At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [88]
“Since when did anything in this bleeding war make sense, Chaplain? If it does to you then, whoi in’t you telling anyone else?”
“The other eleven have gone? How did they get out?”
“No idea,” Tiddly Wop said with a shadow of anger. “An’ if Oi did, Oi wouldn’t be telling. Oi just thought you’d loike to know.”
“I do! I…I just wish Captain Cavan had gone, too.”
A faint glimmer of light caught Tiddly Wop’s teeth gleaming as he grinned. “Sorry. Oi shouldn’t have said that, Chaplain. Course you do.”
There was more shouting outside but the rifle fire had stopped. Tiddly Wop turned around and made his way out, Joseph on his heels. It was relatively quiet, the heavy guns only sporadic. Joseph stared around at the figures sprinting across the open ground, and others standing almost idly. There was a military car parked on the driest piece of ground. A man in officer’s uniform stood beside it, waving his arms, apparently giving directions to the others.
“Got to look loike we want to find them,” Tiddly Wop said sententiously.
“How long ago did they go?” Joseph asked.
Tiddly Wop shrugged. “How do Oi know? They could be on their way to Paris by now. Only more likely they’ll go to Switzerland. Oi would.”
“The Swiss border’s hundreds of miles away,” Joseph retorted.
“Then Oi hope they get a lift. Not that they would, of course!” he added hastily, taking a nervous glance at Joseph.
“They might have gone the other way altogether.” Joseph entered the conspiracy without hesitation. “Maybe making for the sea.”
“Back to Blighty?”
“No, more likely Sweden.” Joseph found himself smiling. He knew it was stupid to be amused. They would be found and brought back. Cavan was probably showing more sense in staying. And it might buy more time. It could take several days to catch them all, if they ever did. Some might get killed, in the ordinary course of the war. “I wonder if we can help,” he added aloud.
“Roight!” Tiddly Wop agreed. “Oi’ll go an’ see if Lieutenant Moore wants a hand. He don’t know north from south, that one. If someone don’t give him a hand he’ll end up in Switzerland himself!”
Joseph offered to look for the escapees, and he spent the next hour pretending to search. Like the rest of the men, he generally made sure that all signs of which way they might have gone were thoroughly obliterated.
He shared a Dixie can of tea with Colonel Hook, sitting in the back of the supply trench on a couple of sandbags.
“Find any trace?” Hook asked, eyebrows raised.
“None at all,” Joseph said immediately. He met Hook’s eyes with complete candor.
“No,” Hook replied. “Didn’t think you would.”
By midday it was a very different matter. General Northrup had returned, and word had come up the line that Lieutenant Colonel Faulkner would arrive before sunset. Northrup was furious.
“How can you be so totally incompetent?” he shouted at Hook. His face was pinched and two blotches of color stained his cheeks. “Don’t you mount some kind of guard? For God’s sake, your command is falling to pieces around you! Pull yourself together, man!”
They were in the small command post. It was little more than a room in a farm outbuilding, furnished with a table and half a dozen chairs. Northrup was pacing the floor, his boots scratching on the wooden boards. He swung his arms and jabbed the air.
The accusation was grossly unjust, and both tragic and absurd. Joseph intervened, although both of them outranked him.
“The men are exhausted, sir,” he said to Northrup. “No one is getting more than a few hours’ sleep any night. The wounded are pouring back from the battlefront and we are finding it more than we can do to get them to hospital, keep any sort of supplies coming forward of either food or ammunition. The only men we’ve got to spare for guarding prisoners are those who are wounded already. We don’t know what happened, and blaming them is premature and deeply unfair. In any other circumstances they