We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [86]
Mason smiled very slightly, moving only his lips. “You want the right to go to hell in your own fashion?”
The shadow of humor touched Matthew’s face as well, uncertainly. “If you like to put it that way, yes. The point is, one of the Peacemaker’s allies in Germany has come through the lines. He’s willing to come to London and identify him to Lloyd George.”
Mason now saw with hideous clarity what Matthew was doing here in the front line, and why he cared so intensely that Schenckendorff not be executed for a crime he had apparently not committed. Possibly even if he had committed it, the price was too great, at least to the Reavleys. Mason wondered what Joseph thought of it.
Matthew mistook his silence. “I know it’s not simple,” he said earnestly. “Much that the Peacemaker wanted is right, and perhaps to begin with he was the most farsighted, the sanest of us all. But he usurped power to which he had no right. He is a man fatally flawed by the weakness to abuse it. Right or wrong in his vision, he can’t be trusted not to betray, to kill, to corrupt in order to keep that power in his own hands. And once he has it, it’s too late to change if you find you have no way to control him, or to take it back from him.
“Our war was worse than anything we could have imagined,” Matthew went on, still watching Mason intently. “But what would his empire have been? And how long might it have lasted? I don’t know. We didn’t make the choice seeing all the way; no one ever does. We do it step by step, doing our best with each one, trying to see where it will lead. Sometimes we’re wrong. But to decide for others, against their will, has to be an arrogance we can’t allow. That kind of power is more than any man has the wisdom or the morality to handle.”
Mason was desperately tempted to ease his hammering conscience by telling the truth of his own part. He longed to explain what he had seen in Africa and why he had tried so desperately to stop it from happening again; why he had seen the same vision as the Peacemaker, and believed in him. It would be a relief to speak honestly, justify at least his beliefs, however they had ended. But it was a luxury he could not afford, a selfishness to ease his own burden of guilt. It was an excuse too small for the cause, and the immeasurable sacrifice of others. Mere discomfort was so trivial it would be obscene to mention it.
He looked up at last and met Matthew’s eyes. “So that’s why you need to get Schenckendorff off this charge, and to London. What can I do to help?” He could have told them who the Peacemaker was, but he would have to tell them how he knew, and why should they believe him? It would appear entirely self-serving. The Peacemaker would deny it. Of course he would. Mason was stunned at his own gullibility; even now he had no proof. There was not and had never been anything in writing. The Peacemaker had always said it was for the protection of them both, above all of the cause, but perhaps primarily it was for his own safety. He trusted no one. It was oddly painful to understand now that that had always included Mason himself.
Nor would the Reavleys dare to trust him if they knew the part he had played. They would not know how totally Mason had at last understood what he had done, and seen it in its futility, its final ugliness.
He must tell them nothing, however badly the guilt twisted inside him and set him apart and alone.
“Help us find and prove who killed Sarah Price,” Matthew told him. “Or at least demonstrate irrefutably that it wasn’t Schenckendorff.”
Mason’s decision was without shadow. It was a long path back, one he might never complete, but he knew how to begin. “When do we start?”
Joseph returned from the front line with more wounded. As soon as he had seen them into the orderlies’ care, he went to Matthew. They stood together