by Anne Perry
Sandwell stared at Joseph with a hatred so violent, his whole slender body trembled with it, then he quickly stepped toward him and hit him as hard as he could.
Joseph staggered backward, overbalanced, and fell, his head striking the floor with a crack. He lay still.
Judith went ashen. Lizzie drew in her breath with a sob and started forward, but Matthew blocked her way.
Sandwell moved forward to hit Joseph again. Matthew suddenly saw in Joseph’s motionless body all the dead men he had loved: his father, Sebastian Allard, Owen Cullingford, and all the others once full of passion and dreams, who had talked and laughed and cared so much. He struck Sandwell in the middle of the back and, as the man swayed, caught him and spun him around. He hit him with the blow he had been taught and never expected to use, hard under the nose, driving the bone into his brain.
Sandwell slithered to the floor, and when Matthew bent over him he was not breathing. Without rising to his feet Matthew turned to his brother. Lizzie was beside him. Joseph was coughing, struggling to get his breath and to sit up. He looked dazed and unsteady, but unquestionably alive.
Matthew was overcome by a wave of relief so intense he felt dizzy with it himself. He realized that for an instant he had thought Joseph was dead. The crack of bone on the hard wooden floor had filled him with a fear just like the terrible grief he had felt for his father.
“Joe?” he said huskily.
Joseph groaned and put a hand to his head, then stared beyond Matthew to the Peacemaker lying on the floor. “You hit him,” he observed. “Thank you. I think I really angered him. He wanted to kill me.”
Matthew looked at the figure almost at his feet, sprawled out, one leg under the other. He seemed smaller than when standing up. His brilliant eyes were open and staring sightlessly.
“He is dead,” Schenckendorff said quietly. “I think perhaps that is a good thing.” He looked at Joseph as he was being helped into a chair by Lizzie and Matthew. “I hope you are not badly hurt. You are quite right: You angered him, because what you said is true. Great men use power as little as possible. It takes supreme humility to allow others to disagree and to make their own mistakes. The right to be wrong is worth dying to protect, because without it all our virtues are empty. What we have not paid for slips through our fingers, because we do not value it enough to do what is necessary to keep it.” He held out his hand to Joseph.
Joseph reached up to take it, and clasped it tightly.
Schenckendorff stood to attention and faced Lloyd George.
“I am at your service, sir,” he said stiffly.
Lloyd George was still standing, pale-faced. “Thank you,” he said simply. “You are a prisoner of war. You will be treated accordingly, and in time repatriated. I am mindful of how much we owe you, and it will not be forgotten.” He walked to the door and spoke to the man outside.
Minutes later Schenckendorff said goodbye to them. Matthew and Joseph saluted him. Two more men came to take the body of the Peacemaker.
“Heart attack,” the prime minister told them, even though it was patently untrue. No one argued or made the slightest movement to intervene as the men carried the body out. The door closed behind them, and those left in the room faced the prime minister.
Joseph’s head ached appallingly, but his vision had cleared. All he could think of was Judith, and how she would bear it when Mason was arrested. Since she was no blood relation of Mason’s, she might not even see him again. Were he in her place, and it was Lizzie who would be taken away to face trial and execution, he would not know how to endure it. And yet there was nothing he could do to help. Mason was as alone as if there were no one else in the building.
Mason stared at Lloyd George, waiting, his face white, eyes steady.
Lloyd George chewed his lip and very slowly shook his head. “This grieves me,” he said softly. “You were the bravest and the best of all our war correspondents. You went to every field of conflict. Your words framed the way we at home saw and felt the pain of our men, and their valor. Through your experience we have shared what our men endured, and the spirit they carried with them. You were the voice of those who could not and now never will speak for themselves.”
Mason swayed a little. Joseph held Judith’s arm to prevent her from going to him.
“We are weary of war,” Lloyd George went on. “We are heartsick, bereaved, and frightened of a future that is stranger and more complex and difficult than ever we have faced before. We do not need to know that one of the voices that comforted us and led us through our darkest hours was that of a traitor. I shall hide that—not for your sake, but for the sake of my country. You will never speak of it again. No one in this room will.” He looked from one to the other of them, and saw agreement in their silence.
“Your punishment,” he went on, addressing Mason, “is that you will leave these shores and never return. You are no longer an Englishman.”
Mason drew his breath in with a gasp, as if he had been struck a blow that took the breath from his body, but he did not complain.
Judith was clinging to Joseph so hard her fingers hurt his arm, but he was aware only of what Mason must be feeling: the absolute and final rejection. He would never again walk the moors and see the wind-riven skies, hear the curlews call, return to the cobbled streets and the familiar speech, take ale with his friends in the village pub.
The silence was thick with the knowledge of what it was to be alone.
Judith let go of Joseph’s arm and stepped forward. She touched Mason, and at last he looked at her. She had never seen greater pain.
“I’m coming with you,” she said, having made the decision without even questioning it.
“You can’t—”
“I’m not asking you,” she replied. “I’m telling you. We’ll go to America. Start again. There’ll be work to do there, too.”
He drew in his breath to argue, and changed his mind, and in any case was too overwhelmed to speak. He nodded, gripping her hand so hard she momentarily pulled away. Then he realized what he was doing and was suddenly, passionately gentle. “Thank you” was all he said.
Lloyd George nodded. “Wait outside,” he instructed, his voice hoarse with emotion.
When they were gone, he turned to Matthew. “You have done a good job, Reavley. I knew your father. He was a fine man, and honest. He loathed the secret services, but he would have been proud of you. Your country will never know what you have done, or what it may have cost you, but we are in your debt.” He held out his hand.
Matthew took it. “Thank you, sir. I hope he would.”
Lloyd George nodded. “Don’t doubt it. We are in a new age, and those who wield secrets are as necessary to us as those who wield swords.” He turned to Lizzie. “Or those who heal, and try to make the best of the damage we have done.”
Finally he turned to Joseph. “And you, sir, have kept the faith. You have helped us heal the wounds of the soul. Without that, the rest is pointless. But it is not the end. This is only the middle.”
“I know, sir,” Joseph replied. “There is a long ministry ahead. But first I must go back to my men in Flanders, before the end.”
“Of course you must,” Lloyd George agreed. “Be with your regiment.”
Outside, in the November dusk, it was time for goodbyes. There was nothing to say. They were used to parting, but nothing ever eased the hurt of it or made the pulling away less like a tearing of the heart. Judith clung long to Matthew, and even longer to Joseph, but still the moment had to come. She walked away beside Mason, her head high. The streetlight caught the bones of her cheeks and the wide, vulnerable mouth, smiling, lips trembling. Then the shadows took them both.
Lizzie kissed Joseph and then moved away, taking Matthew’s arm. “We’ll see you soon,” she said firmly, smiling at Joseph.
Matthew saluted. Joseph returned it, then walked toward the railway station for Dover, and the crossing back to France.
On the morning of November the ele
venth Joseph crouched in a new, hastily constructed dugout. It was little more than a foxhole. He stared across the stretch of no-man’s-land, far to the east of the old one at Ypres. The guns were still firing. Heavy artillery shells gouged up the earth. Snipers picked off the odd, careless soldier who raised his head too high.
Morel was twenty yards along to the right, Tiddly Wop behind him. The sun caught Snowy Nunn’s fair hair.
“Knew you’d come back, Chaplain,” Barshey Gee said beside Joseph.
Joseph turned to look at him.
Gunfire roared again, obliterating Barshey’s words.
Joseph shook his head to indicate that he had not heard.
“You wouldn’t leave us,” Barshey repeated in the sudden stillness.
Joseph looked at his watch. It was eleven o’clock.
The silence went on. There was no answering fire. All along the line was silence—everywhere.
Slowly men stood up, tentatively at first, then more and more, until there were tens of thousands of them, as far as the eye could see, in every direction. Someone cheered, and another, and another, until there was a roar that filled the air and echoed across Europe from the mountains to the sea.
About the Author
ANNE PERRY is the bestselling author of the World War I novels No Graves As Yet, Shoulder the Sky, and Angels in the Gloom; 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 Dark Assassin, The Shifting Tide, and Death of a Stranger. The popular novels featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt include Long Spoon Lane, Seven Dials, and Southampton Row. 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
We Shall Not Sleep
THE CHRISTMAS NOVELS
A Christmas Journey
A Christmas Guest
A Christmas Visitor
A Christmas Secret
We Shall Not Sleep is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Anne Perry
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perry, Anne.
We shall not sleep : a novel of World War I / Anne Perry.
p. cm.
1.Reavley family (Fictitious characters)—Fiction. 2. Chaplains, Military—Fiction. 3.World War, 1914–1918—England—Fiction. 4.World War, 1914–1918—France—Fiction. 5.World War, 1914–1918—Belgium—Fiction. 6.World War, 1914–1918—Trench warfare—Fiction. I.Title.
PR6066.E693W4 2007
823'.914—dc22
2006047853
www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-49707-9
v3.0