We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [29]
“Judith!” He excused himself from the orderly he was talking to and came over to her quickly, almost pushing her into a corner away from earshot, so that she was pressed against a pile of boxes and stretchers stacked upright. “Sarah Price has been killed—” he began.
“I know,” she said, cutting him off. “Cavan told me. Murdered with a bayonet.” She swallowed hard, her throat tight. “It’s horrible, but I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. Victory and defeat are too close to each other here, and both of them have their bitterness. War is probably the most hideous thing we do to each other, but we’ve become used to it. I don’t know about you, but I’m scared sick of going home.” She looked at him, searching his eyes and seeing understanding leap to them, and pain. They knew each other now in a way they could not have in a lifetime at home.
“That’s not all, Judith,” he said in little more than a whisper. “Matthew’s here. I didn’t have the chance to tell you before. The Peacemaker’s German ally has come through the lines to give him up, before he can affect the terms of the armistice so the war starts up again within a few years.”
“You know who he is?” She was amazed, excitement surging up inside her now, her heart suddenly pounding.
“Not yet.” His hand tightened on her arm. “He’s here, but he doesn’t trust us enough to give us the name. He’ll travel to London to tell Lloyd George. We’ve got to keep him safe until we can leave. He’s got a badly wounded foot and was feverish the first night when I met him, but the orderly says he’s better now.”
“Are we going?” Without giving it even a thought she included herself. “He’ll need an ambulance. Can we explain it to Colonel Hook?”
He hesitated only a moment. Before the war he would have evaded an answer, protecting her; now he knew her strength. “No. I think Schenckendorff’s genuine, but we can’t be sure,” he said. “And even if he is, it’s possible the Peacemaker knows he’s crossed through, and there could only be one reason. He wouldn’t take the risk.”
“Murder him, too? His own…” She stopped, realizing what she was about to say, and bit her lip. “Schenckendorff?”
“Yes. Looks like someone already put a bayonet through his foot, more than once.”
She drew in her breath to swear, then remembered his sensibilities and checked herself. “You said Matthew’s here?”
“Two days ago Schenckendorff sent a message to him in London, asking where he should come through and if Matthew could be here.”
A chill touched her more than the wet skirts around her legs. Now she understood why Joseph was afraid it was a trap, a last attempt at revenge on the Reavleys, who had thwarted him from the start.
He must have seen the fear in her. “We’ll get him out,” he assured her. “It’ll be over soon. It’s wretched about Sarah Price’s death, but it may be solved pretty quickly. We can’t wait for it anyway. I’ll explain it to Colonel Hook if I have to. Matthew’s rank should make it pretty simple. At the moment he’s pretending to be a major to avoid attention. He’ll just have to take the chance and explain who he is.”
She nodded. “I’ve got to see if I can fix my engine before I need it again. I’ll be lucky if it lasts the war out. I really need some new parts.”
“Good luck!” he said drily.
“Luck won’t do it!” she retorted. “I need a light-fingered friend willing to liberate a few spark plugs and one or two other necessities of life.”
He had stopped bothering to warn her to be careful. He gave a very slight smile and walked away.
Judith spent the next hour taking apart various pieces of her engine, cleaning them, and attempting to make them work again. Finally she resigned herself to the fact that without new spark plugs it was pointless. She abandoned it and went to find a mug of hot tea and something to eat, even if it was only a heel of bread and some tinned Maconachie stew.
The clearing station was unusually tense. She passed medical orderlies moving briskly over the duckboard paths from the tent for the walking wounded to that for the lying wounded, their heads averted as if they