they knew; what must they be feeling about others?
What lay behind the savagery that had swept over some man until he had lost everything within himself that made him decent, all gentleness, all respect for life or dignity or hope? Had war changed him, or had it merely stripped from him a veneer concealing the barbarism that had always been there, just hidden from view?
Did he know the man, and had he failed to see it? What manner of priest does not recognize hell when it is in front of him, face-to-face? A man so blunted by the sight and sound and smell of suffering that he has shut himself off from the pain of it, a man who refuses to see, because seeing hurts? Seeing forces you to acknowledge that you must also act. The excuse of ignorance is stripped away, leaving you naked before the truth.
He stopped outside the Pre-Operation tent. He was not ready to go around it to the Treatment tents yet, even though he was so cold his muscles were tight and his teeth clenched.
Who had done this? One man must answer for it. But was one man alone responsible, or were they all, because they had taken young men and taught them that fighting and killing are necessary for the nation to survive? And they were necessary! Surrender was not just a matter of ceasing to fight; it meant forfeiting all the freedoms that gave you the chance to make any choice about good and evil, for you and your children, and maybe even their children as well.
Perhaps it was how you fought that made the difference. Maybe some of the soldiers who lived on and went home were just as much casualties as the dead. What had war done to the man who had torn Sarah Price open that way? Could they ever heal him and make him something like whole again? Or must they simply execute him, for the sake of society? Whose was the guilt?
He would speak to the nurses one by one. He must get some sense of order into his mind, learn all he could about that night. Where had Sarah been working, and with whom? Could other people establish that beyond doubt? It was a busy place, men coming and going all the time, but with their attention on the injured and on their own jobs and the terrible urgency of them.
Still, if he could discover what time she had been killed, then it would be possible to eliminate most people, and it might begin to make sense. Of course he would learn as much as he could about Sarah herself, just in case there was any personal element to her death, but it could so easily have been no more than being alone in the dark at the wrong time.
First he walked around the Admissions tent into the wind and across the open space to where he found Judith in the lee of the supply tent, very carefully fitting new spark plugs into the engine of her ambulance.
"Don't ask me where I got them!" she warned. "Believe me, you would prefer not to know."
He'd had no intention of asking. He was a lot wiser now than he had been two years ago. Odd how your family was the last to realize that you had grown up, or had learned from your mistakes.
"Were you here last night?" he asked her.
She smiled at him. Her face was smeared with engine oil and more than a little mud, but she still had the same steady eyes, the high cheekbones, and the passionate and so very vulnerable mouth. What on earth was she going to do in St. Giles after the war? Marry some local worthy who would never begin to understand her? He repeated the question.
"Driving back from the front line, most of it," she answered. "I dropped wounded off here at about three, helped get them inside, had a cup of tea and something to eat. I cleaned the ambulance. I suppose I left again about half past four. I got lost somewhere about Polygon Wood, I think, but it could have been any other hill with tree stumps on it. I got back here about daylight."
"Are you sure of the times?"
She frowned. "I think so. Why? Was that when she was ... killed?" She said it with difficulty, and he could hear the pain in her voice.
"I don't know
What lay behind the savagery that had swept over some man until he had lost everything within himself that made him decent, all gentleness, all respect for life or dignity or hope? Had war changed him, or had it merely stripped from him a veneer concealing the barbarism that had always been there, just hidden from view?
Did he know the man, and had he failed to see it? What manner of priest does not recognize hell when it is in front of him, face-to-face? A man so blunted by the sight and sound and smell of suffering that he has shut himself off from the pain of it, a man who refuses to see, because seeing hurts? Seeing forces you to acknowledge that you must also act. The excuse of ignorance is stripped away, leaving you naked before the truth.
He stopped outside the Pre-Operation tent. He was not ready to go around it to the Treatment tents yet, even though he was so cold his muscles were tight and his teeth clenched.
Who had done this? One man must answer for it. But was one man alone responsible, or were they all, because they had taken young men and taught them that fighting and killing are necessary for the nation to survive? And they were necessary! Surrender was not just a matter of ceasing to fight; it meant forfeiting all the freedoms that gave you the chance to make any choice about good and evil, for you and your children, and maybe even their children as well.
Perhaps it was how you fought that made the difference. Maybe some of the soldiers who lived on and went home were just as much casualties as the dead. What had war done to the man who had torn Sarah Price open that way? Could they ever heal him and make him something like whole again? Or must they simply execute him, for the sake of society? Whose was the guilt?
He would speak to the nurses one by one. He must get some sense of order into his mind, learn all he could about that night. Where had Sarah been working, and with whom? Could other people establish that beyond doubt? It was a busy place, men coming and going all the time, but with their attention on the injured and on their own jobs and the terrible urgency of them.
Still, if he could discover what time she had been killed, then it would be possible to eliminate most people, and it might begin to make sense. Of course he would learn as much as he could about Sarah herself, just in case there was any personal element to her death, but it could so easily have been no more than being alone in the dark at the wrong time.
First he walked around the Admissions tent into the wind and across the open space to where he found Judith in the lee of the supply tent, very carefully fitting new spark plugs into the engine of her ambulance.
"Don't ask me where I got them!" she warned. "Believe me, you would prefer not to know."
He'd had no intention of asking. He was a lot wiser now than he had been two years ago. Odd how your family was the last to realize that you had grown up, or had learned from your mistakes.
"Were you here last night?" he asked her.
She smiled at him. Her face was smeared with engine oil and more than a little mud, but she still had the same steady eyes, the high cheekbones, and the passionate and so very vulnerable mouth. What on earth was she going to do in St. Giles after the war? Marry some local worthy who would never begin to understand her? He repeated the question.
"Driving back from the front line, most of it," she answered. "I dropped wounded off here at about three, helped get them inside, had a cup of tea and something to eat. I cleaned the ambulance. I suppose I left again about half past four. I got lost somewhere about Polygon Wood, I think, but it could have been any other hill with tree stumps on it. I got back here about daylight."
"Are you sure of the times?"
She frowned. "I think so. Why? Was that when she was ... killed?" She said it with difficulty, and he could hear the pain in her voice.
"I don't know
Similar Books
