At Some Disputed Barricade wwi-4

by Anne Perry

  “How terrible,” Morel had said sarcastically. “Good men shot.”

  Joseph had floundered, seeking something to say, a core of belief within himself to cling to and give him fire and conviction. He had found nothing sure enough, and Morel knew it as much as he did. He had failed.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see a man smiling at him. He was tall and dark with a long nose and a mercurial, ironic laughter in his eyes. Just now there was a strange gentleness in him, an instant of naked emotion.

  “Sam?” Joseph’s voice was hoarse. Amazement and joy welled up inside him. It was Sam, wasn’t it? Sam Wetherall, whose grave he had wept over, even though he knew it was not his friend’s body in it, but someone else’s wearing his tags. They had arranged it. It had been the only answer to Prentice’s death and the knowledge afterward.

  Sam grinned. “You look like hell, Joe. But it’s still good to see you. Don’t make a fuss.”

  Joseph’s heart raced with fear, hope, intense, pounding relief. There was no question anymore. Sam was alive. “What are you doing here?” He managed the words although his lips were dry and his throat tight. Sam was not in uniform. “Are you on leave?” Surely he could not have left the army, even in his new identity, not deserted? It wasn’t possible, not the Sam he knew. He realized he was shaking with fear. His belief in Sam was one of the few certainties he relied on. He did not want it tested.

  Sam eased himself into the stool beside him. “Took a leaf out of your brother’s book,” he said very quietly.

  Joseph stared at him, struggling to understand. Intelligence? But Sam was a sapper, one of those who dug under the enemy lines, listened, set mines, blew up defenses. Perhaps the tight spaces and the claustrophobia had gotten to him at last. It got to most men, sooner or later. Too many were buried alive in collapses, drowned in the mud and debris, crushed by falls.

  He found himself smiling simply because Sam was alive. Memories poured back of conversations they had had on the line in 1915, when it had all been so new. They had thought then that the war wouldn’t last a year. It had been talk of glory, of heroism and sacrifice. Now it was just death, endlessly and pointlessly ever more death. The soldiers were even younger.

  “Here in Paris?” he asked aloud, his voice almost level.

  “Mostly.” Sam’s eyes were far away for a moment. “How’s the regiment?” He did not ask for anyone by name, but Joseph thought of the men Sam had known who were dead now. There was no need to tell him.

  Sam interrupted his efforts to concoct a good answer. “You were never a good liar, Joe. Who’s gone? Everyone?”

  “No!” Joseph denied too quickly, thinking of those whose comradeship had been so precious. “Only a few: Tucky Nunn, Eardslie, Chicken Hagger, Lanty and Bibby Nunn both, Doughy Ward, both the Arnold brothers.”

  Sam’s hand tightened on his arm. He said nothing. He had never wasted words.

  The barman poured him some absinthe and he ignored it.

  “I’m looking for Punch Fuller,” Joseph said quietly.

  “Deserted?” Sam said with slight surprise. “Poor sod. Is that really the best use they can find for you, to send you to Paris after the poor devils that reached the end of the line?” He frowned. “If he’s really cut and run, Joe, there’s no point in finding him. He’s a casualty of war. You can’t save him.”

  “No, he’s not a deserter,” Joseph said slowly. Perhaps he should not tell Sam about it, but he knew he was going to. He had no idea what Sam had done in the dreadful years since they had parted, just before Sam went over the top that day in spring of 1915. But he was the same man with whom he had shared the chocolate biscuits, sitting in the dugout, and told stories of the laughter and the memories that mattered, of the England they loved and the past that was slipping a little further away each day.

  Sam was waiting, watching him. His face was leaner than before, more deeply lined. Joseph could barely even guess at the pain losing his identity must have caused him, hollowing out places of loneliness, character, and grief he could not imagine. He could never return to England, the familiar hills and fields, the villages, the rhythm and music of speech, the common history that framed even the simplest things.

  Had Joseph been wrong to offer that way out? He had so desperately wanted Sam to live, and the decision had seemed right at the time, the only thing possible.

  “We had an incompetent officer shot,” he said aloud, looking at Sam again. “It might have passed off without any fuss, considering the overall losses, but another damn war correspondent saw it and left me no way out. The man’s father is a general, and he’s determined to see justice done and his son’s good name reinstated, and of course whoever murdered him tried for it, and face the firing squad.”

  “What has Punch Fuller got to do with it? Don’t say you’re playing detective again, Joe!”

  “Not willingly,” Joseph answered, more memories almost drowning him. If he had been wiser last time, Sam would still be in the British Army, under his own name, and if he survived the war, free to go home to his brother.

  Sam saw it in his eyes. He smiled. “Don’t blame yourself for being who you are, Joe. I don’t. I never wanted you to betray yourself, and that’s what it would have been.”

  “I don’t want to know who killed Northrup,” Joseph retorted. “And I already know why. The man was a fool, and dangerous.”

  “All this old question of loyalty,” Sam said softly. “Do you violate the old standards to save your friends? Or do you keep your conscience, and let them die?”

  “I used to think I was sure of lots of things,” Joseph answered ruefully. “Now I’m only sure of the values of humanity, of courage and honor and pity. Keep your word whatever it costs. Face forward, even if you’re so terrified your guts turn to water. Help someone if you can, anyone, doesn’t matter who they are or what you think they’ve done. Don’t think, just help the pain. Stay with them, don’t let go. Don’t judge.”

  Sam’s eyes were very gentle.

  “And what happens if you go back without finding Punch Fuller?” he asked.

  “General Northrup will go on looking for whoever killed his son, and trying to prove it was murder, until one day he finds out his son was an ass and the men hated him. Then he’ll pin the blame on someone and his vengeance will be satisfied.”

  “You mean he’ll settle for lies as long as he extracts the solution he wants?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I assume you’ve already considered blaming someone who’s dead?” Sam asked. “God knows, there must be enough of them.”

  Joseph smiled, aware of the irony. “Yes, I thought of it. But I wouldn’t have much chance of getting away with it if I don’t have any idea what actually happened. Punch Fuller might be able to tell me that.”

  Sam rolled his eyes very slightly. “Come on, Joe! If he does, it’ll be in the nature of a confession! You won’t be able to use it. For God’s sake, have a little sense!”

  “I won’t be able to use it to prove anything,” Joseph agreed with a pained smile. “But then I really don’t want to!”

  Sam’s eyebrows rose.

  “Don’t you? You’ll let them get away with murdering an officer because they think he’s incompetent! God, you have changed!”

  Joseph realized with a sense of amazement that in spite of the mockery, the chaffing, and the laughter, Sam wanted Joseph to cling to his belief. That he didn’t share it, or professed not to, was irrelevant. Perhaps as long as Joseph did, Sam felt there was something certain. As a last resort, something to trust. When everything else was destroyed, then perhaps it would stand.

  Maybe that was what a chaplain’s job really was—not to teach others to believe, but to be seen to believe oneself. To stand not so much for a specific faith, but for the endurance of faith, for its power to outlast everything else. He must do it now, a gift for Sam, after all he had taken away from him.

  “It’s a matter of weighing one loyalty a
gainst another,” he began delicately. “It’s a matter of the men’s loyalty to each other, after three years in the trenches living together, and before this is over, dying together. Weigh that against Northrup’s answering for the truth of his incompetence, and I’m not so certain whoever did it was wrong that I’d be willing to force the issue and see them hang for it. Especially now. You may not know it here in Paris, but the whole of the British line is too close to mutiny to stomach a glaring injustice like that. I don’t know if I’m right, Sam. There are a lot of things I don’t feel so sure of that I’d ask another man to pay the price of it. I’ll pay it myself. I want to know what happened. When I do, I’ll go back and tell Colonel Hook—and General Northrup, if he wants to know.”

  “Are you sure the dead officer was an idiot, more than most?” Sam asked thoughtfully.

  “I am. I saw some of his handiwork myself. Nigel Eardslie died as a result of it. Edgar Morel is ready to lead a mutiny, I think.”

  Sam smiled and his eyes were surprisingly bright. “I apologize. You haven’t changed. Just a little more complex, that’s all. You’ll make a regular Jesuit, if you survive the war.”

  “Jesuits are Catholic,” Joseph pointed out, but a tiny flicker of warmth was back inside him. “Can you help me find Punch Fuller? You must know Paris a hell of a lot better than I do. Have you got people I can ask? I haven’t much longer to look.”

  Sam sat still for several moments before he answered. “Yes, there’s someone I can ask,” he said at last. “If I tell her you need to know for a good reason, she’ll help. But you’ll have to trust me, Joe. No questions, nothing reported to anyone, not to prove a point, not even to save a man’s life. There are far more lives hanging on it. Your word?”

  “My word,” Joseph agreed, holding Sam’s gaze.

  Sam considered the absinthe for a moment, and decided against it. He put a few coins on the counter, then stood up, and Joseph followed him out of the club and up the narrow steps into the street. It was dark and still raining very slightly, a sort of drifting mist that covered everything with a sheen that gleamed bright and wet in the few lights that were still on.

  “You all right to walk?” Sam asked quietly. “It’s mostly alleys. We need to cross the river.”

  “Of course I’m all right to walk!” Joseph said tartly, but without ill temper. “Carry you, if you need it!”

  “We have some problems,” Sam said cheerfully, his voice on the edge of laughter in the dark. “Don’t always know who our friends are. Keep up, and say nothing.”

  They went together through the old part of the city, along alleys and byways that predated Napoleon’s grand redesign—places that echoed to the footsteps of revolutionaries, and had run with blood then. Now they held the furtive whispers of different secrets, fears, and griefs.

  They crossed the river to the Île de la Cité. The rain had eased, and the water glistened in the faint moonlight. A string of barges was black on its shining surface. Everything was wet. A thin strain of a saxophone drifted and was lost. Someone laughed.

  Sam spoke to someone, their voice murmuring, and a few minutes later they crossed the river at the far side onto the left bank. There were more whispered exchanges with people, sometimes no more than a few words.

  It must have been after two in the morning when at last Sam led the way down steep flagged steps into a cellar. One flame burned in a glass lamp, leaving most of the room in shadows.

  “Monique?” he said in little more than a whisper.

  She answered him in French, only one word to acknowledge that she was there. Joseph, straining his eyes to discern through the shadows, was certain there was at least one more person there.

  “We need to find a British soldier,” Sam told the woman and whoever it was beside her. “This is Chaplain Joseph Reavley. I’ve known him since ’fifteen. You can trust him.”

  “Deserter?” Monique asked. “If so, I’m surprised you came. I can’t do that, and you know it. Not when he has information about German plans. Sapper, is he?”

  Joseph drew in his breath to speak, then remembered he had promised Sam to remain silent.

  “Knows the truth of an execution,” Sam replied. “Wants to avoid the wrong man going to the firing squad. Better right now if no one does. Man from a Cambridgeshire regiment—name of Punch Fuller. On leave in Paris right now.”

  The woman turned to look very carefully at Joseph, moving the light closer, studying his face. He did not avert his gaze but looked back at her. She was beautiful, in a soft, intense way, with a strong nose, wide, gentle mouth. Her cloud of dark hair accentuated the pallor of her skin and the shadows around her eyes.

  She turned back to Sam. “You swear for him?”

  Sam did not hesitate. “Yes.”

  Monique turned to the man beside her and for a moment the light swayed a little toward him. Joseph had a glimpse of wide, light gray eyes and a thin face of extraordinary intelligence; then Monique moved the light away and everything became indistinct again.

  “If he is still in Paris, we’ll find him,” Monique answered. “Have lunch in the Café Parnasse at one o’clock.”

  Sam thanked her and took Joseph by the elbow, leading him back up the steps into the street again. “Where are you staying?” he asked.

  Joseph told him.

  “I’ll take you back close enough for you to find your way. The Café Parnasse is in the Rue Mazarin, near the river. Be there. That’s the best I can do for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sam did not ask him what he would do if he discovered Punch Fuller was involved with the murder of Northrup. It was a delicate balance between them, understood that even if he were, Joseph would not instigate any court-martial that involved him. The success of the intelligence network for which Sam worked depended upon freedom of information, and trust that it was never used for police work, for private gain, or for vengeance.

  From the very little Sam had said, Joseph assumed that what they dealt in was information about German troop movements. Sam had made a laughing reference to carrier pigeons, and Joseph knew their use in war. He could only imagine the courage and patience of scores of men and women posted all over Europe watching, listening, making notes, and risking their lives to report everything to one source, here in Paris, where it could be collated to form a picture.

  They walked together speaking little. There was too much to say, and too little time even to begin. Perhaps most of it they already understood, and the rest did not matter tonight. Facts, details were irrelevant. They had the same understanding of the enormity of the change since the comparative innocence of the time when they had fought in the same trench, side by side.

  Joseph asked a few questions about Paris, although nothing that could be secret; he simply wanted to picture Sam’s life.

  “Do you get reasonable food?”

  Sam shrugged. “Most of the time. Better than you do! I’d back any Frenchman alive against an army cook, any day of my life!”

  Joseph smiled, but he heard the moment of hollowness in Sam’s voice. He remembered the chocolate biscuits Sam’s brother had sent, and the rotten, scalding hot tea.

  “It’s important work,” he said, then wondered if it sounded condescending. “And dangerous. It must be hard to know who you can trust. At least I know which way the enemy is.” Then he wished he had not said that, either. The old comradeship was so precious that the memory of it now seemed almost like golden days, and yet those days had frequently been nightmare awful.

  “It’s which way he’s going next we’re working on,” Sam said drily. “It’s a sort of mental puzzle putting the pieces together. There are some decent chaps, and women, too. Different kind of courage. Paris isn’t home, but it has charm, like a beautiful woman who falls ill. It’s worth fighting to see her recover, get back the color and the wit again, to see her dress with style.”

  “See you in the Café Parnasse, after the war!” Joseph said impulsively.

  Sam sla
pped Joseph on the shoulder, gently. “Done!” he agreed. “First anniversary.”

  They came within sight of Joseph’s lodging. Sam gave a small salute, a smile, and without any more words he was gone into the shadows. The night was empty again, the warmth and the safety of it gone.

  Joseph went to his room. The chill in his flesh—into the bones—had nothing to do with the weather, or even his tiredness: It was a knowledge of loss.

  Punch Fuller was in the Café Parnasse at one o’clock. He was flirting shamelessly with a French girl who was perhaps no more than fourteen, a beautiful, self-possessed child-woman with a magnificent head of curly hair. She was very patient with him, brushing him off with easy skill.

  “Hello, Punch,” Joseph said when he was almost beside him. “May I have soup and bread, please, mademoiselle?” He sat down on the seat next to Punch.

  Punch was startled. “Hello, Chaplain! You come to keep me out of the paths of sin? That’s downright unsporting of you.” He looked at Joseph narrowly to see if he understood that it was a politely worded request to go away.

  Joseph smiled. “I didn’t find you by accident, Punch. Colonel Hook sent me.”

  Punch froze, not even turning his head toward Joseph. He was twenty-three, plain with his hooked nose and sharp chin, but quick-witted and an easy, loyal friend. “Whoi’s that then?” he said guardedly.

  Joseph had intended to be direct; he needed Punch to believe him. “Because Major Northrup’s father, General Northrup, is tearing the regiment apart determined to find out who shot his son,” he replied.

  “Oi got no oidea who that’d be, sir,” Punch said immediately.

  “No, of course not,” Joseph agreed. “Nor have I. Not sure that I really want to. The man was an ass. But the thing is, the general isn’t going to go away until he has an answer, even if it’s a wrong one, and some innocent man ends up before a firing squad.”

  Punch turned to look at him, his blue eyes troubled. “So what is it you reckon Oi can do about that then, sir?” The suspicion was sharp in his face that Joseph was trying to manipulate him into giving someone away.