At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [42]
“Aren’t you?” Joseph continued. “Or is that what you want? Truth at all cost? Whoever pays?”
“Who pays if the chaplain condones men murdering one of their officers because they don’t agree with his orders?” Mason asked.
“Is that how you see it?” Joseph said tensely. “If it’s as simple as that to you, maybe you should be the chaplain. You seem to have right and wrong very clearly labeled. You know far more about it than I do?”
Mason shrugged. “No. But I know what the men will say, and so do you. If you let Northrup’s death go, who’s next? I haven’t any faith that what we’re fighting for is worth the price. I think the whole bloody nightmare is madness. If I believed in the devil, I’d say he’s taken over.” He spread his strong, supple hands. “This has to be as close to hell as it gets. But you believe in something. You don’t have to be here. You could have stayed at home and looked after a nice quiet parish in the countryside, comforted the bereaved, and kept spirits up on the home front. But you’re here. Why? Just going down with the ship because you don’t know what else to do? Can’t find a way to admit you were wrong, or can’t face telling the men that?”
He had touched a nerve. How many nights had Joseph wrestled in prayer to find some sense, some light of hope in the endless loss? If God really had any power or cared for mankind at all, why did He do nothing?
Was Northrup’s murder just one more ugly and senseless tragedy for him, for his family, and most of all for the man who had pulled the trigger? Or would it be the catalyst for a general mutiny against the senseless daily slaughter?
Joseph could divert the attack against himself by attacking Mason in return, but it answered nothing, and Mason would know it, just as he knew it himself.
“You seem to think I should be the judge of what to do,” he said slowly. “And yet you have decided for me, before either of us knew what happened, or what result will come from pursuing it.”
“I know what result will come from not pursuing it,” Mason told him. “And so do you. Either you tell Hook, or I do.”
Joseph did not put him to the choice. If Hook had to be told, it would be his way.
“You’re quite sure, Captain Reavley?” Hook said unhappily. He was a lean man who had been spare to begin with and was now almost gaunt. He had been twice wounded, and the way he stood betrayed every so often that his shoulder still ached.
Joseph had said only what he had found, without drawing conclusions. “Yes, sir.”
“Any idea who is responsible?”
“No, sir. I’m afraid Major Northrup angered quite a few of the men.”
Hook gave him a dour glance. “He angered the whole bloody lot, Reavley. That isn’t what I asked.”
“I have no idea which of the men is responsible.”
Hook stared at him. His eyes were shadowed. He had seen too many of his men die, and he was helpless to do anything but go on ordering them forward in endless attack after attack. He wanted to avoid this one further pointless grief. He sighed. “See what you can find out when you have the chance.” He waited, trying to gauge if Joseph understood him.
“Yes, sir.” Joseph came to attention. “As soon as I have the opportunity.”
Hook relaxed a little. “I’ll write to his father. I should do it myself. Thank you, Reavley. You can go.”
Two days later, on the tenth of August, the rain burst like a monsoon over Ypres and Passchendaele, running in rivers down the slopes of the slight hills, filling the trenches till men were waist-deep in it. The fields became quagmires, latrines flooded, stores were ruined and swept away. In every direction one looked was water and more water.
Men made jokes about collecting animals.
“Anybody give me two cows for two rats?” Cully Teversham asked hopefully.
“Two cows for twenty rats?” George Atherton improved the offer, then laughed with the odd, jerky sound he always made.
“Oi’d give you all the sodding rats in Belgium for two cows,” Tiddly Wop Andrews retorted.
“I’ve already got all the sodding rats in Belgium!” Geddes said bitterly.
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