We Shall Not Sleep by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online Page B

"I was actually thinking about the future of the Middle East after the Turkish Empire is gone. Who will rule what, and how? Will the ordinary people be any better off, any freer from hunger or oppression?"
    "Heroes are ordinary people, Mason," Oldroyd told him. "They're not ten feet tall. It's the inside that's different, not the outside. You could walk past Christ in the street if you weren't looking for Him." He sighed. "Come to think of it, most of us do."
    "Maybe that's why we usually put Him on a cross," Mason said grimly. "At least that's different. Although I think it's peculiarly appropriate as a symbol of humiliation and pointless suffering. No wonder Europe worships Him. We see ourselves, our whole race, in one image of the ultimate defeat."
    Oldroyd leaned forward, his hands clenched, his face so grave that his skin was tight across the sharp bones of his cheeks beneath his sunken eyes. "It's what a man fights for that defines who he is, boy! And a man who doesn't love anything enough to pay what it costs doesn't deserve to have it. Sometimes it costs pain and blood and terror. Sometimes it's years of quiet weeping. Sometimes it's waiting in the dark, without giving up." He blinked, as if seeing other times and people for an instant. "My grandfather fought Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. My father and I fought in the Crimea, Battle of the Alma, 1854. I was twenty-three. Heard General Campbell tell us, 'There's no retreat from here, men. You must die where you stand.' He died in my arms. My son lost his legs in the Zulu Wars, 1879, at Rorke's Drift— hundred and thirty-nine of us against five thousand Zulus. My grandson fell at Passchendaele. Fifty thousand we lost in the first day."
    Mason said nothing. In spite of himself, the ache in his throat was too tight and hard for him to swallow.
    Oldroyd blinked. "Of course we lose sometimes. What has that to do with anything? It's not winning or losing that says who you are, it's the courage that makes you stand fast, with your eyes forward, and fight for what you love. Never let go of hope. Real victories happen one by one, and they're over the enemy inside. If I didn't teach you that, boy, then I didn't teach you anything."
    Mason put his hand up and pushed the heavy hair off his forehead. "You sound like the chaplain in the Cambridgeshires at Ypres, and an ambulance driver I know."
    "Woman driver?" Oldroyd asked him quietly.
    "Yes." Mason was surprised. Judith's face was as clear in his mind as if they had parted only days ago rather than after the court-martial last year.
    "Thought so." Oldroyd nodded. "Women are as brave as any man. They die to save their own without a second thought. But then that's love, isn't it? Loyalty. Women never give up, not when it's someone they love. Many a child wouldn't be here if they did." Oldroyd sipped his cider. "But a good woman'll fight for anyone that's hurt. It's someone's need that draws them, anything vulnerable."
    That was just what Joseph Reavley would have said. Mason knew it as he sat there in the crowded tavern with the voices and the laughter around him, the smell of ale, the sawdust, the light gleaming on pewter tankards hanging above the bar and horse brasses on the wall. That passion was what Judith looked for in a man because she had seen it and understood it in her brother. She had felt it herself and had carried its burden for years.
    Then quite suddenly he realized that for all its weight, that passion was far less crushing than the doubt and sorrow he carried himself. He was looking at what he had lost, not at what he had won. It was not only Judith he had lost; it was something of the best in himself. No matter how difficult it was, or what comfort of surrender it cost him, he must change himself. He must become who he wanted to be: a man he could look at in the mirror with some sense of respect, at least for his aspirations, if not his accomplishments.
    "Yes, you're right," he said aloud.
    Oldroyd blinked again.