At Some Disputed Barricade wwi-4

by Anne Perry

  There was a rumble of approval from the men in the room.

  “So your loyalty is to a Cambridgeshire captain before the king!” Faulkner challenged, his face pink.

  “Oi don’t know the king, sir,” Snowy told him unblinkingly. “An’ Captain Morel’s from up Lancashire somewhere.”

  Faulkner stood motionless, unable to decide whether it was worth pursuing what seemed to be a fruitless course.

  Joseph waited also, terrified Faulkner would go on and try to provoke Snowy into a mistake, or worse, into losing his temper. He had tied himself irrevocably to Morel, and through him to all the accused men. It would be disastrous. He stared across at Snowy, trying to will him to stay calm.

  “Private Nunn,” Faulkner said again. “I ask you, do you condone mutiny? A simple yes or no will do.”

  “Oi never thought of it, sir,” Snowy answered. “Oi trust Captain Morel. Oi know him. Oi’d go over the top if he told me to, any day. Oi have done. He wouldn’t order it if it weren’t necessary. He knows what he’s doing, and he respects his men, sir. Loike they do him.”

  “That wasn’t what…” Faulkner began.

  “You have the best answer you are going to get, Colonel Faulkner,” Hardesty told him. “If you have any further questions for Private Nunn, ask them.”

  “No, sir. It seems pointless to ask. Except one thing.” He turned again to Snowy. “Private Nunn, do you have any idea why Corporal Geddes, alone among the accused men, should have wished to kill Major Northrup? You seem to know all your comrades so well, surely you know that?”

  “No, sir, Oi don’t know,” Snowy answered. “But Oi don’t think Corporal Geddes is stupid. If he had a good reason in his own mind for thinking of something like that, he isn’t daft enough to tell me about it. He’d know Oi wouldn’t go along with it, sir.” It almost amounted to insolence, but not quite.

  Faulkner gave up. “That’s all, Private Nunn.” He looked at General Hardesty. “Sir, since this defense claims that only Corporal Geddes was guilty of murder, perhaps Captain Reavley will provide a credible witness as to what possible motive he could have had. I have questioned him myself, and he denied it. I do not find Captain Morel credible, since his interest in the issue is that his own life depends upon it. Captain Reavley would testify, since he was apparently present when Geddes allegedly admitted to the crime. Then in the interests of both law and justice, I may cross-examine him on his testimony.”

  The trap was sprung, tidily and completely. Joseph could not refuse him or he would appear to be denying what Morel had said, and the whole defense would collapse. And once Joseph was cross-examined, Faulkner would find a way of raising the escape again. Could Joseph lie? And if he did, would that jeopardize everything in the defense so far?

  He had no choice. He was sworn, and briefly told them all that Geddes had said on the long journey back. No one interrupted him.

  “A most interesting tale,” Faulkner said finally. “Did you believe him, Captain Reavley? Or is it Chaplain, in this case?”

  “If you mean, am I breaking the sanctity of confession, no, I am not. If you remember, Colonel, Captain Morel was also present.”

  “Oh, yes, of course, your onetime student, Captain Morel. You have a great loyalty, Captain Reavley. How does your loyalty to your calling, to the truth and honor you have spoken about so eloquently, compare with your loyalty to the ambulance driver who helped the mutineers to escape, and of course the murderer Geddes, as well?”

  All movement in the room ceased. Everyone looked at Joseph.

  He stared back at Faulkner, terrified that he might accidentally look at Judith.

  The slightest misstep now, even a word, and Faulkner would have him.

  “I do not know who helped them escape, Colonel,” he said.

  “Come now,” Faulkner said tartly. “Is being disingenuous to this degree not morally the same as a lie? You may have taken great care not to have anyone repeat news to you, but are you telling this court that you really do not know who it was? Be very careful precisely where your loyalties lie, Chaplain!”

  “You are quite right,” Joseph admitted. He could feel the sweat trickle down his face. Deliberately he relaxed his hands. Was Judith afraid he would betray her, even accidentally? “I have taken very great care indeed not to know who it was. And I have been successful,” he said levelly. “I can guess, but as you yourself have pointed out, most information comes to me in the way of confession, and I cannot repeat it. Not that anyone has confessed to that.”

  “And you do not consider it your duty as an officer to report such a crime?” Faulkner said in amazement.

  “No, sir. I consider it my duty as an officer to go after the men who escaped, and bring them back to face trial. Which I did. It redressed the situation, without betrayal of any trust.”

  “Bringing them back for trial, and possible execution, was not a betrayal of their trust? You amaze me.” Faulkner’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

  “I persuaded them to come back freely,” Joseph corrected him, feeling the heat burn up his face. “For trial. I believe them to be innocent of mutiny or murder, and I hope this court will find them so.”

  “Except Geddes! He didn’t come willingly!”

  “He admitted to murder. That is different.”

  “Not one of your village men, Chaplain?”

  “No.” Joseph knew what was coming next. But at least they had left the subject of the escape, for a moment.

  “Could that be why he is guilty?”

  “If you are suggesting all Gloucestershire men are murderers, that is ridiculous,” Joseph retorted.

  “I am suggesting, sir, that your loyalty to your own men supersedes all honor or balance or judgment on your part. Fighting together in these appalling circumstances, and your fearful losses, have warped your judgment and upset the balance of your thinking. We have no one’s word for it but yours and Captain Morel’s that any of these events in Major Northrup’s home village ever took place.”

  “Are those your last questions to me?” Joseph found his voice was trembling and there were pins and needles tingling in his fingers. The last chance, the one he had been hoping to avoid since the beginning, was now facing him.

  “They are,” Faulkner replied with a gleam of satisfaction.

  Joseph turned to Hardesty. “Sir, I need to call one last witness who can substantiate the greater part of what I have said.”

  “Who is it, Captain Reavley?”

  “General Northrup, sir.”

  Hardesty stared at him, eyes wide, questioning.

  Joseph stared back. The fact that he had made the decision did not lessen his revulsion at it.

  “Very well,” Hardesty agreed. “General Northrup, sir. Will you take the stand.” It was an order, not a request. There was no choice for either of them.

  Slowly, as if his whole body ached, Northrup rose to his feet and walked forward, back straight, shoulders angular and rigid. He was sworn in and turned to face Joseph. There was nothing gentle in his face, no silent plea for mercy. He looked like a man facing his execution. It seemed Faulkner had convinced him that Joseph was utterly partisan, a man without justice, only blind loyalty to his own, regardless of innocence or guilt.

  Joseph wavered. He longed to be able to prove him wrong. He had mercy, honor, a sense of justice being for all, as it was for none. But his calling here was to fight for his own men, and that did not allow him space to cover Major Howard Northrup’s weaknesses with mercy. He wanted General Northrup to know that, to understand. He realized in the same moment that to do the right thing was necessary, to need to be seen to do it was a luxury, even a self-indulgence, and completely irrelevant.

  “General Northrup,” he began, his voice firmer than he had expected. “Would you confirm for the court that you live at Wood End Manor in Gloucestershire, and that your son Major Howard Northrup grew up there, and lived there until the outbreak of war in 1914?”

  “That is correct,” Northr
up replied coldly.

  “Did Corporal Geddes’s family live in the same village at that time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Corporal John Geddes’s father become involved in a business venture with Major Northrup?”

  General Northrup stiffened, his face pink. “I did not concern myself in my son’s financial affairs,” he replied quietly.

  Joseph loathed doing it, but his voice was perfectly steady. “Every man in this court would understand your desire to protect your son’s name, sir, but you are under oath, and other men’s lives depend upon your honesty—good men, soldiers like yourself. Are you swearing on your word as an officer that you at no time involved yourself, financially or otherwise, in your son’s business affairs?”

  Northrup’s face burned scarlet. “I…I lent him money when it was…necessary. Once or twice. Not…not as a habit, sir.”

  “Would it be truthful to say that you indulged many of his desires, and that when he overspent, you paid his debts?” Joseph pressed. “Or did you never do that?”

  “I did it…. It was a matter of honor,” Northrup said savagely. Hiseyes blazed in sockets so shadowed as to seem hollows in the bones of his head. He had aged bitterly in the weeks since his son’s body had been found.

  “Did the Geddes family lose their home?”

  Northrup’s hand jerked up. He drew his breath in as if to deny it, then remained silent.

  “Is the Geddes family still in the home in which Corporal Geddes grew up?” Joseph insisted. “If necessary we can find out, but it will delay proceedings, surely pointlessly. The answer will be the same. Is it something you wish to hide?”

  Faulkner rose to his feet, and Hardesty waved him sharply down again.

  “No, sir,” Northrup said very quietly. “I believe they were evicted.”

  Joseph chose his question very carefully. “Did your son’s business succeed or fail?”

  “It failed.”

  Joseph was aware of Faulkner tense in his seat, ready to spring to his feet any moment. He would need only a shred of a chance.

  “Might it be possible that Corporal Geddes could believe that was Major Northrup’s fault, whether it was or not?”

  “It…” Northrup swallowed, a flash of gratitude in his eyes, there and then gone again instantly. “He might have believed it, yes.”

  “Thank you, General Northrup. That is all I have to ask you, sir.”

  Faulkner shot to his feet, stared at Northrup’s ashen face, then very slowly sat down again. “I have nothing to add to this…this fiasco,” he said angrily.

  Hardesty looked at Northrup. “Thank you, sir,” he said quietly. “The court has nothing further to say, either.”

  In a room electric with hostility, Faulkner made a closing speech demanding justice against one man who had committed murder, and eleven others whose act of mutiny had condoned it and made them accessories both before and after the fact. He requested that the court sentence them all to death, for the sake of law, justice, and the values the army and the country stood for. He demanded that they not allow sentimentality or fear of the enemy to dissuade them from doing their duty.

  He sat down again, still with the court in utter silence.

  Joseph stood up.

  “The circumstances of this war are unlike anything we have ever known before,” he began. “A man who has not floundered in the mud of no-man’s-land, faced every fire, and seen his friends and his brothers torn apart by shellfire, riddled with bullets, or gassed to death, cannot even imagine what courage it takes to face it not just day after day, but year after year. Many of us will never leave here. We know that, and we accept it. Almost all of us came here because we wished to, we came to fight for the land and the people we love, our own people.”

  He took a deep breath. He realized with surprise how passionately he believed what he was saying. “But in order to walk into hell, we need the loyalty of our brothers, whether of blood and kin, or of common cause. We have to trust them without question, trust that they will share with us their last piece of bread, the warmth of their bodies in the ice of winter, and that they will never sacrifice our lives uselessly, on the altars of their own pride, or expect us to pay the price of their ignorance. If you will follow a man into the darkness and the mouth of the guns, then you have to know beyond question that he will do the same for you, that he will give all he has to be the leader you believe him to be.”

  He was speaking to Hardesty and the two men beside him, in whose hands judgment rested, but he faced the body of the court.

  “Captain Morel and Captain Cavan, and nine of the other ten men here, took the action of trying to curb Major Northrup in order to fulfill the duty of trust they know their men placed in them.

  “They were guilty of gross insubordination. It was the price they were willing to pay to save the lives of their fellows. They will accept judgment for that at the hands of their peers, of men who know what it is to be a soldier at Passchendaele, and they will serve whatever punishment those men decide is just, because they have walked the same path.”

  He sat down again, the sweat prickling on his skin, his heart pounding. “Thank you, Captain,” Hardesty said quietly. He looked at the men on either side of him. “Gentlemen, we shall return to the farmhouse kitchen in case there are any points of law you wish to consider.” He rose to his feet and Apsted and Simmons went out after him.

  Not a man or woman left the court. No one even spoke. Minutes ticked by.

  Hardesty, Apsted, and Simmons returned.

  Joseph found his heart beating so violently he gagged on his own breath.

  As the junior officer, Simmons gave his verdict first.

  “I find Corporal John Geddes guilty of murder,” he said quietly. Then he listed the names of all the others, which seemed interminable. No one moved a muscle. “I find them guilty of gross insubordination, sir.”

  Hardesty thanked him and turned to Apsted.

  The tension was almost unendurable. It was like the minutes before men go over the top into the enemy guns.

  “I find Corporal John Geddes guilty of murder.” Apsted swallowed hard. “And all the other accused, guilty of mutiny.”

  Joseph felt the sweat run down his body and his hands clench till his nails drew blood. The room swayed around him.

  Hardesty spoke last. “I also find Corporal John Geddes guilty of murder.” He listed all the other men. “I find them guilty of gross insubordination. By a majority decision, that is the verdict of this court. Sentence of death on Corporal Geddes will be referred up through the usual channels. The others accused will be dealt with at regimental level.”

  Then at last the cheering erupted. Men shot to their feet, shouting, holding hands high, gasping, laughing, with tears in their eyes and on their cheeks. Morel and Cavan were saluted, the others grasped by the hand, hugged rapturously by friends.

  Mason waved his notebook in the air, his eyes bright, although he knew that in London the Peacemaker would be white with rage, uncomprehending that somehow, yet again, the Reavleys had beaten him. Judith wept openly with relief and overwhelming joy.

  Joseph was hoisted up and carried out on the shoulders of Snowy Nunn, Barshey Gee, and he knew not who else. He had found a decision within himself and been prepared to pay the price of it, bitter as it was. He had not flinched. He had repaid the trust. Now he was dizzy with hope and a searing promise of faith, a belief in the possibility of the impossible, even out of utter darkness.

  And to the north, toward Passchendaele, the big guns continued their relentless pounding of the lines.

  About the Author

  ANNE PERRY is the New York Times bestselling author of the World War I novels No Graves As Yet and Shoulder the Sky, as well as four holiday novels: A Christmas Journey, A Christmas Visitor, A Christmas Guest, and A Christmas Secret. She is also the creator of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England. Her William Monk novels include Death of a Stranger, Funeral in Blue, and Slaves of Obsess
ion. The popular novels featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt include Long Spoon Lane, Seven Dials, and Southampton Row. Her short story “Heroes” won an Edgar Award. Anne Perry lives in Scotland. Visit her website at www.anneperry.net.

  By Anne Perry

  (published by The Random House Publishing Group)

  FEATURING WILLIAM MONK

  The Face of a Stranger

  A Dangerous Mourning

  Defend and Betray

  A Sudden, Fearful Death

  The Sins of the Wolf

  Cain His Brother

  Weighed in the Balance

  The Silent Cry

  A Breach of Promise

  The Twisted Root

  Slaves of Obsession

  Funeral in Blue

  Death of a Stranger

  The Shifting Tide

  FEATURING THOMAS AND CHARLOTTE PITT

  The Cater Street Hangman

  Callander Square

  Paragon Walk

  Resurrection Row

  Bluegate Fields

  Rutland Place

  Death in the Devil’s Acre

  Cardington Crescent

  Silence in Hanover Close

  Bethlehem Road

  Highgate Rise

  Belgrave Square

  Farriers’ Lane

  The Hyde Park Headsman

  Traitors Gate

  Pentecost Alley

  Ashworth Hall

  Brunswick Gardens

  Bedford Square

  Half Moon Street

  The Whitechapel Conspiracy

  Southampton Row

  Seven Dials

  Long Spoon Lane

  THE WORLD WAR I NOVELS

  No Graves As Yet

  Angels in the Gloom

  Shoulder the Sky

  At Some Disputed Barricade

  THE CHRISTMAS NOVELS

  A Christmas Journey

  A Christmas Guest

  A Christmas Visitor

  A Christmas Secret

  At Some Disputed Barricade is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.