Chapter 17 #2
George gave a strange laugh, sat back, and poured himself another drink.
“You always did have the heart of a spaniel. But don’t delude yourself on my account.
Why shouldn’t I have a woman if I want her?
I’ve done worse.” His gaze drifted from Thomas to the liquid sloshing in his glass and then away to nowhere. “Far worse.”
“What do you mean?” Thomas swallowed, blood and whisky acrid in his mouth.
It was a long time before George answered, and then he spoke so softly Thomas barely heard him. “‘Thou shalt not kill.’ It makes no difference what I do or don’t do. I’m already damned.”
George had a medal from Crimea. Thomas remembered, suddenly, his brother’s homecoming.
Bad news, Pater, but I’m not dead yet. And then the medal, arcing through the air, spinning silver.
The marquess, of course, had not flinched or moved, the bruise livid against his pale cheek for weeks.
George had been thin and dark-eyed, but whole.
The ladies had found him quite dashing, a hero in a scarlet coat.
“Any priest would tell you that the commandment is against murder. A premeditated and wilful act. You fought for your country, for a cause, against enemy soldiers. It is a different matter entirely.”
“What the devil do you know, Thom?” George gave a weary sigh.
“Everyone looks the same on a battlefield. At Balaklava the fog was so thick, you could barely recognise your closest friend. Half the time, I didn’t know who I was fighting.
I don’t think anyone did, that whole bloody war.
You heard they sent the cavalry straight at the Russian artillery? ”
This was more than George had ever spoken of Crimea, at least to Thomas. But George had always been far closer to Edward than to his unwanted, unlike twin. “I read of the charge. The noble six hundred. ‘When can their glory fade?’”
“Don’t quote that bilge at me.” George reached for the decanter and poured himself another measure.
“Those men were patriots. We should honour their sacrifice.”
“Patriotism is a tattered flag flying over a field of corpses. They died in a foreign land, fighting someone else’s war, because somebody couldn’t relay an order, and for what?
To secure our trade routes to India. A land not ours to begin with.
” He lifted his glass in a derisive toast, brought it to his lips, and swallowed without pleasure.
“Nobility indeed. A glorious sacrifice, for Queen and Country.”
Thomas watched him helplessly, unsure what to say or do. Edward would have known.
“And to think,” George went on, his words slurring, “if our father had bought me that commission in the Eleventh as I wanted, it would have been me. Amusing, isn’t it, that one of His Lordship’s little games saved my life?
I would have died that day with the rest of them.
” He paused. “I sometimes wish I had.” He poured himself another drink with shaking hands, the liquid spilling down the sides of the glass and onto the table.
“But instead, I lived. And I kept on living, while everybody else around me died. Even Edward.”
“Well,” said Thomas, unsteadily, “I, for one, do not wish you had died at Sevastopol. And given how many soldiers did, I think it shows a certain lack of respect that you would say you wish to join them.”
George dropped the glass onto the table with a dull clatter.
He leaned forward again, hands clasped loosely between his knees, and stared at Thomas with a wild light burning in his eyes.
“But don’t you see? It was punishment. For everything I did, for all the lives I took, for all the lives I couldn’t save. ”
Thomas moved to the edge of the sofa, but the small space of floor between them seemed endless, as though it stretched all the way to Sevastopol. “What was?”
George gestured impatiently. “Edward, of course.”
Horror and pity sliced through Thomas’s heart like cold steel. “No, George, no. That was an accident. And you must not think like this. It’s madness.”
If George heard, or if the words meant anything to him, he gave no sign.
Instead, he stared unseeing into a far corner of the room and kept talking.
“They all said I had the devil’s luck, you know.
I’ll never forget that winter. The storms, the snow, the constant rumble of the guns like we lived always the end of days.
The tents were as good as rotten. Nothing could keep the cold at bay.
Even the officers were crawling with vermin.
No fuel, no heat, no food. My best friend died of dysentery. How glorious do you think it now?”
Thomas said nothing. He had known little of this. And it was still slightly beyond his power of imagining. How old had George been, then? Twenty? Twenty-one? Watching his country squander its youth while Thomas had laboured over dusty tomes at Cambridge, safe inside his golden cage of learning.
“I still remember it was beautiful.” George reached again for his glass. “That white city curling round the glittering turquoise bay. While we sat in our muddy trenches, shivering and starving in the dark, and died in droves.”
“George.” At his name, George’s head jerked up as though he had forgotten where he was and to whom he spoke. “That you lived while so many died is a blessing, not a curse. And God would not punish you for it.”
“You don’t understand anything, do you? Edward was the price, for my sins, for my survival.
He used to write to me, you know. Not like you.
‘Dear George, the weather continues clement.’” The ghost of his old smile curled on George’s lips.
“You were so boring it was a wonder I didn’t fall on my bayonet. ”
Thomas coloured. “I’m so sorry. I’m a poor correspondent. I didn’t know what to tell you or even if you wished to hear from me.”
“Of course I wanted to hear from you, you bloody fool. I kept trying to write back, but what could I say? ‘Weather continues inclement, everybody dead, I remain your loving brother.’”
“I would have preferred truth to silence.”
George gave a great bark of laughter. “Not the family way, old boy, not the family way. It should be our motto. ‘Sub silentio.’”
“What about, oh who was it again, St. Erth’s second daughter. Rosa, was it? Everyone thought you would marry her.”
“Oh yes, I liked her well enough. Too well to marry her. I was grateful for her letters, though. They were pretty things. Smelled of flowers. So did she. But it was Edward who kept me sane.” He finished his drink.
“Or some approximation thereof. He made me believe the world was waiting for me. Except it wasn’t.
He lied, though I can’t hold it against him.
” George came to his feet and spread his arms wide.
“This was the illusion all along. In truth, I never left Sevastopol.”
“You’re drunk.” Thomas was pleading and he did not care.
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re here, with me, and you’re safe and good and you’re still my brother.
And . . . and . . .” It was not something spoken in their family, but he said it now.
The words learned, not from God, with all His promises and mysteries—and the endless, endless silence—but in Micha’s arms. “I love you.”
“Yes, I’m drunk,” said George mildly, ignoring the rest. “And I know exactly what I’m saying.
It’s been ten years, Thom, and I still dream of it.
I still see the bodies. The mud and the blood and the glittering sea.
I still hear the guns in every carriage that rattles down the street.
Drinking helps but not very much.” He looked down at his hands and the scraped knuckles.
“I haven’t touched a woman I haven’t paid for in over a decade.
” He crossed to the window and stood looking out at the shadow-sloshed street below.
“It’s why I wanted that bloody housekeeper.
She looked untouchable. As though you could never hurt her. ”
“That does not excuse your conduct.”
George sighed. “I know. I’m not fit for human company. It’s true what they say. ‘Any hussar who is not dead by the age of thirty is a blackguard.’”
There was a long silence.
“George,” said Thomas, at last, “you need to know something.”
“Oh?”
“Well, a lot of things. But this is about Edward.” Thomas took a deep breath.
His heart was pounding like hoofbeats. “It’s not your fault he died.
It was not some divine retribution for your actions in the war.
The gun did not discharge by accident. He chose to take his own life. He . . . he killed himself.”
George’s back went absolutely rigid. “What?”
“The marquess made me keep the secret. To avoid the disgrace. And I didn’t take much convincing because I wanted to see our brother buried well.”
“And why,” asked George very softly, “was this kept from me?”
“I . . . don’t know. He insisted, and I was not strong enough to gainsay His Lordship. Perhaps he thought it would upset you.”
“Whereas being lied to is something I particularly enjoy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You always are, Thom. You always are.” George turned slowly. The moonlight bleached his face to bone. “I used to hate you for being so much our father’s creature. But now I see that none of us were any different.”
“You do at least understand,” Thomas insisted, “that you cannot blame yourself for Edward’s death. I should have told you. I know that.”
“By his own hand, or another’s, it makes no difference. Our brother is lost.”
“Not lost, just waiting. We will see him again.”
“Not I. I know what awaits me.” George came back to his chair and lifted the empty decanter, watching the dregs careen back and forth, in shades of amber and gold. “Do you know why he did it?”
“No, but I feel I should.”
“As do I.” George’s face hardened. “I’ll find out.”
“How? The man is dead.”
“I don’t know. But, for now, I’m going to bed. I’m very drunk, and I’m tired of talking.”
Thomas nodded. “As you wish.”