Shoulder the Sky (34 page)

He had a quick meal at the railway station, and went to Cambridge on the afternoon train, arriving a little after three. Fortunately the day on which John and Alys Reavley were killed was one that would be remembered in England as long as recorded history lasted, because that day an assassination had occurred in the Balkans that had precipitated the last hectic plunge towards a war that seemed as if it must be the end of the world as Europe, knew it, and the beginning of something unknown, perhaps swifter, darker and immeasurably uglier.

It did not take long for the general to find a driver to take him to the village, and the public house where Hannah had said to Judith that Sebastian and Laetitia Dawson had been seen.

"A fine-lookin' lass, all right," the publican agreed, looking from the magazine picture to Cullingford with respect. The general was in uniform, as thousands of other men were, but in his case because he had not had time, or inclination, to go home. He wanted to deal with this matter first, and if he were honest, he had no desire to see Nerys, and be obliged to put on the mask that for her sake hid his feelings. It was an effort he was uncertain if he could sustain, and he was too tired, too emotionally raw to try.

"Do you remember her?" Cullingford asked patiently.

"Don't see 'er much these days," the publican replied. "Busy, I s'pose. Most folk are."

"I am trying to understand an event that happened a little under a year ago, in order to clear someone of a certain blame," Cullingford elaborated with something of a slant to the truth. "I'm sure you remember the day of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand .. ."

The publican rolled his eyes. "Do I ever? Hardly goin' to forget that!"

"I imagine no one is," Cullingford agreed. "Did you see this woman the day before that?" He remembered Judith's description of Sebastian Allard. "She may have been in the company of a young man, tall also, very good-looking indeed, fair brown hair, sun-burned, looked like a poet, a dreamer."

The publican smiled. "Oh, yeah! I remember him. Right handsome, he was. Odd, because I've never see' dim since. I s'pose he's gone to war like most of'em." His face flooded with sadness and he blinked several times. He polished the glass in his hand so hard he was fortunate not to snap it. "I'd like to think 'e weren't killed. "E had such a look to 'im, as if 'e were alight with something inside is self He shook his head. "An' it weren't love, like you see all the time in young folk. It were bigger than that, like you said, a dream. An' 'e and she were friendly, but no more'n that. An' she were proper and some too, but a bit tall for a girl, to my taste. Does that 'elp you?"

"Yes," Cullingford said quickly. "Yes, thank you." It was what he needed to know. He would take it to Matthew Reavley. It was his task to know how to arrest the Peacemaker, or what else to do about him. But at least now he would know who he was. His power would be curtailed for ever. Perhaps they would do something discreet, no open accusation, certainly no trial.

He thanked the publican again and gave him a handsome tip for his time, then he walked outside into the sun.

Did people commit suicide out of honour any more, if they were found guilty of treason? Certainly the government could never let it be known. Would someone offer him a sword or a gun? It would be the best way.

The driver was waiting for him, and Cullingford went back to the station to catch the next train to London. He should have thought to ask Judith for Matthew's address, but he had not wanted to tell her what he intended to do. Any questions, and she might have guessed. Now he would have to telephone one of his friends in the Intelligence Services and ask. It was only a temporary setback.

The journey back from Cambridge was very pleasant. He let himself drift off into sleep. He woke with a start to find himself already on the outskirts of the city. He would have to find a hotel tonight, and perhaps go home tomorrow. Time to face that decision when he had to.

It was nearly seven o'clock and already the light was fading when he walked along the platform under the vast ceiling and out into the early evening air. It was warm, a softness to the day as if summer were almost here.

He realized how hungry he was and looked for a restaurant to find a decent meal before going to see Matthew Reavley. Matthew was a young man, unmarried. There was no reason why he should be at home early, or for that matter, at all! Still, he must try, even if it took him all night, and he had to go to the SIS offices tomorrow. But tonight would be better for all sorts of reasons. The disclosure must be done in absolute privacy, where no one at all could overhear even a word. And Matthew might take considerable convincing that the Peacemaker was indeed who Cullingford now knew him to be.

The other main reason was that he wanted to do it urgently. Every hour the Peacemaker was free to make more plans, betray more people, might mean the deaths of other men, and bring defeat closer.

After dinner he made a single telephone call, and obtained the information he wanted. He hailed a taxi, and gave the driver an address a couple of hundred yards from Matthew's street. It was almost certainly an unnecessary precaution, but he still did not wish Matthew's address known, even to a cab driver, who might well remember a passenger in a general's uniform.

It was nearly ten when they fought their way through the traffic and he finally paid his bill and alighted. The evening was still warm, but it was completely dark now, and the streetlamps lit only pools like a string of gigantic pearls along the footpath.

Around the corner in the side street they were further apart. It was dark between them. He noticed a man standing a few yards beyond the lamp nearest where he judged Matthew's flat to be. He was on the kerb, as if hoping to hail a taxi. He could not be waiting to cross because there was no reason why he should not. The street was silent. Cullingford hoped it was not Matthew himself! He was wearing a topcoat and hat, and carrying a stick. It was difficult to tell how tall he was. The shadows elongated him.

He turned just as Cullingford reached him, as if the sound of his footsteps in the quietness had drawn his attention. For a moment the light shone in his face, and he smiled.

"Good evening, Cullingford," he said softly. "I assume you have come to see Reavley. That's a pity."

Cullingford stared into the face of the Peacemaker, twisted with regret but without a shadow of indecision.

He actually saw the lamplight on the blade of the sword stick then the next moment he felt it in his body, a numbing blow, not sharp at all, just a spreading paralysis as he fell forward into the darkness.

Joseph was sitting in his dugout writing letters when there was a sound outside the doorway, and the moment later, without knocking, Barshey Gee came in. His face was white and he stared at Joseph without even an attempt at apology.

Joseph dropped his pen and stood up. In two steps across the earth floor he was in front of Barshey. He took him by the shoulders. "What is it?" he asked, his voice gravelly, steeling himself for the news that one of Barshey's brothers had been killed. It had to be a sniper, at this time in the afternoon. "What is it, Barshey?" he repeated.

Barshey gasped. "Oi just 'eard, Captain. General Cullingford's been murdered! In London. "E were home on leave, an' some thief stuck a knife into 'im in the street. Jesus, Oi hope they hang the bastard!" He struggled for breath, his chest heaving. "What's 'appenin' to us, Captain Reavley? How can someone kill a general in the street?" His eyes were wide and strained. "Jeez, you look as bad as Oi feel!"

Joseph found his mouth dry, his heart pounding, not for himself but for Judith. It was like the past back again: death where you had never even imagined it, like your own life were cut off, but you were left conscious with eyes to see it, forced to go on being present and knowing it all. The end of life, but without the mercy of oblivion.

Judith was going to hurt so much! Cullingford was not her husband, the love was not right, it could never have led to any happiness in the future but that had nothing to do with the pain she would feel. It was still love! It was laughter, understanding, gentleness, the hunger of the soul met with generosity and endless, passionate tenderness. It was the voice in the darkness of fear, when the world was breaking; the touch that meant you were not alone. She would hurt! She would hurt till she felt there was nothing left inside her. Then rest would restore her, and she would have the strength to hurt all over again.

"Thank you for telling me, Barshey. I must go to Poperinge now! Help me find a car, an ambulance, anything!"

Barshey did not argue he simply obeyed.

An hour later Joseph was at the ambulance post in Poperinge. First he went to Hadrian. He must be certain of the details. He even cherished some vague, ill-defined hope that Barshey had been wrong.

He had not. Hadrian was numb with shock, but he told Joseph that it was true. It had happened at night, in the same street where Matthew lived.

He left Hadrian and went outside across the cobbles to where he could see Judith and Wil Sloan standing together laughing. They must have heard his boots on the stone, because they turned to look at him. The laughter died instantly.

Judith came forward, the blood draining from her skin as she stared at him.

He put both his hands on her shoulders. She waited, knowing from his eyes that the blow would be terrible. Perhaps she expected it would be Matthew.

"Judith," he began, his voice catching in his throat. He had to clear it before he could go on. "General Cullingford was murdered in the street in London just outside Matthew's flat. They didn't find who did it."

"What?" It was not that she had not heard him, simply that she could not grasp the enormity of it.

"I don't know any more than that. I'm sorry! I'm so very, very sorry!"

"He's .. . dead?"

"Yes."

She leaned forward and buried her head on his shoulder and he tightened his arms around her until he held her as close as he could. It was a long time until she started to weep, then her whole body shook as if she would never get her breath, never ease the rending pain.

He kept on holding her. Wil stood where he was, horrified, helpless.

At last she pulled away. Her eyes were tight shut, as if she could not bear to see anything. "It's my fault," she whispered hoarsely. "He went after the Peacemaker, because of what I told him! I killed him!"

He pushed the hair off her face. "No," he said very softly. "The war killed him."

She leaned against him again, very still now, too exhausted to cry again, for the moment.

He just held on to her.

Chapter Eleven

There was nothing Joseph could do to help Judith's grief. She had to hide it from everyone except those closest to her, such as Wil Sloan, and possibly Major Hadrian. To permit its true depth to be seen by others would in a sense betray Cullingford's privacy, and perhaps his reputation. A new general was moved forward immediately, with his own driver, and she was returned to ambulance duty. It took a matter of hours, not days. War waited for no one.

Joseph knew that now he would not see her again except by chance. He had been on or near the front line for weeks without leave, and the stress was telling on him. He was due two weeks now, and he accepted it gratefully. Apart from anything else, it was important that he speak to Matthew as soon as possible. He believed Judith's assertion that it was the Peacemaker who had murdered Cullingford, either directly or indirectly, which meant that he had to have been close to finding him.

Watching the late spring countryside skim past him on the way to Calais, it seemed like an escape from the reality of mud and wasteland. Here the trees were in full leaf. At a hasty glance, the French farms and villages looked as they always had: uniquely individual, steeped in history, each with its own vines and cheeses, humour, tastes, expression of life. It was afterwards on the boat across the Channel that he realized he had seen only women, children and old men. When they stopped to buy petrol or bread,

there was a sadness in people's faces, and always a shadow behind the eyes, a knowledge of fear, probably not for themselves but for those they loved.

London was startlingly the same. After the loss of men Joseph had expected a silence, some kind of mourning he could see," but it was full of traffic as always, motor and horse-drawn. There were men in uniform, some on leave as he was, some injured, hollow-faced with the grey pallor of the shell-shocked or inwardly crippled. He heard a man with a hacking cough; it was probably no more than a spring cold, but to him it brought back, with skin-chilling horror, the memory of gas.

He reached Matthew's flat a little after six, and the porter, knowing him well, let him in. He bathed, letting the hot water soak into his skin, although it stung the scratches where he had torn it with his nails when the lice or fleas became unbearable. The bone-deep ease of the bath made him realize how tired he was, how many nights he had lain on the hard clay, or on duckboards, and slept fitfully. It was going to be strange to sleep in a bed with sheets, and waken knowing he was in England. It would seem eerily silent with only the distant sound of traffic, no gunfire, no shaking of the ground as the fourteen-pounders landed. No injuries, no deaths.

He towelled himself dry, examining the scraped and abraded patches of his skin, and dressed, borrowing clean underwear from Matthew's drawer. Then he made himself a pot of tea and sat down to wait.