We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [143]
“Then the blood of millions is on your hands,” Sandwell replied between his teeth. “The best and the bravest of the nations of the earth lie crushed beneath the weight of your stupidity.”
“You are wrong,” Joseph answered him with absolute conviction. “I do not believe our king would have signed it, but if he had, it would not have bound us, not all of us. There would always have been some who would pay for the freedom for us to make our own laws, speak our differences aloud, follow the faith we choose, make our own mistakes, laugh at ourselves and try again. If we pay with our lives, then so be it. We will not pay with the slow death of our minds or the withering of our souls.”
“You patronizing idiot!” Sandwell spat at him. “Do you think anybody cares for that kind of empty sermon now? Death is real! It’s broken bodies, men blinded, crippled, choked on their own blood! It’s corpses riddled with bullets, frozen to death. It’s not high-minded valor, you fool! Look at reality! Say that to the mutilated, the blind if you dare!”
“I dare,” Joseph replied unflinchingly. “I know them as you never will, or you would not have misjudged them so completely. Again and again you were wrong. You did not understand their courage, their loyalty, their friendship, their love of the right to come and go as they like, to keep their ancient customs, the little ways that make life sweet. Men and nations will always seek the right to make their own choices, whatever the cost. You can guide, but you cannot rule. You misjudged humanity in general, and Britain in particular.
“But worse than that, and far worse, you confused the ends with the means until they became one in your mind. You destroyed the very spark of life that you wanted to give us. Without the freedom to be right or wrong, to choose your own way rather than the way forced upon you, there is no virtue, no courage, no honor or laughter or love worth having. Men with far less intellect than yours know this in their blood and their bones, and they will die rather than sell it to you and your dreams of dominion. And that is what they have become—dreams. It is not the wisdom or the intent of power that corrupts, it is the totality of power that can no longer be curbed.”
Sandwell stared at Joseph with a hatred so violent, his whole slender body trembled with it, then he quickly stepped toward him and hit him as hard as he could.
Joseph staggered backward, overbalanced, and fell, his head striking the floor with a crack. He lay still.
Judith went ashen. Lizzie drew in her breath with a sob and started forward, but Matthew blocked her way.
Sandwell moved forward to hit Joseph again. Matthew suddenly saw in Joseph’s motionless body all the dead men he had loved: his father, Sebastian Allard, Owen Cullingford, and all the others once full of passion and dreams, who had talked and laughed and cared so much. He struck Sandwell in the middle of the back and, as the man swayed, caught him and spun him around. He hit him with the blow he had been taught and never expected to use, hard under the nose, driving the bone into his brain.
Sandwell slithered to the floor, and when Matthew bent over him he was not breathing. Without rising to his feet Matthew turned to his brother. Lizzie was beside him. Joseph was coughing, struggling to get his breath and to sit up. He looked dazed and unsteady, but unquestionably alive.
Matthew was overcome by a wave of relief so intense he felt dizzy with it himself. He realized that for an instant he had thought Joseph was dead. The crack of bone on the hard wooden floor had filled him with a fear just like the terrible grief he had felt for his father.
“Joe?” he said huskily.
Joseph groaned and put a hand to his head, then stared beyond Matthew to the Peacemaker lying on the floor. “You hit him,” he observed. “Thank you. I think I really angered him. He wanted to kill me.”
Matthew looked at the figure almost at his feet, sprawled out, one leg under the other.