Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [112]
“Thank you for telling me, Barshey. I must go to Poperinge, now! Help me find a car, an ambulance, anything!”
Barshey did not argue—he simply obeyed.
An hour later Joseph was at the ambulance post in Poperinge. First he went to Hadrian. He must be certain of the details. He even cherished some vague, ill-defined hope that Barshey had been wrong.
He had not. Hadrian was numb with shock, but he told Joseph that it was true. It had happened at night, in the same street where Matthew lived.
Joseph left Hadrian and went outside and across the cobbles to where he could see Judith and Wil Sloan standing together laughing. They must have heard his boots on the stone, because they turned to look at him. The laughter died instantly.
Judith came forward, the blood draining from her skin as she stared at him.
He put both his hands on her shoulders. She waited, knowing from his eyes that the blow would be terrible. Perhaps she expected it would be Matthew.
“Judith,” he began, his voice catching in his throat. He had to clear it before he could go on. “General Cullingford was murdered in the street in London—just outside Matthew’s flat. They didn’t find who did it.”
“What?” It was not that she had not heard him, simply that she could not grasp the enormity of it.
“I don’t know any more than that. I’m sorry! I’m so very, very, sorry!”
“He’s . . . dead?”
“Yes.”
She leaned forward and buried her head on his shoulder and he tightened his arms around her until he held her as close as he could. It was a long time until she started to weep, then her whole body shook as if she would never get her breath, never ease the rending pain.
He kept on holding her. Wil stood where he was, horrified, helpless.
At last she pulled away. Her eyes were shut tight, as if she could not bear to see anything. “It’s my fault,” she whispered hoarsely. “He went after the Peacemaker, because of what I told him! I killed him!”
He pushed the hair off her face. “No,” he said very softly. “The war killed him.”
She leaned against him again, very still now, too exhausted to cry again, for the moment.
He just held on to her.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
There was nothing Joseph could do to ease Judith’s grief. She had to hide it from everyone except those closest to her, such as Wil Sloan, and possibly Major Hadrian. To permit its true depth to be seen by others would in a sense betray Cullingford’s privacy, and perhaps his reputation. A new general was moved forward immediately, with his own driver, and she was returned to ambulance duty. It took a matter of hours, not days. War waited for no one.
Joseph knew that after that first brief and terrible encounter he would not see her again except by chance. He had been on or near the front line for weeks without leave and the stress was telling on him. He was due two weeks now, and he accepted it gratefully. Apart from anything else, it was important that he speak to Matthew as soon as possible. He believed Judith’s assertion that it was the Peacemaker who had murdered Cullingford, either directly or indirectly, which meant that he had to have been close to finding him.
Watching the late spring countryside skim past him on the way to Calais, it seemed like an escape from the reality of mud and wasteland. Here the trees were in full leaf. At a hasty glance, the French farms and villages looked as they always had: uniquely individual, yet steeped in history, each with its own vines, cheeses, and livestock. It was afterward, on the boat across the Channel, that he realized he had seen only women, children, and old men. When they stopped to buy petrol