Shoulder the Sky (43 page)

Had Sam felt like that, faced with Prentice, whom everyone hated? Joseph didn't hate Mason, but he would in effect have killed him.

He felt Matthew's hand, warm and strong on his wrist, and looked up at him.

"Joe, what happened?" Matthew said insistently. "Where's Mason now? You didn't.. . ?"

He was afraid, Joseph realized with amazement. Matthew was afraid because something in Joseph had changed irreparably. An innocence of decision had gone. Nothing was as simple as it had seemed, not Judith and Cullingford, not Sam and Prentice, not himself and Mason.

"You're right," he agreed quietly. "I would have drowned him rather than let him publish his piece." He blinked as tears filled his eyes. "But he can't do it now. I tried to tell him the reason for it all, explain to him, but I didn't have the words. Andy showed him."

"Who's Andy?" Matthew asked.

"Tommy Atkins," Joseph replied, then in simple, choking words he told Matthew what had happened. Matthew listened in silence, his hand held tight over Joseph's.

"Where's Mason now?" he said when Joseph fell silent.

"In the next room," Joseph replied. "He was colder than I was, because he was wet. But he's all right. He made it."

"There's no one in the next room," Matthew said with a frown. "I passed it as someone was leaving. Tallish fellow, with dark hair. He looked pretty rough."

Joseph felt himself grow cold again. "You must find out who was going to print his story," he said urgently. "If the Peacemaker gets hold of him he just might write it again. I don't think so but we have to be sure! Mason comes from Beverley in Yorkshire. When he thought we wouldn't make it, he told me he'd known the newspaper owner all his life. The man has several papers, all in Yorkshire and Lancashire. He could kill recruiting right across the country, once the story spread. You ought to be able to find him. Politically he's a pacifist for a united Europe, doesn't care at what cost, or who's in charge." He closed his eyes, his mind and his heart aching with understanding for Sam. He wished to God he had never told anyone at all that Prentice was murdered. "Bloody Prentice was working for him as well," he said aloud. "Mason told me."

"The Peacemaker?" Matthew's eyes filled with understanding. "The original plan couldn't work, so his plan now is to bring about British surrender because we haven't the army to defend ourselves any more. God damn it, Joe! We have to stop him, whatever the cost!

"And you're sure the Peacemaker's not Chetwin?"

"Absolutely. It seemed so ... inevitable. But it's not him." He repeated to Matthew what Mynott had said about Chetwin's German fiancee, her death and her parents' grief and anger. "It would have been impossible for Chetwin to have any connection with the document," he went on. "The Kaiser wouldn't let him into the palace grounds to deliver the coal, never mind to take a secret document of state to someone here to carry to the King. I think he was lucky to get out of Germany alive."

"Father would be pleased," Matthew said with a very slight smile. "He didn't want to hate Chetwin. Although I don't think he would have admired that story! Poor girl."

"And her parents. She was their only child." For a moment memory of Eleanor came back again. Joseph saw in Matthew's eyes that the same thought had come to him.

Joseph found himself smiling, not that the memory was much easier, but because Matthew understood it. "We've paid too much to give in now," he said aloud. "How could we face those who've given everything they had, and tell them it was for nothing? We haven't the stomach to go on! We asked everything from them. They gave it and we took."

"I know," Matthew bit his lip. "We won't give in. But we're a long way from the end. I'm glad the Peacemaker wasn't Chetwin, but I wish to hell I knew who was. We need to, Joe, whoever he is. He's ruthless. Killing Cullingford like that shows he'll destroy anyone he thinks stands in his way." His face was bleak. "Gus Tempany died too. I don't know if it has anything to do with the Peacemaker, but he was a hell of a fine man, and a friend of Cullingford's. Died the day after Cullingford. Accident of some sort, in his flat. I actually went and asked the porter if Cullingford had been there the day before, and he said he had."

The coldness seemed to be in the air of the room. Joseph felt Cullingford's death more deeply than he had expected to. His mind turned automatically to Judith, and meeting Matthew's eyes, he knew his had also.

As if in answer, Matthew spoke. "I write to Judith pretty well every day. She writes back, but she doesn't say much. I feel so damn helpless."

"Letting her know you're there is about all you can do," Joseph replied. "It does help, at least after a while."

Matthew nodded very slightly. "Our losses are appalling," he said bleakly. "And the war at sea is getting worse." He shook his head with a slight, self-deprecating smile. "I suppose I hardly need to tell you that! And you've seen more of the carnage than I have. No one could know better how little we can afford to be betrayed from within as well. We've got to find him and destroy him, before he takes our faith in ourselves away from us."

"You'll find the newspaper owner?" Joseph pressed.

"Yes. But having Mason's report published won't be all the Peacemaker is doing."

"No. No, of course not. I suppose if Mason's well enough to get out of here, I must be too." He sat up slowly. He still ached, but his head was clear. "I've got to get back to Ypres," he added. "I must see Judith. And I have to do something about Sam."

"In a day or two," Matthew agreed gently. "Come to my flat for a while first. Give yourself a chance, Joe. You're no use to anyone like this."

"I don't know if I can afford the time. What day is it anyway?"

"May the nineteenth. I've told your unit you've got till the end of the week at least, more if you need it. I don't know what you're going to do about Sam I can't help you with that but Judith will be all right. We're all going to lose people. She'll hurt, but she'll recover. You need a day or two here first. I'll take one or two early nights. We'll go to the music hall, or see a Charlie Chaplin film. You need to think of something absurd that doesn't matter a damn, before you go back. So do I."

Joseph looked up. "I'm sorry. I didn't even ask how you are!" "That's all right! I wouldn't have told you anyway," Matthew said with a sudden, beautiful smile.

In Marchmont Street the Peacemaker was stunned. Mason looked appalling. His eyes were hollow, and his face had a haunted air as of a man whose dreams make sleep worse than waking. He stood straight, but there was an overwhelming weariness in him, and when he moved it obviously hurt him.

"You lost it?" the Peacemaker repeated. "You said it was wrapped in oiled silk!"

"I didn't lose it, I destroyed it," Mason repeated. "I took it out of its wrapping and threw it into the water. Actually I had very little choice, if I wanted to survive. He would have let us all drown rather than have it published."

"Drown himself? And the other crewman?"

"Yes."

The Peacemaker stared at the man in front of him and saw in his wide-boned, passionate, stubborn face an immovable certainty that he was right. And there was something more than facts: there was a difference in emotion, a change in his eyes. "Joseph Reavley? The Biblical language teacher from Cambridge?" he asked, still finding it difficult to believe.

"Yes," Mason replied. "He's serving as a chaplain in Ypres now. He's seen a lot of action. I watched him helping the wounded in Gallipoli. He's done a lot of it before."

The Peacemaker swore. He was not often wrong about men, he could not afford to be, and this was an expensive mistake. That was two brilliant pieces of propaganda, opportunities to tell the truth in its horror, that had been snatched from him. He looked steadily at Mason, trying to read beyond the weariness; the emotion that Gallipoli and the sea had stirred in him. How long had he been adrift in an open boat with a blind and suicidal chaplain. Mason was a good man, he abhorred the waste, he cared for the individual, but he could also see beyond sentimentality to the greater good, which only too evidently Joseph Reavley could not.. . Damn Joseph Reavley! He was far more of a nuisance than could have been foreseen!

"Never mind," he said aloud. "You can write it again. It might not have the immediacy of the battlefield, but write the truth! Say you were pursued across the Mediterranean, that you took ship in Gibraltar but it was sunk and you only just survived crossing the Channel in a lifeboat, and you lost your original draft. It will make even more compelling reading." He went on urgently, "And it will heighten people's awareness of how vulnerable we are at sea."

"Possibly," Mason agreed flatly. "But I won't."

"Reavley can't '

"It's nothing to do with what Reavley would do," Mason replied, a flare of anger in his eyes. "Or to save my life. It's because I don't believe it's the right thing to do. It won't bring peace, only a betrayal of the ordinary soldier who now believes that he's fighting a just and necessary war. I won't do that."

The Peacemaker's temper flared because he was losing control in a startling and unexpected way. It took him a supreme effort to mask it and keep his expression bland. "Even Gallipoli?" he asked. "What was it like? What happened to you there?"

"I helped the wounded," Mason replied. His voice was filled with pain, but there was a finality in it, closing off search for detail.

The Peacemaker stared at him. His words were true, but he was concealing something deeper. He could feel it. He could also feel the emotional tension in Mason, a passion just below the surface that consumed him, but he was too frightened of it to allow it through.

The Peacemaker would have to wait, move gently. Mason was too valuable to lose. He must be won back, persuaded, whatever it needed to change his mind again. Perhaps this was not the time to raise the subject of U-boats and torpedoes anyway! He would like to have turned his attention to those plans that included undermining and ultimately destroying this government, but he was not at the moment sufficiently certain of Mason's loyalties in that direction.

"You've had a grim experience," he said with some warmth. "And perhaps you are right about some of the issues of morale." It was difficult to say, and he saw the surprise in Mason's face, but he would come back to it later, slowly and with greater subtlety. "There are other matters of importance," he went on with a smile. "The situation in the United States is of the utmost interest. Mexico is in turmoil and could invade any day. Unfortunately no one there is to be relied on. They are at war with each other as much as with any outside force."

Mason's eyes were wide, stunned with total incomprehension. "Why in God's name did the Germans sink the Lusitania! I thought even Wilson would go to war over that!"

The Peacemaker pushed his hands into his pockets. "It seems nothing will bring him in. The Mexican move was even more successful than we hoped. We'll keep working on it. Let me tell you what the exact situation is now, who we have there and what is next to be done." He indicated that Mason should sit down. "It's detailed," he began. "Complicated. You need to understand the people."

Mason listened, his attention held at last, almost as if he were relieved to have something to fasten his intellect on and rest from the turmoil inside him.

The Peacemaker did not tell him about the mole he had placed in the Scientific Establishment in Cambridge. He would keep that secret. It was as well to give only the information you had to. Trust no one.

Joseph ate and slept and did little more than wander around Matthew's flat for two days. Then in the evening of the third day Matthew answered the telephone, and Joseph, watching him, saw his face light up, and an intense concern fill his expression.

"How are you?" Matthew said earnestly. He waited for the answer, listening with obvious sympathy. "I can't," he went on. "Although I expect Joseph would move for you. He's been through a pretty rough time. He went out to Gallipoli, and came back by sea. His ship was sunk, and .. . yes, yes, he's all right!" He glanced at Joseph as he spoke. "He's here, now. I wouldn't tell you like that, for heaven's sake! But he did spend a bit of time in an open boat, rowing the thing. Yes, of course he is! I swear!"

There was another silence.

Matthew smiled. "Of course. That sounds like a good idea. Do you want to speak to him? Right." He held out the telephone receiver. "It's Judith. She's in London."

Joseph took the receiver. "Judith?" He was terribly afraid of what he might hear the pain in her he still had no idea how to help.

"Are you all right," she said urgently. "Joseph?" She sounded as if she were afraid for him.

"Yes, I'm fine," he answered. "I was only cold and wet.. . and terrified."

She laughed a little jerkily. "Is that all?"

"Where are you?" he asked. "If you want to stay here, I can move to a hotel."

"No .. . thank you. I wanted to stay with Mrs. Prentice, and she invited me. I'm going to a dinner at the Savoy tomorrow evening, a sort of government thing, to get some kind of organization into voluntary help. There are people all over the country doing things: knitting, driving around, packing parcels, writing letters. It needs to get some order, or we'll be falling over each other. It's Dermot Sandwell's idea, I think. Anyway, I need to find a dress."