Shoulder the Sky Read online

  “Take them away.” Marie O’Day gestured to the blood-soaked swabs in one of the dishes. “Bring me some more—quickly.”

  The girl moved to obey, grateful for a second chance, but still keeping her eyes averted from the operating table, in case her nerve betrayed her again.

  “Out!” Joseph ordered Prentice. He pushed Wil in front of him also, and a moment later they were in the entrance, and then outside on the wooden walk. “You’d better get out of here,” he said to Wil. “You’re a volunteer, you can go wherever you like. If you’ve any sense, you’ll go at least as far as divisional headquarters for a while. They’ll find you something to do.”

  “What about Charlie? I can’t leave him!” Wil demanded.

  “You can’t help,” Joseph said gently. “You getting thrown out won’t make it any better for him. Just lose yourself for a while. Go to Armentières, or somewhere like that.”

  Wil’s eyes were still sunken with shock, and now, after the exertion, his rage having cooled off and the horror returning, he started to shake, but, stumbling and slipping on the boards, he made his way reluctantly along the line of the huts, and around the corner.

  “Don’t think I’ll forget this!” Prentice snarled, blowing bubbles of blood through his bruised and rapidly swelling lips. One eye was already darkening with a huge bruise and the other cheek was blotched. His arm hung uselessly and obviously with pain.

  “You can remember what you like,” Joseph replied. “But you’d be wise to say and do nothing. If anyone hears about what you said in front of Charlie Gee, you’ll get no cooperation from any of the men. And you may find you have other ‘accidents’ on dark nights. As you pointed out to Sergeant Watkins, friendship is about all we have here, that and loyalty to your unit and a belief that we’re fighting for something that matters; honor, a way of life, people we love.”

  He looked at Prentice’s face. The man was not used to physical pain, and he was obviously hurting pretty badly. “You’d better go up to one of the forward first-aid stations,” he advised. “You’re hardly a hospital case, but you could do with a little attention, a stitch or two, perhaps, and someone to put your shoulder back. It’s quite a simple thing to do, but it’ll hurt like hell.” He said that with pleasure. “Wait your turn, and tell them anything you want. A shrapnel burst near you would probably be best. It looks as if you fell. There’ll be lots hurt worse than you are, so you’ll make a fool of yourself if you raise a fuss. People are hard on cowards.” He gave a very small, tight smile. “And do it smartly, before I arrest you.”

  Prentice was furious. “That lunatic attacked me! I didn’t even hit him back! Or are you going to lie about that, too?”

  “For getting in the way of treating the wounded, and wasting medical officers’ time,” Joseph replied without hesitation. “You didn’t hit him back because he didn’t give you a chance. Be grateful I haven’t arrested you already.”

  Prentice stared at him just long enough to realize he meant it, then turned on his heel and went off, shambling unevenly, feet slithering on the boards, physical and emotional shock making him dizzy.

  Joseph went back inside the hospital hut to check on Charlie Gee’s condition. It was too much, he thought. He remembered how alone and inadequate to the burden he had felt when his parents were killed, and suddenly he was the head of the family, expected to know the answers, and have the strength and the inner certainty to help.

  That had been nothing compared with what he needed to do now. No teaching, no ministry prepared you to have answers for this. What kind of a God hurled you into this hell without teaching you what you were supposed to do, to say, even to think in order to keep your own faith?

  There was no answer, only numberless men, young, broken, and in desperate need. He went up the step and in through the door.

  It was several days after Matthew had returned from seeing Mary Allard in Brighton before he could take the time to go up to Cambridge and find an opportunity to speak with Aidan Thyer. It was a bright spring morning with a sharp wind and sunlight glittering off the wet cobbles of the streets. The porter let him into St. John’s College. Apparently he had been told to expect him, because he walked with him across the outer quadrangle, under the arch and into the smaller, quieter inside quad where the master’s lodgings were situated on the farther side.

  “There you are, sir,” he said respectfully. All men in uniform were regarded with a special dignity, whether he knew them or not, and he remembered Joseph with affection, and a peculiar awe for his part in the previous summer’s tragedy. He did not want to be intrusive, and the indecision was in his face, but he had to ask.

  “How is the Reverend Reavley, sir? We think of him often.”

  “He’s well, thank you,” Matthew replied.

  “He’s in Flanders, isn’t he?” It was a statement, and there was pride in it.

  “Yes, near Ypres.” Matthew was surprised how much pride he felt in it himself. He realized how little he knew Joseph. He had half expected him to stay at home, or to find a post in administration, perhaps in one of the command headquarters far behind the lines. His language skills might possibly have been useful. He could very easily have avoided the worst of the violence and the pain, and no one would have blamed him.

  The porter nodded. He was a quiet man, stolid, fond of a quiet beer in the evenings, and a walk beside the river. “We’ve got a few of our young men there. Many in France, too, o’ course. An’ Gallipoli. It isn’t like it used to be. Don’t hear young people laughing around the place like it was, playin’ the fool, an’ gettin’ up to tricks.” He sighed, his blunt face full of loss. “Daft, half the time. No harm in ’em, mind, just high spirits. Dead now, some of ’em. Young Mowbray, what was studyin’ history, lost both his feet. Frostbite, they said it was, then gangrene. Don’t think of that in war, do you! Think of shots, and things like that.” He took a deep breath. “That’s the master’s house, sir. He’s expecting you.”

  Matthew thanked him and walked across the short space to the door. It opened the moment he knocked on it. A maid of about sixteen led him into the dining room where French doors opened onto the master’s garden. It was presently filled with pruned rosebushes, bare-sticked, waiting for the spring, and gaudy splashes of late daffodils in bloom. Here and there were dense clumps of violets in the damp, shaded earth.

  Aidan Thyer was sitting in his armchair, a pile of papers on the table beside him, presumably essays, theses on one thing and another. He stood up as Matthew came in. He was a little taller than average, but the striking thing about him was his flaxen hair, so fair it seemed to catch the light whichever way he moved. His face was long, his cast of expression a strange mixture of melancholy and humor, but both infused by a keen intelligence.

  “Come in, Captain Reavley,” he invited, waving to the chair opposite his own. “Can I offer you anything? Tea, or a glass of sherry?”

  “Sherry would be excellent, thank you. It’s good of you to make time for me.”

  “Not at all. You said it was important. How can I help?” As he was speaking, Thyer went to the cabinet, opened it, and poured two glasses of light, dry sherry. He carried one back to Matthew, and sat down with the other. “Have you heard from Joseph lately?” he asked with interest. “He writes occasionally, but I can’t help wondering if he is putting a brave face on it.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Matthew answered. “Sometimes it is the only way to deal with it.”

  Thyer smiled bleakly. He was waiting for Matthew to explain his visit.

  Matthew hesitated also. It would take great care; he could not be as forthright as he had been with Mary Allard. Thyer was less emotional and a far better judge of other men’s characters. Sitting in this quiet drawing room surrounded by the dust and stones, the wooden stairs hollowed by the feet of centuries of students, the strange mixture of wisdom and enthusiasm. He was acutely conscious that he might be facing a man who had deliberately plotted to betray and break it all on the wheel of
idealistic militarism and bloodless surrender.

  “I’ve been thinking about the deaths of my parents,” he began, and saw the twist of pity in Thyer’s face. “We know probably as much of the facts as we ever will,” he continued. “And perhaps now they don’t matter. But I still find myself needing to understand. It seems unarguable that Sebastian Allard deliberately caused the accident, and the evidence is strong as to how.” He was aware of sitting unnaturally still. The silence in the room seemed like a tangible thing. “I still have no idea why, and I find that I need to know.” He waited for Thyer’s response, trying to read his face.

  Thyer looked startled.

  “My dear Matthew, if I knew why, I should have told you at the time. Or at least, to be more accurate, I should probably have told Joseph.”

  Matthew leaned back a little, steepling his fingers and gazing at Thyer over the top of them. “Would you? If it had been a painful reason, either to Joseph or to the Allards, for example? Or if maybe you had only guessed at something, perhaps later, in light of other events.”

  “I don’t know,” Thyer said, frowning. “The question is completely hypothetical. I know nothing about your family that could explain Sebastian’s act, and I admit I have given it some thought myself and come to no conclusion at all. The little we know makes no sense.”

  “It wasn’t personal and it could not have been financial,” Matthew went on. He had weighed what to say on the drive from London. If he said too much he would betray to Thyer that he suspected him, yet if Thyer were the Peacemaker he would know exactly why Matthew was here and everything else that he knew about the document, and the murder of Reisenburg as well. The risk of learning nothing was too great to afford such caution.

  “What are you suggesting?” Thyer prompted. His voice was level, his diction perfect. He had sat here, questioned by some of the most brilliant minds of more than a generation, men who would go on to hold many of the highest positions in the land, in industry, science, finance, and government. He molded them, not they him.

  “Perhaps political?” Matthew suggested carefully.

  Thyer considered for a moment. “I know Sebastian had some very strong beliefs, but so do most young men. Heaven preserve us from those who have none.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, I forgot for a moment what he did. I apologize. But knowing your family I find it extremely difficult to believe that your father held any conviction at all that would enrage anyone or make them feel threatened to the point of murder.”

  Was that a bait to provoke Matthew into proving himself correct? It was like a complicated game of chess, move and countermove, think three places ahead. He had already considered that. “I wondered if it had anything to do with my father’s German friends.” He watched Thyer’s face. His expression barely changed, only a flicker of the eyes.

  “You mean some German connection with the war?” Thyer asked a trifle skeptically. “I can’t imagine what, unless it was built on a misconception. Your father was not for war, was he? I know Sebastian hated the thought. But then so did many young men. Since they are the ones who have always had to fight our wars, and give their lives and their friends to the slaughter, they can barely be blamed for that.”

  Matthew felt a faint prickling on his skin in the quiet room, so essentially English with its mahogany Pembroke table at the far side, its prints on the wall. He recognized one of Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, ruins towering up like an unfinished sketch, more dream than stone. There were daffodils in the china vase, Connie Thyer’s embroidery in a basket, the April sunlight on the flower garden beyond the French doors, centuries-old walls.

  Beyond the quad in the other direction there would be students in cap and gown, exactly as they had been for hundreds of years, carrying piles of books, hurrying to class. Others would be crossing the Bridge of Sighs over the river, perhaps glancing through the stone fretwork at the punts drifting by, or the smooth, shaved green of the grass under the giant trees.

  “Father was not for war,” Matthew replied. “But he was not for surrender either. He would choose to fight, if pushed far enough.” He kept his voice light, as if the words were quite casual.

  “So would we all,” Thyer said with a tight smile. “I really can’t help you, Matthew. I wish I could. It makes no sense to me. Sebastian went to Germany that summer, I believe. Perhaps he became infected with strange ideas there. International socialism has become a religion for some, and can carry all the irrationality and crusading zeal of a religion, even the martyr’s crown for those in need of a cause to follow.”

  “You speak as if you have experience of it?” Matthew observed. It seemed a world away from Cambridge, but ideas traveled as far as words could be carried.

  Thyer smiled. “I’m master of St. John’s; it is my job to know what young men dream of, what they talk about, whom they listen to, and what they read, both prescribed and otherwise. The best of them always want to change the world. Didn’t you?” His face was gentle, at a glance no more than politely interested, but his clear, light blue eyes penetrated unwaveringly.

  Was he a man who wanted to change the world—into an Anglo-German hegemony?

  “It isn’t the change that matters,” Matthew answered, feeling his heart beat high in his throat. He must not give himself away. A clumsy word now would be enough. “It’s the means they propose to use to bring it about,” he finished.

  “Sebastian was persistently against war,” Thyer said with certainty. “He admired German science and culture, particularly music. But that does not make him unusual. Find me a civilized man anywhere who doesn’t.”

  They were moving around and around each other like a medieval dance, never touching. Matthew was learning nothing, except the extraordinary power over minds that the master of a college could exert, which he knew already. Thyer was simply reminding him. Intentionally? Did it amuse him to play?

  “You spoke to Sebastian the day before he killed my parents,” he said aloud.

  Thyer was jolted at last. It showed only in the flicker of his eyes. “How did you know that?” he asked quietly.

  “You took no trouble to conceal it,” Matthew replied. “Was it meant to be secret?”

  Thyer relaxed deliberately, the faintest touch of humor at the corners of his mouth. “No. Not at all.” His face was almost without expression. “I called to remind him of his promise to give me a few quotes for a dinner with some friends. He could be forgetful. They were Greek scholars who could appreciate his translations of heroic verse.”

  It was another world, a year ago, and a different lifetime. “And had he forgotten?” Matthew asked. Heroic verse! And the next day he had murdered John and Alys Reavley.

  “No,” Thyer replied. “He had prepared for it and was quite willing. As it happened, I canceled the dinner. It no longer seemed appropriate. Joseph would have been one of the guests, and in the circumstances none of us felt like proceeding.” Thyer bit his lip and leaned forward very slightly. “I am quite aware of what you are seeking, Matthew. I find it almost impossible to believe that Sebastian was planning murder then,” he said earnestly. “He sounded exactly like the young man we all knew: intense, charming, exasperating, brilliant, at times sublimely funny. And of course fickle.”

  Matthew was surprised. “Fickle?”

  Thyer’s face softened unexpectedly with a deep sadness. “He was very handsome. He had all life before him. He had a keen appetite for its pleasures, and he wanted to taste them all. I was unaware of his fiancée until she came here after his death, but I knew perfectly well of his dalliance with the girl in the pub along by the millpond, and others as well. He was fairly discreet about seeing her, but Cambridge is not such a big place, and he was easy to recognize also.”

  “I didn’t know about others.” Matthew was surprised, and disconcerted. “Who were they?”

  “I have no idea,” Thyer confessed. “I imagine he did not wish any of his—girls—to know about the rest.”

  “But you knew!” Mat
thew pointed out.

  Thyer smiled very slightly. “A great deal is told to me that does not become general knowledge. As long as his behavior is within certain bounds, a student’s love affairs are not my concern. I may not approve, but I do not interfere.”

  It still left a faintly disturbing taste. Sebastian had taken some trouble to deceive at least three women. It could not have been easy, it required planning, evasion, sometimes lies. Deeper than that, it required a degree of lying to himself. To his fiancée he had proposed marriage, or at the least, allowed it to be understood. To Flora in the pub along the river he had offered a deep and possibly intimate friendship, and now it seemed he had given time and at least a degree of affection also to other women. He had committed something of himself to each of them, and yet all of them would have supposed themselves to be unique.

  Was that kind of emotional deceit in a man the beginning of the duplicity that could betray his friends and eventually his country as well? Where does omission of the truth begin to be a lie?

  The telephone rang on the wall beside Thyer. “Excuse me,” he said, picking it up. Unconsciously he straightened a little as he listened, nodding his head and smiling. “Yes, of course,” he said quietly. “I know your beliefs in the matter, but I think a compromise is necessary.” He waited a few moments while the person on the other end spoke. He nodded again, giving occasional murmurs of agreement. He had not spoken the other person’s name, and yet a certain respect in his manner made Matthew suppose that it was someone of considerable importance, and his mind was sharp to the power of a man in Thyer’s position. What more perfect place for the Peacemaker? He would know men in government, the army, the royal household, the diplomatic service, he would know their dreams and their weaknesses, and above all, they would trust him.

  He was still talking, giving gentle advice, the subtlest of pressure.