We Shall Not Sleep (18 page)

"In fact, she was rather common?" Judith concluded with a slight lift of her voice to make it a question. Then she remembered hearing that Erica's younger brother was an RFC squadron leader who had been burned to death when his plane crashed over Vimy Ridge, and wished she had been gentler. Matthew and Joseph were still alive, at least for now.

"If that's your conclusion, don't attribute it to me, Erica said sharply. "And don't say I said that she deserved what she got, because I didn't."

"I'm not trying to make trouble!" Judith exclaimed. "I've got more than enough already. I'm trying to find out who killed her.'"

"You're trying to save your brother from being hanged," Erica corrected her, turning to face her squarely, eyes hot and full of pain.

Judith felt as if she had been slapped. It was perfectly true. Before Matthew had been accused she had cared very little who had killed Sarah Price. Her mind had been on Mason returning and stirring up feelings in her she had been determined to leave buried, as well as the amazement of finding someone who would identify the Peacemaker at last, and the passion to get him home to England in time. Sarah's death was horrible, but not personally wounding.

"At least you don't lie about that," Erica said with a bleak smile. "Good luck. You'll need it. Everyone has their own ideas about who did it, and whether they really want to know for certain, or not. Some of us don't."

Judith finished with the blankets, then went to find out who had been on duty guarding the German prisoners the night Sarah had been killed.

It had stopped raining outside, but the air was cold and it flapped her wet skirts around her ankles, making her legs and feet almost numb. The boards creaked when she stood on them. Wind rattled in the canvas and whined through cracks where it could not be tied down.

It took Judith some time and argument before she learned the names of both men who had been on guard duty. One was Lance Corporal Benbow, the other Private Eames. Both had recently been wounded themselves, and they were still insufficiently healed to be back on front-line duty. She found Eames first. He was in a dugout brewing up a cup of tea in a Dixie can over a flame, waiting patiently for it to come anywhere near boiling. He had fair hair and long, bony wrists that poked out of his uniform shirt. He moved stiffly, the wound in his shoulder clearly still causing him pain.

"We were there all night, miss," he said in answer to her question. "I'd an 'ole lot rather think it was one o' them Jerries 'oo done that to 'er, specially seein' as 'ow she were over that way toward the shed where they're kept. But Benbow were with me all the time, and no one came out o' the 'ut that I saw till about three in the morning, an' that were just ter stick 'is 'ead out and straight back in again."

"But you saw Sarah Price?" Judith said quickly. "Where? Who with? What was she doing?"

He shook his head, still watching and nursing the flame under his Dixie can. "She were alone, miss. Just walking along the boards wi' something in 'er 'and. Couldn't see what."

"What time?" She refused to let the faint glimmer of hope slip out of her grasp. "You were on guard duty, you must have an idea."

"About 'alf past two, near as I can remember. Or maybe three."

"Was there anyone else near her? Think! It could matter a lot."

It was clear that Eames was thinking. His brow furrowed, and he was deeply withdrawn into himself.

Judith waited.

"I don't know," he said at last. "I was thinking about the Germans."

"What about before that?" she asked. "Earlier in the evening?"

"She went to the Germans' shed," he replied. "But she came out and she were fine. I told 'er—" He stopped.

"What?" Judith demanded. "What did you tell her?"

He chewed his lip, eyes still concentrating on the candle flame. "I told 'er to give the poor sods a chance," he mumbled. "They aren't all bad, any more'n we're all good."

Judith breathed in and out slowly. "Why did you say that, Private Eames?" She did her best to sound patient.

He was silent for several moments.

"She was murdered, Private," she prompted him.

He looked away from the candle at last, his eyes grave.

"I know that, miss, an' I wouldn't 'ave that 'appen to anyone. Wot they did to 'er was 'orrible. But she did tempt them something rotten. Told 'em all sorts o' things as'd 'appen to their women when our boys got into Germany. I know she were just ignorant, miss, an' she lost some of 'er friends, like all of us." He looked across at her, the tea forgotten now. "But that in't the way ter treat people as can't fight back at yen" He was struggling to find the words to explain it to her. He understood his own laws of honor, but they had never been set out for him; they were simply learned by things he had seen other people do.

"It's all right, Private, I know it isn't." She felt a warmth in her stomach, as if she had swallowed the tea and it had blazed to life like a fire inside her. "Could it have been one of the Germans who got back at her?"

"I dunno, miss. I don't think so."

She thanked him, leaving him to brew his tea.

It was some time later that she found Benbow. He was a year or two younger, and quite clearly worried. She could draw nothing from him except an approximate agreement with what Eames had said. It surprised her. He seemed a strong man, a good soldier. He was not much more than nineteen, but he had been promoted from the ranks and had an easy confidence. The question troubled him, but he did not hesitate in his answer. "I wouldn't like to say, miss, and perhaps be wrong."

She had to be content with that, which she told Joseph at dusk when they stood in line with forty others to receive their rations. It was a clear evening, banners of clouds shredded out and streaming across the north with a sharp wind carrying the sound of heavy gunfire in the distance.

Joseph looked unhappy. "I've come across the same thing," he said quietly. "No one wants to tell tales that could be misread, but they all want it to be over. I can't help wondering if I would be any different if it wasn't Matthew they were accusing. If it was somebody from London that I didn't know, somebody who had sat out the war at home, as far as I could see, would I care?"

"Don't say that!" she told him sharply. "Just because it—"

"I know," he interrupted. "But that's how some men see it. I was talking to Turner, who beat the German prisoner the other day. He's got a brother-in-law who has bad eyesight, or flat feet, or something, and has spent the entire war at home sleeping in his own bed every night and making a fortune on the black market. I think Turner would see him shot in a trice."

"We probably all would," Judith agreed as they shuffled forward a few steps. "But we could live with it only if he was guilty, if it was one of us and not a German. What happens to make somebody who looks just like the rest of us suddenly go barking mad and do something like this? Why?"

Joseph did not answer. Ahead of them someone laughed loudly, then suddenly bit it off. There was silence. The click of ladles against a metal can was loud.

"I'm not sure what madness is," Joseph said at last, keeping his voice so low that those next to them and behind could not hear. "Or maybe I mean that I don't know what sanity is, or exactly how you keep hold of it."

The remark frightened her: He had always been the one person who knew what he believed. But it was unfair to expect him to always hold up the light for everyone else. He must have his dark nights of the soul, too, moonless and starless like everyone else's, or what use was he? Without knowledge of despair, was hope real or only an un-tasted thought?

"You might lose sight of what's good," she said firmly. "You don't lose the memory of it or the certainty that it is what you want; that is sanity. You might have to kill, but you do it reluctantly, and without hate."

He put his arm around her in a quick, silent hug. Even in the chill of the wind, the warmth of it touched her mind if not her flesh.

"From what everyone says she wasn't a bad nurse," he went on, exploring the ideas. "I thought she might have made a mistake that turned out badly, or told tales, or anything else that was stupid, and might have caused somebody to get hurt, lose an arm or leg, even die. But I haven't found anything. She seems to have been perfectly competent— if anything better than some others. She flirted and occasionally, when the rations were decent, drank a bit too much and was silly, but only to laugh too loudly and be a bit of a nuisance. Some of the men thought it was quite funny. Nobody took advantage of her. She had a few romances, but short-lived, just while a particular man was here, usually too badly wounded to do much anyway."

They moved another step forward. "It was just... just grabbing at life while she could," he added very quietly. "She was frightened and lonely, like everyone else. According to one of the orderlies, all she really wanted was to marry and have children." He stopped. "At least that's what he thought."

She could barely see his face in the uncertain lamplight, but there was a deep understanding of loss in it, and a pity that hurt. She thought of his beloved Eleanor and the baby who had died at birth. Would Lizzie Blaine ever be able to take Eleanor's place, or at least make a new place where the old hopes could begin again? At that moment she wished more than anything else in the world, more than anything for herself, that it would happen.

It was not until he turned that she saw his eyes and realized that he was thinking not just of Sarah Price, but probably also of Mason, who had fallen so far below the courage and hope Judith needed to feed her heart. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and she turned away. It was strangely painful to be known so well. It left her wounds exposed, too. And yet it meant she was not alone. As long as Joseph was alive, she never would be.

"We'll find who did it," she said, needing to say something practical, to stop looking at the things too delicate to touch. Times, places, who was where, who saw what—those were the things that mattered. But now they were at the head of the queue, and it was not until they had received their bread and stew that they were able to move into a quiet corner of a supply tent and resume talking.

"Let's be practical," she said firmly, taking a mouthful of stew and trying not to think what it tasted like. "After you've taken out all the people who couldn't have killed her because they were proved to be somewhere else, who's left?"

He gave a bleak smile, but there was a flash of humor in his eyes. "Sherlock Holmes? After you've eliminated all that is impossible, whatever is left, however unlikely, has to be the truth," he quoted roughly. "That's the trouble: Very little indeed is left. Most people are accounted for because it was a pretty busy night, but in the poor light and with people coming and going, there are still quite a
few
I'm not certain of." He ate another couple of mouthfuls of stew before going on. "The trouble is, I think several people could be lying. I can understand it." He looked at her over the top of the Dixie can. "No one wants to think it's someone they care about. Perhaps they owe a debt to some friend, a pretty big one, and so they lie to protect them, certain it doesn't matter because they would never do such a thing anyway."

She looked down quickly, feeling the guilt burn in her face for her own lie to protect Wil Sloan. It had been for exactly that reason. He could never do such a thing. She knew him too well to even imagine it for an instant, but others didn't, and he might be blamed. Jacobson didn't know anyone, and didn't understand the men, any of them, let alone an American medical volunteer. Did Joseph know she had lied? She was not going to tell him, not now, anyway.

"Yes, it's difficult," she agreed. At least her lie would not affect Matthew, and owning up to it would hurt Wil without helping anyone else. She bit into the bread and chewed it until she could swallow. Her throat was tight. "We'll just have to work harder."

Judith could not tell Lizzie why Matthew had come here, but naturally she knew he had been arrested. Everyone did. The sense of relief was palpable for most of them. He had not actually been charged yet; Jacobson was still gathering evidence, hoping for something more concrete, witnesses who had seen something, heard something. But it was only a matter of time.

News was coming about the front line moving east, towns falling one by one. The fighting was still bitter, with murderous losses on both sides, but the end could not be much longer in coming.

Judith was in the Evacuation tent making room for more wounded to be moved into it.

"I need to see one of the German prisoners," she said urgently to Lizzie. "It's important. For Matthew." She was almost on the edge of telling Lizzie why, but she remembered with a stab of pain still fresh the consequences of a previous confidence she'd made, and she kept silent.

Lizzie must have heard the emotion in her voice. She did not argue or ask for further explanation. "You'd better come with me," she said, looking away the moment after she had agreed. "I have a duty there as soon as we've finished this, but I expect you know that."

Judith felt guilty. She was using Lizzie, who was a friend, but she would have used anyone at all to help Matthew, and to get Schenckendorff to tell them everything he knew about the Peacemaker. Her mind told her that he must not be permitted to influence the terms of the armistice; her heart demanded that he answer for the deaths of her parents.

"Thank you," she said sincerely.

A flicker of a smile warmed Lizzie's face, then she led the way. There were two guards on duty, as usual, but they took no notice of nurses coming and going, and to them Judith in her VA.D. gray was just the same. The thought flashed in her mind to wonder if nurses were always invisible to them. Had Sarah come and gone this way without being noticed?

Inside the hut eight men lay on narrow cots, close to one another. Dark blankets covered their bodies up to the chin; the white bandages that were visible were mostly stained with blood. Lizzie stopped at the first bed. Judith went on, looking for a man whose foot was bandaged.