Shoulder the Sky Read online

  “Yes, sir!” Wil saluted, forgetting the pastry, and turned on his heel to march over to Judith.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  It was still imperative to Joseph that he learn who had killed Eldon Prentice, even though no one seemed willing to help with anything but the barest information that was so obvious as to be useless. Edwin Corliss remained in military prison awaiting the final verdict on his appeal. Any application of the death sentence was referred all the way up to General Haig himself, regardless of the offense or the circumstances, but the feeling against Prentice for having pushed the issue where Sergeant Watkins would have let it go, prevented anyone now from caring greatly how Prentice himself had died.

  There was also his behavior over Charlie Gee’s injuries, although that was less widely known. There was a searing pity for Charlie. Every man understood the horror of such mutilation, and their rage at Prentice’s insensitivity was a release from the fear that it could happen to them. But it was rage, nevertheless, and the medical and VAD staff also were disinclined to give any information to Joseph that might help him discover a truth they were perfectly happy to leave alone.

  Still, Prentice had been murdered by one of the British soldiers or ambulance drivers of this division, and he was becoming increasingly afraid that it could have been Wil Sloan. He could not forget Wil’s uncontrolled, almost hysterical violence toward Prentice in the Casualty Clearing Station where he had brought Charlie Gee in, and Prentice had been so callous. If Joseph had not stopped him, he would have beaten Prentice senseless, perhaps even killed him there and then.

  Could Prentice have been idiotic enough to have returned to the subject later, in Wil’s presence, and Wil had somehow followed him, or even taken him, out into no-man’s-land on the raid, perhaps on the pretext of looking for wounded? No one else seemed to have any explanation as to how Prentice had got there, or why.

  The other alternative he could not escape was that it was one of Sam’s men who was a friend of Corliss.

  “Leave it alone, Joe,” Sam said gravely. They were sitting in Joseph’s dugout, sharing stale bread from rations, and a tin of excellent pâté that Matthew had sent in a parcel from Fortnum and Mason’s in London, along with various other delicacies. For dessert they would have some of the chocolate biscuits Sam’s brother sent whenever he could manage to.

  “I can’t leave it,” Joseph said, swallowing the last mouthful. “He was murdered.”

  Sam smiled lopsidedly. “Aren’t we all!” There was a bitter edge to his voice, the betrayal of a passion he rarely allowed to show through.

  “Philosophically, perhaps,” Joseph looked directly at Sam, watching his dark eyes with their sharp intelligence. “But for the rest of us it will be cold, disease, accident, or the Germans, all of which are to be expected in war.”

  “You left out drowning,” Sam reminded him. “That’s to be expected, too.”

  “Not by having your head held under it.” Joseph heard his own voice crack. He despised Prentice, but it was a horrible thing to think of any man choking in that filthy water with the stench of corpses and rats and the lingering remains of the chlorine gas. He imagined the pressure on the back of his neck forcing him down until his lungs burst and darkness reached up and engulfed him.

  Sam winced, as if it filled his mind as well. His face was tight, and the skin pale around his lips. “Don’t think about it, Joe,” he said quietly. “Whatever happened, whoever’s fault it was, they’ll probably be dead, too, before long. Leave it alone. Look after the living.”

  “It’s the living I am looking after,” Joe replied. “The dead don’t need justice. They’ll get it anyway, if there’s a God. And if there isn’t, it hardly matters. It’s we who are left who need to keep the rules—for ourselves. At times it’s all we have.”

  “You don’t know the rules, Joe,” Sam said quietly. “Not all of them.”

  “I know murder is wrong.”

  “Murder!” Sam said abruptly, jerking his head up, his eyes wide. “Jesus, Joe! I’ve seen men killed by snipers, shrapnel, mortars, explosives, bayonets, machine guns, and poison gas—do you want me to go on? I’ve skewered young Germans I’ve never even seen before, just because they were in front of me. And I’ve heard our own boys crying in their sleep because of the blood and grief and the guilt. I’ve seen them praying on their knees, because they know what they’ve done to other human beings, that could be ourselves in the mirror, except they’re German. Dozens of them—every day! What rules are there to protect them, or give them back their innocence, or their sanity?”

  He stared at Joseph intently, his eyes unblinking, a deep sadness in them for a moment allowing his own vulnerability to show. “Granted it wasn’t a good thing to do, but hunting out whoever it was won’t make it any better now. Morale matters, and that’s your job. We have to survive. The men here need your help, not your judgment. We need to believe in each other, and that we can win.”

  Joseph hesitated.

  “Leave it, Joe,” Sam said again. “Belief can make the difference between winning, and not.”

  “I know.” He stared at the ground. “We all need to have something to believe, or we can’t forget it all. I wish I were surer of what I believe. There aren’t many absolutes, but I’m supposed to know what they are.”

  “Friendship,” Sam answered. “The best of yourself that you can give, laughter, keeping going when it’s hard, the ability to forget when you need to. Have another chocolate biscuit?” He held out the packet with the last one left.

  Joseph hesitated, then took it. He knew it was meant.

  The corporal with the mail arrived, and Joseph went as eagerly as anyone else to see if there was anything for him from home. There were three letters, one from Hannah with news of the village. He could feel her tension through the careful words, even though he knew she was trying to hide it.

  The second was from Matthew, telling of having seen Judith, and having visited Shanley Corcoran, and what a pleasure it had been.

  The only other letter was from Isobel Hughes. He was surprised she should write again but he opened it with pleasure.

  It was a simple letter, quite frank and comfortable, telling him about the farm, how they were having to make do with young women on the land where they had had men before they joined up and went away. She mentioned some of their exploits, and disasters. She had a robust, self-deprecating turn of humor and he found himself laughing, the last thing he had expected to do.

  She described the spring fair, the church fête, life as it had always been, but with sad and funny changes, little glimpses of personal courage, unexpectedly generous help.

  He read it through twice, and then wrote back to her. Afterward, when it was sealed and posted, gone beyond his recalling, he thought he had told her too much. He had written of his difficulty in trying to convince men that there was a divine order above and beyond the chaos they could see, a reason for all the senseless devastation. He felt a hypocrite saying it when he could give no reason for believing it himself. He should not have said that to her. She had made him laugh for a moment, feel clean and sane in the joy of little things, and he had rewarded her by talking of vast problems of the soul, which she could do nothing about. They would weigh her down, intrude into her grief, which she was trying so hard to control.

  She would almost certainly not write again, and he would have lost something that was good.

  He went to the hospital as soon as he had the chance, and asked Marie O’Day if the man Wil Sloan had brought in on the night of Prentice’s death was conscious yet.

  “Yes, but he’s still in a lot of pain,” she said guardedly. “Are you still after finding out if it really was Wil who brought him all the way?”

  “Yes. I’d like to know.”

  “Well, don’t push him! If he doesn’t know, he doesn’t,” she warned.

  But he did know, and he was happy to tell Joseph at some length how Wil had saved his life, at considerable risk
, and how difficult the journey had been. His account was a little garbled, but it was clear enough to show that Wil could not have been anywhere near the length of trench known as Paradise Alley, where Prentice had gone over the top. He had been over a mile away, more like two.

  Joseph left with a feeling of intense relief. Wil Sloan could not be guilty. For a moment he stood outside the Casualty Clearing Station in the sun and felt absurdly happy. He found himself smiling, and started to walk briskly back on the way to the supply trench again.

  He was halfway along it, dry clay under his feet, rats scattering in front of him with a sound like wind in leaves, when he realized he had inevitably driven himself closer to the fear that it was one of Sam’s men. It was a thought he was not yet ready to face. There were other things he could learn first. One of them was how Prentice had gained permission to go so far forward, and which officer had allowed him to join the raiding party, and on whose orders.

  He was in a trench known as the Old Kent Road when Scruby Andrews came limping toward him.

  “Gawd, moi’ feet ’urt,” he said with a twisted smile. “Must ’a bin a bloody German wot made moi boots! If oi ever foind ’im, Oi’ll kill ’im wi’ me star naked ’ands, Oi will! Sorry, Captain, but it’s torture.”

  “Are you soaping your socks?” Joseph asked with concern. A soldier survived—or not—on his feet. It was an old trick to use bar soap to ease the rough parts of hard wool over the tender skin.

  Scruby pulled a face. “Oi should’ve done that better. Barshey Gee says as you’ve bin asking about that wroiter fellow what got drownded out there?” He jerked his hand toward the sporadic sound of machine-gun fire.

  “What I really need to know is what he was doing out there anyway,” Joseph replied. “He shouldn’t have been.”

  Scruby shrugged. “Shouldn’t ’ave bin a lot o’ things. Didn’t listen, didn’t care, an’ got ’isself killed. Serve ’im roight.” He sat on the fire-step and started to unlace his boots.

  “I daresay in a way he deserved it,” Joseph agreed with reluctance. “But which of us can afford what we deserve? I need better, don’t you?”

  Scruby looked up and grinned. “You’re roight, Captain, but it don’t work loike that. There’s some rules we gotter keep. If we don’t, there in’t no point. We got nothin’ left. It’s rules what should ’ave kept Jerry out o’ Belgium. It don’t belong to ’im, it belongs to the Belgians, poor sods.” He took his left boot off and rubbed his foot tenderly. “Oi seen an old man wi’ a broken bicycle the other day, tryin’ to push it up the road wi’ a bag o’ potatoes on it, an’ a little girl trottin’ along besoide ’im, carryin’ a doll wi’ one arm.”

  His face crumpled up, and he put his foot back in the offending boot, relacing it now loosely. “Oi didn’t loike that bloke, Captain. Bastard, ’e were, but Oi s’pose rules is for them yer don’t loike. Yer won’t ’urt them as yer do. In’t that what God’s about, been fair to them as rubs your coat all the wrong way?”

  “Yes, that’s pretty well how I’d put it,” Joseph agreed. “He rubbed my coat the wrong way, too, just about every time I saw him.”

  “Oi don’t know for meself what’s true,” Scruby went on thoughtfully. “But Oi ’eard ’e were dead set on goin’ over the top—more so ’e could say ’e ’ad, if yer get me? But ’e swung the general’s name around summink rotten, loike the general were ’is pa, an’ no one ’ad better stand in ’is way. Said ’e ’ad permission, written, an’ all! Load o’ rubbish, if you ask me.”

  “Actually the general was his uncle,” Joseph replied. “But I can’t imagine him giving a war correspondent permission to go over the top. I’d like to find out who he went with, exactly, and what this permission amounted to.”

  “Oi dunno, Captain. Reckon as you’ll ’ave to ask the general ’isself. Oi don’t see nobody else goin’ to tell you, cos they don’t care.”

  Joseph was forced to admit the truth of that. The captain who had led the raid had been killed, and everyone else had claimed that in the dark they couldn’t tell Prentice apart from anyone else. He had been very discreet about it, but he already knew most of the sappers could account for each other. It was with a cold, unhappy doubt gnawing inside him that he finally begged a lift on a half-empty ambulance and went to Cullingford’s headquarters in Poperinge to ask him outright. At this point he would like to have taken Sam’s advice and let it go, but Scruby Andrews was right, if morality were to mean anything at all, it must be applied the most honestly when it was the most difficult, and to protect those everything in you despised.

  But when he reached the house just outside Poperinge and asked if he might speak with General Cullingford briefly, Major Hadrian told him that Cullingford was not there.

  “You can wait for him, if you’ve time to, Captain, but I have no idea when he’ll be back,” Hadrian said with brief apology. “Can I help you?”

  Joseph was undecided. He did not want his inquiries to become the subject of speculation any more than they already were, but how could he decide the question one way or the other if he had not the courage to ask? It might be days before he had the opportunity to speak to Cullingford privately. And whatever he learned, he might have to ask Hadrian for verification anyway.

  “Yes, perhaps you can,” he said, choosing his words with care. They were alone in Hadrian’s office; this was as discreet as it was ever going to be. “You may be aware that before his death, Mr. Prentice was keen to gather as much firsthand information as possible about the war.”

  Hadrian’s face was pinched with distaste. He stood behind his desk, small and extremely neat, his haircut immaculate, his uniform fitting him perfectly. “Yes, I know that, Captain.” He did not say that it was of no interest to him, it was in his expression. He was intensely loyal to Cullingford, and if Prentice had been an embarrassment to him, he would get no protection from Hadrian.

  “He managed to get to several places much further forward than any other correspondent,” Joseph went on. “He claimed to have General Cullingford’s permission. Do you know if that is true?”

  Hadrian looked carefully blank, his eyes wide. “Does it matter now, Captain Reavley? Mr. Prentice is dead. Whatever he did, it is not going to be a problem any longer.”

  There was no avoiding the truth, except by simply surrendering and going away. He could not do that. “The problem will not completely go away, Major Hadrian,” he replied. “Mr. Prentice did not die by accident. He was killed, and at least some of the men are aware of it. For morale, if not for justice, there needs to be some accounting for it.”

  Hadrian frowned. “Justice, Captain?”

  “If we do not believe in that, then what are we fighting for?” Joseph asked. “Why do we not simply leave Belgium to her fate, and France, too? We could all go home and get on with our lives. If promises to defend the weak are of no value, why is Britain here at all? Why sacrifice our men, our lives, our wealth on something that was in the beginning essentially not our business?”

  Hadrian was stunned. “Are you likening Mr. Prentice to Belgium, Captain Reavley?” His abstemious face was filled with distaste.

  “I did not like him, Major Hadrian,” Joseph said. “And I gather you did not either, but that is hardly the point, is it? Most of the men who have died here in this mud had never been to Belgium before, and I daresay some of them couldn’t have found it on the map.”

  Hadrian swallowed with a convulsion of his throat. “I take your point, but surely Prentice was killed by a German. If he was out in no-man’s-land, then he was a perfectly legitimate target. Even if he were not, there wouldn’t be anything we could do about it. He shouldn’t have been there.”

  “No, he shouldn’t,” Joseph agreed. “Who gave him permission?”

  Hadrian colored a deep red. “Is that your concern, Captain? If you feel you owe some kind of explanation to his family, General Cullingford is his uncle, as no doubt you are aware.”

  “Perhaps I didn’t make myself c
lear, Mr. Prentice was not killed by a German soldier, he was killed by one of our own.”

  The color in Hadrian’s face ebbed, leaving him pasty white. “Are you trying to say he was murdered?”

  “Yes. Very few men know so far, but I would like to find out the truth and deal with it before they do. I would be obliged for your help, Major. I am sure you can see why. He was not a very pleasant young man, and he caused a certain dislike. People will speculate. I confess, in many ways I am more concerned with protecting the innocent than I am with finding the guilty.”

  Hadrian was silent, in acute discomfort.

  The cold fear began to tighten inside Joseph until it was a hard knot of pain. If Cullingford had indeed given Prentice permission to go wherever he pleased, then why? It was an unprofessional thing to do. He would not have given such latitude to any other correspondent. Was it family favor, or had Prentice exerted some pressure? He thought of the bawdy laughter and the jokes he had already heard about Cullingford’s replacement driver, the helpless Stallabrass, and his drunken confession to an unrequited passion for his local postmistress. The tale had spread like wildfire through the trenches. They needed to laugh to survive, and teasing was merciless. Every time the mail was brought to anyone within earshot of him, the jokes began.

  Joseph also knew that Judith and Wil Sloan had deliberately got Stallabrass drunk so Judith could get her old job back driving Cullingford, and Cullingford had allowed it. All kinds of conclusions could be drawn, accurate or not.

  “Did General Cullingford give Prentice written permission to go wherever he pleased?” he said aloud. “That is what he claimed.”

  Hadrian stared at him in undisguisable misery. He was obviously trying to decide whether he could get away with a lie, and if he could, what it would be to protect Cullingford.

  Joseph put him out of his misery, partly because once he came up with a lie he would feel cornered into sticking to it, however openly he had been exposed. “I do not need to know the general’s reasons for doing so,” he said, meeting Hadrian’s eyes. “Prentice was a manipulative man and not above emotional pressure where he perceived a vulnerability.”