We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [63]
Judith could not tell Lizzie why Matthew had come here, but naturally she knew he had been arrested. Everyone did. The sense of relief was palpable for most of them. He had not actually been charged yet; Jacobson was still gathering evidence, hoping for something more concrete, witnesses who had seen something, heard something. But it was only a matter of time.
News was coming about the front line moving east, towns falling one by one. The fighting was still bitter, with murderous losses on both sides, but the end could not be much longer in coming.
Judith was in the Evacuation tent making room for more wounded to be moved into it.
“I need to see one of the German prisoners,” she said urgently to Lizzie. “It’s important. For Matthew.” She was almost on the edge of telling Lizzie why, but she remembered with a stab of pain still fresh the consequences of a previous confidence she’d made, and she kept silent.
Lizzie must have heard the emotion in her voice. She did not argue or ask for further explanation. “You’d better come with me,” she said, looking away the moment after she had agreed. “I have a duty there as soon as we’ve finished this, but I expect you know that.”
Judith felt guilty. She was using Lizzie, who was a friend, but she would have used anyone at all to help Matthew, and to get Schenckendorff to tell them everything he knew about the Peacemaker. Her mind told her that he must not be permitted to influence the terms of the armistice; her heart demanded that he answer for the deaths of her parents.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely.
A flicker of a smile warmed Lizzie’s face, then she led the way. There were two guards on duty, as usual, but they took no notice of nurses coming and going, and to them Judith in her V.A.D. gray was just the same. The thought flashed in her mind to wonder if nurses were always invisible to them. Had Sarah come and gone this way without being noticed?
Inside the hut eight men lay on narrow cots, close to one another. Dark blankets covered their bodies up to the chin; the white bandages that were visible were mostly stained with blood. Lizzie stopped at the first bed. Judith went on, looking for a man whose foot was bandaged.
She found him quickly, although he was not at all as she had expected. He looked leaner, more vulnerable, lying on the cot, his hair untidy from the rough pillow, his face tired and unshaven, etched with pain. She was aware of what Joseph had said about the courage it must have cost him to abandon his life’s belief and promises because his moral loyalty was to a higher principle. How many people can ever do that? The loneliness must be almost beyond the imagination. Could she have left all that she knew and loved for any principle of right, however deep? Would not the accusation of betrayal, however false, bleed inside her forever?
Would he be able to go through with it, when the moment came?
The man stared straight ahead, not looking at her because he did not expect to be spoken to. She was anonymous, just another English nurse who was here only out of duty. The young man in the bed beyond him looked no more than sixteen or seventeen. There was barely down on the fair skin of his cheeks. He looked at her with fear.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said in German. She wanted to add that nobody would, but she knew that might not be true.
Schenckendorff looked at her, woken from his thoughts. “It is not himself he is afraid for,” he said in almost unaccented English. “He is afraid for his family. He comes from a village in the path of the army on its way to Berlin. They are alone there now. His father is dead and his sisters are only children, younger than he is. I apologize for him. He has heard stories.”
“Of course he’s afraid for them,” she replied. “I understand that. My brother is in danger, and I’m afraid for him.” She smiled at the boy, who stared at her, an answering smile touching his mouth and then vanishing. She looked back at Schenckendorff.