Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [135]
Mason pushed Joseph violently, knocking him off the bench, and seized his oar, pulling on both of them and righting the boat to send it in front of the wind again.
Joseph settled in the stern, next to Andy. It was a relief not to be straining his aching back against the oar anymore. Drowning was supposed to be not too bad a way to die. He had heard that you lost consciousness pretty quickly. Not like being caught in the wires in no-man’s-land and left there for hours, even days. Prentice had died comparatively easily.
Pity Sam would not know. He would have appreciated the irony! Even more of a pity that he couldn’t tell Matthew where the newspaper editor was. He didn’t know the name, but it would be easy enough to find. Someone Mason had known all his life, who owned several papers, and was against the violence and waste of war.
He did not want to think of Matthew, or Judith or Hannah. It was too hard, too filled with pain. It hurt with a deep, gouging ache he could not control.
“You’re a fool!” Mason was shouting at him, struggling to keep the boat straight with the wind behind it. “Surrender could mean peace! A united Europe. Isn’t that better than this insane carnage, and the destruction of all our heritage, the poisoning of the earth itself? Europe’s becoming an abattoir! There isn’t going to be anything but ruin and madness left for the victor. Can’t you see that?”
“You want peace?” Joseph asked, as if it were a real and urgent question. They were being pitched sideways, one direction then the other as Mason fought to keep control, his face sheened with water, his muscles clenched.
“Of course I want peace!” he shouted furiously.
Joseph braced himself not to land his weight on top of Andy, who was watching him intently. “And you think that surrender will bring peace?” He allowed his own disbelief to ring through. “Maybe to us! But what about Belgium that we proposed to protect? We gave our word. And what about France?”
“We didn’t promise France,” Mason retorted.
“What the hell has that got to do with it?” Joseph demanded. “Do we only protect people if we’ve got treaties that say we must? Do we only do the right thing if we are forced to?”
“The right thing?” Mason’s voice rose in outrage. “It’s the right thing to crucify half the youth of Europe in a quarrel about who governs which strip of land, and what language we speak?”
“Yes! If the right to have our own laws and our own heritage goes along with it. If anyone conquers us and lays down the rules for us, then bit by bit anything that makes us free and unique will be taken away.”
The wind was still rising and Mason was finding it more and more difficult to hold the boat, even with the storm at his back.
“Free and unique! You’re a madman! They’re just dead! Bodies piled on bodies; tread on the earth in Flanders and you’re standing on human flesh! Tell them the truth, and let them choose what they want! It’s an unpardonable sin to lead them blind to the slaughter.” He yanked at the oar, his face contorted with the strain. “You’re supposed to believe in good and evil—to deny knowledge is to deny freedom—that is evil. Who the hell do you think you are, you supremely arrogant bastard, to decide for the youth of Europe, whether it will fight your damned war or not? Answer me, Reverend Reavley.”
Joseph’s mind raced. Mason’s argument was the Peacemaker’s, and he was so nearly right, so close to pity and humanity.
“You told me I was naive,” he shouted back. “You want peace? Don’t you think we all do? But not at any price, no matter how high. Belgium was invaded, and France. If we give up, do you think that’s going to bring peace? Do you think the Belgian and the French people will simply lay down their arms and surrender?”
The wind tore Mason’s answer from his lips.
“The government might give up, even some of the people!” Joseph went on furiously. “But do you think the army will? The men whose brothers and friends have already died in the mud and gas, on the wires and in the trenches? The men who