At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [128]
“Yes, I know,” Joseph replied. It would be ridiculous to deny it now. “Anyone looking into it could prove it pretty easily. But we’re not going to shoot Geddes. We’re going to get him back to the lines, and then through them.”
“How?” Morel asked. “He’s out cold now. Who knows what he’ll say when he comes around again, but whatever it is, it’ll be in English, because that’s all he knows.”
“Then we’ll have to see that he doesn’t say anything,” Joseph replied. “We’ll take him as a wounded man. We’re priests. That’s reasonable. We’ll be heroes. Who knows—they might even help us. We’ll tie his head and face up, with a gag underneath the bandages, so he can’t speak. Cut him a little so there’s blood. Just hope to hell that whoever helps us isn’t a surgeon!”
“We can’t carry him that far,” Morel pointed out reasonably. “We’ve come four or five miles at least!”
“If we go back on the road we’ll find some debris. With luck, something with wheels. We can cannibalize it and make a carriage for him.”
“I realize how little I knew you at Cambridge,” Morel said drily. “I was a child!”
“We all were,” Joseph replied. “Let’s tie him up first. We don’t know how soon he’ll come around.”
They used Geddes’s own shirt to bind him for lack of anything better. They slit it with the knife he had and tore it into strips. It would be enough to hold him until they found better. Then they took turns carrying him as far as the road. He was a young man, heavy-boned and well muscled although any surplus flesh had long since gone, and he was dead weight. In fact, twice Joseph was anxious enough about him to stop and make sure he was still breathing. He was not certain how hard Morel had hit him.
They had to carry him another laborious half mile along the road before they came to a car that had been blown to bits. But no matter how they tried to imagine it, there seemed no way to take any of it apart. Reluctantly they abandoned it and again began the arduous task of carrying him.
They were still three or four miles from the nearest trenches when they were passed by a couple of soldiers who had apparently become separated from a relief column. It was a summer night, cloudless with a three-quarter moon, and light enough for Joseph to see how gaunt they were. He judged them to be veterans who had been wounded, and sent back too soon out of desperation. He had seen the same in the British ranks. In so many ways this was a mirror image of home. It tore at him with a familiarity, an acute understanding he would rather not have had.
The two men stopped. Neither looked strong enough to help carry Geddes, for which Joseph was grateful. Geddes was going home to face trial. He would never fight again, but still it would be one deceit too far.
“Looking for the nearest field station?” the taller one asked.
“Yes,” Joseph replied. “Not sure how bad he is.”
Geddes must have been conscious. He started to wriggle and become extremely awkward to hold. Had they been alone Joseph would have threatened to drop him, and done it. Geddes was trying to shout.
“He’s in a lot of pain,” Morel offered. “We’re looking for something to wheel him on, if we can find anything.”
“There’s bound to be something with wheels,” the shorter man said hopefully. “Even something broken might do. We could fix it to take the weight. He’s nothing like as heavy as field artillery.”
“Nothing like as useful, either,” Morel said under his breath.
They walked together, alternating Geddes’s body from one to another. The Germans insisted on taking their turn, and there was no way to refuse them without offense.
They had gone another half mile when they came to a pony cart at the side of the road. One wheel was blown to bits and what was left of