Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [145]
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