Joseph asked a few questions about Paris, although nothing that could be secret; he simply wanted to picture Sam’s life.
“Do you get reasonable food?”
Sam shrugged. “Most of the time. Better than you do! I’d back any Frenchman alive against an army cook, any day of my life!”
Joseph smiled, but he heard the moment of hollowness in Sam’s voice. He remembered the chocolate biscuits Sam’s brother had sent, and the rotten, scalding hot tea.
“It’s important work,” he said, then wondered if it sounded condescending. “And dangerous. It must be hard to know who you can trust. At least I know which way the enemy is.” Then he wished he had not said that, either. The old comradeship was so precious that the memory of it now seemed almost like golden days, and yet those days had frequently been nightmare awful.
“It’s which way he’s going next we’re working on,” Sam said drily. “It’s a sort of mental puzzle putting the pieces together. There are some decent chaps, and women, too. Different kind of courage. Paris isn’t home, but it has charm, like a beautiful woman who falls ill. It’s worth fighting to see her recover, get back the color and the wit again, to see her dress with style.”
“See you in the Café Parnasse, after the war!” Joseph said impulsively.
Sam slapped Joseph on the shoulder, gently. “Done!” he agreed. “First anniversary.”
They came within sight of Joseph’s lodging. Sam gave a small salute, a smile, and without any more words he was gone into the shadows. The night was empty again, the warmth and the safety of it gone.
Joseph went to his room. The chill in his flesh—into the bones—had nothing to do with the weather, or even his tiredness: It was a knowledge of loss.
Punch Fuller was in the Café Parnasse at one o’clock. He was flirting shamelessly with a French girl who was perhaps no more than fourteen, a beautiful, self-possessed child-woman with a magnificent head of curly hair. She was very patient with him, brushing him off with easy skill.
“Hello, Punch,” Joseph said when he was almost beside him. “May I have soup and bread, please, mademoiselle?” He sat down on the seat next to Punch.
Punch was startled. “Hello, Chaplain! You come to keep me out of the paths of sin? That’s downright unsporting of you.” He looked at Joseph narrowly to see if he understood that it was a politely worded request to go away.
Joseph smiled. “I didn’t find you by accident, Punch. Colonel Hook sent me.”
Punch froze, not even turning his head toward Joseph. He was twenty-three, plain with his hooked nose and sharp chin, but quick-witted and an easy, loyal friend. “Whoi’s that then?” he said guardedly.
Joseph had intended to be direct; he needed Punch to believe him. “Because Major Northrup’s father, General Northrup, is tearing the regiment apart determined to find out who shot his son,” he replied.
“Oi got no oidea who that’d be, sir,” Punch said immediately.
“No, of course not,” Joseph agreed. “Nor have I. Not sure that I really want to. The man was an ass. But the thing is, the general isn’t going to go away until he has an answer, even if it’s a wrong one, and some innocent man ends up before a firing squad.”
Punch turned to look at him, his blue eyes troubled. “So what is it you reckon Oi can do about that then, sir?” The suspicion was sharp in his face that Joseph was trying to manipulate him into giving someone away.
Joseph had his answer planned. “He won’t leave until he gets an answer. I want to find one he’ll accept, and stop looking.”
“Loike wot, Chaplain? If it weren’t a Jerry, it had to be one of us.”
“True,” Joseph conceded. “With our casualty rate, probably someone who’s dead, too, by now.”
“Roight.” Punch nodded. “But still won’t be very good for his family, though, will it? An’ d’yer think the general’ll believe it? Sort of convenient, don’t you think? An’ apart from that, Chaplain, who’s going to tell him a loi? You aren’t!”
Joseph was both pleased and frustrated by Punch’s faith in him. The next part of his plan was very carefully judged. “I realize you don’t know exactly what really happened, Punch,” he began. “But let’s create a sort of working model, for something that’s close enough people would believe it. The major was a liability. He didn’t know what he was doing, and he wouldn’t be told. It cost several good men’s lives, plus a smashed leg here and there, the odd amputation.”
“That’s roight,” Punch agreed guardedly. “We all know that.”
“So far General Northrup doesn’t,” Joseph corrected him. “He’s still denying all such accusations.”
“So whoi does he think we shot him, then?” Punch said reasonably.
“That’s a good point,” Joseph said vehemently. “I can find chapter and verse of that easily enough. And when I do, the people who suffered most, or those whose friends did, are going to be suspect. That’s the reason I haven’t made a point of looking very hard so far. I hoped he’d realize it’s going to be ugly. Do as much damage to his son’s reputation as anyone’s. But he isn’t listening.”
“Don’t necessarily follow!” Punch protested. “You can’t say as it was this man or that just because of who got killed!”
“I know that.”
“Could’ve been lots of people!” Punch emphasized.
An idea was crystallizing in Joseph’s mind. “Do you mean lots of people together, Punch, or just any one of lots of people?”
Punch was thinking hard.
Joseph waited.
“How would it be…” Punch said very slowly, “if you was to tell him that it was lots of men, dozen or more. Not one man gone mad who wanted to murder him, but a dozen who’d all had enough, and could see that more an’ more men were going to get killed if the major didn’t stop and listen to someone with experience? And it was only meant to scare some sense into him.”
“How was shooting him going to scare sense into him?” Joseph said dubiously.
“Not shoot him, Chaplain. Set up a trial, loike. Make him sit an’ listen to what a fool he was, evidence. Foind him guilty of incompetence, causing other men’s deaths, an’ pretend to shoot him. Scare the hell out of him.” He studied Joseph’s face earnestly, searching for understanding.
It was beginning to be very clear. “You mean a kangaroo court-martial?” Joseph said very softly.
“I’m only suggesting it!” Punch protested. “D’you think the general moight believe that?”
“Private soldiers court-martialing an officer?”
“Not just privates, nor corporals neither.”
“Officers?” Joseph was not really surprised. “Captain Morel?”
“An’ Captain Cavan. He were the one who had to amputate poor Matheson’s leg, just ’cos that idiot sent him to cart a bloody great field gun through the mud. Everyone told him it was dangerous!” He stared at Joseph, challenging him to argue.
Joseph sat numbly, no longer even aware of his surroundings. It was worse than he had thought. They were speaking theoretically, but both knew that what Punch was really saying was the truth. If Cavan had been involved and Northrup ever found out, it would be a court-martial that would tear apart more than just the regiment. Cavan was one of the best surgeons on the Ypres Salient, and one of the bravest men. His recommendation for the V.C. had heartened every man who knew him. If he were now court-martialed for Northrup’s murder, it might be the final grief and absurdity that would break the spirit of some, and ignite others to the mutiny that had lain just beneath the surface in men like Morel. There wouldn’t be a serving soldier on the front who wouldn’t think Cavan was worth ten of Northrup, whatever the law said.
“Captain Reavley?” Punch said anxiously.
“Yes. Yes, I see. It was designed to frighten Major Northrup. What went wrong?”
“Oi don’t know, sir. Oi swear.”
“Thank you.”
“You aren’t going to go an’ tell Colonel Hook what Oi said, are you? Oi’ll deny it, sir.” His eyes were angry and frightened.
“No, I’m not,” Joseph said sharply. “I told you I wasn’t. But I can’t find a story the general will believe if I don’t know what the truth is. This way none of the facts anyone can discover will prove it false.”
“Roight. Yes, I see. Thank you, Chaplain.”
It was dusk as Joseph left in a staff car returning to the front. The air was motionless, wet and close to the skin. The sky leached the last tones of warmth out of the waterlogged land. Thin vapors of mist provided a curious softness but hid none of the desolation: the broken trees; the bare, scorched wreckage of houses and farms; the litter of broken guns and vehicles on the roads.
The car was on a cratered road now, and he smelled the familiar stench long before they reached even the outpost farthest back. The first star shells were bursting, and gradually the sound of the heavy guns blurred one raid into another. A stray eighteen-pound shell exploded fifty yards away, jarring the earth and sending eruptions of heavy Flanders clay high and dark into the air. Most of it was far in front of the car, over the woods toward Passchendaele itself.
As he alighted, he thanked the driver who had given him a lift, glad of a few hundred yards to walk. He felt battered by the noise, as if it were a physical assault, but he needed the time for a last arrangement of thoughts in his mind.
He found Hook in his dugout. He was looking at maps, although he must have known the whole of the Ypres Salient better than he knew his own garden. The photograph of his wife had been moved to the top of the gramophone, as if both had to be forgotten for the moment.
“Ah, come in, Reavley,” he said, looking up as if relieved to forget the advances and retreats for a while. “Did you learn anything?”
“Yes, sir,” Joseph replied, letting the sacking fall closed over the doorway and standing to attention as well as he could. It was raining again outside and his boots were heavy with mud, his legs soaked almost up to the knee. “I found Punch Fuller, and he told me a good deal of what happened.”
There was no light in Hook’s face. “As a confession?” Clearly he hoped it was; then Joseph could not tell him.
“No, sir—more or less theoretically, the sort of thing that could have happened,” Joseph answered unhappily. He stood to attention, refusing to sit. “I really think, sir, that General Northrup would prefer not to know this,” he said very clearly. “And it would serve no purpose at all to tell him. The major was an arrogant and inexperienced officer who inadvertently caused the deaths of several good men, and the serious injuries of others. It provoked intense ill feeling among almost all the men, not just an odd one here or there. Any action you take is going to have to involve at least a dozen men, sir. And I have reason to think that his actual death was not intended but was an accident.”
Hook looked weary. He gestured to Joseph to be seated on an upturned ammunition box.
“You can’t have it all ways, Reavley,” he said. “Either a dozen men were involved because he had angered them beyond their control, or his death was an accident. Which was it? And if you’re going to say it was an accident, then you are going to have to produce the man who fired the shot, and prove its accidental nature. What the hell was he doing pointing a loaded weapon at an officer anyway?”
“I don’t know who did it, sir,” Joseph said honestly. It was the one part of the story he had no need to blur.
“Don’t play games with me, Reavley!” Hook snapped. His uniform was crumpled and bloodstained. His face was haggard with exhaustion. “I’ve got men dying out there by the hundreds every day!” His hands were trembling. “I need to get Northrup off my back and out of the way! Either you know what happened or you don’t! What did Fuller tell you? You said a dozen men. Do you mean a kangaroo court-martial?”
There was no point in denying it. Hook obviously knew. Joseph felt the net of circumstance tightening around him, but he was determined to give Hook a way out. “Yes, sir, but only with the intention of frightening him into taking advice in the future. Not to kill him.”
Hook’s face was pale, his mouth pulled down with grief. “Who was involved, Reavley?” His voice dropped. “I have to know.”
Joseph looked straight back at him. He would not make the same mistake this time. He was prepared to lie, evade, whatever was necessary, and live with his conscience. “I don’t know, sir. Fuller told me what happened, not who was concerned. And I promised him I’d not betray him. I think the men may know, sir, but no one will say. You can’t blame them if their loyalty to each other is greater than to some military principle of obedience to an incompetent officer who, out of sheer stupidity, is going to cost the lives of their friends.” He chose his words deliberately. “We owe them more than that.”
Hook passed his hand across his face. Joseph could hear the faint rasping of dry skin over the stubble of his beard. “I don’t have the luxury of choosing my own morality, Reavley. I can tell Northrup this, but he won’t believe me. He can’t afford to, because it makes his son a disgrace to him. And it would set a precedent that would be impossible to live with. Truth or lie, the army can’t afford to grant that it is just.”
“Then tell him it was an accident,” Joseph demanded. “Let Major Northrup be buried with some semblance of honor. That would serve everyone.”
Hook gave a sharp bark, supposed to be laughter. “I’ll try!”
Joseph spent the night working with Cavan at the dressing station as casualties poured in. He snatched a few hours of sleep, then went to sit with the wounded or dying and do what he could for them. Mostly it was simply not leaving them to die alone.
At ten o’clock, Barshey Gee came and told him the colonel wanted to see him, and ten minutes later Joseph was back in Hook’s dugout facing General Northrup, white-faced and standing so ramrod-stiff it seemed as if his back was arched.
“Are you saying, Captain Reavley, that my son was murdered by the common consent of a dozen or more of his own men?” His voice rasped in his throat as if he could not gulp the air into his lungs. “What in God’s name has this army come to? Are we a crowd of barbarians, beyond the law? I will not surrender humanity and decency, sir, to a bunch of hooligans so demoralized by drink and terror that they turn on their own officers! Is there no morality left? How dare you stand there in the uniform of a man of God, and condone such…such evil!” His body trembled and he was obviously having difficulty controlling his voice.