Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [38]
Utter silence had fallen on every trench within earshot. Along the whole length of the line, whatever his nature or his faith, not a man had broken the glory of the moment.
But that was gone now.
Joseph and Goldstone moved on toward the wire, slowly in the dark, crawling on their bellies, slipping where the clay was wet, fumbling in the mud and water to gain a foothold. Whenever a flare went up they flattened themselves to the ground and for a moment the pockmarked land was lit, tangles of wire shown up black against the dun colors of the earth, bodies caught in them like giant flies in a web.
They found several men dead, and one still alive. It took them nearly half an hour, working between flares, to pull him out of the mud without tearing off his injured leg and making the bleeding fatal. Then between them they carried him across the cratered land with its crooked paths and stumps of trees, its pockets of ice-cold water still carrying the faint, ghastly odor of gas, until they reached the parapet of the front trenches. They answered the sentry’s challenge, and slithered over and down, only to find that the man was dead.
Joseph was momentarily overwhelmed with defeat. The two men in the trench and Goldstone were all looking at him, expecting him to say something to make sense of it. There was nothing, no sense—human or divine. It was not fair to expect him to have an answer, just because he represented the church. No concept within man was big enough to find sanity or hope in this. It was just day after day of blind destruction.
“Chaplain?” It was Peter Rattray, whom he had taught in Cambridge. Thin and dark, he’d had so much imagination and poetry in the translation of ancient languages. They had walked along the grass under the trees together, looking at students punting on the river, and discussed poetry. Now his face was smeared with blood, his hair was cut short under his cap, and he was asking Joseph to find reason for him in this chaos of death, to untangle from it a meaning, as they once had with difficult pieces of translation.
“We had to try,” Joseph said, knowing the words were not enough. “He might have made it.”
“Of course.” Rattray rubbed the heel of his hand against his chin. “If it were me out there, I’d need to think you’d come for me—whatever.” He grinned, a desperate gesture, white teeth in the flare of a star shell. “Are there any more?”
Joseph nodded, and he and Goldstone turned back to go over the parapet again as soon as there was another spell of darkness.
The next one they brought back alive, and handed him over to the stretcher party.
“Thanks, Chaplain,” he said weakly, his voice barely a whisper. They carried him away, bumping elbows against the crooked walls of the trench, slithering on the wet duckboards and keeping balance with difficulty.
It was toward dawn when Joseph saw the body lying facedown at the edge of the shell crater and knew even before he reached it that the man had to be dead. His head was half submerged, as if he had been shot cleanly, and simply pitched forward.
There was still time before daylight to get him back. Better he be buried somewhere behind the lines, if possible, than lie here and rot. At least his family could be told, instead of enduring the agony of missing in action and never knowing for sure, seesawing up and down between hope and despair. He refused to imagine a woman standing alone every morning, facing another day of uncertainty, trying to believe and afraid to think.
He knelt down beside the man and turned him over, pulling him back a little. He was well built. Carrying him would not be easy. But since he was dead, he would not suffer if he were dragged.
There was a smudge of gray in the sky to the east, but it was still not possible to see much until the flares went up. Then it was clear enough: the bright hair and—even through the mud—Eldon Prentice’s face.
Joseph froze, a wave of unreality washing over him. What in God’s name had Prentice been doing out here? He had no business even in the front trenches,