by Anne Perry
Joseph thanked him and took a mouthful. It felt as if a fire had exploded in his stomach. He was sure he could belch flame. Coughing hard, he thanked Kretschmer and passed it on to Morel, who took it rather more easily, then offered it to Wolff.
A mile later, after a couple more changes of shift as to who was pulling, they passed the schnapps around again. Joseph realized with a smile that they were marching in time to the squeaking of the wheels. The last shreds of cloud had gone and the moonlight shone pale on the cratered road, making black skeletons of the few shattered vehicles and broken trees. In the distance they could make out the standing walls of a burned house.
Wolff began to sing a drinking song. His voice was light and pleasant. Joseph remembered a little of the tune from his visits before the war, and he joined in.
An ambulance passed them going back, and a munitions supply convoy passed going forward to the lines.
They found a second song, and a third. There were still at least two miles farther to go. Joseph started to worry about how they were going to explain leaving these two men who in some absurd way had become friends. The last drop of schnapps was gone and none of them had any food. The squeaking of the wheels was incessant, and they were all unquestionably a little drunk.
Wolff began to sing again, this time in English, and they all joined in.
“There’s a long, long trail a-winding, into the land of my dreams,
“Where the nightingales are singing and a white moon beams…”
They went through all the verses, then began again. The three-quarter moon lit the road, but the only sound apart from their voices was the squeaking of the wheels, and the guns roaring a couple of miles ahead. The odors of bodily waste and putrefying flesh were already strong, and in the distance there was the flash of red and yellow mortar fire.
Joseph had no idea how they would get through the lines, other than the same way as they had come. Additionally, they would have to untie Geddes so he could run. But first they would have to find a way of parting from Kretschmer and Wolff, who with luck, would have a specific place to report.
But for this moment, his feet hurt, and his hands were blistered from holding the cart. His back and his legs ached and he was so hungry he could have eaten a raw turnip with pleasure, if he could have found one. But he was light-headed with schnapps, singing in the moonlight, and there was a kind of happiness in it that was desperately, passionately real.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
M ason returned to London with a heavy sense of oppression. His mind should have been crowded with thoughts of the slaughter at Passchendaele and the impending farce of the court-martial of Cavan, the only one of the twelve men who was actually in custody.
But all the way across the Channel, and then standing crowded in the troop train from Dover to London, jostled and jolted, kept upright largely by the press of other men’s bodies around him, he felt a deep and abiding misery that was almost paralyzing. There seemed no light in his inner landscape at all. Had he really imagined the court-martial would solve anything?
Rationally, perhaps the idiocy of it all, the casualty toll climbing toward a quarter million men for the gaining of one shattered town, would have been enough to make sane men call a halt to it, at whatever cost, on whatever terms. But was there any sanity left? No one looked at the whole monumental disaster. They all looked at their own little patch of it.
Perhaps it was too big for anyone to comprehend the ruin that stretched right from the Atlantic waves that swallowed men and ships off the battered shores of Britain right to the blood-soaked sands of Mesopotamia, to the snowbound graves of Russia. Europe was a charnel house. No one could count the millions of dead, let alone those maimed forever.
And yet Judith Reavley was prepared to risk her life to help eleven mutineers escape and flee to Switzerland, and Joseph was equally willing to risk his life to bring them back! In the scheme of things both actions were equally pointless, and just as likely to end in death.
Perhaps that was what hurt? Joseph had hardly any chance of succeeding, which—if he were a logical man—he would have known; but he wasn’t logical! He was an idealist, a dreamer, seeing the world he wanted more clearly than the real one.
Mason wished he did not like him so much. He had wit and imagination, courage to the point of stupidity—no, actually beyond it. And compassion, again beyond sense. You could not argue about honor with him because he did not listen. He followed his own star, even though it was an illusion; beautiful, better than the truth, but a mirage. And when he reached the place where he thought it was, he was going to discover that there was nothing there. That was what Mason hated: the disillusion he knew had to come. No one would be able to help them. What does a man do when he climbs the vast heights, struggles his way upward to heaven, and when bleeding and exhausted he gets there and finds it empty?
He was furious with Joseph for being so vulnerable, and leaving people like Mason to be wounded by his pain.
The train jolted and threw him against the man beside him, knocking him off balance. He apologized. They stopped somewhere in a siding, crowded together, hot and exhausted, legs aching.
The minutes dragged by. He was impatient, although it made little difference when he reached London. He was going to see the Peacemaker, and he would be admitted whatever time he got there. He was going to report on the court-martial and the mood of the men. The Peacemaker would not be pleased. The court-martial was not only going to be absurd, it was going to appear so. Might someone step in and prevent it even now? Was there anyone who could? If so, it would be obvious they had, and that would be absurd also.
The train started to move, lurching with a clang of couplings, then stopped again. Someone swore under his breath. There was another lurch and bang, and another. Then slowly they picked up speed.
Mason was lying to himself: It was not really the thought of Joseph that weighed him down, it was Judith. He could remember the touch of her lips, and her eyes as she looked at him when he drew away at last. He wanted to hold that forever, and he knew he was losing it already. Even if no one ever betrayed the fact that it was she and the American volunteer driver who had rescued the mutineers, she had been willing to do it. That was the division between them that was uncrossable. She was impulsive, quixotic, rushing in like a fool to do something noble without thinking of the inevitable result.
He should force himself not to care. He would only be hurt. She was not going to change. Possibly she was not even going to live through the war! That had always been a risk. Ambulance drivers did get killed, of course they did! Anyone on the battlefront ran that risk.
Why did that thought all but make him sick with despair? She was not part of his life. They had no commitment to each other. They had met only a few times, shared intense emotions of terror and hope and pity, laughed too much, to the edge of weeping, and kissed just once.
He was lying to himself again. She was part of his dreams, of the quiet places inside him that fed his strength, the things for which he struggled and climbed to his feet when he fell, the thing that gave the journey a purpose, a distinction, a place to belong.
The train was moving swiftly now, swaying with a kind of rhythm, everyone so close they held each other up, and all lost in their own thoughts.
How had he allowed himself to do something so stupid? Why could he not have chosen any of a dozen pretty, intelligent, and reasonable girls he had known? Because to persuade himself that he cared for any of them was one lie he could not get away with. There are parts of a man that will accept only the truth.
The train slowed going over the bridge, and finally pulled into Waterloo. They spilled out onto the platform—stiff, dirty, their bodies aching and so tired no one spoke. Mason pushed his way to the entrance to find a taxi, but there was a queue so long it would take hours, and many of the men standing there had injuries far worse than the few cuts and bruises he had. He went instead to the underground train, and an hour later wa
s walking along Marchmont Street in the warm evening air. He passed a newspaper seller and ignored him. Their chief correspondent on the Western Front was a man he knew well. He could imagine what he would make of the court-martial story, and he would be bound to get it. He would make Morel look like a traitor, and Joseph Reavley like a fool.
He reached the Peacemaker’s home and was let in by the same manservant as always, and received in the upstairs sitting room. A moment later he was joined by the Peacemaker. He was wearing a smoking jacket, as if possibly he had been reading a little while, having a last cup of tea, or whisky and soda, before going to bed.
“You look tired,” he said sympathetically. “Rough crossing?” He gestured to Mason to sit down. He had already asked the manservant for sandwiches and fresh tea.
Mason sank into the familiar chair. “No. Calm as a millpond,” he replied. “But no room to sit on the train. Stood all the way from Dover. Hardly room to lift your elbows.” He was not looking forward to reporting on the state of the court-martial. He did so briefly, almost tersely, to get it over with.
“What a mess,” the Peacemaker said with little expression, surprising Mason by his control. “I assume someone helped the mutineers escape? Any idea who?”
“None at all,” Mason lied without compunction. “Could have been any of a thousand people. Nobody wants this court-martial to go ahead.”
“Any chance of capturing the escaped men?”
“One in a thousand, maybe,” Mason said, leaning back in his chair. “But I can’t see that it would improve matters. Just increase the chances of someone saying who helped them.” He spoke honestly, then felt the pain grip his heart and knot in his belly as he thought of Judith in the dock beside Cavan. It was a sense of loneliness as if the lights had gone out in the world, or in his part of it. But it was also jealousy. Judith admired Cavan, and surely he must admire her, too. They would stand side by side, ready to be crucified for loyalty to the men they served. Everyone else was shut out, especially someone like Mason who thought the whole thing was a pointless sacrifice.
He looked across at the Peacemaker, expecting his reaction to be one of fury, perhaps most of all for the waste of good men of just the kind of nobility, courage, and loyalty he himself so valued. But the Peacemaker was smiling bleakly, his eyes bright. He saw what Mason was describing, understood the words if not the heart of it, and was ready to move on to the thoughts that obviously took precedence with him. It was as if he were not really even surprised.
“Thank you,” he said aloud, crossing his legs comfortably. “It is exactly as you say: a final piece of idiocy. I wish we could prevent it, but I know of no way. I believe they are sending Faulkner to prosecute, and he will carry it to the last degree. A narrow man full of fears. He worships the letter of the law, because he has neither the courage nor the imagination to see the spirit behind it.”
Mason remained silent, not trusting himself to speak. His mind raced, skittering around, crashing into ideas in his search to think of anything at all he could say or do that could save Judith, or even save Cavan! Would he save Cavan, for her, knowing that it would exclude him forever?
That was a stupid and crassly sentimental thought. There was no forever. The darkness had begun in August 1914, and now, three years later, it was almost complete.
“I have more news from Russia,” the Peacemaker was saying. He was leaning forward again in his chair, fixing Mason with the intensity of his eyes. “They are on the brink of a real revolution! Not the halfhearted affair of Kerensky and his Mensheviks, but one that will change everything, sweep away all trace of the old regime. They will get rid of the tsar and all his family forever.” He made a short, jerky movement with his long hand. “Lenin is back, and he and Trotsky will lead it. It will be violent at first; there is no alternative.” His face pinched for a moment. “There will be many deaths, because the old guard is strong—they have been there for centuries and the corruption runs deep. No one gives up power unless they are forced to.” The light came back into his face. “But think of the future, Mason! Think of all that the Bolsheviks can do with their passion and ideals. A new order, started from the beginning! Unity, equality, an end to war.”
“It will drown Russia in blood.” Mason was appalled. He should have guarded his speech. He knew his protest was pointless, or—worse than that—dangerous, but the words were out in spite of himself.
“No, it won’t!” the Peacemaker argued, too excited to be angry. “It will be violent to begin with, of course it will. The tsar had warning after warning but he took no notice. What else can they do, Mason? As long as the Romanovs are alive there will always be the old nobility, the property owners, the oppressors who will try to return. They are of the old aristocracy of privilege and violence who know no social justice. They use the ordinary man as cannon fodder in a war the people of Russia have no interest in. It must stop! It is not the tsar or his supporters who are dying out there in the bitter snows of the Eastern Front—it is the ordinary man! It is the family of the ordinary man that is starving at home.”
He leaned farther forward. “Well, no more. The people will rise. They will refuse to fight. Mason, we are at the beginning of the end. By Christmas there will be peace in Europe. We can begin to rebuild, not just materially but socially as well.” His face was alight, his eyes burning.
It was a dream again. Mason had a sudden terror that he was being swept along in a fantasy in which everyone else believed, and only he could see the bitter truth. Individual ambitions would always play their part; men would build on towering visions and subsequently forget the details that would undo them.
The Peacemaker had lost sight of the individual in his sweeping plan, as if one man’s ideas could command the loyalty of millions, and their obedience.
For the first time Mason began to wonder if the Peacemaker was mad. No man had the power to do what he dreamed, and no man should.
Perhaps he had seen too many dead and become tired, his own passion exhausted. Judith would hate everything the Peacemaker had said. She would tell him it had nothing to do with reality, the way people actually were.
The Peacemaker would say her sight was too small, too ordinary.
She would say that his was too far from the human heart to see into it: too overweening, exercising not leadership but dominion.
“Mason!” the Peacemaker said sharply. “It is the beginning of the end! Can’t you see that? Peace! There need never be this abomination of war again!”
“Yes, sir,” Mason said a little flatly. “Well, not here anyway.”
The Peacemaker was not to have his spirits damped. “You’re tired. Go home and sleep. Write your article. Then go back to Passchendaele. Attend the court-martial and write the truth about it. The men deserve that. Cavan deserves it.”
Joseph and Morel, with Geddes in tow, made the crossing back through the German lines, over no-man’s-land and then through the French lines. They had great difficulty but achieved it in the same manner as they had crossed the other way: running, crawling, scrambling the moment it was dark enough between the star shells. Perhaps they had been a little less frightened, thanks to the schnapps, and for the same reason also a little clumsier.
They had found parting from Kretschmer and Wolff had occurred naturally because the German soldiers had had to report to their units. In the darkness and the tension before an attack, other people’s minds had been more preoccupied with what was to come than identifying individuals. Like the British and French armies, their regiments had also been decimated. The losses were staggering, and men were assigned anywhere just to fill in the numbers and make up a platoon or a brigade. There were more strangers than friends left. No one questioned Joseph or Morel closely, and the clerical disguise did the rest.
Getting through the French lines was more difficult. They were taken prisoner at the point of a rifle—in fact several rifles.
“We’ve got a German prisoner,” Morel said immediately, in French, in
dicating Geddes, whose mouth and lower face were still bound. He was still in his stolen German uniform, so there was nothing to make the statement appear untrue.
The French lieutenant in command looked dubious, but he accepted the story, at least on the surface. Joseph was so covered in mud that his dog collar was all but invisible.
When they had been taken farther back to a dry dugout suitable for interrogation, they told the truth, more or less.
The French lieutenant shook his head. “I suppose you want to take him back to Ypres now?”
Joseph smiled. “Yes, please. If you can help it would be enormously appreciated.”
The lieutenant shrugged. “Well, you can barely walk! And I don’t suppose your prisoner is very keen. We’d better have somebody drive you.” He rolled his eyes. “Entente cordiale,” he observed, making an elegant gesture of despair with his hands, but he was smiling. He might never admit it, but he obviously found it secretly rather entertaining. It was something different, and a story to tell.
He must know, just as Joseph did, and any other soldier anywhere would, that war is frequent terror, occasional hideous violence, sometimes terrible pain, a lot of exhaustion and discomfort and hunger, but it is mostly boredom. It is the comradeship, the laughter, the stories and bad jokes that make it bearable, the sharing of the glorious and the absurd, the dreams and memories, and the letters from home through which one clings to sanity.
Thus it was with the help of the French lieutenant, after a meager but well-cooked meal, and armed with a new stock of tall stories, they were driven the long way back to Passchendaele. They arrived the following day, with Geddes still bound but no longer gagged since there was no necessity for it.
They thanked the French driver profusely and offered him a tin of Maconachie’s and a bar of decent chocolate, which he accepted reluctantly but with grace.
Before reporting to Colonel Hook, Joseph had a brief moment alone with Morel. There was a military police sergeant in the doorway; there would be no second chance to escape. He wanted to ask Morel what he intended to say about his original escape. Faulkner would ask, and if Morel refused to answer he would add to the original charge that of concealing the identity of his helpers who had committed a criminal act in aiding him.