Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [52]
Was Cullingford thinking of that, too, his mind racing over the reconciliation there could have been in the future, and now never would be? Did he think of Prentice as he had been when he was a child, times they had spent together when the world was so utterly different? They had been innocent, incapable of imagining the storm of destruction that had descended on them now. She still saw that bright, vulnerable look in the eyes of new recruits, when they did not know what the stench meant, and believed they could do something brave and noble that would matter. They had no conception how many of them would die before they had a chance to do anything at all, beyond the willingness, and the dream.
It took them half an hour to reach the place. The rain had stopped but the mud was still slick and in the pale sun the wet grass glittered with drops of water. Major Harvester met them, looking stiff, formal, and somewhat embarrassed.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” he said, saluting smartly. “Please accept my condolences.”
Cullingford looked at him with a flash of bitter humor. Judith wondered if he knew how Prentice had been disliked, and how much it hurt him. Whatever he had felt himself, Prentice was family. His loyalties must be torn.
“Thank you,” he accepted.
Harvester remained where he was, standing to attention on the strip of mangled grass. Judith could see in his sensitive, bony face that he felt he should add something more, the usual remarks that the dead man had been good at his job, loyal, brave, well liked, all the things one says over graves. Decency, even pity, fought within him against loyalty to his own men, and the truth. It was a kind of betrayal to use the same words for Prentice as for a soldier killed in battle. He stood there tongue-tied, unable to do it.
Judith agonized for him, and for Cullingford. It was too late for Prentice to redeem himself now; he would be remembered as he was. Perhaps only his family would think of him as he could have become.
Cullingford rescued him. “There is no need to say it, Major Harvester,” he said quietly. “Mr. Prentice was not a soldier. He does not warrant a soldier’s epitaph.” His voice shook so very slightly that probably Harvester did not even hear it.
“He . . . he was doing his job, sir,” Harvester said, his face softening with gratitude.
Joseph spoke at last. “Would you like to come this way, sir?” he asked. “I’ll take you to the grave.”
“Thank you.” Cullingford followed him.
Judith waited behind. She had disliked Prentice. She had no right to go now as if she mourned him, and perhaps Cullingford would value a few moments of privacy for whatever grieving duty permitted him. She watched him go, stiff and upright, intensely alone.
A sergeant came over and offered her a mug of tea. Harvester went about his duties.
Twenty minutes later Cullingford came back, his face white, his eyes bright and oddly blind. He thanked Joseph and walked to the car. Joseph looked for a moment at Judith, his face shadowed with anxiety. She would like to have had time to speak to him, ask how he was, and above all, what he had meant by his strange remarks about Prentice’s death. But not only was Cullingford her duty, he was her chief concern also. She smiled fleetingly at Joseph, and went to the car.
Cullingford was already seated, waiting for her, this time in the front passenger seat. Judith cranked the engine, climbed in and drove back onto the road toward Zillebeke.
She would like to have said something good about Prentice, but she knew nothing. To invent it would have been intolerably patronizing, in a way making it even more obvious that invention was necessary.
She was weighed down by a savage awareness