Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [61]
“Close the door,” the Peacemaker directed.
The man obeyed. They both remained standing. Richard Mason was perhaps the best war correspondent to emerge from this hideous conflict. His writing was lucid, concise, the force in it coming from simple language, a brilliant intellectual grasp of what was happening driven by a passionate anger at human suffering. Time and time again he saw the detail that brought a vast event into the grasp of the reader, making the experience immediate enough to hurt as does the death of one man, rather than overwhelm as does the destruction of a thousand. He gave the enormity of it a human face.
“I want you to go to Gallipoli,” the Peacemaker said quietly. “The news is bad. They say the casualties are terrible. One observation pilot reported that the landing at Cape Helles beach was so fearful he looked down and saw the sea red with blood.”
Mason’s face was pale and his hands by his sides were clenched. He had seen war before, in South Africa. He would have given everything he possessed to prevent such slaughter and human misery happening again, but now, as then, he was helpless to do anything but watch. The Boer War with its civilian casualties, its concentration camps, its legacy of bitterness and destruction, had made him long for peace at any price, as a drowning man longs for air.
It had brought him together with the Peacemaker, and a few others who hungered in the same fierce and passionate way, in an attempt first to prevent this great engulfing conflict, and when that had failed, at least to make it as short as possible. God above knew how many men would die if it continued. He had seen the trenches, and the slaughter of tens of thousands of young men—and he had heard of the nightmare hell of gas.
“What about the Western Front?” he asked. “The Germans are breaking through at Ypres. They’ll be to the French borders soon, and then Paris. What will be the point of Gallipoli if France surrenders?”
“I’ve got a man right there where the gas attack took place,” the Peacemaker replied. “He’s young and keen. He’ll write a good piece. He actually saw it, and the casualties afterward. As of the moment, the Ypres Salient is still holding.”
“For how long?” Mason said bitterly. “We’re bent to breaking, right from Ypres to Verdun and beyond. Austria and Germany have got eight million men mobilized, the French have only got four and a half, and we’ve got barely seven hundred thousand! Now we’ve got the Turks against us as well.”
“I don’t know,” the Peacemaker admitted. “But the story’s in Gallipoli now. If it fails, eventually Churchill will have to go. It may even bring down the government.”
Mason stiffened, his eyes widening. There was a sudden flare of hope in him.
The Peacemaker smiled bleakly. “It’s only a beginning,” he warned. “And we’ll pay for it in blood and tears long before it’s over. But go out there and find the truth, then write it! I’ll see it’s published. I have editors in the small papers who have the courage to print an honest report, not the censored rubbish the rest of us get. People are being deceived. There is no choice without knowledge. Truth is the only freedom.”
“Yes, it is,” Mason said quietly. “But I wish to God sometimes I didn’t have to see it in order to write it.”
“I’m sure,” the Peacemaker agreed. “It isn’t cheap. Like everything else of value, it comes at a high price, sometimes everything we’ve got.”
Mason did not argue. If he had to, he was willing to pay.
CHAPTER
SIX
Judith was on the deck of the transport steamer on the way back across the Channel. She stared into the luminous shadows over the sea and thought about Mrs. Prentice. If she was anything like Eldon, Judith would find it extremely difficult to be gentle with her or offer her any kindness to conceal how he had been disliked, and worse than that, held in contempt. It would cost her all the self-control she possessed to think only of the engulfing sense of loss any woman must feel for her son. Judith had never had a child, but she had watched