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By Root 497 0

Her Irish nationalism he could understand. In her place he would have felt the same. He might have fought for Germany, if the reward were his own country’s independence, even if half of them did not want it. But this had to mean that she was close enough to the Peacemaker to be trusted with at least the core of the plan, the dream of it. There would be no need to tell her the name or the fate of the man who had foiled it. His death was regarded by everyone else as an accident and no one in the family had challenged that. The Peacemaker himself never knew that they had found the treaty, or understood its nature. John Reavley had said simply that he had found a document that would dishonor England and change the world.

Detta was an idealist. It could be dangerous to tell her more of murder than she needed to know. The Peacemaker took no risks.

Until now Matthew had had little idea of his identity, hard as he had sought. It was not Ivor Chetwin, John Reavley’s one-time friend; Matthew and Joseph had proved his innocence in Gallipoli. Nor, surely, was it Aidan Thyer; but then that had been only a passing thought because of his power in Cambridge as master of St. John’s. Matthew’s greatest fear had been that it was Calder Shearing himself, right at the heart of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. Shearing was brilliant, charming, and elusive, and Matthew knew almost nothing about him outside those walls.

He had never even considered Patrick Hannassey. He had thought of him only as the cleverest and most dedicated fighter for Catholic Ireland’s freedom from British rule. Now he had to face the possibility—in fact the probability—that he was wrong.

Detta’s father!

She was looking at him, her odd eyebrow raised in bitter irony. “You didn’t know about that paper, did you.” It was a statement. “You thought it was all inevitable.”

“Given the political tides,” he said very quietly, “the alliances between Austria, Germany, and Russia—and ours with France and Belgium—yes, I thought there was no way to avoid it.”

“You aren’t asking me if I’m sure about it,” she pointed out.

“Would you say it if you weren’t?”

She avoided his gaze. “No. Is there a point where madness becomes so common we think it’s sanity?”

“I don’t know.” She was not going to say any more. He would not play the game of trying to make her. “Would you like to dance?” he asked. He wanted to forget about talking for a while. He simply wanted to hold her in his arms, feel the ease and grace of her movement, smell the perfume of her hair, and above all pretend for a few minutes that they were on the same side.

“Dance?” she asked, her voice rising. “Perhaps you do understand magic after all! What’s the difference between looking for a supernatural answer, and simply running away, Matthew?”

“Timing,” he answered. “At the moment I’m just running away.”

“Yes,” she agreed, laughter touching her eyes again, but only with self-mockery. “Yes, I’ll dance. What better is there to do?”

The following morning Matthew arrived at his office in a mood of optimism. This was dashed the moment he encountered Hoskins standing in the corridor, his thin face twisted with anxiety.

For a moment Matthew thought of avoiding asking him what was wrong, and simply going on to his own door, but he quickly resigned himself to reality. All bad news had to be faced.

“Good morning, Hoskins. What is it?”

“Morning, Reavley. Just another ship gone,” Hoskins replied miserably. “U-boats got it. It was carrying food and munitions. All hands lost.” Hoskins stood motionless apart from the slight tic in his left eyelid. “That’s the fourth this month.”

“I know,” Matthew said quietly. He could think of nothing else to say. There was no comfort to offer, and nothing to salvage.

“Shearing wants to see you,” Hoskins added. “I’d go there first, if I were you.”

Matthew acknowledged the message, left his coat in his office, and glanced at his desk to see if there were any overnight messages of urgency. There was nothing that Shearing needed to know, just the usual reports from his men in the eastern