to understand. And like him or not, that man deserves pity.'
She grasped the door firmly, ready to shut it, her face suddenly still as if she regretted offering opinions to a stranger. 'Call again after dinner, if you want. I don't expect he'll come around before then, if he comes around at all.' Her voice was crisp again, businesslike. 'It won't do any good to try before that, mind!' She closed the door, leaving him standing there on the pavement.
Hamish, stirring again, said, 'If he dies, and it's proved you gave him the money that brought him to his grave, a man with your past, what do you suppose they'll do to you?'
'It will be the end of my career. If not worse.'
Hamish chuckled, a cold, bitter sound. 'But no firing squad. You remember those, now, don't you? The Army's way of doing things. A cold gray dawn before the sun rises, because no man wants to see a shameful death. That bleak hour of morning when the soul shrivels inside you and the heart has no courage and the body shrinks with terror. You remember those, don't you! A pity. I'd thought to remind you…'
But Rutledge was striding toward the Inn, head down, nearly blundering into a bicycle, ignoring the woman who hastily moved out of his path and the voice of someone saying his name. The world had narrowed down to the agony that drove him and the memories that devoured him. Back in France, back to the final horror, the disintegration of all he had been and might be, in the face of blazing guns. The machine gunner was still there, and the main assault was set for dawn. He had to be stopped before then. Rut- ledge sent his men across again, calling to them as he ran, and watched them fall, his sergeant the first to go down, watched the remnants turn and stagger back to their lines through the darkness, cursing savagely, eyes wild with pain and fury.
'It's no' the dying, it's the waste!' Corporal MacLeod screamed at him, leaping back into the trench, faces turning his way. 'If they want it taken out so badly, let them shell it!'
Rutledge, pistol in hand, shouted, 'If we don't silence it, hundreds of men will die-it's our lot coming, we can't let them walk into that!'
'I won't go back-you can shoot me here, I won't go back! I won't take another man across that line, never again, as God's my witness!'
'I tell you, there's no choice!' He looked at the mutiny in the wild eyes surrounding him, looked at the desolation of spirit in weary, stooped shoulders, and forced himself to ruthless anger: 'There's never a choice!'
'Aye, man, there's a choice.' The Corporal turned and pointed to the dead and dying, caught in a no-man's- land between the gunner and the lines. 'But that's cold-blooded murder, and I'll no' be a part of it again. Never again!'
He was tall and thin and very young, burned out by the fighting, battered and torn by too many offenses and too many retreats, by blood and terror and fear, tormented by a strong Calvinistic sense of right and wrong that somehow survived through it all. It wasn't courage he lacked; Rutledge knew him too well to think him a coward. He had quite simply broken-but others had seen it. There was nothing Rut- ledge could do for him now, too many lives were at stake to let one more stand in the way. Grief vied with anger, and neither won.
He'd had Hamish MacLeod arrested on the spot, and then he'd led the last charge out into the icy, slippery mud, challenging them to let him do it alone, and they'd followed in a straggle, and somehow the gun had been silenced, and there was nothing left afterward but to see to the firing party. Then he'd sat with Hamish throughout what was left of that long night, listening to the wind blowing snow against the huts they'd somehow rigged in the trenches. Listening to Hamish talk.
A hideously long night. It had left him drained beyond exhaustion, and at the end of it he'd said, 'I'll give you a second chance-go out there and tell them you were wrong!'
And Hamish had shaken his head, eyes dark with fear but steadfast. 'No. I haven't got any strength left. End it while I'm still a man. For God's sake, end it now!'
The shelling had started down the line when Rutledge summoned six men to form the firing party. It rocked the earth, shook men to their souls, pounding through the brain with a storm of sound until there was no thought left. He'd had to shout, had to drag them, reluctant, unwilling, through the falling snow, had to position them, and will them to do his bidding. And then he'd gone to fetch Hamish.
One last time, he'd said, 'It isn't too late, man!'
And Hamish had smiled. 'Is it my death you're fearing, then? I don't see why; they'll all die before this day's out! What's one more bloody corpse on your soul? Or do you worry I'll haunt you? Is it that?'
'Damn you! Do your duty-rejoin your men. The Sergeant's dead, they'll need you, the push will come in less than an hour!'
'But without me. I'd rather die now than go out there ever again!' He shivered, shrugging deeper into his greatcoat.
It was the darkness that blinded them, and the snow. But dawn would come soon enough, and Rutledge had no choice, the example had to be made. One way or another. He took Hamish's arm and led him up the slick, creaking steps and to the narrow, level place where men gathered before an assault.
'Do you want a blindfold?' He had had to bring his mouth to Hamish's ear to be heard. He was shaking with cold, they both were.
'No. And for the love of God, untie me!'
Rutledge hesitated, then did as he asked.
There was a rumble of voices, strangely audible below the deafness of the shelling. Watchers he couldn't see, somewhere behind the firing party. The six men didn't look around, standing close together for comfort. Rutledge fumbled in his pocket and found an envelope to mark the center of Hamish's breast, moving by rote, not thinking at all. He pinned it to the man's coat, looked into those steady eyes a last time, then stepped away.
He could hear Hamish praying, breathless words, and then a girl's name. Rutledge raised his hand, dropped it sharply. There was an instant in which he thought the men wouldn't obey him, relief leaping fiercely through him, and then the guns blazed, too bright in the darkness and the snow. He turned, looked for Hamish. For a moment he could see nothing. And then he found the dark, huddled body. He was on the ground.
Rutledge reached him in two swift strides, barely aware of the shifting of the noises around him. The firing party had melted away quickly, awkward and ashamed. Kneeling, he could see that in spite of the white square on the man's breast, the shots had not entirely found their mark. Hamish was bleeding heavily, and still alive. Blood leaked from his mouth as he tried to speak, eyes dark pools in his white, strained face, agony written in the depths, begging.
The shelling was coming closer-no, the Germans were responding, rapidly shifting their range, some falling short. But Rutledge knelt there in the dirty snow, trying to find the words to ask forgiveness. Hamish's hand clutched at his arm, a death grip, and the eyes begged, without mercy for either of them.
Rutledge drew his pistol, placed it at Hamish's temple, and he could have sworn that the grimacing lips tried to smile. The fallen man never spoke, and yet inside Rutledge's skull Hamish was screaming, 'End it! For pity's sake!'
The pistol roared, the smell of the powder and blood enveloping Rutledge. The pleading eyes widened and then went dark, still, empty. Accusing.
And the next German shell exploded in a torrent of heat and light, searing his sight before the thick, viscous, unspeakable mud rose up like a tidal wave to engulf him. Rutledge's last coherent thought as he was swallowed into black, smothering eternity was, 'Direct hit-Oh, God, if only-a little sooner-it would have been over for both of us-' And afterward-afterward, London had given him a bloody medal
10
It was an hour or more later that Rutledge walked down the stairs to the dining room for his lunch. He wasn't sure how he had reached the Inn, how he'd made it to his room, whom he might have encountered on the way. It had been the worst flash of memory he'd suffered since he left the hospital, and it had unnerved him, shaken his fragile grip on stability. But as the doctor had promised him, in the end it had passed, leaving him very tired, very empty.
Bracing himself as he opened the French doors, he was prepared for Redfern to comment, or worse still, for the other diners to stare at him in speculation and disgust. But the room was nearly empty, and Redfern had a
