We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [113]
“That was stupid,” she said drily. “She can’t have been there herself. I saw her at about four o’clock, or shortly after, and she’d been in the Admissions tent for some time.”
“No, she was in Evacuation,” he corrected her. “She was seen there by Benbow, and Eames as well.”
She shook her head. “I saw her, and she was covered in blood. She must have been in Admissions. She was perfectly clean apart from a few spots on her skirt at about half past three, and by the time any of the wounded get to Evacuation they’re bandaged and fit to go, or they wouldn’t be there. You only get soaked in blood like that either in Admissions or in lying wounded, waiting for operations.” Then suddenly her eyes widened and she stared at him, aghast.
He could not believe it. It was hideous, terrible, but he knew exactly what she was thinking. The images raced through his mind also, increasing, growing clearer and more real. The hatred was there, the sense of morality, and the belief that the meaning of life was falling apart. It was not only in violence and death on every side, but then finally at the core, the very fount of creation, the reason that redeemed all else and gave hope for newness, cleanness in the world again.
Men were dead or damaged everywhere, the flower of a generation. No one could count the number of women who would live alone, and childless. A new, harsher order had taken over, and it was terrifying. Women, the keepers of sanity, had themselves cast it aside. There was a way in which that was the ultimate betrayal, the end of hope itself.
That was why the bayonet had been used—woman punishing the suicide of womanhood. How had he not even guessed at it? Sarah’s playing with Cavan and then flirting with the German prisoners was the final, unbearable offense, committed while British men were only yards away, bleeding to an agonizing death, awake and hideously aware of all of it.
Erica was still staring at him, but there was no struggle left in her eyes. She knew it was true. “I’m sorry,” she said gravely. “I didn’t see it, either, and I should have. I was so sure it was a man. I thought it was Benbow. I saw certain…certain things he did, a way he looked at some of the women, especially Moira Jessop. That isn’t evidence, and I misjudged him. I even thought of warning her not to tease him. I would have wronged him, wouldn’t I?” She gave a bleak grimace of self-criticism.
Joseph did not answer. It was all past, and it would not help. He needed to find Onslow, and Jacobson, too. Jacobson deserved to know. They would have to arrest Allie Robinson and release all the rest of the men kept here, sending the wounded home and the few able-bodied back to the fighting. The station itself would be moved forward to where it was still needed.
“A woman?” Onslow said slowly, as if the very word were a new concept to him, let alone the idea.
Patiently, allowing the horror to fill his words, Joseph explained to him the passion of betrayal that he believed Allie had seen: the ultimate obscenity of a woman like Sarah threatening to defile the very source of life, of nurture, of every hope to make everything clean and new.
“If there is no home to go back to, no one to love, to forgive and to start again, what was the pain all for?” he finished.
“Can we prove it?” Onslow asked, his voice hushed.
“Not easily, but I think so,” Joseph answered. “We must certainly try.”
Onslow wiped his hand over his brow. “Come on, then. We’d better go and find her.” His hand went automatically to the revolver at his belt, reassuring himself that it was there.
Joseph did not tell him that it was unnecessary. He did not know.
Allie Robinson was in the Operating tent. Cavan was busy suturing a lacerated foot. He barely looked up.
Allie saw Joseph’s face, and Onslow just behind him. She stiffened, her eyes wide.
Onslow walked forward slowly, moving a little toward the operating table so he cut her off from it, placing himself between her and the soldier whose foot was being stitched.
She saw the finality in his expression. She stepped back, closer to the