No Graves As Yet (10 page)

But John Reavley was dead! And there had been the rope on the tree and marks on the road, scars where a row of caltrops had ripped all four tires and sent the car veering one way and then the other until it crashed into the copse. Where did one buy caltrops in the modern world? Or had they been homemade? It might be simple enough, with strong fence wire, wire cutters, and pliers. Any man could do it with a few hours to spare and a knack with his hands.

Someone had searched the house in St. Giles, and his office.

But he could not prove it. The crushed foxgloves would grow back; the marks would be obliterated by rain and dust and other traffic. The rope end tied to the tree could have been put there for any of a dozen reasons. And no one else could say whether objects in the study or the bedroom had been moved or not. The evidence was in remembered details, a sense of disturbance, minute things not as they should be, marks on a lock that he could have made himself.

They would say that John Reavley was a man out of office and out of touch, who dreamed up conspiracies. Matthew and Joseph were deluded by grief. Surely the violent loss of both parents was enough to cause, and to excuse, disjunction of reason in anyone?

It was all true. And the anger inside him turned to a dull, inward ache of confusion. In his mind’s eye so clearly he could see his father’s keen face. He was an eminently reasonable man, his mind so quick, so very sane. He was the one who curbed Judith’s excesses, who was patient with Hannah’s being less fluent at expressing herself, who hid his disappointment that neither of his sons had followed the career he so longed for them to embrace.

He had loved the quaint and eccentric things in life. He was endlessly tolerant of difference—and lost his temper with arrogance, and too often with fools who stifled others with petty authority. The real fools, the simple-minded, he could forgive in an instant.

It hurt almost beyond intolerably to believe that his father had utterly misinterpreted one stupid, minor endeavor that would make not even a mark in history, never mind turn the tide of it to ruin a nation and alter the world!

The irony was that he would not have found it as hard to be wrong as Matthew found it for him. Matthew knew that, and it did not help. He stood in the center of his office and had to fight to stop himself from weeping.

CHAPTER
FOUR

Joseph slipped back into the routine of teaching again and found the old pleasure in knowledge easing a little of the pain inside him. The music of words closed out the past, creating their own immediate world.

He stood in the lecture room and saw the earnest faces in front of him, different in features and coloring, but all touched with the shadows of anxiety. Only Sebastian had voiced his fear concerning the possibility of war in Europe, but Joseph heard the echoes of it in them all. There were reports of a French airship making reconnaissance flights over Germany, speculation as to what reparation Austro-Hungary would demand of Serbia, and even discussion of who might be assassinated next.

Joseph had spoken once or twice on the subject to the other students. He had no knowledge beyond the newspaper reports available to everyone else, but since the dean was on a short sabbatical and therefore unavailable, he felt that he should fill his place with the spiritual resources that would have met just such a need as this. There was nothing better than reason with which to answer fear. There was no cause to believe that there would be a conflict involving England. These young men would not be asked to fight, and perhaps to die.

They listened to him politely, waiting for him to answer their needs for assurance, and he knew from their eyes, the tension still there in their voices, that the old power to comfort was not enough.

On Saturday evening he called by at Harry Beecher’s rooms and found his colleague reclining in his armchair and reading the current edition of the
Illustrated London News
. Beecher looked up, laying the paper flat immediately. Joseph could see, even upside down, a picture of a theater stage.

Beecher glanced at it and smiled. “
Eugene Onegin
,” he explained.

Joseph was surprised. “Here?”

“No, St. Petersburg. The world is smaller than you think, isn’t it! And
Carmen
.” Beecher indicated the picture at the bottom of the page. “But apparently they’ve revived Boito’s
Mefistofele
at Covent Garden, and they say it’s very good. The Russian Ballet has
Daphnis and Chloe
at Drury Lane. Not really my kind of thing.”

Joseph smiled. “Nor mine,” he agreed. “How about a sandwich or a pie and a glass of cider at the Pickerel?” It was the oldest public house in Cambridge, just a few yards along the street, across the Magdalene Bridge. They could sit outside in the fading light and watch the river, as Samuel Pepys might have done when he was a student here in the seventeenth century, or anyone else over the last six hundred years.

“Good idea,” Beecher agreed immediately, rising to his feet. The room was a pleasant clutter of books. Latin was his subject, but his interest lay in the icons of faith. He and Joseph had spent many hours positing theory after theory—serious, passionate, or funny—as to what was the concept of holiness. Where did it move from being an aid to concentration, a reminder of faith, into being the object of reverence itself, imbued with miraculous powers?

Beecher picked up his jacket from the back of the old leather chair and followed Joseph out, closing the door behind them. They went down the steps and across the quad to the massive front gate with its smaller door inset, and then out into St. John’s Street, and left to the Magdalene Bridge.

The terrace outside the Pickerel was crowded. As usual, there were punts on the river, drifting along toward the bridge, silhouetted for a moment beneath its arch, then gone as they turned and followed the stream.

Joseph ordered cider and cold game pie for both of them, then carried the provisions to a table and sat down.

Beecher regarded him steadily for a moment or two. “Are you all right, Joseph?” he asked gently. “If you need a little more time, I can take some of your work. Really—”

Joseph smiled. “I’m better working, thank you.”

Beecher was still watching him. “But?” he questioned.

“Is it so obvious?”

“To someone who knows you, yes.” Beecher took a long draft of his cider, then set the glass down. He did not press for an answer. They had been friends since their own student years here, and spent many holidays walking together in the Lake District or along the ancient Roman wall that stretched across Northumberland and Cumbria from the North Sea to the Atlantic. They had imagined the legionaries of the Caesars who had manned it when it was the outer edge of empire against the barbarian.

They had tramped for miles, and sat in the sun staring over the moors in the light and shadow, eaten crusty bread and cheese, and drunk cheap red wine. And they had talked of everything and nothing, and told endless jokes, and laughed.

Joseph wondered whether to say anything to Beecher about his father’s death and the fear of a conspiracy of the magnitude he had suggested, but he and Matthew had agreed not to speak of it, even to their closest friends.

“I was contemplating the ugly situation in Europe,” he said aloud, “and wondering what sort of future lies ahead for the men who graduate this year. Darker than for us.” He looked at his cider, sparkling a little in the long amber light. “When I graduated, the Boer War was over, and the world had all the excitement of a new century. It looked as if nothing would ever change except for the better—greater wisdom, more liberal laws, travel, new art.”

Beecher’s slightly crooked face was grave. “There are shifts of power all the time, and socialism is a rising force—I don’t think anything can stop it,” he said.

“Nor should it. We’re moving to a real enlightenment, even votes for women in time.”

“I was thinking more of the crisis in the Balkans,” Joseph said, taking another bite of his pie and talking with his mouth full. “That’s what many of our students are worried about.” He said
many
, but he was thinking primarily of Sebastian.

“I can’t see any of our students joining the army.” Beecher spoke just before swallowing the last mouthful of his pastry. “And no matter how heated it gets between Austria and Serbia, it’s a long way from us. It’s not our concern unless we want to make it so. Young men always worry before leaving university and stepping out into the world.” He smiled broadly. “In spite of the competition, there is safety here, and a multitude of distractions. The college is a hotbed of ideas most of them have never even imagined, and of the first temptations of adulthood—but the only real yardstick is your own ability. You may not get a first, but the only person who can prevent you succeeding is yourself. Outside it’s different. It’s a colder world. The best of them know that.” He finished his cider. “Let them worry, Joseph. It’s part of growing up.”

Again Joseph thought of Sebastian’s tortured face as he had stared with such intensity across the burnished water toward the dark outlines of the college. “It wasn’t anxiety for himself. It was for what war in Europe would do to civilization in general.”

Beecher’s face split into a good-natured grin. “Too much poring over dead languages, Joseph. There’s always something ineffably sad about a culture whose people have vanished when an echo of their beauty remains, especially if it is part of the music of our own.”

“He was thinking of our language being overtaken and our way of thought lost,” Joseph told him.

“He?” Beecher’s eyebrows rose. “You have someone particular in mind?”

“Sebastian Allard.” Joseph had barely finished speaking when he saw a shadow in Beecher’s eyes. The still evening light was unchanged. The sound of laughter from a group of young men drifted on the twilight breeze from the green swath of the Backs, but inexplicably the air seemed colder. “He’s more aware than the others,” he explained.

“He’s got a better intellect,” Beecher agreed, but he did not look at Joseph.

“It’s more than intellect.” Joseph felt the need to defend himself, and perhaps Sebastian. “You can have a brilliant brain without delicacy, fire, vision. . . .” He had used the same word again, but there was no other to describe what he knew in Sebastian. In his translations the young man had caught the music and understood not only what the poets and philosophers of the past had written, but the whole regions of passion and dream that lay beyond it. To teach such a mind as his was the wish of all those who wanted to pass on the beauty they themselves had seen. “You know that!” he said with more force than he had intended.

“We’re not in any danger of going the way of Carthage or Etruria.” Beecher smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “There are no barbarians at the gates. If they exist, then they are here among us.” He looked at his empty glass but did not bother to catch the barman’s eye. “I think we are equal to keeping them at bay, at least most of the time.”

Joseph heard a note of pain in his voice and knew that it was real, the tip of something he had not seen before. “Not all the time?” he asked gently.

Then into his mind burst back the crushed foxgloves on the verge of the road, the scars of the caltrops on the tarmacadam, the screaming of metal in his imagination, and the blood. And he understood violence and rage completely, and fear.

“Of course not all of it,” Beecher replied, his gaze beyond Joseph’s head, unaware of the emotion all but drowning his friend. “They are young minds full of energy and promise, but they are also morally undisciplined now and then. They are on the edge of learning about the world, and about themselves. They have the privilege of education in the best school there is, and of being taught—forgive the immodesty—by some of the best mentors in the English language. They live in one of the most subtle and tolerant cultures in Europe. And they have the intellect and the ambition, the drive and the fire to make something of it. At least most of them have.”

He turned to meet Joseph’s eyes. “It’s our job to civilize them as well, Joseph. Teach them forbearance, compassion, how to accept failure as well as success, not to blame others, nor blame themselves too much, but go on and try again, and pretend it didn’t hurt. It will happen many times in life. It’s necessary to get used to it and put it in its place. That’s hard when you are young. They are very proud, and they haven’t much sense of proportion yet.”

“But they have courage,” Joseph said quickly. “And they care—intensely!”

Beecher looked at his hands on the table. “Of course they do. Good God, if the young don’t care, there isn’t much hope for the rest of us! But they’re still selfish at times. More, I think, than you want to believe.”

“I know! But it’s innocent,” Joseph argued, leaning forward a little. “Their generosity is just as powerful, and their idealism. They are discovering the world and it’s desperately precious to them! Right now they are frightened they’re going to lose it. What can I tell them?” he pleaded. “How can I make that fear bearable?”

“You can’t.” Beecher shook his head. “You can’t carry the world, and you’d only rip a muscle trying—and still probably drop it. Leave it to Atlas!” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Do you want another cider?” And without waiting for an answer, he took Joseph’s glass as well and walked away.

Joseph sat surrounded by murmuring voices, the clink of glass, and the occasional burst of laughter, and he felt alone. He had never realized before that Beecher did not like Sebastian. It was not only the dismissive words; it was the coldness in his face as he said them. Joseph felt distanced by it, cut off from a warmth he had expected.

He did not stay long after that, but excused himself and walked slowly back through the near darkness to St. John’s.

Joseph was tired, but he did not sleep well. He rose a little before six and dressed in old clothes, then went outside and down to the river. It was a breathless morning; even the topmost leaves of the trees were still against the blue of the sky. The clear, pale light was so sharp every blade of grass shone with the dew, and there was no mark at all on the shining surface of the water.

He untied one of the small boats and got into it, unlashed the oars, and rowed out past Trinity and on eastward into the spreading light, feeling the warmth on his back. He threw his weight into it, pulling steadily. The rhythm was soothing, and he picked up speed all the way to the Mathematical Bridge before turning to come back. His mind was empty of every thought but the sheer physical pleasure of the effort.

He was back in his rooms, stripped to the waist and shaving, when there was an urgent, almost hysterical banging on his door. He padded over barefoot and opened it wide.

Elwyn Allard was standing on the threshold, his face contorted, his hair flopped over his brow, his right hand raised in a fist ready to hammer on the closed wood again.

“Elwyn!” Joseph was horrified. “Whatever’s happened? Come in.” He stepped back to make room for him. “You look terrible. What is it?”

Elwyn’s body was shuddering. He gasped for breath and started speaking twice before managing to get the words out coherently.

“Sebastian’s been shot! He’s dead! I’m sure he’s dead. You’ve got to help!”

It took a moment for Joseph to absorb the meaning of the words.

“Help me!” Elwyn begged. He was leaning on the doorpost, needing it to support himself.

“Of course.” Joseph reached for his dressing gown from the back of the door and ignored his slippers. To think of bothering with clothes would have been ridiculous. Elwyn must be wrong. There might be time to salvage something—everything. Sebastian was probably ill, or . . . or what? Elwyn had said he had been shot. People did not shoot each other in Cambridge. Nobody had guns! It was unthinkable.

He ran down the steps behind Elwyn and across the silent courtyard, the dew on the grass nearly dry except where the buildings shadowed it. They went in at another door, and Elwyn started to scramble up the stairs, lurching from side to side. At the top he turned right and at the second door hurled his shoulder at it as if he could not turn the handle, although his hands grasped after it.

Joseph passed him and opened it properly.

The curtains were drawn back and the scene was bathed in the hard, clear light of the early sun. Sebastian sat in his chair, leaning back a little. The low table beside him was spread with books, not littered but lying carefully piled on top of each other in a neat stack, here and there a slip of paper in to mark a place. One book was open in his lap and his hands, slender and strong, brown from the sun, lay loosely on top of it. His head was fallen back, his face perfectly calm, no fear or pain in it. There were a couple of deep scratches on one of them. His eyes were closed. His fair hair seemed barely disturbed. He could have been asleep but for the scarlet wound on his right temple and the blood splattered on the chair arm and floor beyond from the gaping hole at the other side. Elwyn was right. With an injury like that, Sebastian had to be dead.