Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [124]
Mason’s eyes blazed.
“Of course it will! Men won’t volunteer for this if they know the truth. There’s nothing glorious in it! There’s nothing even useful! They’re dying because of incompetence! We aren’t going to take the Dardanelles, we aren’t going to take Constantinople, and we aren’t going to liberate the Russian Grand Fleet! The Eastern Fronts are going to be against the Italians, poor sods, and the Russians in the north—if anyone’s insane enough to try that. Napoleon failed. That should be a lesson to anyone.”
Joseph smiled with a downward twist. “Now who’s being naive?”
They reached the spot where they had sat before. Their mugs were still there. Mason picked up his and looked at the dregs. “You don’t think the kaiser will march against the tsar? This whole abattoir is a glorified family feud! They’re all bloody cousins!”
“I meant,” Joseph corrected him, “that I don’t think anyone is instructed by the lessons of history.”
Mason smiled at last, a curiously honest expression that suddenly shed years from his face. “Have another cup of tea? At least the rum’s real. Then we’ll go and see if we can get some of these poor devils out to the hospital ships. Not that they’ll be that much better off there! They can exchange being shot at for being seasick. Personally, I think I’d rather stay here and take my chances.” Without waiting for Joseph to answer, he took both mugs over to the field kitchen.
Joseph relaxed a little. There was still time to try to make Mason see the terrible damage of what he intended. When they were at sea, away from this horror, he would be able to convince him that it would be wrong.
They spent the rest of the daylight helping the wounded men who could walk, carrying those who couldn’t. It was backbreaking and heartrending work. Another three times Joseph struggled up the hillside himself to help more men down. He stepped in blood, tripped over bodies, sometimes only limbs or torsos, riddled with bullets or blown apart by shells. In the shallow trenches British, Australians, and Turks sometimes lay together, indistinguishable in the blood and earth. The smell of slaughter filled his mouth and throat and lungs. The wild thyme was gone; even the sharp sting of creosol couldn’t penetrate through the sick sweetness of blood.
It was after midnight when he sank into a dazed exhaustion and the oblivion of sleep overtook him until dreams invaded it, full of torture and screaming.
He awoke with a jolt to daylight and someone throwing a bucket of seawater in his face. Its saltiness was exquisitely clean. He gasped and sat up, struggling for breath.
“There y’are, cobber!” a voice said cheerfully. “An’ there’s plenty more where that came from. But if yer ain’t broke your legs, yer can fetch it for yerself.”
“Hey! It’s Holy Joe!” another more familiar voice added. “Let’s get the poor bleeder some breakfast. For a Pommie he wasn’t too bad last night.”
Joseph clambered to his feet, pushing his hair off his face and wiping the water away. His body ached appallingly. “Thanks, but I need to find the journalist. He’s shipping out today, and I’m getting a lift with him. Thanks all the same.”
“No you aren’t, sport! He left a couple of hours ago!”
Joseph froze. “What?”
“Guns got your ears? He left a couple of hours ago—at least! He’s long gone—over the horizon on his way to Malta by now. You’ll have to take the next ship—whenever that is. Have a cup o’ tea!”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
It was another twenty-four hours of frantic effort before Joseph could find a ship going as far as Malta that would take him as a passenger. He had to use all the persuasion he had to gain it, including his letters of authority from Matthew.
He paced the deck as the shores of Gallipoli faded behind him and became an indistinct blur, Anzac Cove and Suvla Bay no longer distinguishable. Even the sound of guns was finally lost in the wash of the sea. The island of Samothrace towered to the south, its corona of mist gilded by the setting sun. Today the beauty of the past, the heroes,