Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [139]
It was Mason who finally came back and sat down in the stern. Joseph could see no more than an outline of his body in the darkness now.
“It’s no good,” Mason said, his voice raw with pain. “He’s gone. Even if we found him now, it wouldn’t help.”
Joseph was weeping, the tears running down his face and choking his throat. There was no point in telling Mason he was a fool—he knew it. The guilt would never leave him.
“That’s what he meant,” he said, struggling to speak, even to get his breath. “You give your life for your mates—whoever they are. It’s nothing to do with them, it’s to do with you.”
Mason bent his head in his hands and wept.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Joseph lost track of time altogether. There was no point in rowing, but he was too cold and thirsty to sleep. He drifted in and out of a hazy unconsciousness, grieving for Andy, touched with guilt that it was his decision not to row with Mason that might have cost them a possible landfall, although it was unlikely.
More than that he was worried for Mason, who was not only wet, and therefore suffering far more from exposure than Joseph, but also because of the guilt that tormented him.
Joseph felt a terrible pity for him. He could not get out of his mind the memory of Mason on the beach at Gallipoli, struggling up and down the gullies with the wounded, under fire when he did not need to be, working through exhaustion when every muscle hurt, to rescue others. He worked for the Peacemaker, but he had done it because he honestly believed what he was doing was for the greater good. No man can do more than the best they understand, the utmost they believe.
But the Peacemaker was responsible for the deaths of Joseph’s parents, indirectly of Sebastian, and now of Cullingford as well.
Yet Joseph could not hate Mason personally. And alive, Mason might lead them to the Peacemaker, intentionally or not.
He sank back into a kind of sleep again, too cold to be aware of discomfort, only of thirst and a gnawing emptiness inside himself.
He woke with a jolt to feel hands lifting him and he heard voices, cheerful and urgent. Someone forced a cup between his lips and the next instant the fire of rum scalded down his throat, making him cough and then choke. He was too stiff to help them as they carried him up into the trawler and wrapped him in blankets.
“Mason?” he asked between cracked lips.
“Oh, he’ll make it!” a voice assured him. “I reckon.”
The next hours passed in a haze of the pain as circulation returned to his limbs, the blessed sensation of warmth and food, blankets at first, and then clean sheets.
When he finally awoke to sunlight shimmering through a hospital window, Matthew, white-faced, was sitting beside him. “God, you gave me a fright!” he said accusingly.
Joseph managed to smile, but his skin still hurt. “I’m all right,” he said huskily.
Matthew poured him a glass of water from the jug and lifted him up with intense gentleness to help him drink it. “What the hell happened to you?” he demanded savagely.
Joseph sipped the water, then lay back again. “Ran into a German U-boat on the way back,” he answered, his throat easier. “I found Mynott. Decent chap. He told me about Chetwin in Berlin. It wasn’t him. I’m sorry.”
“Damn!” Matthew swore. “I thought we had the bastard.” He was still regarding Joseph with profound concern. “What else? Was Gallipoli hell? Surely it couldn’t be worse than Ypres?”
“No, about the same,” Joseph replied. “But I met a journalist out there, brilliant fellow—Richard Mason, actually. Matthew, he was going to write a hell of a story about Gallipoli, tell everyone the truth of what it’s really like.” He saw Matthew’s face darken and his body tense. “I tried to persuade him what it would do to morale, but I failed before we left. I think I tipped my hand too far.” The chaotic beach was in his mind as if he had barely left it, the Australian voices, the smells of blood and creosol and wild thyme, the light across the high, wind-stippled sky and the sound of water.