Shoulder the Sky wwi-2

by Anne Perry

  “You mean underground!” Again his belief was stretched to snapping.

  Her face was twisted with contempt. “Yes, of course. You didn’t think he went on top, did you?”

  “He was back here from eastward somewhere,” he asked, trying to piece it together in his mind.

  “That’s right. The sappers were working along at Hill Sixty. Major Wetherall and his men. Prentice went that way with them.”

  “Prentice went with Major Wetherall?”

  “Yes.” She finished the last bandage. “I don’t know how Major Wetherall could stand him, but he can’t have minded or he’d have got rid of him,” she said. “Sappers don’t have to put up with anybody they don’t want to. It’s pretty dangerous, with explosions, cave-ins, water, and all that.” There was admiration in her now, an utterly different tone in her voice, a softness.

  Joseph found himself smiling. He knew that what Sam did was dangerous, and vital. If a shell landed anywhere along the tunnel, they could be buried alive, crushed by falling earth, or perhaps worse, imprisoned and left to suffocate. And there was the moral hell of getting so close to the German trenches that you could hear the men talking to each other, the laughter and jokes, the occasional singing, all the daily sounds of life far from home and in intense danger. You could sense the comradeship, the grief for loss, the pain, the loneliness, the whisper of fear or guilt, the hundreds of small details that showed they were men exactly like yourselves, and most of them nineteen or twenty years old as well.

  They listened to overhear information. Sometimes they planted explosives to blow up the trench itself. More than once they accidentally broke in on an enemy sap and found themselves face-to-face with Germans doing exactly the same job, with the same fears and the same guilts. Joseph had sat listening to them, because listening was all he could do to help, and his admiration for them was intense. But there was still a sweetness seeing it in someone else. “Thank you,” he said aloud. “Who would know what Prentice actually did do, and what was said, who he finally went with?”

  “You could try Corporal Gee. Barshey Gee,” she added, knowing how many Gees there were in the regiment.

  He thanked her and went in the darkening air, now louder with gunfire, to look for Barshey Gee.

  The gunfire increased, heavy artillery going on both sides. He moved from one stretch of trench to another, past men crouched over machine guns, others waiting, rifle in hand, in case there was a German raiding party coming. Eyes scanned the alternate glare and darkness of no-man’s-land. It was easy to mistake the haggard outline of a tree stump for that of a man.

  Then there was a bad hit at Hill 62, and he forgot Barshey Gee, Prentice, or anything else while he helped wounded men, mostly carrying them on his back. No one could carry a six-foot stretcher around the corners without tipping it over.

  By midnight it eased off for a while, then there was another flurry, and the expected raiding party came. Star shells lit the sky and the running figures were momentarily silhouetted black. Against the glare bullets ricocheted everywhere. Several men fell, but the attack was beaten off. Two prisoners were taken, white-faced, stiff-lipped, only slightly injured. They looked to be about twenty, fair-haired and fair-skinned. Joseph was sent to talk to them, because of his fluent German, but he learned nothing except their names and regiment. It was all he expected. He would have both despised and pitied a man who gave him more.

  It was close to the spring dawn when he finally caught up with Barshey, who was sitting on an empty ammunition crate smoking a Woodbine, oblivious of the blood crusting on his cheek and down his left arm.

  “Hello, Reverend,” he said cheerfully. “We won that one, Oi think.”

  “Raids are always rough on whoever crosses no-man’s-land,” Joseph agreed, squatting on his heels opposite him.

  “Want one?” Barshey offered him a Woodbine.

  “No thanks,” Joseph declined. “Do you remember the raid the night Prentice was killed?”

  “Who’s Prentice?”

  “The war correspondent.”

  “Oh, him!” Barshey shrugged. “Rotten little sod. Yes, of course Oi remember it. He didn’t come back. They say he got drowned. Shouldn’t ever have gone, stupid bastard.” He drew in deeply. “Oi told him that, but he was hell-bent on it. He’s been up the saps with Major Wetherall’s men and thought he was a soldier.” His lip curled in contempt. “Full of what he was going to write about it. Tell ’em all at home everything they don’t want to know. Oi moight’ve pushed him in a crater meself, if Oi’d ’a thought of it.”

  “I don’t suppose you know who did?” Joseph said casually.

  “No oidea.”

  Barshey stubbed out his Woodbine and lit another, cupping his hand around the match from habit, even though they were well behind the lines now. “Didn’t you and Major Wetherall go out and look for some o’ them as moight be still alive? You brought Captain Hughes back, didn’t you? He didn’t make it.” He shook his head and his voice dropped. “Pity. He was a good man, even though he was Welsh.”

  “Yes. We found Prentice’s body, too.” Joseph said nothing about Hughes, even to defend the Welsh. That was Isobel’s husband, and losing him still hurt.

  Barshey shrugged. “Don’t know whoi you bothered risking your neck for that one. He was dead anyway. No point, really.”

  “I’d have fetched him if he’d been anyone else,” Joseph said.

  Barshey grinned suddenly. “Oi reckon you’re a fool, Cap’n, but it’s a sort o’ comfort. Oi’d loike to think you’d come for me, whether Oi were any good or not. Because sometimes Oi think Oi’m foine, but other days Oi wake up with dead Jerries in moi ’ead, and Oi think of their woives and mothers, and that maybe they’re the ones Oi can hear singing sometimes? Or the ones that left the sausages out there for us, or that yell out asking for the football scores, an’ Oi can’t stand it. Oi need to think there’s someone that’d come for me, no matter what.” He was still smiling, but his eyes were brilliant, hurting with the intensity of his need.

  “Don’t think it,” Joseph said softly. “You can be sure I would.”

  Barshey nodded, blinking a little. He looked down and squinted into the empty Woodbine packet to hide his feelings, not because he wanted another cigarette. “You know if you want to find out what happened to the stupid bastard, you should ask Major Wetherall. He was with him up the saps ’cos Prentice was bragging about it. Reckoned Wetherall thought he was some kind of soldier. Load of rubbish, if you ask me. Wetherall despoised him. But he came from the saps over to us during the raid, roight across no-man’s-land. More guts than any other man Oi know. He might’ve seen the stupid sod fall in a crater.”

  Joseph was cold in the pit of his stomach. “Major Wetherall came across no-man’s-land during the raid?”

  Barshey smiled. “Loike Oi said, he’s one on his own.”

  It was the one answer Joseph had not thought of: any of the other sappers, Corliss’s friends—but not Sam!

  “You all roight, Cap’n?” Barshey said gently. “You look pretty bad. You didn’t get hit, did you?”

  “Hit?” Joseph said stupidly.

  “Did you get hit—that last raid?” Barshey repeated carefully, searching Joseph’s face. “You all roight? You look koind o’ sick.”

  “Just bruised,” Joseph replied. “Bruised inside, I think.”

  “Hurts, doesn’t it,” Barshey said sympathetically, even though he was not sure what he was referring to.

  “Yes,” Joseph agreed. “Yes, it hurts.” He wished now that he had taken Sam’s advice and not looked. He did not want to know, but you cannot undo knowledge. He knew who had killed Eldon Prentice. Thinking of Corliss still waiting to know if he was going to face the firing squad, perhaps it was not difficult to understand why. Maybe he should have known from the beginning. But he could not let it go just because it wounded him too deeply to deal with the pain of it.

  There was no use hesitating. He would like to have avoided faci
ng it altogether, but he knew that was not possible. Scruby Andrews’s words were in his head, and the knowledge of the truth of them would not leave him. It would not now, and he knew it would not later.

  At stand-to, Sam would be at his usual place. Breakfast was not the time for such a confrontation, and straight afterward they would both be occupied with other duties. It must be before. There was no choice but to waken Sam now.

  He walked slowly along the damp morning earth. The trench walls were studded with beetles. A rat ambled away, unconcerned. He went up the steps and along the supply trench. It was eerily silent just at the moment. Both sides had stopped shooting. He could hear a bird singing somewhere high above in the morning sky of soft, unblemished blue.

  He had walked this stretch of Paradise Alley so often he knew every bend and dip in the ground, where the posts and the hollows were. Every other time it had been with a sense of expectancy, even pleasure. Now he had to force himself because delay was pointless. It would change nothing.

  He reached Sam’s dugout and stopped. Every scar and nail hole on the wooden surround was familiar. There was nothing on which to knock, but one did not walk into a man’s living quarters at this hour without making some attempt at courtesy.

  “Sam!” His voice was rough, as if his throat were dry. “Sam!”

  There was silence. Was he relieved or angry that he had to put it off after all? Perhaps Sam was at a very early breakfast? No. Stand-to had not been called yet. Maybe he was asleep. “Sam!” he shouted.

  A tousled fair head appeared through the gap in the sacking. “You’re looking for Major Wetherall? Sorry. He was transferred. Some sort of emergency along the line. No idea where.”

  Joseph stared at him. He could hardly grasp that this strange, blank-faced man was in Sam’s dugout. Where were all Sam’s things? How could this happen without warning?

  The man blinked, recognized Joseph’s insignia of rank and calling.

  “Sorry, Chaplain. Not bad news for him, I hope?”

  “No,” Joseph said slowly. He took a breath. “No. No news at all, at least not now. Thank you.” He turned away, tripping over a rut in the uneven ground. This was only a respite, it changed nothing, but for the moment he did not have to face Sam and deliberately destroy the friendship that was his lifeline to the laughter, the warmth of human touch, the hand that reached out and grasped his in the inner darkness of this seemingly universal destruction.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  The same evening as Joseph was talking to Marie O’Day, Judith was sitting in the kitchen of the château. She had been given an excellent dinner, but separately from Cullingford and the senior French officers with whom he had been conferring. She ate the last of the crusty bread, which was still warm, and the fresh Brie, finished her wine, then thanked the cook with an enthusiasm and a gratitude she did not have to feign.

  Outside in the garden afterward in the balmy evening under the trees she could hear birdsong and smell the damp earth. To the north the glare of shells was marked against the evening darkness, and the sound grew louder as the firing increased.

  Cullingford found her as the last light was fading in the sky. The heavy trusses of the lilac seemed more shadow than substance but the perfume was heady, snaring the senses and wrapping one around.

  “Did they give you a good dinner?” he asked quite casually.

  She turned in surprise. He was a couple of yards away and she had not heard his feet on the soft grass. “Yes, thank you. Best meal I’ve had in . . . since dining with Mrs. Prentice, actually,”

  “What about with your brother, Matthew?” He smiled, his face toward the light, but there was no ease in it, and she thought no happiness. Was it because she had reminded him of his sister, and Eldon Prentice’s death?

  “Honestly, I hardly remember what we ate,” she admitted. She wanted to ask him if everything was all right, but that would have been intrusive.

  Perhaps he saw it in her face. He put his hands in his pockets, something she had learned he did when he was thinking deeply, and oblivious of his surroundings. It was relaxed, oddly intimate. He started to walk, quite slowly, and she fell into step beside him. Apart from the sound of guns in the distance, they could have been in an English garden, with fields of corn beyond the hedges.

  “I have been thinking about what you told me of your father’s death,” he said, pulling a pipe out of his pocket and stuffing it with tobacco. “June twenty-eighth last year. And you said it was because he had discovered a conspiracy, but you didn’t tell me much more. You mentioned your brother’s friend who had actually caused the crash, but you said very little of the man behind it.” He turned to look at her. “He’s still free, isn’t he? And with whatever power and liberty he had before?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was tight. The anger and the pain were still there, even the sense of surprise because everything that gave her life sense and value had been destroyed in one act. Perhaps she had deliberately sealed over some of the grieving, making herself too busy to allow it, but it was far from finished. She wanted to share it with Cullingford. He understood loneliness, emotions of horror and loss that form the shape of your mind, so powerful they were beyond control, deeper than words, consuming and too intimate to explain to those who had never felt such things themselves.

  He had told his wife nothing of the reality of his own life here in Flanders: the daily, weekly risks, judgments, and duties that were his identity. Then what did they speak of? Household matters, mutual acquaintances, the weather? All that was passion and laughter and pain went unsaid, because she did not know his world, and he did not know hers? The loneliness of not knowing was sometimes like a weight crushing out the power to breathe.

  “Yes,” she said again, aware that he was watching her intently, and with a hunger in his eyes that he could not know she read. She did not look at him, but it made no difference; his face was in her mind exactly as if she did, whether first thing on waking or last thing before falling asleep.

  “And he won’t stop, just because he failed the first time,” she went on. “Matthew thinks he could be attempting to destroy morale at home to damage recruiting, and prevent Kitchener from raising a new army.” Then she remembered what Belinda had said about Prentice writing articles that would tell the truth about pointless deaths, and how it would affect those who were considering joining up. Perhaps Cullingford was aware of that. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, aware of how family loyalty must tear at him, pity for everything that was too late now. “I don’t suppose Prentice realized what he was doing with his articles. And it would have been censored anyway.”

  “My dear, I knew Eldon,” he said gently. “He would not have taken the pains to find out. Too many men are dying now for us to pretend they were all good. That is a facet of decency that belongs to peacetime. Those of us who don’t have to make decisions can indulge in dreams, but those of us who do cannot afford to. Please tell me what you know about this . . . creator of peace, at the price of slavery and dishonor,” he asked.

  In the growing dark she told him, as they walked along the paths which were now a little wild, since the gardening boys had been called up to the war. The unheeding earth had blossomed with its usual verdure as if oblivious that only miles away it was being poisoned and laid waste.

  She had already told him something of the events themselves, and the search afterward as the fragments of meaning had come together, until finally, with Europe on the brink of war, they had discovered the conspiracy itself.

  “Your father was a brave man,” he said quietly when she had finished. “I wish I could have known him.”

  She was furious with herself because the tears filled her eyes and her voice choked when she tried to speak.

  “I’m sorry,” he said with deep contrition. He put his pipe away and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. He handed it to her.

  She took it, wiped her eyes, which was almost useless, then blew her nose fiercely. She stood holdi
ng the handkerchief. She could hardly give it back to him now.

  “I think Eldon may have been involved in the same thing,” he said thoughtfully. There was immense sadness in his face, but he did not flinch away from the knowledge. “I’ve thought about some of the things he said to me last time I was on leave. He boasted about changing things. He often did that, as young men will, but he seemed surer of himself than before, as if he were speaking of something specific.”

  She said nothing.

  He pulled on his pipe slowly and let out the smoke. She could smell it in the damp air.

  “We had one of the stupid arguments we had so often. He hated the army and everything to do with militarism, as he called it. He said there was a better way than violence, way of peace and government that would supersede petty nationalism, and that I was fast becoming an anachronism, and I’d see!” He was standing still, the pipe in his hand almost as if he were not quite sure what to do with it. The light reflected on the polished wood of the bowl. “I thought he was just bragging at the time, but looking back, I think he knew what he was saying.”

  She turned to look at him, and he averted his eyes, even though in the twilight she could barely have read the expression in them. She knew it was shame, because he read Prentice so easily, the shallow and the vulnerable in him, the child that had needed to impress, and the man who had embraced an evil to do so, perhaps without recognizing it. She looked back at the trees against the sky, now little more than shadows in the afterglow.

  “I saw photographs of him,” she said quietly. “At a regatta. You were there. He looked young and eager, sort of excited, as if everything good lay ahead of him. I suppose there are thousands of young men like that. People must look at those pictures now, and . . .” She could not go on. She was hurting both of them, and it was pointless.

  He put out his hand and touched her arm, his fingers strong, a steadying grip, just for a moment, then withdrawn again.

  “There was a young woman as well,” she said, to fill the silence.