At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [50]
He shivered and stared around him. He had lived in this hole in the ground for more than a year, like some hibernating animal. Half a dozen of his favorite books were here, his picture of Dante, the writer of The Divine Comedy. Could his vision of hell have been as bad as this reality?
What of Dante’s beliefs, his searing portraits of good and evil? Would he be so certain of it if he had seen this welter of terror, heroism, loyalty, and death? Joseph wasn’t. He ought to be unequivocally for the law, sure of the few absolutes of justice and the perceived order that had sustained them for more than a thousand years.
Surely there was a constant morality, values beyond any questions, no matter what? Were the truths that spanned the abyss not the surest evidence of God’s existence, and His continuing governance of the world? Sometimes in darkness such as this they were the only evidence.
He was lying to himself. The sure theories of the past broke before the need to save lives now, to understand whatever it was that had happened to Howard Northrup, and to the men who had brought it about. The answers did not obey rules. Compassion, loyalty to the living who trusted him to understand, swept away the old faith in rules.
Or was it just a simple and very human matter of who you liked, and who you didn’t, who belonged to your pack, the old bonds of loyalty again? He had prayed for understanding, some answers to make the slaughter comprehensible, so men at least knew what they were dying for, and he had received this, which only made it worse.
There was a parcel from Hannah with cake, raspberry jam, a bundle of books, and new socks. There was a note with it where briefly, almost self-consciously, she described the familiar, heart-stopping beauty of the countryside, the harvest-gold fields, the soaring poplars, leaves fluttering in the sunset breeze, the heavy elms, skirts down to the ripe corn heads, the starling whirling across the evening sky.
He pulled out paper to answer her, and wrote possibly too much. Sharing his confusion with her only made him see more clearly how uncertain he was, and his reasons sounded like excuses. In the end he tore it up. It sounded too much as if he were expecting her to find a solution for him. He would thank her properly later.
Instead he wrote to Lizzie Blaine again. He smiled as he remembered how quick she had been to understand last year, how she had had the wisdom not to offer false comfort when he had at last found the awful answer, and had to accept it, and his deep and bitter disillusionment.
The physical pain of his shattered arm and ripped-open leg had almost gone; only now and then did it ache and remind him. But the wound to his faith in people and in his own judgment, the destruction of old loves and old certainties would not ever be forgotten. The truth about Shanley Corcoran had broken something in him.
Lizzie knew that things were never solved, only a little better understood, the doubts faced, courage gripped a little more tightly. It was easier to admit to her than to Hannah that he was troubled by his own sympathy with the men more than the law, that he could conceal the truth, turn away from it, in the needs of mercy.
Perhaps he cared less what she thought of him than he did about Hannah. Or it could be that Hannah was his sister, and might need to believe that he knew more of the answers than he did. He had been there all Hannah’s life, when so much else had been ripped away. She had found the loss of her mother particularly hard. And the war had taken all the old certainties she had loved, the way of life she had grown up believing would last forever. She was not like Judith, hungering for adventure. She loved the sweetness of what she had, village life, her home and family, giving the quiet service of a good neighbor—food for the hungry, time with the lonely, a quiet hand for the sick or afraid. She