried the bodies home.”
“Yes, sir. I know you have. And a lot o’ the ones still alive.”
Joseph thanked Teague and resumed his seat at the defense table.
Faulkner knew well enough to remain silent. His face was pale, the freckles standing out.
Hardesty asked Teague again if he was certain that he did not know who had let the prisoners go. Teague repeated that he had no idea.
Faulkner called upon the testimony of other men, particularly those who had searched for the escapees afterward, asking about how the escape could have been effected, and drew from them the answers he wanted. It required a vehicle large enough to transport all eleven men, and of course a driver. No vehicle had been reported lost or abandoned. The conclusion was obvious: An ambulance had carried away the prisoners.
The room seemed to be hotter, smaller, the walls crowding inward.
Joseph accepted the possibility that he would have to lie under oath to defend Judith. Could he? Could he swear on the Bible that he knew so well, not only in the poetic glory of the King James version but in the Hebrew and Greek and Aramaic as well?
Yes, he could. Words were strong and beautiful, but it was the reality they spoke of that mattered. What were all the scriptures in the world worth if he placed his own emotional comfort first and let Judith suffer, even be broken, for doing what she believed was essentially the right thing? And the fact that all the men of the regiment whom he knew, whose lives and dreams he shared, thought so too eased the decision. Yes, he would look Faulkner in the face, and lie to him. If he had to.
Judith was wondering the same thing, and yet it did not frighten her as much as it should have. She had known the risk when she took it, and would have done it again. It was Cavan and Morel she was afraid for, and the other ten, not herself. She had known Teague would lie about knowing who was behind the escape.
She looked at General Northrup’s face and saw the pain in it. He must be realizing now that every rank and file man in the room, every man who actually went out into the mud and death of battle, would risk his own freedom, perhaps his life, to lie for the men accused of Major Howard Northrup’s death. Could there be a loneliness, a failure more bitter?
There was a stir in the crowd to her left and automatically she turned to look. It was Richard Mason. As if he felt her gaze, he turned toward her. He must be here to report on the court-martial. He looked tired, more than physically exhausted, as if there were a weariness inside him. The ridiculous thought flashed into her mind that he had been wounded and what she saw was the debilitation of pain. But she knew that was not so. She had seen him too recently for such a wound to have been sustained and then healed enough for him to be here now.
As soon as there was a break in the proceedings she looked for him, to find him also looking for her. When they met outside the farmhouse only a few yards from other war correspondents, drivers, and witnesses, she could think of nothing to say. She knew from the fine lines in Mason’s face dragging downward, and the tiredness of his eyes, that he had lost something. Immediately her mind went back to what Joseph had said about a darkness in Mason that would prevent him from making her happy, and the coldness of that thought touched her now. Since she had seen him last, a fire had gone out of him, as if some hope or trust had been betrayed.
She was suddenly angry. All hope might be betrayed, all trust soiled, used and thrown away. It did not alter the value of all the things that were loved, or the need to go on fighting for them. What was the alternative? To deny that they were infinitely precious, whatever the cost proved to be? There was no second best, no fallback position worth having.
“Hello, Judith,” he said quietly. “Joseph is putting up a better battle than I thought he would.”
“What did you think he was going to do?” she said with unexpected bitterness. “Fold up like a deck of cards? You should know him better than that.”
“Not fight a battle he can’t win,” he replied, but he said it softly, as if it caused him pain.
She searched his face and saw not triumph or any vindication of his earlier views but a sense of loss that startled her. It seemed so immediate, as if the erosion were happening as she watched.
“Sometimes you don’t win battles,” she answered quietly, but with unwavering certainty. “But your side wins the war. People get lost, soldiers get killed. Do you only fight if you know you’ll win? That sounds like a coward to me.”
He winced. “I choose my battles,” he answered. “There are not many of us fighting my war. Every loss counts.”
“What is your war?” It was a challenge and she meant it as such. She looked at his dark face with its
