Joseph spoke of friendship, the kind of trust where everything is shared. He saw, as he had many times before, the guilt in Matthew’s face, that he, a healthy young man, should be doing a job here at home when almost every other man he knew was either at the front or at sea. Few people realized how important his job was. Without good intelligence, quickly gathered and correctly interpreted, tens of thousands more lives would be lost. There was no glory at the end; in fact, seldom was there any recognition at all.
Joseph was simply grateful that his brother was safe. He did not lie awake at night, cold and sick with fear for him, or scan each new casualty list with his stomach churning. He knew that Matthew was responsible specifically for information concerning America, and the likelihood of their joining the Allies, as opposed to their present neutrality. He could imagine his duties might involve the decoding and interpretation of letters, telegrams, and other messages. “How’s Hannah?” he asked.
“Fine. I expect they’ll let her in to see you this afternoon or tomorrow. Not that there’s been much to see, until now. You’ve been out of it most of the time.” The anxiety returned to Matthew’s eyes.
“There are others a lot worse,” Joseph said truthfully. “I’ve a cracking headache, but nothing that won’t heal.”
Matthew’s eyes flickered to Joseph’s arm, which was heavily bandaged, and then the bedclothes carefully placed so as not to weigh on the wound in his leg. “You’ll be home a while,” he observed. His voice was thick. They both knew Joseph was fortunate not to have lost the arm. Perhaps, had Cavan been less skilled, he would have.
“Any other news?” Joseph asked. He said it quite lightly, but there was still a change in his tone, and Matthew heard it immediately. He knew what the question really meant: Was he any closer to finding the identity of the Peacemaker? That was the name they had given to the man behind the plot their father had discovered, and which had led to his murder and that of their mother.
It was Joseph who had learned, to his enduring grief, who it was who had physically caused the fatal car crash. He and Matthew together had found the treaty, unsigned as yet by the king, on the day before Britain declared war. But the man with the passion and the intellect behind it still eluded them. Their compulsion to find him was partly born out of a hunger for revenge for the deaths of John and Alys Reavley. Others, too, whom they’d cared for, had died—used, crushed, then thrown away by the Peacemaker in pursuit of his cause. They also needed to stop him before he achieved the devastating ruin he planned.
Matthew pushed his hands into his pockets, lifting his shoulders in the slightest shrug. “I haven’t found anything helpful,” he answered. “We know it isn’t Chetwin. I followed everything else we had, but in the end it led nowhere.” His lips tightened a fraction, and there was a moment’s defeat in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where else to look. I’ve been pretty busy trying to prevent the sabotage of munitions across the Atlantic. We’re desperate for supplies. The Germans are advancing along the Somme. We’ve over a million men wounded or dead. We lose ships to the U-boats pretty well every week. If it goes on like this another year, we’ll start to know real hunger, not just shortages but actual starvation. God! If we could only get America in on our side, we’d have men, guns, food!” He stopped abruptly, the light going out of his face. “But Wilson’s still dithering around like an old maid being asked to . . .”
Joseph smiled.
Matthew shrugged. “I suppose he has to,” he said resignedly. “If he brings them in too fast, he could lose his own election in the autumn, and what use would that be!”
“I know,” Joseph agreed. “Maybe while I’m at home I’ll have time to think about the Peacemaker a bit. There might be other people we haven’t considered.” He had in mind Aidan Thyer, his old master at St. John’s, and he was startled how the idea hurt. It had to be someone they knew, which made it the ultimate betrayal. It was difficult to keep the hatred out of his voice. Perhaps Matthew would take it for pain. “What else is happening in London?” he asked aloud. “Any new shows worth seeing? What about the moving pictures? What about Chaplin? Has he done anything more?”
Matthew smiled broadly. “There’s some good Keystone stuff. ‘Fatty and Mabel Adrift,’ with Roscoe Arbuckle and Mabel Normand, and a great dog called Luke. Or ‘He Did and He Didn’t,’ or ‘Love and Lobsters,’ if you prefer. They all have alternative titles.” And he proceeded to outline some of the highlights.
Joseph was still laughing when Gwen Neave returned, clean sheets folded over her arm and a roll of bandages in her other hand. She smiled at Matthew, but there was no denying her authority when she told him it was time for him to leave.
Matthew bade Joseph goodbye briefly, as if they saw each other every day. Then he walked out with a remnant of his old, slight swagger.
“My brother,” Joseph said with a sense of pride that startled him. Suddenly he was filled with well-being, as if the pain had lessened, although actually it was just as grave.
Gwen Neave set down the sheets. “He said he was up from London,” she remarked without meeting his eyes. “We’ll change those dressings first, before I put on the clean sheets.”
The implicit rebuke in her voice hurt Joseph. He cared what she thought of his brother. He wanted to tell her how important Matthew’s work was so she did not think he was one of those who evaded service, the sort of young man to whom girls on street corners gave white feathers, the mark of the coward. It was the ugliest insult possible.
She slid her arm around him and put an extra pillow behind his back so she could reach the raw, open wound where the broken ends of the bone had torn through the flesh.
“He works in London,” he said, gasping as the pain shot through him in waves. He refused to look at the wound. He still needed to tell her about Matthew.
She was not interested. She dealt with the injured, the fighting men. She worked all day and often most of the night. No call on her care or her patience was too much, no clasp of the hand or silent listening too trivial.
“He can’t tell us what he does,” he went on. “It’s secret. Not everybody can wear a uniform. . . .” He stopped abruptly, afraid to say too much. The physical pain made him feel sick.
She gave him a quick smile, understanding what he was trying to do. “He’s obviously very fond of you,” she said. “So is the other gentleman, by all appearances. He was upset you weren’t well enough to see him.”
He was startled. “Other gentleman?”
Her lips tightened. “Did they not tell you? I’m sorry. We had an emergency that evening. Rather bad. I dare say they forgot. They wouldn’t do it on purpose. It . . . it was distressing.” Her face was bleak. He did not ask what had happened. It was too easy to guess.
“Who was he?” he asked instead. “The man who came?”
“A Mr. Shanley Corcoran,” she replied. “We assured him you were doing well.”
He smiled, and a little of the tension eased out of him. Corcoran had been his father’s closest friend and all of them had loved him as long as they could remember. Of course Corcoran would come, no matter how busy he was at the Scientific Establishment. Whatever he was working on would have to wait at least an hour or two when one of his own was ill.
She eased him back as gently as she could. “I see your brother brought you your medal. That’s very fine, Captain, very fine indeed. Your sister’ll be proud of you, too.”
A young man walked briskly along Marchmont Street in London, crossed behind a taxicab, and stepped up onto the curb at the far side. He had come down from Cambridge for this meeting, as he had done at irregular intervals over the last year, and he was not looking forward to it.
Full of high ideals, quite certain of what end he was working toward, and believing he knew what the personal cost would be, he had secured his place in the Scientific Establishment in Cambridgeshire. Now it was much more complicated. There were people and emotions involved that he could not have foreseen.
This meeting would entail a certain degree of deception, at least by omission, and the young man was not looking forward to that. There were changes to his own plans of which he could say nothing at all. It would be intensely dangerous, and he strode along the footpath in the sun without any pleasure at all.
In the afternoon Hannah was allowed to come to the hospital. Joseph opened his eyes to see her standing at the end of the bed. For a moment he registered only her face with its soft lines, her eyes so like her mother’s, and the thick, fair brown hair. It was as if Alys were standing there. Then the pain in his body returned, and memory. Alys was dead.
