At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [67]
He had tried again to argue with Morel. He could hear the words in his mind—“You can’t lead them to mutiny! Think what it means. They’ll be shot.”
“How terrible,” Morel had said sarcastically. “Good men shot.”
Joseph had floundered, seeking something to say, a core of belief within himself to cling to and give him fire and conviction. He had found nothing sure enough, and Morel knew it as much as he did. He had failed.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see a man smiling at him. He was tall and dark with a long nose and a mercurial, ironic laughter in his eyes. Just now there was a strange gentleness in him, an instant of naked emotion.
“Sam?” Joseph’s voice was hoarse. Amazement and joy welled up inside him. It was Sam, wasn’t it? Sam Wetherall, whose grave he had wept over, even though he knew it was not his friend’s body in it, but someone else’s wearing his tags. They had arranged it. It had been the only answer to Prentice’s death and the knowledge afterward.
Sam grinned. “You look like hell, Joe. But it’s still good to see you. Don’t make a fuss.”
Joseph’s heart raced with fear, hope, intense, pounding relief. There was no question anymore. Sam was alive. “What are you doing here?” He managed the words although his lips were dry and his throat tight. Sam was not in uniform. “Are you on leave?” Surely he could not have left the army, even in his new identity, not deserted? It wasn’t possible, not the Sam he knew. He realized he was shaking with fear. His belief in Sam was one of the few certainties he relied on. He did not want it tested.
Sam eased himself into the stool beside him. “Took a leaf out of your brother’s book,” he said very quietly.
Joseph stared at him, struggling to understand. Intelligence? But Sam was a sapper, one of those who dug under the enemy lines, listened, set mines, blew up defenses. Perhaps the tight spaces and the claustrophobia had gotten to him at last. It got to most men, sooner or later. Too many were buried alive in collapses, drowned in the mud and debris, crushed by falls.
He found himself smiling simply because Sam was alive. Memories poured back of conversations they had had on the line in 1915, when it had all been so new. They had thought then that the war wouldn’t last a year. It had been talk of glory, of heroism and sacrifice. Now it was just death, endlessly and pointlessly ever more death. The soldiers were even younger.
“Here in Paris?” he asked aloud, his voice almost level.
“Mostly.” Sam’s eyes were far away for a moment. “How’s the regiment?” He did not ask for anyone by name, but Joseph thought of the men Sam had known who were dead now. There was no need to tell him.
Sam interrupted his efforts to concoct a good answer. “You were never a good liar, Joe. Who’s gone? Everyone?”
“No!” Joseph denied too quickly, thinking of those whose comradeship had been so precious. “Only a few: Tucky Nunn, Eardslie, Chicken Hagger, Lanty and Bibby Nunn both, Doughy Ward, both the Arnold brothers.”
Sam’s hand tightened on his arm. He said nothing. He had never wasted words.
The barman poured him some absinthe and he ignored it.
“I’m looking for Punch Fuller,” Joseph said quietly.
“Deserted?” Sam said with slight surprise. “Poor sod. Is that really the best use they can find for you, to send you to Paris after the poor devils that reached the end of the line?” He frowned. “If he’s really cut and run, Joe, there’s no point in finding him. He’s a casualty of war. You can’t save him.”
“No, he’s not a deserter,” Joseph said slowly. Perhaps he should not tell Sam about it, but he knew he was going to. He had no idea what Sam had done in the dreadful years since they had parted, just before Sam went over the top that day in spring of 1915. But he was the same man with whom he had shared the chocolate biscuits, sitting