We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [66]
His feet squelched in the mud. His legs ached with the effort of pulling himself out of it again and again.
The Peacemaker had begun with such high, clear ideals. They would broker peace, prevent the slaughter and ruin of war, at a relatively small price. Except that it was not a small price. They had not seen then that the lack of open war is not the same thing as peace. There are internal prices to pay that create a different kind of war, another sort of destruction. The Peacemaker had paid, principle by principle, until the crusader in him had become a tyrant, making choices for others that they would not have chosen for themselves.
Why had Mason joined him in the beginning? So that the atrocities he had seen in the Boer War would never happen again. He was heartsick at the suffering he had seen and would have made any sacrifice to prevent another single further human from enduring such loss. Nationality was irrelevant.
But it wasn’t nationality that was the issue. It was the passion and the belief of the individual, the right to rule himself in the manner of his choice, the chance to be different, funny, inventive, to learn anything and everything, to question, to make mistakes and to start again. And to be bloody-minded and brave and kind, like half the ordinary soldiers he had seen. And like the crewman who had given his life on the way back from Gallipoli, to avoid betraying the people who trusted him. Mason would never forget him. He could still see his white face in the bottom of the boat, then in the water. In the moment of his death he had become Everyman, the ordinary British soldier, the one Joseph Reavley had said would never understand or accept the Peacemaker’s world—not at the price it cost.
Without realizing it he had quickened his step, sloshing through the mud in what he hoped was the general direction of the station. He must help Judith; that was one thing about which there was no question or doubt. Where he stood or what else he believed could wait until later.
CHAPTER
SIX
Matthew stared at the rough wooden walls of the inside of the hut in which he was locked. It had been a toolshed once, then used for supplies. Now it was the only place secure enough to keep a prisoner. He had been left a cot, two blankets, and a pail—that was all. He could hardly believe that Jacobson really considered him guilty of having murdered Sarah Gladwyn—Sarah Price, as she now was. He had not lied; he had never connected the present army nurse with the girl he had known at the university. “I haven’t thought of her from that day to this!” he had protested with absolute honesty. It was preposterous that Jacobson stood there convinced he was lying, not a shadow of uncertainty in his face.
“Hard to believe, Major Reavley,” he said almost without expression. “Pretty girl. Doesn’t look in that picture as if you’d forget each other.”
“Know lots of pretty girls, do you?” Sergeant Hampton had asked, his lip very slightly curled perhaps less from skepticism than a faint contempt, an unworded suggestion of moral callousness on Matthew’s part.
“Yes,” Matthew snapped. “Actually the university is full of them. Lots of them are pretty, and some are clever as well.” Instantly he wished he had not said that. It was an arrogant remark, and in the circumstances extraordinarily stupid. It was just the sort of indifference to feelings that justified their suspicion of him. The truth was that it had been an uncomfortable episode. Sarah had been pretty and fun, in a superficial way, and he had certainly been flattered that she chose him. It had had a lot to do with beating the competition, which was not a pleasing thought, and far too close to what Jacobson assumed of him.
Sarah had been easy to like, undemanding, ready to laugh. He remembered now how pretty her hair had been, soft and always shining. Her features were no more than pleasant, but she had danced marvelously, following as if she read his thoughts in every step. He blushed now to