Shoulder the Sky Read online

  “Oi’ll be back!” the soldier said quietly. “Oi’ve seen a lot worse than broken legs.”

  “So’ve I, mate, so’ve I.” The ambulance driver pursed his lips. “But this’ll do for now. Now let’s be ’avin’ yer.”

  Joseph moved forward. “Can I help?” he offered.

  “Blimey! ’E don’ need the last rites yet, Padre. It’s only ’is leg! The rest of ’im’s right as rain,” the ambulance driver said with a grin. “Still—I s’pose yer could take the other side of ’im, stop ’im fallin’ that way, like?”

  Quarter of an hour later Joseph was refreshed by really quite drinkable tea. Unlike in the front trenches, there was plenty of it, almost too hot to drink, and strong enough to disguise the other tastes in the water.

  He had almost finished it when a car drove up. It was a long, low-slung Aston Martin, and out of it stepped a slim, upright young man with fair hair and a fresh complexion. He wore a uniform, but with no rank. He ignored Joseph and went straight into the tent, leaving the flap open. He spoke to the surgeon, who was now tidying up his instruments. He stopped in front of him, almost at attention. “Eldon Prentice, war correspondent,” he announced.

  Joseph followed him in. “Bit dangerous up here, Mr. Prentice,” he said, carefully not looking toward Corliss, who was lying on one of the palliasses, his bandaged hand already stained with blood again. “I’d go a bit further back, if I were you,” he added.

  Prentice stared at him, his chin lifted a little, his blunt face smooth and perfectly certain of himself. “And who are you, sir?”

  “Captain Reavley, chaplain,” Joseph replied.

  “Good. You can probably give me some accurate firsthand information,” Prentice said. “Or at least secondhand.”

  Joseph heard the challenge in his voice. “It’s cold, wet, and dirty,” he replied, looking at Prentice’s clean trousers and only faintly dusty boots. “And of course you’ll have to walk! And carry your rations. You do have rations, don’t you?”

  Prentice looked at him curiously. “A chaplain is just the sort of man I’d like to talk to. You’d be able to give me a unique view of how the men feel, what their thoughts and their fears are.”

  Joseph instinctively disliked the man. There was an arrogance in his manner that offended him. “Perhaps you haven’t heard, Mr. Prentice, but priests don’t repeat what people tell them, if it’s of any importance.”

  Prentice smiled. “Yes, I imagine you have heard a great many stories of pain, fear, and horror, Captain. Some of them must be heartrending, and leave you feeling utterly helpless. After all, what can you do?” It was a rhetorical question, and yet he seemed to be waiting for an answer.

  He had described Joseph’s dilemma exactly, and the emotions that most troubled him, awakening a feeling of inadequacy, even failure. There was so little he could do to help, but he was damned if he would admit it to this correspondent. It was too deep a hurt to speak of even to himself.

  “Nothing that is really your concern, Mr. Prentice,” he said aloud. “A man’s troubles, whatever they are, are private to him. That is one of the few decencies we can grant.”

  Prentice stood still for a moment, and then he turned slowly and looked at Corliss. “What happened to him?” he asked curiously. “Bad ammunition exploded and took off his fingers?”

  “He was down the saps,” Joseph said tartly.

  Prentice looked blank.

  “Tunnels,” Joseph explained. “The intention is that the Germans won’t know where the tunnels are. They get within a yard or two of their trenches, then lay mines. If a mine had exploded there’d be nothing left of any of them.”

  “He’s a sapper? I hear that men reaching their hands above the parapet level sometimes get hit by snipers.” Prentice was watching Joseph intently.

  Joseph drew in breath to reply, and then changed his mind. Prentice was a war correspondent, like any other. They all pooled their information anyway—he knew that. He had seen them meeting together in the cafés when he had been behind the lines in one of the towns at brigade headquarters, or even further back at divisional headquarters. Nobody could see everything; the differences in their stories depended upon interpretation—what they selected and how they wrote it up.

  There was movement at the entrance, and a sergeant came in. He saluted Joseph, ignored Prentice and spoke to the doctor, then went to Corliss. “What happened, soldier?”

  Corliss stared up at him. “Not sure, sir. Bit of the wall fell in. Something landed on my hand.”

  “What? A pick?”

  “Could be, I suppose.”

  “Hurts?”

  “Yes, sir, but not too much. I expect I’ll be all right.”

  “Sapper without ’is fingers is not much use. Looks like a Blighty one.” The sergeant pushed out his lip dubiously, but his voice was not unkind.

  Joseph took a deep breath and let it out, feeling his muscles ease a little. If Corliss had been as close to the edge as Sam feared, he might have been careless, might even have been partly responsible for the accident, but that was still not a crime. If someone else had been injured he should be put on a charge, but he was the one in pain, the one who would spend the rest of his life with half a hand.

  “Nasty injury,” Prentice remarked, taking a couple of steps over toward the sergeant. “Eldon Prentice. I’m press.” He looked down at Corliss where he was lying. “Looks like you’ll see home before the rest of your mates.”

  Corliss gulped and the fraction of color that was in his face vanished. His teeth were chattering and he was beginning to shake. Perhaps Sam had been right and his nerves were shot.

  There was a long silence. Suddenly Joseph was aware of the tent being cold. The air smelled of blood, the sweat of pain, and disinfectant. There was noise outside, someone shouting, the faint patter of rain on canvas. The light was fading.

  Should he say anything, or might he only make it worse? The doctor was unhappy, it was wretchedly clear in his tired face. He was a young man himself. He had seen too many bodies broken, too much hideous injury he could not help. He was trying to dam rivers of blood with little more than his hands. The shadows under his eyes looked even more pronounced.

  Joseph knew the sergeant vaguely. His name was Watkins. He was regular army. He had probably seen most of his friends killed or injured already. He believed in discipline; he knew the cost of cowardice, even one man breaking the line. He also knew what it was like to face fire, to go over the top into a hail of bullets. He had heard the screams of men caught on the wire.

  Joseph turned to Prentice. “It’s a pity you won’t get to go along the saps some time,” he said, his voice drier and more brittle than he had meant it to be. “You could write a good piece about what it feels like to crawl on your hands and knees through a hole in the ground under no-man’s-land, hear the water dripping and the bits of earth falling. A bit close to the rats down there, but it can’t be helped. They’re everywhere, as I expect you’ve noticed. Thousands of the things, big as cats, some of them. They feed on the dead, especially the eyes. You want to cover your face when you’re asleep.” He felt an acute satisfaction as he saw Prentice shiver. “But then you won’t be able to go that far forward, will you? War correspondents don’t. They’d get in the way. You only have to watch what other men do, and then go off somewhere safe and talk about it.”

  “And what do you do? Pray about it, Chaplain?” Prentice snapped. “God Almighty! You’re a joke!” His voice was shrill with contempt. “You’re no more use here than a maiden aunt in a whorehouse. If your God gives a damn about us, where is He?” He jabbed his hand viciously in the direction of the front line, and no-man’s-land beyond. “Ask him,” he pointed at Corliss, “if he believes in God when he’s down one of his saps!”

  “If you had ever been out there at night, when they’re shooting, you would know there’s nothing else to believe in except God,” Joseph answered him with bitter certainty. “If there’s any real, physical place to conv
ince you there is a hell, try no-man’s-land in winter. To sit in a nice warm pub with a glass of beer and write stories for the breakfast tables in England sounds like heaven in comparison.”

  “Look . . .” Prentice began.

  He was cut off by the sergeant. “I think you’d better go back to your pub and your beer, Mr. Prentice,” he said in a hard, level voice. “What the captain says is right. And you may believe in nothing at all, but you’ve got no place coming out here and making mock of other men’s faith. When it gets bad, it may be all you’ve got. But you wouldn’t know that, seeing as you aren’t a soldier.” He was a big man, heavier than Prentice, though not as tall, and he was seven or eight years older, probably nearer forty.

  “Any officer can have you arrested at any time,” he went on. “King’s regulations. So it might be a good idea to be polite to the captain, don’t you think?”

  Prentice stood facing him, measuring his resolve.

  Joseph waited without moving.

  Prentice retreated, his face tight with anger.

  The sergeant smiled. “Ambulance’ll be here soon,” he said to Corliss. “Take you back to a proper hospital, then Blighty in time.” His voice was strong, comfortable, but Joseph knew from his face that he had no inner certainty that it was not a self-inflicted wound. He would not report it as such because Prentice had angered him. He was an outsider who had come in and tried to tell him his job. It was soldiers closing ranks against civilians.

  Outside there was a splash and crunch as an ambulance drew up, and a moment later a loose-limbed young man came in. He was soaked and his dark hair dripped down his face. As soon as he spoke, it was obvious that he was American.

  “Hi, you got anyone for me, Doc?” He saw Joseph. “Hi, Padre, how’s it going?”

  “Fine thank you, Wil,” Joseph replied. “Yes, there’s one for you there.”

  Wil walked over to Corliss. “Looks like it hurts,” he said sympathetically.

  Corliss tried to smile. “Yes, but not too much,” he answered, his voice rasping between dry lips.

  Prentice grunted, and smiled sarcastically.

  “That’s what everyone says!” Joseph told him, not bothering to suppress his anger. “If they’re dying, they still say that!”

  “But he’s not dying, is he, Chaplain?” Prentice responded. “And he won’t! In a week or two he’ll be home in England, warm and safe!”

  “So will you!” Joseph told him. “Only you’ll have all your fingers.” And he turned to help Wil Sloan get Corliss to his feet and out to the ambulance in the rain.

  Matthew Reavley drove along the open road in the April sunshine. He was heading south from London toward the outskirts of Brighton and he had a sense of exhilaration to be out of the city and at last, after nine months of frustration and failure, to be on the brink of a real step forward.

  The events of the previous summer, even before the outbreak of war, had altered his life irrevocably. At the end of June, on the same day as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Matthew’s parents had been killed in a car crash, which at first had seemed simply an accident. On the previous evening John Reavley had telephoned Matthew to relate his discovery of a document that outlined a plan which, if carried out, would ruin England’s honor and change the history of the world. It was in motoring from his home in St. Giles to Matthew in London that the accident had happened.

  But when Matthew and Joseph had examined their father’s possessions, taken from the wreck, there was no document. Nor was it in the shattered car. They had searched the house and found nothing even resembling such a thing.

  The car crash had proved to be a careful and deliberate murder, although the police had never known that. John Reavley had also warned Matthew, in their last brief conversation, that the conspiracy touched even as high as the royal family, and he could trust no one.

  Matthew and Joseph, seven years Matthew’s senior, had uncovered the painful and ultimately tragic truth of what had happened. They had found the document where John Reavley had hidden it, and it was far worse than he had painted it. Even as Matthew sped between the hedgerows with their new leaves translucent green, a soft veil of rain misting the copse of woodland in the distance, he remembered the numbing horror with which he and Joseph had read the paper. It was beyond anything they had imagined: a treaty between Kaiser Wilhelm II and King George V agreeing that England should abandon France and Belgium to the German conquering army, in return for which England and Germany together would form an empire to divide the world between them. Most of Europe would fall to Germany, who would then help Britain to keep its present empire and add to it the old colonies of the Americas, including the entire United States. It was a betrayal almost inconceivable.

  And yet it would have avoided the slaughter that was now staining the battlefields of Europe. The British Expeditionary Force of less than a hundred thousand men was already all but destroyed by death and injury. If England were to survive, it must raise a million more men to go voluntarily into that hell of pain and destruction.

  They knew who had killed John and Alys Reavley, and why. The killer himself was now dead, as was his brother, but the instigator of it all, almost certainly the man who had believed he could convince King George to sign the treaty, was still unknown, and free to continue in whatever way he could to further the creation of his empire of subjugation and dishonorable peace.

  Joseph was serving in Flanders and had no opportunity to pursue the Peacemaker, as they had called him. Hannah had moved back to the family home in St. Giles, with her three children. Her husband, Archie, was in the Royal Navy and at sea most of the time. She had been the closest to their mother, and in many ways was trying to take her place in the village, close to the familiar lanes and fields of her childhood, the families she knew, the routines of domestic care and the small duties and kindnesses that were the fabric of life.

  Matthew himself had naturally continued in his career in the Secret Intelligence Service which his father had so deplored. It surprised him how much it still hurt that the one time John Reavley would have turned to him for professional help it had been too late, and he still, nearly a year later, could not complete the task.

  Judith, five years younger than Matthew, was using the only real skill she had and harnessing her aimless impetuosity somewhere in the Ypres area, as a VAD—Voluntary Aid Dispenser—driving ambulances, staff cars, whatever she was asked. Her letters sounded as if finally she had found a sense of consuming purpose, and even a fellowship, which gave her a kind of happiness in spite of the frequent danger and the almost perpetual physical hardship.

  That meant it was only Matthew who was able to pursue the little knowledge they had in order to find the Peacemaker, not for personal vengeance or even some abstract of justice, but to stop him in whatever alternative way he was pursuing his goal. And none of them had ever imagined he would abandon it.

  He drew up at the crossroads. A team of horses—heavy and patient creatures—were drawing a harrow over the field to his left and he could smell the turned earth, a rich, clinging fragrance. The rain had passed and the sunlight glittered on the dripping leaves in the hedge.

  He accelerated and moved forward. He could trust no one outside the family, not even his own superior in the SIS, in fact possibly him least of all. He could only rehearse the facts that were indisputable and deduce from them what else had to be true.

  John Reavley had finished his university education in mathematics in Germany, and had many German friends. One of them had been Reisenburg, the man whose calligraphic skills had been used to draft both copies of the treaty. Reisenburg had been appalled by what he saw, and stolen them, bringing them to England to the one man he trusted, and believed might be able to stop the conspiracy.

  Reisenburg had passed the documents to John Reavley, who had within hours telephoned Matthew in London, saying he would bring them the following day. But he had got no farther than a few miles when he had been sabotaged
on the road by Sebastian Allard, Joseph’s favorite student at St. Giles. Sebastian was passionate, idealistic, and terrified of the destruction not only to life but to the very spirit of civilization that war would bring. He had believed the Peacemaker’s plan to be the lesser evil. Then after he had committed double murder in its cause, and seen with horror the reality of violent death, he had found he could not live with it.

  That had been followed by the murder of Harry Beecher, Joseph’s oldest and dearest friend. Reisenburg, too, had been killed, but they had no idea by whom.

  And on August 4th Britain had been plunged into war.

  Who was the Peacemaker? A man with allies who had access to the German royal court, almost certainly to the kaiser himself, and who also had private and personal access to King George V. No one would conceive of such a plan, let alone put it into action, without knowing both men. He was also quite obviously politically astute, had a soaring and utterly ruthless imagination, and yet in his own way a passionate morality.

  He and his disciples had desperately wanted the treaty document back because there was neither time nor opportunity to redraft it and get the kaiser to sign it again before offering it to the king, but also it was imperative it did not fall into the hands of anyone who would make it public.

  When they had discovered it was gone, they must have known it was Reisenburg who had taken it, but not in time to follow him. If they had, they would have taken it from him and killed him then. Similarly they could not have seen him pass it to John Reavley, or again they would have acted at the time.

  And yet they had instructed Sebastian to kill John Reavley the very next day; therefore they had to have known that he had it, and that he would be driving down that particular stretch of road that morning.