A Christmas Garland by Anne Perry

Author:Anne Perry [Perry, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781410452191
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

NARRAWAY COULD NOT SLEEP. HE LAY ON HIS COT. IT WAS comfortable enough, better than many places where he had slept perfectly well over the last year, but restfulness eluded him. He turned one way, then the other, sometimes with his eyes closed, sometimes staring up at the ceiling, which was pale from the starlight through the window. Tallis’s face came back to his mind, regardless of all his efforts to banish it away. This was an inescapable burden, suffocating him.

It was not only Narraway’s career at stake, it was the whole regiment’s honor, its belief in justice as an abstract, a perfect and beautiful thing that every man strove for. Except that that was nonsense. Some men strove for it. Many merely used the word as an excuse.

Narraway had not been among the soldiers who had relieved Cawnpore after the siege. He had been farther north. But he had heard about it. What the soldiers arriving had seen had driven them almost out of their senses. The vengeance had been appalling. No one had bothered with justice then.

Had he not seen the emotion in the men, the stunned look in their eyes, the sudden clumsiness in movement, as if they lacked coordination? The horror and the grief were too enormous to recover from in just a few short months. Maybe those men would never again be quite the same men as they had been before.

Right now, faced with the immediate decision of what to say at the trial in a matter of hours, Narraway dared not think about his future, but that time would come. He could not win; it was only the measure of his loss that counted. Some would judge him for trying at all, even though the soldier in them would know he was obeying an order he could not refuse. Reason would defend him, but emotion would not.

Again and again, he came back to reason. He could see very easily why Latimer needed to understand. It was not simply a matter of morale. Without understanding, they would commit the same errors over and over again in the future. For all he knew, they might be committing them right now.

What was he misreading? Was there something in the puzzle that did not belong? He must have some plan before morning.

He went over it again in his mind and came up with the same answers. There was no one it could have been, except Tallis. Tallis had sworn his innocence. And no one, not even Busby, could come up with a reason why Tallis should have wanted Dhuleep to escape.

Reason—that was the missing piece.

He could not think of anything that would justify letting Dhuleep escape. His hunger to see sense was growing more powerful, the need for an overall intelligence that promised future control.

He could hear no sound in the night air except his own breathing and the whine of an insect somewhere.

Then a thought struck him. Perhaps the act made no sense because it was not the result Tallis had intended.

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