We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [104]
Onslow was staring at him. He might want to apologize, try to explain, but nothing could excuse what Onslow had done to Lizzie, and Joseph would not yield. He was a chaplain, not a career soldier, and Lizzie was more important to him than any calling. He stared back without wavering.
Lizzie, too, must have been desperate to think of something to say. She looked from one to the other, her face ashen.
Onslow straightened his tunic and brushed himself down. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Blaine,” he said quietly. “I am quite sure you feel your omission more than sufficiently. I should not have mentioned it. I cannot imagine the suffering you have already endured, and the insensitivity of some people’s remarks. I apologize that I added to them.”
“You were right to blame me, sir,” she said, her voice trembling. “I thought perhaps it might have been my own fault, that somehow I had unintentionally allowed someone to believe I held a regard for him that I didn’t. We…we all tend to think that somehow we were stupid, careless…but I have no idea who it was. I’ve gone over and over it in my mind, and I don’t know. It’s too late now to say who was here then, I realize that. I was so ashamed…I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. I’m sorry.”
Joseph waited for Onslow to agree, but instead he turned to Joseph, his face already beginning to swell from the blow. “You should watch your temper, Chaplain. Not every senior officer may appreciate your remarkable service to the men here, or realize that to charge you with assault at such a time, when the morale of the whole unit is so fragile, would not be in the army’s best interest. You are very fortunate that I do.” He put his hand to his cheek and touched it gingerly. “If anyone inquires, I shall say that I fell. You would be wise to be quite unaware of the whole incident.”
“Yes, sir.” Joseph was suddenly embarrassed. Onslow was a better man than he had given him credit for—simply out of his depth with the subject of rape. And like most people, he disliked intensely having made a very public stand on an issue, and then being proved wrong. “Thank you,” he added.
“Thank your record with the Cambridgeshires, Captain Reavley,” Onslow replied. “You are loved by the men. I think if I were to charge you I would lose their support completely. I’m not fool enough for that.”
There was a certain pain in his voice, a knowledge of having been a fool in other things. He stood awkwardly, beginning to realize that he had been hit very hard indeed. “Now I have to make certain that Schenckendorff is released from this accusation, and that everyone knows that he could not be guilty. I don’t want him attacked—again.”
He turned to Lizzie. “I regret that I shall have to tell them why, Mrs. Blaine, because if I do not, they may not believe me, and someone will take a private vengeance on him. I will not mention your name, but it is possible someone may guess. There is no alternative. I cannot allow the man to be murdered in an accident”—he emphasized the word—“because I am not believed.”
“I understand,” she said hoarsely. “That would be almost as bad as his being hanged. Thank you, sir.”
Onslow nodded.
Joseph and Lizzie turned and went back out into the rain.
Later, Joseph walked alone around the old supply trench, remembering the men he had known who were gone, so many of them dead. He thought of them in the good times, the jokes, the sharing, the long stories about home, the letters, the dreams for the future. Had they loved him as much as Onslow thought? He had loved them, and watched them die. Had he been any help in this nightmare?
What help was he now to Lizzie, whom he loved? He thought he had learned to deal with death, even with mutilation, which was sometimes even harder. But there was an element in rape that was different, a violation not just of the body but of the inner core unique to a woman. If it had been somebody else, possibly even Judith, he would not feel so wounded within himself. There would not be the horror, the…he had been going to use the word revulsion in his mind. Part of him wanted