Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [71]
“Something like that,” she agreed.
After the children had gone to bed, Judith and Hannah walked up the garden in the dusk. Appleton had gone to work on the land. Food was more important than flowers. Mrs. Appleton had gone with him, over in Cherry Hinton direction. Not far away, but too far to come back here to cook or clean. The weeds were high in the spring warmth and the long daylight hours.
“I can’t keep it up,” Hannah said, looking at it miserably. “Even the raspberries are overgrown. The children help a bit, but it isn’t enough. There’s always so much to do. There are fifteen families in the village now who’ve lost someone, either on the Western Front, or at sea. We heard about Billy Abbot just yesterday. His ship went down in the North Atlantic, with all hands.”
Judith said nothing. She knew Hannah was thinking about Archie, but neither of them wanted to say so. There were some things it was better not to put into words, the silence helped to keep at least the surface of control. There was work that had to be done, children who needed to feel at least some faith in survival. As long as you did not give in to terror, neither would they. You had to be busy, to smile, if you must cry, then cry alone. Perhaps the women with children were lucky. They gave you a reason to force yourself to be your best, always. The act became a habit.
It was Hannah who broached the subject of the Peacemaker.
“Matthew won’t tell me anything about his search for the man who killed Mother and Father,” she said as they stood at the end of the lawn and looked west toward the last echoes of light in the sky. “Has he given up?”
“No.” Now a lie seemed like a betrayal, and she was not in a mind to be able to deal in the loneliness of deceit. “He’s trying to find out who Sebastian Allard spoke to the evening before.”
“Why? Oh . . . you mean the Peacemaker . . . what a ridiculous name for him! The murderer must have told him what to do?”
“Probably not himself,” Judith replied. “He wouldn’t risk that. He has to be someone well known, very highly placed, and someone Father knew already, and trusted. He will have sent someone else to persuade Sebastian what to do. It couldn’t have been easy. You don’t just walk up to someone and say ‘By the way, I’d like you to murder one of my friends tomorrow. It has to be tomorrow because the whole thing has become rather urgent. Will you do that for me?’ You’d have to give him all sorts of reasons, and persuade him. Sebastian was a passionate pacifist. It will have taken some time to argue him into believing it was the only way to preserve peace in Europe.”
Hannah was silent for several minutes. The last shreds of light from the west, no more than a luminescence in the air, caught her cheekbones and brow and the curve of her mouth, softening the anxiety and making her look as young as she had a year ago.
“I talk to Nan Fardell quite a bit. Her husband’s in the navy, too. She lives in Haslingfield.” She hesitated a moment. “Nan said she saw Sebastian in Madingley the afternoon before . . . he was with a girl. They seemed to be very close, talking earnestly, having an argument, which they made up before they parted.” Hannah frowned. “She mentioned it because she knew he was engaged and she thought it was a bit shabby. She assumed he was trying to break it off with this girl, and she wouldn’t let him, so he gave in, and apparently they parted in agreement. Nan said she was rather beautiful, nearly as tall as he was. I expect the Peacemaker’s a man, but does the person who gave Sebastian his instructions have to be a man as well?” She turned to Judith. “He doesn’t, does he? Lots of idealists who really get things done are women. They were in the past, and they are now. What about Beatrice Webb, or even more, Rosa Luxemburg? Nan said this woman was very unusual, she had remarkable eyes, pale blue and very bright.”
Judith’s mind whirled. It could be! It was a cold thought, and she had not the faintest idea who the woman was, or how to find her, and trace her back to the Peacemaker. But it was a beginning, or