At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [80]
His voice dropped to a whisper.
“My son does not deserve to be buried with dishonor. Is it not enough for them that he is dead?”
“It is terrible that he is dead, sir. And Captain Eardslie, and all the others. Over half a million of them, I believe. Not counting the French, and of course the Austrians and Germans, and the Italians, and Russians. And I suppose we have to start counting the Americans, too, now.”
“I will speak with the prosecutor. Perhaps the charge can be lessened.”
She smiled very slightly, afraid to say anything in case she spoiled it. “Permission to return to my ambulance, sir?”
“Granted, Miss Reavley.”
Mason arrived back at Passchendaele to find it worse than before. It had rained almost without ceasing, the wettest August in human memory. Men lived and died in a hell past sanity to imagine. It went on day after day, night after night, with no victory and no end in sight except the possibility that there would be no life remaining—human, animal, or plant—and finally the mud would claim everything.
He thought of his beloved Yorkshire with its wild fells, shining tarns beneath wind-ragged skies, and steep villages with cobbled streets. But the memory was too all-consuming: It robbed him of words powerful enough to capture the passion and tenderness of a love so deep. Instead he began writing of England in general.
“It doesn’t seem possible.” He started a rough draft. “At home the trees tower green like clouds over the gold of the harvest fields. Horses bend to the plow and the fruit ripens in the orchards. Poppies burn scarlet grazing the corn with hot color. The men are gone. Women now get ready to reap and bind, laughing with each other, growing used to their new tasks.
“Here there are no trees, only a few shattered trunks and the scarlet is blood as men are crushed and trodden back to the all-consuming clay from which we are told we were fashioned by a deity who has grown tired of us and turned away. These few terrible miles hold so much human flesh you cannot set foot without standing on some man’s rotting body.”
Then he tore it up and wondered how to start again. Words needed to be simple for this, clear of all sentimentality. But what was there for anyone to say? For the first time in his life, words seemed pointless, his own too small, too shallow for the burden.
“We died in hell—they called it Passchendaele.” He could only quote others. “Oh, Jesus, make it stop!”
But it seemed no God was listening.
He heard the news of the arrests of Cavan, Morel, and the other ten before he reached the section where it had happened. He wanted to speak to Colonel Hook when he had the chance and to Joseph Reavley. He needed the whole story to write up, all the information he could find before the court-martial began. And of course he wanted to see Judith as well. That was at the forefront of his mind, as it had been lately, too often for his emotional comfort.
He found the ambulance parked outside a first aid station, just behind the supply trenches. It was covered with mud; he saw several scars and dents on it, and a few bullet holes. The air was soft and muggy, full of flies and the ever-present stench. The occasional fine rain did nothing to help.
He asked for Judith and was told that she and Wil Sloan were both inside the makeshift tent. There were several other men with them, all with apparently minor injuries, and they were clustered around Judith, looking at her and laughing. Most of them had mugs of tea, held up as if in a toast.
Mason’s shadow across the door made one then another turn, and they froze.
He walked in. He could not help looking first at Judith. She was very slender, as if under the gray V.A.D. uniform with its long skirt she were thin enough to be fragile. She had been at the front for three years. She must be so weary of dirt and pain, and never having time for laughter, never dressing in pretty clothes, being admired, playing games and falling in love. There