Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [117]
“Too right, you do!” three of them replied in chorus.
“What’s yer problem, sport?” another asked, squinting a little at him. “Apart from that yer here, o’ course. We all got that one.” He grinned, showing a gap tooth at the front.
“You couldn’t wait to get ’ere, yer stupid bastard!” the man next to him pointed out. “ ‘We gotter go!’ yer kept sayin’—‘We gotter go!’ ”
The first man lifted his hand dismissively. “Well, we have gotter.”
“So what d’yer want then, mate?” Blue faced Joseph, his wide eyes curious.
“I’m looking for a Major Mynott, General Hamilton’s ADC,” Joseph replied. “He has important information about a traitor.” He used the word intentionally, since he knew it would burn their emotions. They were young men who had heard the need of their mother country, dropped what they were doing and come from the other side of the world, in their thousands, to shed their blood in France and on these hell-raked beaches. Surely to them there would be no uglier word?
“So you’re not a holy Joe for real?” A flicker of disappointment crossed Blue’s eyes. “You’re a spy, or whatever they’re called.”
Joseph smiled with a little grimace. “Actually I’m very much a holy Joe. My name’s Joseph Reavley, and I’m a chaplain on the Western Front. I was home on leave and the intelligence officer who was supposed to come was called away since the Germans just sank the Lusitania. Over eleven hundred civilians were drowned, men, women, and children. I was on leave from the Ypres Salient, where my regiment is, so he asked me to come in his place. I need to be back in time to return to Flanders in ten days.”
Blue let out a low whistle, his eyes round. “Well, I’ll be . . . ! So you’re a dinkum priest! What’s Flanders like, sport? Is the gas as bad as they say?”
“Yes. Whatever they say, it’s as bad. Can you help me find Mynott?”
“ ’Course we can, eh?” He looked around the group, and everyone replied with vigorous agreement. “Mind it feels in the air like there’s going to be another raid up the hill soon,” he added. “Maybe we’d better start asking now. If Mynott’s the geezer I think he is, he’s a real scrapper. He’ll be up there with the men.”
“Best not waste time,” they agreed. “C’mon then, mate.”
They rose to their feet carefully, ever mindful of Turkish snipers on the escarpments above the beach.
It was not as warm as Joseph had expected, and the terrain was appalling: rock and clay, open hillsides, gullies with trees and—incredibly—wildflowers. Everywhere there were smells of earth, latrines, creosol, tobacco, cordite, and the sharp fragrance of wild thyme. As in Flanders there were dead bodies no one had had the chance to bury, and clouds of flies, black, blue, and green ones. Joseph did not have to be told that dysentery and similar diseases were almost as big a danger as the Turkish guns.
The Australians were unceasingly helpful, although while their ferocious lack of respect for British army regulations caused occasional setbacks, it also swept away some of the impediments of officialdom.
At sundown the huge sweep of sky was stippled with mackerel clouds shot through with light. The Aegean Sea was a limpid satin blue beneath it, though still dotted with ships and struggling men.
Joseph sat on a patch of stony ground a hundred feet or so above the beach, shivering a little with cold and exhaustion.
For four hours he had scrambled over ridges and scree, floundering, tripping rather than falling into trenches that were little more than scrape holes in the earth. Once he had had to duck and run to avoid the raking fire of Turkish machine guns, before he had reached the place where he had been told Mynott would be.
Apparently he had led a raid uphill, hoping to capture a Turkish position and take a few prisoners. It was hopelessly against the odds, and it had failed, but the attempt had improved morale greatly.
Now Major Mynott sat opposite him on the thyme-scented earth, his arm wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage, his face gaunt. He was a man of medium height with a prominent nose and slightly hooded eyes that at the