Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [132]
“I’m not trying to protect reputations!” Joseph dug just as deeply with his oar. It was taking all his strength and the exhausted muscles in his back and arms to hold the boat to the wind. Mason must feel the same. He had carried just as many wounded men. “I’m trying to keep up hope and courage at home, for very good reasons, and a rather longer view than you have! Few men set out on a battle they don’t believe they can win.”
“Few of them are stupid enough,” Mason agreed tersely.
“And are you going to tell them what will happen if they don’t fight?” Joseph had to raise his voice against the rising noise of the wind and the water in order to be heard. The light must have been broadening a little behind him to the northeast because he could see the stippling on the backs of the waves and the pale crests were creaming now and then. His feet were numb with cold.
“With no army we’ll be forced to surrender,” Mason answered him. “The slaughter will stop. It’s a war we should never have got into. England has no quarrel with Germany.”
“Whether we should have or not doesn’t matter now,” Joseph told him. “It’s past. Right or wrong, we can’t undo it. Germany has invaded Belgium, the land has been bombed and burned, the people driven out, thousands of them killed, their farms and villages destroyed. Are you going to tell them to surrender to the soldiers that have despoiled them, bury their dead, then carry on as before?”
“Of course I’m not going to tell them anything so damned stupid!” Mason said angrily. “Belgium will suffer, it already has, but isn’t that less evil than the whole of Europe plunged into chaos and death? We are on the brink of destroying the finest young men of an entire generation for what? Can you justify what’s happening?”
“I’m not trying to.” Joseph was staring at the two crewmen in the stern. Andy seemed to be asleep, although he stirred now and then, and once Joseph had seen him open his eyes. The other man was lying next to him, half cradled across his knees, Andy’s uninjured arm supporting his head, but he had not moved in over half an hour.
“Take the oar,” Joseph said abruptly. It was light enough now to see Mason’s face, the weariness and the strain in it, wet from spray. He understood what Joseph was thinking. He took the oar.
Joseph moved forward carefully. The boat was pitching and if he stood he might lose his balance, perhaps even go over the side. On his hands and knees he reached the wounded man.
Andy opened his eyes: wide and frightened, full of pain.
Joseph put the back of his hand to the other man’s neck. He could feel no pulse at all. His skin was waxy-white in the creeping daylight.
Andy’s good arm tightened around him. His face asked the question, but he did not speak.
“I think we could let him lie on the bottom,” Joseph said, having to speak loudly to be heard above the sea. “Be more comfortable for you. That weight would send your legs to sleep.”
“I don’t mind!” Andy protested.
“You might need your legs, when we reach land,” Joseph answered. “And it won’t help.”
Andy blinked, his face crumpling.
“I’m sorry.” Joseph touched him briefly. “Come on.”
Andy still hesitated, then slowly eased himself sideways and helped Joseph move the dead man’s body so it lay out of his way and where the oarsmen would not bump it. Then he inched back to where he had been before, careful to take exactly the same position, and pulled the piece of canvas over himself. “I’m sorry I can’t help,” he apologized.
Joseph broke off a piece of the chocolate and gave it to him. “There are only two oars anyway,” he replied.
He went back to his place again and he and Mason rowed in silence for a while. The white light spread across the horizon behind them, still without color. The wind was harder, and rising. It was getting more and more difficult to make any headway against it.
“Where do you come from?” Joseph asked Mason.