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, indicating 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.
It was a crime Joseph was guilty of as well.
Far more urgent, however, was the matter of what Geddes would say. It would have been pointless trying to persuade him not to betray Judith and Wil. He was already facing the firing squad. There was nothing they could offer him or threaten him with. It would depend upon what the other men said. There was a faint glimmer of hope that if they all stuck to the same story, it would be believed over Geddes’s testimony. It would be suggested that he named Judith as accomplice out of revenge, because it was Joseph who had brought him back.
But he could say none of that now. He and Morel had traveled together, shared laughter and pain. Each man’s survival had depended upon the other; but now Joseph was going to resume his duties, and Morel was facing court-martial and perhaps dishonor and death. Nothing was equal between them anymore.
“Thank you” was all Joseph could think of to say that was not condescending, false, and completely pointless. He offered his hand.
Morel took it, held it hard for a moment, then turned and walked over to the sergeant. Without looking back, he went out of the door.
Admiral Hall had given Matthew forty-eight hours before reporting back on Faulkner, and Matthew knew that they could afford no more. He toyed with the idea of simply asking Shearing why he had chosen him, but in spite of what Hall had told him of Shearing and his family, he still could not silence that last whisper of doubt. Sandwell’s words stayed with him. Whatever he learned, it must be from his own investigation, his own sources. And it must be discreet.
But all the searching he was able to do swiftly and discreetly only confirmed that Faulkner was an extreme disciplinarian, rigid in his interpretation of the law, a man who seemed unfailingly to have pushed for the letter of the law above mercy. He had served all his career in England and had, so far as was known, never seen the battlefield or had the slightest knowledge of life in the trenches, let alone death in no-man’s-land.
He seemed the worst possible choice to prosecute Cavan, Morel, and the others. If Faulkner was single and he had any weakness, or even any redeeming factors, whatever it was, Dermot Sandwell had not known of it. He believed Faulkner was invulnerable, and Shearing had agreed to him for precisely that reason.
Matthew had no time left, and now no alternative but to face Shearing.
As they sat facing each other in Shearing’s office, Matthew began without apology or preamble. “Sir, I recently had a matter which I took directly to Admiral Hall. He gave me instruction to investigate it and report to him within forty-eight hours. That time is up today, and I have no satisfactory answer. I need to know if you have any knowledge on the subject.”
Shearing put down his pen carefully and sat back, staring at Matthew. “I assume this is about your vast conspiracy again,” he said slowly, his face tight and wary.
Matthew evaded the answer. “It is about Lieutenant Colonel Faulkner, sir,” he said. “He is going to prosecute Cavan. And any of the other men, if they are found.”
Shearing’s eyes were cold. “I told you, Reavley, that matter is in hand. You are not to interfere with it. That is a direct order. If you disobey me, I shall have you transferred to the front—immediately. Do you understand me?”
Matthew felt the chill as if a window had been opened onto an ice storm. “Yes, sir. But I have been studying his past record…”
Shearing sat upright sharply. “Who gave you permission to do that? You could have jeopardized the whole court-martial! You—”
“Admiral Hall, sir,” Matthew cut across him.
Shearing’s eyes were like black stones. “Do you think me incompetent, Reavley? Or that I am involved in this conspiracy of yours?”
Matthew stared at him and felt guilty for the spark of pain he saw in Shearing’s face. It took him by surprise and he found himself speechless.
Shearing breathed a faint sigh. “There is no good solution, Reavley. Faulkner is simply the best we have—”
“I don’t see how,” Matthew interrupted him bitterly. “He’s—”
“I know what he is!” Shearing snapped. “If you think about it a little harder, use your brain rather than your emotions, you might see it yourself.”
“He’ll insist on the charge of mutiny and murder,” Matthew said wretchedly. “General Northrup might have moderated it, to save his son’s reputation, but from what everyone says of Faulkner, there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance he’ll go for anything less than the full thing, and a firing squad—no matter what a rank injustice it is, who gets executed, or even what it does to the regiment, or even the whole damn Western Front! He’s an obsessive, single-vision martinet.” His anger and helplessness made him louder than he had intended.
“That is precisely what he is, and it is the single weakness that may, with great skill and luck, be turned against him.” Shearing’s voice was elaborately patient as he held up his hand, fingers stiff. “There are three possible verdicts: guilty of mutiny and murder, guilty of mutiny and manslaughter, or guilty of gross insubordination and accidental death—for all except the man who deliberately front-loaded the live round. He alone is guilty of murder.”
“Faulkner will insist on mutiny and murder,” Matthew interrupted him. “Even mutiny and manslaughter will get the firing squad. They might be able to delay it a while on appeal, but what use is that? The end is just as inevitable, and everyone knows it.”
“Which is why there is no use finding a prosecution who will go for the middle charge,” Shearing said grimly.
Matthew still saw no hope. “There’s no way Faulkner will accept gross insubordination!”
Shearing’s lips were drawn into a tight line. “Of course there isn’t! He will insist on murder, and if we can get the right man to defend Cavan and the other men, he will force Faulkner to prove it, to the very last act and word, even thought, beyond any doubt at all, reasonable or unreasonable. He will hang on like a bulldog, until the arena is swimming in blood, but he won’t let go.”
Matthew was stunned.
Shearing’s voice was very low. “It will destroy Howard Northrup’s reputation, but for his father it will be like seeing him killed again. It will show the court exactly why Cavan and Morel and the others felt they had no choice whatever, no morally acceptable choice, but to take an action which they believed would save the lives of at least some of the men they led, and who trusted them, for whom the army had made them responsible.”
At last Matthew understood. He breathed out very slowly. “It’s a hell of a risk, sir.”
“Can you think of something better?”
“No,” Matthew admitted. “Have you got a military lawyer with the nerve to do that? And the knowledge of the front line?”
Shearing smiled with a bitter irony. “No. It’s customary for an officer from the regiment to defend on lesser charges. I think the very best they can do is pick one of them this time….”
Matthew was appalled. “Against Faulkner? His opponent will be cruficied!”
There was a bright, hard light in Shearing’s eyes. “It doesn’t need a brilliant student of the law, Reavley. It needs a man of passion, courage, and undeviating loyalty, a man who knows the accused and what they have endured, and why. A man who will be prepared to sacrifice himself before he will stand by and allow an injustice to be done. A man whom the court will respect as one of their own.”
Matthew could feel his heart pounding in the oppressive room with its still, hot air. “And you have such a man?”
“Naturally! He knows the case better than anyone else, and he believes in their moral innocence. Also, he does not know when he is beaten, so he will not give up.”
“Joseph…”
“Precisely,” Shearing agreed. “I have an excellent man there to brief him. Let’s hope he does not get himself killed in the meantime!”
In Passchendaele the fighting wore on. A sense of foreboding filled the air they breathed, the clothes they wore, the food they ate, and darkened the vision, like the rain, everywhere. It was all hopeless, as if the final insanity had seized the world. Rescue was pointless. Whoever did not die today would die tomorrow, or the day after.
Colonel Hook sent for Joseph. It was late. As August moved into September, the nights were drawing in. Summer was fading.
“The court-martial is going ahead,” Hook said gravely. “The preliminaries are tomorrow, the real stuff the day after.”
Joseph had expected it. It was unrealistic to hope for anything different. All the arguments and pleas had been made and rejected. The desperate state of the battle had been argued, as had the morale of the army, the possible effect of such a trial and the verdict on the entire Western Front, and therefore on the war as a whole.
“Rubbish!” Faulkner had dismissed it. “We are winning the battle of Passchendaele,” he had insisted. “The discipline of the entire army depends upon never, in any circumstances, being seen to allow mutiny and murder. If disgruntled men who think they know better than their officers can take the law into their own hands and commit murder and get away with it, then no officer will be safe from now on. It is impossible that you can be so stupid as not to see that. If we do not serve justice both when we wish to, and when we do not, then we serve nothing. The essence of justice is that personal feelings do not enter into it. Either it is impartial, or it is meaningless.”
Alone with Hook, he was at a loss to know why he had called him to tell him no more than they already knew.
The briefest of smiles touched Hook’s face. “I know you are already aware of that, Reavley. What you don’t know is that it has been requested from London that you represent the accused men.”
“Of course I shall be there,” Joseph said quickly. “But it would be far better if their defense did not call me. Much of what I know I cannot testify to. Let Morel tell them about finding Geddes and bringing him back, and anything he said about Northrup and his father. He knows it all as well as I do.”
Hook pushed his hand through his hair. “I have no intention of letting you testify, Reavley. I know perfectly well that you know who helped them escape. I have a damn good idea myself. I am not calling you as a witness. You are to defend them.”
“What?” Joseph was horrified.
“You are to defend them,” Hook repeated.
“Me? I have no experience—and no natural ability,” Joseph protested. “I don’t know the first thing about military law. They need an expert. In fact they need the best there is.”
“No,” Hook said wearily. “They need a man who believes in them, and doesn’t know when to give up. They need a man who knows what it is to fight, and what our losses have been.” The briefest flicker of amusement touched his eyes. “I would also prefer it if you were not called to testify. I’m sure you’d lie in your teeth rather than implicate…whoever it was who helped them escape.” His gaze did not waver. “Even if it was a civilian, such as the V.A.D., for example, and not subject to military law, only ordinary imprisonment. They were not worried about betrayal of anyone. Morel in particular thought you would lie, possibly hating doing it, but lie nevertheless.”