At Some Disputed Barricade wwi-4

by Anne Perry

  Faulkner’s face was burning with rage, but General Hardesty stepped in before he could speak.

  “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 less, to go over into no-man’s-land to try to recover wounded or dead? Or even the lie of poison gas. Or sniper fire, visibility, any of the things the rest of us have learned by experience over the years.”

  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 cau
sed 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 powerful lines—the shadowed eyes, the emotions within—and she remembered the joy and compassion they had shared. And she remembered how he had kissed her, as if she could smell the warmth of his skin now, and taste him. She had given him more of herself than she had realized.

  “What is your war?” she repeated. “What is it you’re fighting for? Or have you given up?”

  “Sanity,” he replied, the hurt in his eyes deep. “And yes, I probably have given up. I ought to. Joseph can’t get these men off, and if he isn’t careful they’ll take you down with them as well.”

  She felt a sharp grip of fear, like a cramp in the stomach. Would Mason betray her, thinking the truth worth more than individual loss? Exactly what did he believe in? Had she ever known, really? She found herself staring at him, searching, trying to dig deeper than she had any right to, tear off the protecting mask and understand the dreams and the pain underneath.

  “Judith!” he said desperately.

  What did he want? Trust? She could not give that to him. There was a dark, unknown void inside him that could swallow the things she loved: Joseph, Wil Sloan, Cavan, the men she had known as friends all these years, the men who trusted her. If she let them down there would be nothing left of herself, either.

  She turned away from Mason, tears stinging her eyes. There was not anything to say, nothing words could capture or enfold. Either he understood already, or it was too late.

  He watched her go with a sense of a door having been closed against him, shutting him out. The blow was not unexpected. He had known she helped the prisoners escape, and he was exasperated with her but not surprised. It was the sort of insane, thoughtless, idealistic thing she would do. She still had the same heroic ideals that the young men had had who went to war three years ago, believing it was glorious. Most of them were dead now, or crippled, shell-shocked, disillusioned. Rupert Brooke, the epitome of them all, the golden poet, had died of blood poisoning before the battle of Gallipoli. The poetry now was of realism, of destruction, of anger and loss. Only dreamers like Judith refused to grow up, clinging to a paper-thin mirage.

  And Joseph, of course, trying to defend the morally just and legally indefensible! He would go down with it, like the captain of a sinking ship.

  So why did Mason, standing in the sun watching Judith’s gaunt, square shoulders and the light on her hair, feel as if he had been shut out of Paradise? The pain of it caught him by surprise, taking his breath away, taking his hopes, and he was naked without them.

  Early in the afternoon Faulkner closed his case for the prosecution. It was legally perfect, and he knew it. There was no doubt that the twelve men accused had mutinied, regardless of their motives, and that as a result of their act Major Howard Northrup had been shot by one of them, and it could not have been accidental. Which one had fired the bullet that killed him was immaterial to the charge. He turned to Joseph, inviting him to attempt a defense.

  Joseph stood up, forcing himself to keep calm, to try to look as if he knew what he was doing. This was his last chance.

  Hardesty asked him the usual questions. Did the accused wish to testify in their own behalf? Did they wish to call any witnesses?

  “Two of the accused will testify on behalf of them all, sir,” Joseph replied. “And we have two witnesses.” Please God this was the right decision.

  He had racked his brain, considered every possibility both likely and unlikely. He had prayed about it, but no sense of ease came to still the gnawing doubts in his mind or comfort any of the fear. If that was a sign the decision was wrong, that left him with no answer at all. Every other alternative was worse.

  Hardesty nodded grimly. “Very well. Proceed, Captain Reavley.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He called Cavan first.

  Cavan swore to his name and rank and exactly where he served and for how long. Joseph had considered listing some of Cavan’s achievements, but decided it would give the impression that he was desperate. He was, and probably Faulkner knew it, but bluff was all he had to play.

  Carefully, and in sparse, verifiable detail, he drew from Cavan a list of men he had treated and what their injuries had been. Every time he asked if Cavan knew whether the men had survived or not, and if so, if he had lost limbs or eyes.

  The court listened in silence. Every man Cavan named was known to them, a friend, possibly even a cousin or brother. If Faulkner could be unaware of the feeling around him then he was truly anesthetized to life. He was at least wise enough not to challenge Cavan.

  “Thank you,” Joseph said gravely. He turned to General Hardesty. “Sir, it is a matter of record which I will be happy to have Colonel Hook verify that each of these men was injured while obeying the direct orders of Major Northrup. I shall call other witnesses to confirm that the orders were given against the advice of more experienced but junior men.”

  “That will be necessary, if you wish to make this evidence of any value in these proceedings, Captain Reavley,” Hardesty replied. “So far all you have achieved is to illustrate for us the tragedy of war, of which we are all wretchedly aware.”

  “All except Colonel Faulkner, sir,” Joseph replied. “I believe he has not seen action.”

  “It is irrelevant!” Faulkner snapped, his face pale except for two spots of pink in his cheeks. “This court-martial is to address the crimes of mutiny and murder, not to praise or blame the war record of the officers concerned, or to comment on the tragedy of young men’s deaths.”

  “It is to exercise the circumstances, Colonel Faulkner,” Hardesty responded coldly. “You will have your opportunity to contest any of Captain Cavan’s testimony, if you wish.” He turned to Joseph. “Continue, Captain Reavley. You have a long way to go before you have made this relevant to the charge.” There was warning in his face and sadness. Was it for the dead and injured, or because he believed Joseph could not succeed?

  Joseph reached the moment of decision. He turned to Cavan again. “When you realized that Major Northrup was not going to take the advice of the men familiar with the conditions and the dangers, Captain Cavan, what did you do?”

  “I knew there were many other men who felt as I did,” Cavan answered quietly. “Particularly Captain Morel. We decided to use force to make Major Northrup listen. We decided to frighten him badly enough he would feel he had no choice. Morel devised a plan that we hoped would make him see that it was both wisdom and his duty to act on advice, and I agreed immediately.”

  “What was that plan, Captain?”

  “To take him by force to a place where we could hold a mock drumhead court-martial and charge him with the mutilation and deaths of the men who suffered because of his arrogance,” Cavan replied. “If we proved to him that it was his fault, we believed he would be willing to change. He was a stupid man, arrogant and out of his depth, but he was also frightened, and I believed he wanted to succeed; he simply didn’t know how. He wasn’t actually cut out to be a soldier, but then most of the men here wouldn’t be if they had a choice.” His voice was quiet and clear, the anger in it almost hidden. “We thought it was a way out for all of us.”

  “And why wasn’t it, Captain Cavan?” Joseph asked.

  There was complete silence in the room. No one even shifted position.

  Cavan’s face was white, but he stood stiffly to attention, his eyes fixed on Joseph�
�s. “He was terrified. We found him guilty of gross negligence, and followed it through with a mock execution. We thought it was necessary at the time, in case once he was free again he reneged. We all loaded with blanks—”

  “Blanks?” Joseph interrupted sharply. “The army doesn’t issue blanks. Where did you get them?”

  “We didn’t,” Cavan said. “We made them. It’s easy enough.”

  “Is it safe?” Joseph pressed. “How did you know they wouldn’t still fire bullets? It looks as if one did.”

  “No sir, it’s not possible. The bullet that fired was a live round.” Cavan again explained carefully exactly how a blank was made.

  “Then one of the men replaced his blank after you had seen him load it?” Joseph deduced.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you know that at the time?”

  “Of course not!” Cavan clenched his fists, and his voice shook. “Do you think we wanted this?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Joseph replied. “But we need to demonstrate it to the court. Who shot the live round?”

  “I have no idea, sir, except I don’t believe it was I.”

  “Why not?”

  “The kick from a live round is different. I’d have felt it. From a blank there is no recoil.”

  “You are a surgeon,” Joseph pointed out. “How do you know what firing a live round feels like?”

  Cavan blushed faintly. “I’ve fought as well, sir. I have fired a rifle many times.”

  There was a murmur around the room. Many knew of his V.C.

  “Thank you, Captain Cavan.”

  Faulkner rose to his feet.

  Joseph swallowed, his mouth dry. He sat down.