We Shall Not Sleep (30 page)

Joseph was too late to stand up, but he was not sure that his legs would hold him anyway. He knew she was right; Schenckendorff had come through the lines to* surrender himself and betray the Peacemaker, with all that that cost him, because his honor demanded it. If she allowed him to hang for a crime she knew he had not committed, it would poison the rest of her life—and Joseph's, too, if he colluded in such an act of cowardice.

And yet every part of him wanted to protect her. His mind screamed at him to find another way, any way, but not this. Please God, let there be something else they could do! But even as he prayed he knew there was not, and he was wasting time protesting while he allowed her to go to Onslow alone. He should be with her, beside her. What it cost him was irrelevant.

He stood up and parted the sacking, climbing the steps, his legs as heavy as if he were struggling through the thick mud of no-man's-land. He went outside and followed after her, knowing which way she would have gone. He caught up with her as she opened the door to the hut where Onslow had made his office, and they went in together.

Onslow was sitting behind a table with half a dozen sheets of paper on it. He looked surprised
to
see them, and somewhat irritated. He addressed Joseph first. "Yes, Chaplain. Please don't waste your time and mine asking me to delay charging the German, or with any more theories as to who else could be guilty. You are not serving your men, or your regiment's honor."

"Sir—" Joseph began.

"We need this wretched business to be over and put as far from our minds as possible," Onslow said tartly, cutting across him, his hand up as if to silence him physically. "You should write to the poor girl's family, if you have not done so already, then turn your attention to the living. There are more than enough wounded who need your help ... your undivided help, Captain Reavley." He still had done no more than glance at Lizzie.

Now she stepped forward. Joseph could see something of what
it
cost her to stand so stiffly to attention, shoulders squared.

"Captain Reavley came only to support me in what I have to tell you, Major Onslow," she said clearly. "He knew nothing of it until I felt obliged to inform him just now."

Onslow drew in his breath to interrupt her also, but something in her face and bearing stopped him. He made an attempt at patience, but it was brief.

Lizzie plunged on. "Unfortunately Sarah Price was not the only woman to be assaulted. There was an earlier rape, extremely unpleasant, but very much less violent—"

This time he did interrupt. "Nothing was reported, Miss—"

"Mrs. Blaine," she said. "I know it was not reported." Her voice dipped.

Joseph ached to be able to say it for her, explain, force Onslow to understand, but he knew he must not. It would rob Lizzie of the only dignity or control she had in the matter. He stood rigidly, his hands by his sides, clenched so his nails dug into his palms. The silence in the tent was oppressive, the air stale.

"It is very ... difficult to report such a thing." Lizzie's voice sank despite her will to keep it strong.

Onslow's face darkened with anger. "Mrs. Blaine, rape is a very serious crime! Not to report it is completely irresponsible. I am very sorry that such a thing should have happened, and if you tell me who the woman is, we shall add that to the charge." He jerked his hands, as if freeing himself from some restraint. "Although of course I cannot unless the victim herself tells me. Please point out to her that it is her duty, and perhaps if she had had the courage to come forward at the time, we might have caught the man then, and Sarah Price would still be alive."

It cost Joseph such an effort of will to keep silent that he could feel the blood throbbing in his temples. He wanted to beat Onslow until he lay senseless.

Lizzie struggled to force the words through her lips. "I was the woman, sir. I have no idea who it was who raped me. Had I known, I would have reported it..."

Onslow looked taken aback, but it did not alter the anger in him. His face was red, his eyes bright and hard. "Then your accusation now is pointless, and too late, Mrs. Blaine." He stood up and walked around the table toward her, looking her up and down as though to see whether she was injured.

Joseph was trembling, the sweat hot and then cold on his skin.

"It has every point!" Lizzies voice was choked with tears. "It happened more than a month ago, before Colonel Schenckendorff was anywhere near here. It could not possibly have been him."

It took a moment for the full import to strike Onslow. He froze. 'You mean you have allowed us to accuse and imprison an innocent man while you said nothing?" he shouted at her.

"I... I hoped he would be proved innocent in some other way," she whispered. "I—"

"You hoped?" he demanded incredulously, his eyebrows arched high. "You hoped?" he repeated. "If you had spoken at the time we would have investigated then, when the trail was fresh. At the very least we would have known there was a rapist loose in the clearing station, and women would have taken the proper precautions for safety. Sarah Price would still be alive, and we would not have wasted weeks questioning and accusing and finally locking up the wrong man! Have you any concept of what you have—"

"Yes!" she cried out, tears running down her face. "Yes, of course I know. Why do you think I came to you now? But I don't know who it was—"

"You should have come—"

Joseph lunged forward and hit Onslow, hard, throwing all his weight behind the blow. The major staggered backward, crashing into the canvas, losing his balance and falling sideways onto the floor.

"Joseph! No!" Lizzie shouted, throwing herself at him and clinging to him so he could not strike again, and they both lurched to a standstill.

Onslow blinked and lay still for several seconds before raising himself onto an elbow. He drew in his breath and shook his head. Then very slowly he clambered to his feet, still half leaning against the wall.

Joseph was so angry that if Onslow had turned to Lizzie and spoken he would have hit him again, even though the realization was beginning to sink in that he had struck a superior officer and could find himself court-martialed—possibly even dishonorably discharged.

Onslow was staring at him. He might want to apologize, try to explain, but nothing could excuse what Onslow had done to Lizzie, and Joseph would not yield. He was a chaplain, not a career soldier, and Lizzie was more important to him than any calling. He stared back without wavering.

Lizzie, too, must have been desperate to think of something to say. She looked from one to the other, her face ashen.

Onslow straightened his tunic and brushed himself down. Im sorry, Mrs. Blaine," he said quietly. "I am quite sure you feel your omission more than sufficiently. I should not have mentioned it. I cannot imagine the suffering you have already endured, and the insensitivity of some people's remarks. I apologize that I added to them."

"You were right to blame me, sir," she said, her voice trembling. "I thought perhaps it might have been my own fault, that somehow I had unintentionally allowed someone to believe I held a regard for him that I didn't. We ... we all tend to think that somehow we were stupid, careless ... but I have no idea who it was. I've gone over and over it in my mind, and I don't know. It's too late now to say who was here then, I realize that. I was so ashamed ... I wanted to pretend it hadn't happened. I'm sorry."

Joseph waited for Onslow to agree, but instead he turned to Joseph, his face already beginning to swell from the blow. "You should watch your temper, Chaplain. Not every senior officer may appreciate your remarkable service to the men here, or realize that to charge you with assault at such a time, when the morale of the whole unit is so fragile, would not be in the army's best interest. You are very fortunate that I do." He put his hand to his cheek and touched it gingerly. "If anyone inquires, I shall say that I fell. You would be wise to be quite unaware of the whole incident."

"Yes, sir." Joseph was suddenly embarrassed. Onslow was a better man than he had given him credit for—simply out of his depth with the subject of rape. And like most people, he disliked intensely having made a very public stand on an issue, and then being proved wrong. "Thank you," he added.

"Thank your record with the Cambridgeshires, Captain Reavley," Onslow replied. "You are loved by the men. I think if I were to charge you I would lose their support completely. I'm not fool enough for that."

There was a certain pain in his voice, a knowledge of having been a fool in other things. He stood awkwardly, beginning to realize that he had been hit very hard indeed. "Now I have to make certain that Schenckendorff is released from this accusation, and that everyone knows that he could not be guilty. I don't want him attacked—again."

He turned to Lizzie. "I regret that I shall have to tell them why, Mrs. Blaine, because if I do not, they may not believe me, and someone will take a private vengeance on him. I will not mention your name, but it is possible someone may guess. There is no alternative. I cannot allow the man to be murdered in an
accident"
—he emphasized the word—"because I am not believed."

"I understand," she said hoarsely. "That would be almost as bad as his being hanged. Thank you, sir."

Onslow nodded.

Joseph and Lizzie turned and went back out into the rain.

Later, Joseph walked alone around the old supply trench, remembering the men he had known who were gone, so many of them dead. He thought of them in the good times, the jokes, the sharing, the long stories about home, the letters, the dreams for the future. Had they loved him as much as Onslow thought? He had loved them, and watched them die. Had he been any help in this nightmare?

What help was he now to Lizzie, whom he loved? He thought he had learned to deal with death, even with mutilation, which was sometimes even harder. But there was an element in rape that was different, a violation not just of the body but of the inner core unique to a woman. If it had been somebody else, possibly even Judith, he would not feel so wounded within himself. There would not be the horror, the ... he had been going to use the word
revulsion
in his mind. Part of him wanted to run away from all of it, the whole issue—even from Lizzie, as if
she had been spoiled for him.

But she had done nothing wrong, and he knew that. She was a victim, brutalized by a violent man, randomly—unless there was something in her vitality, a moments kindness misunderstood, possibly even something as stupid as a passing resemblance to someone else he knew, that had sparked his act? It could have been anything.

But even if she had allowed a moments carelessness, or worse, she was still a victim. If he turned away from her because that man had touched her, known her, was it not totally selfish, nothing to do with anything but his own feelings, not love at all? He would make her a victim again, doubly so, by rejecting her as if she were unclean.

He knew with complete, sickening finality that to do so would not only devastate her, but also destroy the bedrock of the faith that had sustained him throughout the war. It had made endurable the endless boredom, the sudden blood-red agony, the nights in no-man's-land with men caught on the wires and torn apart by bullets, left hanging there, bleeding to death. He had sat cradling in his arms the broken bodies of those he had loved. He had seen them starving, freezing to death, drowned in mud, gagging and vomiting up their own lungs from poison gas, and he had not turned away, not said he could not bear it.

Was he now going to turn away from Lizzie because he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, passionately, intimately, and he could not bear that she had been raped? If what had happened to her could kill his ability to love, then he had learned nothing, and there was no hope for any of the wounded, the damaged, the millions who would come home changed forever. And who was not damaged, in some way perhaps more hidden, more inward to the soul?

He must overcome it. To fail at this bitter test was to lose it all. He leaned against the trench wall, his clasped hands resting on the clay.

"Father, help me to do what I cannot do alone." In the silence of the wilderness and the miles of the dead, he asked again and again, until finally a kind of peace settled over him and a stillness blossomed inside, growing stronger than the pain.

"It doesn't happen without something starting him off," Matthew said a couple of hours later as he and Joseph sat on a pile of sandbags that had collapsed from an old parapet. It was one of the few places they could expect to be alone. Time was growing desperately short, not only to find the rapist before he struck again, but because the war news that poured in every day made it obvious that the armistice was no more than a couple of weeks away—perhaps not even that. If they were to unmask the Peacemaker in time to prevent his taking a primary part in the final negotiations, then they must begin the journey to the coast within a day or two.

Despite his resolve, Joseph's emotions were so raw, he was unsure how well he could control them. Subtlety was needed, not violence, even in words. A careless comment or accusation, an implied threat, could damage their investigation. He was sharply aware of it, but still he could feel the pain taking over inside him, and he was afraid it would slip out of his control.

Most likely to snap his frail mastery were the men he knew well but who were still lying to him, or to themselves, through old loyalties to those they had fought beside and whose most intimate griefs they knew, perhaps even shared.

He made an intense effort. He must make his mind dominate his emotions. Think! There were facts that remained unaltered by what Lizzie had told him. The only men who were not accounted for at the time Sarah had been killed were Cavan, Benbow, and Wil Sloan. Surely it must be Benbow. And yet the impossible did happen; people changed beyond imagination. Nothing could be assumed. It was not only illogical to do so, it was morally unjust.

"A man to whom something has happened that has changed his life," he said aloud.