Shoulder the Sky Read online

  Cullingford was waiting. He looked tired and so easy to hurt. Prentice was his nephew and she knew from Hadrian’s expression, the odd words he had let slip to her, awkwardly, as if he wanted her help but would not ask for it, that the relationship was difficult, full of criticisms and resentments. Their values were different and they were too close to disagree with respect.

  Suddenly she was furiously angry with Prentice for his supreme self-centeredness in allowing his petty family squabbles to make even one man falter in his step, let alone a general upon whom other lives depended.

  “The Peacemaker has to be someone who had access to both the kaiser and the king, sir,” she said firmly. “Someone with the total arrogance to assume that they have the moral right to make decisions that affect the rest of the world, without even telling us, let alone asking us. And he had to know both Sebastian Allard and my father personally. That narrows it down rather a lot, but it still leaves dozens of people—I think.”

  “Who is Sebastian Allard?” he said gently, as if he guessed, although he spoke of him in the present.

  She forced herself to keep her voice steady, but it was difficult. Her breath was tight in her chest. “The student of Joseph’s who killed my parents, to get the document back.”

  “And failed . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. I think we may assume that the Peacemaker has not given up his aim. The question is how has he redirected his forces, and what are his targets now?” He bit his lower lip. “He will want the war over as soon as possible, and presumably he does not care greatly who wins. No! No, it would be better for his purposes if Germany does. The kaiser must already have signed the treaty, because it was on its way to the king. We do not know if the king would have signed it or not.” He began to pace back and forth, four steps and then turn, four steps and then turn, restless, caged in by more than the plastered and paneled walls. “Germany, he can rely on, England he cannot. But if Germany wins, then a new government would be formed in England—one that would do as Germany told it—it would have no choice.”

  Judith stood still, watching him, cold inside. John Reavley would have liked him. They had the same kind of quiet, irresistible logic. It was utterly reasonable, and yet it never frightened her because the human warmth and the rueful humor were always there, an inner tenderness that once given was never lost.

  “If I wanted England beaten quickly,” he went on, concentrating with desperate intensity, “what would I do? Attack our weakest point . . .”

  “Break through at Ypres?” Her voice was a whisper. “With more gas? Drive for the coast . . .”

  “No,” he looked at her, shaking his head. “Too costly. We are weak, but we’re far from beaten. The use of gas didn’t work. The men are more resolved than ever to fight to the last yard. It’s a dirty war. They’ll never surrender now.”

  “What then?”

  “Attrition, but swiftly. Without reinforcements we can’t last long. If I were in the man’s place, I would attack morale at home, cripple Kitchener’s ‘new army’ before it begins. Dry up recruitment.”

  “How?”

  “That’s the question. If we can find out how, we might stop him.” His face tightened. “I need to speak to Eldon again.”

  “What can you say?” Now she was frightened he would betray them, unintentionally. Yet what could he say that the Peacemaker did not already know?

  He smiled ruefully. “I have no idea,” he confessed. “I . . .”

  Before he could finish his sentence there was a sharp knock on the door and as soon as he answered, Hadrian came in.

  “Is Colonel Fyfe here already?” Cullingford asked unhappily.

  Hadrian was acutely unhappy. He was as immaculately tidy as always, but his face looked crumpled and he jerked his tunic down absentmindedly.

  “No, sir, Captain Reavley, the chaplain from the second division. He says it’s urgent, sir. I . . . I think you should see him.”

  A little of the color ebbed from Cullingford’s face.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Hadrian said with intense gentleness filling his eyes, and confusion, as if several emotions twisted inside him at once.

  Unconsciously Cullingford straightened his shoulders. “Ask him to come in.”

  “Would you like me to leave, sir?” Judith asked. She desperately wanted to stay. Whatever it was, she would learn of it sooner or later, why not now? Or was privacy kinder?

  There was no time for him to answer. The door opened again and Joseph came in. He was thinner than the last time she had seen him, his face gaunt under the high cheekbones. He must have been aware of her, but he gave no sign, facing Cullingford squarely.

  “Captain Reavley,” Cullingford acknowledged. “What is it?”

  “I’m extremely sorry, sir,” Joseph said levelly. “But I have to tell you that Mr. Eldon Prentice, a war correspondent with the London Times, was killed in no-man’s-land the day before yesterday. Colonel Fyfe asked me to tell you personally, since we believe he was closely related to you, rather than inform you in dispatches. He was buried with the other soldiers who fell that night, but if you believe his family would prefer his body to be shipped home, it could still be arranged.”

  Cullingford frowned. “The day before yesterday, you said?”

  “Yes, sir. He was found in no-man’s-land. I brought him back myself. I hoped that I would be able to tell you why he was there, and what happened to him, but I’m afraid I don’t know yet.”

  “Yet? You expect to?” Cullingford was still confused, stunned by shock. He had heard of or seen the deaths of thousands of men, an average of a score a day, but it was still different when it was someone of your own family. The fact that one did not especially like the individual was irrelevant. It was blood that stirred the loss, the emptiness in the pit of the stomach, nothing to do with affection.

  “I intend to, sir,” Joseph said calmly. “It was extraordinary for a newspaper correspondent to be in the forward trenches at all, he should never have been in no-man’s-land.”

  “No,” Cullingford agreed. “It was a breach of discipline, but his, Captain, not the army’s. If the army writes to his mother, I would be grateful if you did not make an issue of that. He was . . .” He stopped. He had been about to ask for emotional privilege, and he despised it in others. It was unprofessional. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “There is no need to ship his body home, any more than any other man’s. Flanders clay is an honorable grave.”

  Joseph smiled, a momentary gentleness changing his features dramatically. “Of course. And as far as the record will show, he was a man of unusual courage, risking his life in pursuit of truth.” There was an odd irony in his voice.

  Cullingford picked it up. “I presume he was shot by the Germans, and you will tell her so. If he was caught on the wire, she does not need to know that.”

  “That’s always how people die, sir,” Joseph answered him. “But actually Mr. Prentice was drowned.” He stopped. There was something pinched in his face, an unhappiness far more personal than the fact that he was bringing news of bereavement to someone. He was used to that.

  Judith fidgeted, moving her weight, and for the first time Joseph turned to look at her. There was no smile in his eyes, only a kind of desperation. Judith felt it like something tangible in the room. She could not ask. She was merely a driver, like a servant. She was less even than a regular army private. She bit her lip, her breath hurting in her lungs. She knew Joseph too well.

  Cullingford looked at her, then back at Joseph. “Is there something else, Captain Reavley?” he said softly.

  “Not yet, sir.”

  Cullingford stood very still. “You did not say ‘he drowned,’ Captain, you said ‘he was drowned.’ Do you mean that some German soldier found him out there, and held his head under the water?”

  Joseph said nothing.

  Cullingford let out his breath very slowly. “Thank you for taking the time to come and tell me personally, Captain Reav
ley. If you could tell me where he is buried, I should like to pay my respects, for his mother’s sake.”

  “Yes, sir. It is just beyond Pilkem. I can show you, if you wish?”

  “Yes, please. Then I can go on to Zillebeke. Miss Reavley, will you fetch the car.”

  Judith drove, Joseph and Cullingford sat in the back. It was a bright, sharp spring day, sunlight one moment, drenching thundershowers the next, and the air was still cold with a cutting edge to the wind.

  She drove in silence, aware of the crowding emotions that must be pulling Cullingford one way and then the other. She understood grief, confusion, anger, and how hard it was to fight through them without someone to listen, to help you find the reasons why you could miss someone so fiercely whom you have never missed in life.

  She missed her mother. They seemed to have spent little time together, and much of that in quiet disagreement, pursuing different dreams, and yet the ache of loneliness that now she could never go back was deeper than she could have imagined. She missed all the comfortable little things that used to imprison her: time taken to cut and arrange flowers, the need to polish the silver or move the photographs when dusting the table. Now she thought of them as the cords of sanity that held her safe from the emotional violence of life. She caught herself thinking if only she could find a telephone she would hear her father’s voice. And then she remembered, and the tears choked her.

  They were driving slowly along the rutted road toward Pilkem. They passed supply trucks going the other way, and long wagons drawn by horses, mostly laden with the powder shells. There was nothing to do but move as they could, wait when they had to, overtaking would be both dangerous and pointless. There were others ahead anyway, as far as she could see along the flat, straight road.

  They pulled up where an ambulance had lost a wheel and men from a small column of relief troops were helping replace it, working patiently in the rain. She looked back at Cullingford in the seat behind her, half in apology for not being able to do any better. He was staring at the windscreen, his eyes unfocused. Was he thinking of his sister and how she must be feeling, and that he could not be there to say or do anything to help her? Had she been proud of her son, knowing only what he said of himself?

  Alys would have been proud of Judith, and terrified for her as well. But then every mother in Britain was terrified for someone. Probably every mother in Germany, too, and so many other countries.

  Cullingford’s face was impassive. He stared ahead. Only some delicacy of his lips indicated any feeling at all. She knew he had quarreled with Prentice because Hadrian had been furious about it. Hadrian was a quiet man, driven by duty and loyalty, meticulous in his job. The intensity of his emotion had startled her, as had the fact that he had refused absolutely to say what the quarrel was about.

  Was Cullingford thinking of that, too, his mind racing over the reconciliation there could have been in the future, and now never would be? Did he think of Prentice as he had been when he was a child, times they had spent together when the world was so utterly different? They had been innocent, incapable of imagining the storm of destruction that had descended on them now. She still saw that bright, vulnerable look in the eyes of new recruits, when they did not know what the stench meant, and believed they could do something brave and noble that would matter. They had no conception how many of them would die before they had a chance to do anything at all, beyond the willingness, and the dream.

  It took them half an hour to reach the place. The rain had stopped but the mud was still slick and in the pale sun the wet grass glittered with drops of water. Major Harvester met them, looking stiff, formal, and somewhat embarrassed.

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” he said, saluting smartly. “Please accept my condolences.”

  Cullingford looked at him with a flash of bitter humor. Judith wondered if he knew how Prentice had been disliked, and how much it hurt him. Whatever he had felt himself, Prentice was family. His loyalties must be torn.

  “Thank you,” he accepted.

  Harvester remained where he was, standing to attention on the strip of mangled grass. Judith could see in his sensitive, bony face that he felt he should add something more, the usual remarks that the dead man had been good at his job, loyal, brave, well liked, all the things one says over graves. Decency, even pity, fought within him against loyalty to his own men, and the truth. It was a kind of betrayal to use the same words for Prentice as for a soldier killed in battle. He stood there tongue-tied, unable to do it.

  Judith agonized for him, and for Cullingford. It was too late for Prentice to redeem himself now; he would be remembered as he was. Perhaps only his family would think of him as he could have become.

  Cullingford rescued him. “There is no need to say it, Major Harvester,” he said quietly. “Mr. Prentice was not a soldier. He does not warrant a soldier’s epitaph.” His voice shook so very slightly that probably Harvester did not even hear it.

  “He . . . he was doing his job, sir,” Harvester said, his face softening with gratitude.

  Joseph spoke at last. “Would you like to come this way, sir?” he asked. “I’ll take you to the grave.”

  “Thank you.” Cullingford followed him.

  Judith waited behind. She had disliked Prentice. She had no right to go now as if she mourned him, and perhaps Cullingford would value a few moments of privacy for whatever grieving duty permitted him. She watched him go, stiff and upright, intensely alone.

  A sergeant came over and offered her a mug of tea. Harvester went about his duties.

  Twenty minutes later Cullingford came back, his face white, his eyes bright and oddly blind. He thanked Joseph and walked to the car. Joseph looked for a moment at Judith, his face shadowed with anxiety. She would like to have had time to speak to him, ask how he was, and above all, what he had meant by his strange remarks about Prentice’s death. But not only was Cullingford her duty, he was her chief concern also. She smiled fleetingly at Joseph, and went to the car.

  Cullingford was already seated, waiting for her, this time in the front passenger seat. Judith cranked the engine, climbed in and drove back onto the road toward Zillebeke.

  She would like to have said something good about Prentice, but she knew nothing. To invent it would have been intolerably patronizing, in a way making it even more obvious that invention was necessary.

  She was weighed down by a savage awareness of how alone Cullingford was. The men expected him never to show fear, exhaustion, or doubt of final victory. If he had weaknesses or griefs, moments when he was overwhelmed by the horror of it all, he must keep them concealed. There was no one at all with whom he could share them.

  Joseph must have seen the conflict in him over Prentice’s death. He might have understood it as grief for his family, pity for his sister, regret for all the possibilities now gone, and perhaps a thread of guilt because he had disliked Prentice and found him a professional embarrassment. He respected the ordinary fighting man, British or German. He understood their strengths, and their weaknesses, and he hated intrusion into their privacy, or their need. Prentice had violated both.

  But she did not know how to find words that would not commit exactly that same intrusion, and let him know how much of his emotion she had seen.

  “I’m sorry for Mr. Prentice’s death, sir,” she said finally.

  The traffic was slowed to a crawl. He looked at her. “Are you? It is unlike you to express a sentiment you do not feel, Miss Reavley, for courtesy’s sake.” There was the ghost of a smile on his lips. “Eldon was eminently dislikable, don’t you think?”

  She was startled by his frankness. Had she made her feelings so very obvious?

  “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to . . .” How could she finish? “To have been so . . .”

  “Honest?” he suggested, his eyes bright and surprisingly uncritical.

  “Undisciplined,” she corrected him, looking away, the heat burning up her face.

  “Discipline does not require t
hat you swallow your own ideas of morality,” he answered, turning sideways a trifle to look at her more comfortably. “You must have heard about the court-martial of the sapper, and the way Eldon behaved when Charlie Gee was brought into the Casualty Clearing Station?”

  Of course she had heard. She knew it was Joseph who had restrained Wil Sloan from half killing Prentice. She was profoundly grateful for that. She liked Wil enormously. He was brave, funny, and generous. She loved the stories he told of working his way across half of America on the railroads in order to get passage to England for the war. She also knew he had had to leave his hometown in the Midwest in an indecent hurry after losing his temper once before.

  Cullingford was right about what she had thought. She hated being put in the position of not knowing whether she should deny it or not. He was Prentice’s uncle, and had probably known him since he was born! He had to care, even if largely for his sister’s sake. She would love Hannah’s children, whatever they did. It was not a choice; she could not help it. But Prentice had still been an insensitive man who put his own advancement before basic decency in the face of human pain.

  “Yes, sir, I’m afraid I did.” The words were said from a depth of feeling, and she only thought afterward of how they might hurt him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Please do not keep saying you are sorry, Miss Reavley. It is growing tedious. And don’t treat me like an aged aunt. Your honesty is one of your better qualities—along with your ability to mend a car.”

  She was confused, uncertain how to react, and she felt ridiculous that it mattered so much to her.

  Then he smiled suddenly, which lit his face and took the tiredness from it. Images raced in her mind. What was he like away from war? What sort of man was he when circumstance did not force him into this hideous extremity of planning and executing death, having this unnatural power and answerability for the hope, morality, and survival of thousands of other men? What did he do when he was on leave? Did he like gardening, playing golf, walking? Did he have a dog, and did he love it, touch it with unbearable gentleness, as her father had? What music did he listen to? What books did he read? Who were his friends?