Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [136]
Mason stared at him. His face reflected the pain of his tearing muscles as he strained against the oars. The boat bucketed and slid in the troughs. He was losing. He began to realize Joseph was going to die for his conviction, and take Andy, too, if that was what it cost. The knowledge woke admiration in him, reluctantly, angrily, but totally honestly.
“There’ll be mutiny,” Joseph went on, conviction growing in him. He was so cold now that he was not moving and he could hardly feel his legs below the knee. Andy must be beginning to suffer from exposure. It grieved Joseph to sacrifice him. “In the army, and at home,” he went on. “What could the government do? Arrest all those who want to resist? Hand them over to the German occupying force? You know human nature, Mason! The brave men will flee to the hills, the forests, anywhere they can hide and regroup. Those who can’t—the old, the sick, women with children—will pay the price. There’ll be mass trials for treason, if they’re lucky; if not, then just executions. There’ll be collaborations, of course, and betrayals, counterbetrayals, groups of vigilantes, informers, and secret police. . . .”
“All right!” Mason yelled. “There won’t be a bloody thing if you don’t help me keep this boat ahead of the wind! We’ll all be dead!”
“No, we won’t,” Joseph told him, leaning forward to make himself heard above the roar and crash of the sea. “You and I will be, and unfortunately Andy, but no one else. The other crewman is dead anyway.”
Andy struggled to sit up. His face was ashen white in the cold morning light. The hard gray sea was racing around them, waves spume-topped, foam flying.
“Do you agree with him?” Mason demanded, staring at Andy. “Is this what you want, really? Because if it isn’t, you’d better tell him.” He jerked his hand toward Joseph. “And quickly. I can’t hold this much longer.”
“It’s what I want,” Andy answered, his eyes screwed up against the wind, but unwavering. “You’ve got to fight for what you believe, an’ die for it, if that’s the way it goes. An’ you fight for your mate, same as he’d fight for you.”
“And is Belgium your mate?” Mason asked savagely.
Andy gave him a crooked smile. “Yeah. S’pose he is. Your mate’s whoever’s beside you. The Germans’ve got no right to go through Belgium doing what they’re doing. Nor into France neither. We’d fight if it was England. It isn’t different, just ’cos it’s somebody else.” He said it simply, as if it were obvious.
Joseph felt a sting in his throat. It was the whole philosophy of the British “Tommy” he knew. Are you your brother’s keeper? Yes, you are, at the price of your life, if that’s what it takes. All his and Mason’s arguments were academic, deciding for others. It was Andy, and a million men like him, whose lives were the cost.
He looked at Mason’s face and saw the amazement in him, and the grasp after a new understanding.
“You throw that thing overboard and swear as you won’t write it again, or we’ll all go down,” Andy told him. “I reckoned I’d give up my life for my country, if I had to—well, this is having to, that’s all. Never thought it’d be to stop a traitor, but at least there’s some point in that.”
“For God’s sake, man, I just want to stop the bloody slaughter!” Mason shouted back at him. “Do you know how many men are dead already, and the war isn’t a year old yet?”
Joseph ached to be able to help him, but he could think of nothing else to say. Any hour, any minute now, Mason would be unable to hold the boat alone and it would go over, and they would all be in the sea, floundering, battered, struggling as long as they could until it overwhelmed them, and they swallowed water, it filled their lungs, bursting. Could it be as bad as being gassed? He remembered that with a sickening horror! And what about Prentice, drowned not in the clear sea but in the filth of a shell crater. Sam had done that, Sam, whom Joseph loved as much as a brother. He reached out his hand and grasped Andy’s and felt his fingers respond, stiffly,