We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [132]
Another man lashed out, and he was closer. His boot caught Monique in the chest, and she gasped and cried out. She slipped from Joseph’s arms onto the cobbles. Her eyes rolled back and she stopped moving, blood running from her mouth.
The man regained his balance and lifted his foot to do it again.
Joseph shot to his feet and hit the man as hard as he could with his fist, all his weight behind it. “She’s not a collaborator, you fool!” he shouted. “She’s part of the resistance!” He hit the man again and again, feeling his fist strike bone, then soft flesh: yielding, sagging dead-weight. Still he didn’t stop. “She was braver and better than any of you, you cowards!”
The man staggered and fell backward onto the stones himself, but Joseph didn’t stop. He lunged after him and hauled him to his feet, then hit him again, one fist and then the other. His own hands were bleeding, but he didn’t care. Another man came at him, and he hit him, too, full in the face, sending him reeling backward, then again, knocking him to the ground. He was bending over him, ready to strike, when he felt arms holding him, stopping him from moving, sending him off balance.
He heaved himself away and spun around to lash out, and saw with surprise that it was Matthew. Then Mason caught him from behind and pinned his arms to his sides.
Judith was on the ground by Monique. The crowd was staring at them, shocked into silence.
Judith laid Monique down gently. “It’s too late,” she said, looking at Joseph. “She’s dead.”
Joseph stiffened.
Mason held him more tightly.
Lizzie and Schenckendorff were standing on the edge of the crowd, their faces white.
“You know her?” Matthew asked, looking at Joseph with concern.
“Yes. I met her in Paris last year. She worked for our intelligence there. She risked her life to help her country, and these stupid animals have murdered her.” He was finding it difficult to breathe, as if there were a great weight tightening around his chest, crushing him. The distance blurred in his vision, figures becoming fuzzy and distorted.
“Not a collaborator?” someone asked quietly.
“We didn’t know,” someone else offered.
“No, you didn’t!” Joseph grated the words between clenched teeth. “And you didn’t care. You murdered her anyway.”
“But we didn’t…we thought…” His words trailed off in the withering blaze of Joseph’s eyes.
“Tell her that!” Joseph said bitterly.
“Joseph, she’s dead.” Matthew’s voice was gentle, insistent.
“I know!” Joseph shouted, ending in a sob. He struggled for breath. They were all dead: his mother and father, Sebastian Allard, the man who had brought the treaty from Germany in the first place, Owen Cullingford, Charlie Gee, that damn reporter in his arrogance, Theo Blaine, Shanley Corcoran, Tucky Nunn, half the men of the Cambridgeshire regiment that he had grown up with, the young men from St. John’s College, half the armies of Europe torn and blinded and choked in their own blood. Now Monique: stupidly, senselessly murdered after all she had done for her own people. It was unbearable.
He was too late to save her, or to save those stupid, ugly people from their own fate. They could not undo what they had done. Had he really helped anyone? Those who believed, or those who didn’t? The sick, the frightened, the hopeless, anyone at all?
He had kept a grip on all the despair that threatened him like a towering, consuming darkness all the years of war. He had not wept for his own pain, but now it could not be denied. It tore through him like a storm, sweeping reason, self-mastery, and consciousness of others away like a tidal wave. He wept for all of them: every lost and terrified soul of the last dreadful years. Matthew held him, and the crowd swirled around, confused and ashamed, frightened by the power of what they had done. Suddenly they understood that it was irretrievable, and one by one they also saw that it was undeniable. Ignorance did not pardon them.
Matthew