Angels in the Gloom wwi-3

by Anne Perry

  “I’m not sure that anything we say touches people in those times.” He corrected himself: “These times. It’s worse when the shock wears off and feeling comes back. But I’ll be here. I won’t leave . . . or let you leave me.”

  She turned away from him quickly. “Go to bed,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m not ready to weep yet. If I do I won’t be able to stop, and I have to think how to tell the children, especially Tom. Please!”

  He obeyed silently, closing the door behind him.

  He slept fitfully. He heard Hannah up and down the stairs, he lost count how many times. At five o’clock he got up as well and went down to the kitchen, knowing he would find her there.

  She was dressed, scrubbing out the pantry. The whole large cupboardlike room was empty, nothing left on the shelves. It was all piled on the kitchen table and on the bench above the flour and vegetable bins and the cutlery drawers. There were boxes, bags, tins, and barrels everywhere. She had her sleeves up to her elbows and an apron on over an old dress. She had not bothered to put her hair up, but it was in a loose braid, like a schoolgirl’s.

  “Can I help?” he offered.

  “Not really,” she replied, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m doing it, it’s just better than lying in bed.”

  “Do you want a cup of tea?”

  “If you can find the kettle and the tea, yes.”

  Half an hour later all the shelves were scrubbed but still wet, and Joseph had made some sort of order out of the piles of groceries. They were both sitting at the kitchen table and it was broad daylight, the sun shining in through the window as if it were any other day.

  The telephone rang.

  Hannah gripped her cup so tightly she slopped tea over onto her dress and arm. The sight of the mess upset her, tears gleaming in her eyes, simply because it was a hair crack in the façade and cost all her strength to keep from letting go.

  Joseph went into the hall and picked up the receiver. “Joseph Reavley,” he said quietly.

  “Good morning, Captain Reavley,” a voice said on the other end, sounding tinny and far away. “This is Calder Shearing.”

  Joseph did not want to speak to this man. He could not cope with talking of Matthew’s death, not yet.

  “Mr. Shearing . . .” he began.

  “I have news you will want to hear,” Shearing cut across him. “There were quite a number of survivors from the Cormorant. Captain Reavley and Commander MacAllister are among them. Their injuries are trivial. They spent some time in the water, but they will be perfectly all right.”

  Joseph found his voice was gone, stuck in his throat, his mouth dry.

  “Captain Reavley?”

  He coughed. “Yes . . . are you sure?”

  “Of course I am sure,” Shearing said testily, as if some emotion had drained him as well. “Do you imagine I would have called you if I were not? The battle was appalling. We estimate casualties of over six thousand men, and at least fourteen ships. Your brother and brother-in-law will be home within two or three days.”

  “Thank you . . . yes . . .” Joseph gulped. “Thank you.” He replaced the receiver and walked back to the kitchen, bumping into the jamb of the door and numbing his elbow. It should have been painful, but he was unaware of it.

  Hannah stared at him. There was no fear in her face, there was nothing else left to hurt her, the worst had already happened.

  “It was Shearing. . . .” he began.

  She frowned. “Who is Shearing?”

  “Intelligence service. Hannah, they’re alive! They saved a lot of the crew, and Archie and Matthew are among them! He’s sure! It’s no mistake, he’s absolutely certain.”

  She looked at him, eyes wide. Now she was afraid again, afraid to believe, to grasp the pain of hoping, going through all the torture of love and fear and waiting and dreading. “Is he?”

  “Yes! Yes he is! Absolutely!” He strode around the table and pulled her to her feet and put his arms around her, clinging onto her and feeling her cry, great gasping sobs of all the emotion, the agony she had held in, and now at last was letting go.

  He was smiling, tears on his face as well. Archie was alive—above all, Matthew was alive! Matthew was alive—he was all right—he would be coming back.

  And that meant, of course, that Joseph would have to return to Ypres. But not yet, not today.

  There were twenty-four hours’ respite, then Joseph went to London to testify at the trial of Shanley Corcoran. He was charged with high treason. The trial was held in a closed room; the only thing to make it different from a place where any kind of business might be conducted was the situation of the chairs, the height of the windows above the ground, and the armed and uniformed men at the doors.

  As with any other trial, Joseph did not hear the testimony previous to his own. He waited in an anteroom alone, pacing the floor, sitting for a short time on the hard-backed chair, then pacing again. He turned over and over in his mind what he would say, if he would simply answer what was asked of him, in a sense leave his contribution to truth or justice in someone else’s hands. That would take from him the final responsibility, the blame for Corcoran’s fall, and whatever happened to him because of it. It should not be Joseph’s decision to weigh his guilt.

  The door opened and a small, quiet man in a dark suit told him it was time.

  Joseph went with him.

  The room was silent as he entered. He saw Corcoran immediately. There were only a dozen or so people there, no jury. This was not a trial at which any member of the public could be present. Both its evidence and its findings would remain secret. It reminded him of a court-martial.

  He had not intended to meet Corcoran’s eyes, but his gaze was drawn in spite of himself. Corcoran sat at a small table with his defender beside him. He looked ashen and stiff-bodied but somehow smaller than Joseph remembered him. But then at heart he had been different from the way Joseph remembered him for a long time, perhaps always.

  Now he was angry, his dark eyes brilliant, still a question, a demand in his expression—would Joseph finally measure up to the loyalty his father would have given, the loyalty to all past love and laughter, passions shared, and which he was convinced he deserved?

  The prosecutor began. “Please state your name, your present occupation, and where you live,” he directed. His voice was soft, very polite. He was a rather elegant man.

  “Joseph Reavley. I am a chaplain in the army. I live in Selborne St. Giles, in Cambridgeshire.”

  “And why are you not with your regiment now, Captain Reavley?”

  “I was injured, but I am due to return as soon as you permit me,” Joseph replied.

  “When your duty here is completed, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just so. How long ago were you wounded, and when did you go from hospital to St. Giles?”

  Joseph gave the answers, and detail by detail the prosecutor drew from him his involvement with solving the murder of Theo Blaine, his acquaintance with Blaine’s widow, his conversations with Hallam Kerr and with Inspector Perth. It was a meticulous, almost dry, account, but then there was no jury to impress, no emotion to manipulate. The three judges would deal only with facts.

  Throughout it all it was a battle between Joseph and Corcoran, who sat staring as if Joseph were the betrayer and he the victim, a man in an impossible situation who had been beaten by circumstance, and in the end turned on by the one person he trusted like a son. Such was the agony in his face that Joseph became more and more certain that he had actually convinced himself it was so.

  Worse was to come. The defense lawyer, a lean man with fair, receding hair, stood up and walked toward Joseph, stopping a couple of yards in front of him.

  “Would you like to sit down, Captain Reavley?” he asked courteously. “I know you received serious wounds which must be barely healed. We do not wish to cause you unnecessary pain.”

  Joseph straightened his shoulders and stood even more c
risply to attention. “No, thank you, sir. I am perfectly recovered.”

  “I understand you have been awarded the Military Cross for your heroic efforts in bringing back dead and injured soldiers from the mud of no-man’s-land in Flanders?”

  Joseph felt himself color. “Yes, sir.”

  “Is that part of an army chaplain’s duty?” The defense seemed surprised.

  “Not technically, sir, but I believe it is morally.”

  “So you are willing to define your moral duty outside the army’s terms of reference?” He smiled very slightly, his voice still soft. “The army tells you one thing, but you have added to it others far more dangerous, risking your own life and very nearly losing it, because of the way you perceive your own duty?”

  Joseph could see the pitfall ahead; he had dug it himself and there was no honest way to avoid it. “Yes, sir. But I am far from the only chaplain to do that.”

  “Ah, I see. Soldiers must obey orders, but chaplains have a higher master, a different morality, and can do as they themselves think fit?”

  Joseph could feel the heat in his face and knew it must be plain to others. “Most soldiers will risk their lives to save their friends, sir,” he replied stiffly. God, he sounded self-righteous. He loathed it. “If you had someone you were responsible for,” he went on, “some young man of nineteen or twenty who had gone out to fight for his country, was lying injured, bleeding in the mud of no-man’s-land, and you had it in your power to go and look for him, perhaps bring him back alive, wouldn’t you?”

  There was a faint rustle of movement in the room, a kind of sigh.

  “What I would do is immaterial, Captain Reavley,” the defense replied, shifting his weight and then taking a step or two to face Joseph from a different angle. “We are establishing what you will do. It is quite clear from what you have said that you make your own rules, answering to what you believe is a higher authority than human law.”

  The prosecutor rose to his feet.

  “Yes, yes,” the central judge agreed. He turned to the defense. “Mr. Paxton, you are drawing too high a conclusion. We take your point that Captain Reavley is a man who follows his belief in morality without being ordered to. Please proceed.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” Paxton turned to Joseph again. “I shall not ask you to repeat your testimony regarding the death of Mr. Blaine, or your growing acquaintance with Mrs. Blaine after her widowhood. It all seems to be perfectly clear. But I will ask you to repeat what she said about her husband’s ability. And then, if you would be so good, tell us what you did to ascertain for yourself that it was indeed true. What is Mrs. Blaine’s knowledge of the situation at the Establishment, other than what her husband told her? And it is regrettably beyond doubt that he was more than willing to deceive her in matters surely more important to her than his professional skill, relative to that of Mr. Corcoran.”

  Joseph had no choice. Reluctantly he admitted that he had accepted Lizzie’s word, without corroboration.

  “You seem somewhat gullible, Captain Reavley,” Paxton observed. “Well meaning, but easily led where your affections, or your own perceptions of your duty, are concerned.”

  “Is that a question, my lord?” the prosecutor demanded, his voice edgy, his face pale.

  “Perhaps it should be,” Paxton rejoined immediately. He looked at Joseph. “You seem to wish to be all things to all men, Chaplain. No doubt a noble and Christian desire, but you may well end in betraying one in order to be loyal to another. And I fear in this instance it is your lifelong friend, Shanley Corcoran, who is going to suffer for your very mixed emotions, and what you feel to be a higher duty than that which you have been given. My advice to you would be to do what you have been commanded to, and do it well. Leave the rest to others, before you meddle where you do not understand, and end in doing irretrievable harm, not only to individual men, but to your country.”

  Joseph stood rigid. Was it true as he had feared? He tried to be all things to all men, and was in truth nothing inside, empty? He looked at Corcoran. There was sweat on his face, but his eyes were gleaming. He had seen hope, and he would allow Joseph to be destroyed if he had to, to save himself. In that ugly, final moment Joseph was certain of it: Corcoran would survive at all costs.

  Joseph turned away, sick at heart. He faced Paxton. “That is very good advice,” he said distinctly. “And it is what I did. Mr. Corcoran had said to me that he had killed Theo Blaine because Blaine was incapable of finishing the project they were working on, but to protect his own scientific reputation he was going to sell it to the Germans.”

  Paxton’s eyebrows shot up. “Even though it did not work?”

  “I didn’t believe it either,” Joseph replied, and saw Paxton’s face flame. “I went to Admiral Hall of naval intelligence and told him all I knew. He would be able to check on Theo Blaine’s abilities, and those of all the other men working at the Establishment.”

  Paxton shifted his position again. “And if Blaine could not complete the work, Captain Reavley, but intended to betray what there was of it to our enemies, what would you have done in Mr. Corcoran’s place? You, who exceed your own orders and go over the top into no-man’s-land to bring back the dead? Is this not actually what you received your Military Cross for? Was not the journalist Eldon Prentice actually dead? It was a corpse you risked your life to bring back, was it not?”

  “Victoria Crosses are given for a specific act of extraordinary valor,” Joseph corrected him. “Military Crosses are for a number of lesser acts. Lots of men go out to bring back the injured. You can’t always tell if they’re dead or not until you reach your own trenches. It’s wet and cold and dark out there, and you’re being shot at. Sometimes men die before you get them back.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “Very moving,” Paxton said. “But irrelevant. There are many kinds of courage, moral as well as physical. I repeat, if you knew for a certainty that the most brilliant scientist in your Establishment was also a traitor, but you could not prove it to others, what would you do, Captain Reavley?”

  Joseph closed his eyes. This was the moment. Corcoran was sitting rigid, staring at him. He could feel his eyes as if they burned a scalding heat onto his skin. “I would do what I have done,” Joseph replied. “I would take the evidence to naval intelligence and let them deduce from it what they would. I could be mistaken.”

  “And was Mr. Corcoran mistaken, in your opinion? Did he act in error?”

  Joseph’s mouth was dry, his heart pounding. “No. I do not believe so. He described a scientist whose ambition and hunger for glory was so consuming that he would betray everything and everyone else, rather than yield the ultimate achievement to another. He would sooner have Britain lose than win with someone else’s invention. But it was not Theo Blaine he was describing, it was himself.”

  Paxton flung out his arms. “You have known the man all your life!” His voice cracked with incredulity. “He was your dead father’s best and dearest friend, and this is what you think of him?” Now there was derision in him, and stinging contempt. “What changed your mind, Reverend? A loss of faith in everything, perhaps even in God? What happened to you in the trenches, in the no-man’s-land you describe so well, the cold, the wet, the agony, being shot at?” He waved his arms. “And you were hit, weren’t you? Are you lashing out at a God the Father who did not protect you from all this?” He gestured again toward Corcoran. “Or at the father who died and left you to face this horror and deal with it alone? What changed you, Chaplain? What turned you into a betrayer?”

  What had been the moment, exactly? Joseph searched in his mind and he knew.

  “You are right when you said I tried to be all things to all people,” he replied with a strange, aching calm. “It was when I was talking with the minister in St. Giles, about what to say to a young soldier who has lost both his legs. Sometimes there is nothing you can do, except be there. He asked me if I was sure that there is a God, quite sure. Sometimes I’
m not!”

  There was a movement in the room. Corcoran’s stare did not alter.

  “But there are things I am sure of,” Joseph went on, leaning forward a little. “The things Christ taught of honor, of courage, and of love are always true, in any imaginable world. And whether you choose to follow them with all the strength you have or not has nothing to do with anyone else. And if you stand alone, then you do. You don’t do it to give to this person or that, as a command, or out of obedience, and certainly not for reward. You do it because that is who you choose to be.”

  Paxton started to interrupt him.

  “You will never know how it hurts me to look at Shanley Corcoran and see him as he is,” Joseph overrode him. “But my alternative is to betray the good I believe, and I can’t do that out of loyalty to anyone. If I were to, then I would have nothing left inside me to offer to the men in the trenches, to those I love, or to myself. Judgment is the court’s, not mine, but I have told you the truth.”

  Paxton knew he had lost, and he gave in with grace.

  The verdict was immediate. Shanley Corcoran was found guilty of treason and sentenced to be hanged. He faced it with terror and self-pity, the sweat running down his face. He seemed to shrivel inside his clothes. For all the laughter, the warmth, and the intelligence he had had, there was a core of emptiness inside him, and Joseph could not bear to look at his nakedness.

  Three Sundays must pass before the execution, but something had died there that day. An illusion of warmth and beauty had finally evaporated, leaving only a void.

  As Joseph walked out onto the steps in the sun, he knew that he had acknowledged betrayal and survived. He had been forced to look within himself and had seen not a weak man trying to find his purpose in becoming whatever others needed of him, but a knowledge of good that did not depend upon anyone or anything else. He would love, and he would need people for many reasons, but not to heal his own doubts or to fill an emptiness within himself.