Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

A room in the mairie had been requisitioned for the trial and in the morning Naomi walked to that august French republican building with its two wings which made a near-encircling square within which little leniency seemed possible. Mounting the steps, she presented herself to the Tommy provost at the counter. He signed her in and asked her to wait in a corridor. Sitting on a bench, she saw a number of disheveled British soldiers proceeding to trial in handcuffs, to be judged for crimes of indiscipline and inebriation and desertion.

At last she was fetched by an Australian provost who asked her what the weather had been like on her journey and led her down a further corridor and into the featureless courtroom.

She saw Ian first. He stood in apparently good health behind a wooden barrier to one side of the room. He wore a jacket but with no webbing belt. They must have given him braces for the day because his pants seemed to stay up without the indignity of his holding them. There were two officers seated at tables on the floor of the court and then—at the table set on a rostrum—sat three young-looking officers who were to be Kiernan’s judges. She had expected older men. But many of the older men had been winnowed out. The contrast between the judges’ smartness, as worn as their uniforms might be, and Ian, produced a peculiar dread in her. Her eyes fixed on them as she was sworn in by a military clerk of the court and told to sit. They—by contrast—still wrote casual notes and turned around in their chairs to mutter to each other.

Ian’s eyes lay calmly on her a second, and then he looked to his front as if he had earlier been ordered to. He had a young captain for his counsel—a man with the sort of moustache grown in the hope it will cause him to be taken seriously. His military prosecutor was a major and seemed the oldest man in court—though barely forty years. Could these men all be relied on to judge Ian in their own terms? That was the tortuous question. Were there unseen superiors they would attempt to gratify? And though this room in the mairie was bare and lacked the atmospherics of the stage, the members of the court could have with justice appeared in any court-martial drama in any theatre. It seemed a gratuitous matter that a man’s freedom should hang on a ritual like this, with the three immature priests and the acolytes putting on their amateur show.

She was asked to stand in front of the table behind which stood Ian. During swearing-in and all the rest she could not see him. The prosecuting major asked her to outline her own military and individual reasons for having presented herself. Did she know the accused, when had she first met him, under what name did she know him, and in what subsequent circumstances did they meet? He asked automatically and seemed to have no idea how crucial all these matters were. There was a different order of urgency in her answers.

Despite not possessing any breath, she began to give the summary of their long acquaintance which the prosecutor did not let her spend much time on—interrupting details she considered crucial. For example, how Ian had behaved after the Archimedes sank. How could she make this major assess the true weight of these matters? How could he be made to see that it was essential to the globe’s sanity that he be acquitted?

So, he asked, you are now the fiancée of the accused?

She said that they had been betrothed according to the rites of the Society of Friends.

The Quakers? he asked.

That’s what people call them, said Naomi. And then she said, in case the name were an argument against Ian, When I visited the Society of Friends in Paris with Lieutenant Kiernan, I did not see anyone quake. In fact, the reverse was true. It was all calm consideration on their part.

And you are not one of these Quakers yourself?

No. I am not. But I am not averse to them.

Then how would you say this war should be fought? By men like Lieutenant Kiernan? Should everyone be a surgical supply officer or a medical orderly?

One of the presiding officers did remark offhandedly that the prosecutor was being perhaps too zealous and that Staff Nurse Durance was not herself on trial.

You don’t come from a background of conscientious objection to fighting, do you? the major asked her.

I do not, she agreed. But, mind you, the question never arose where I came from.

If you had a son, say, and there was a future war, would you let him fight?

I would try to stop him. I’ve seen so much mutilation… No mother would…

All right, the major said, holding up a hand and returning to his table. He sat and now Ian’s young captain was permitted to ask his questions. She watched his face for the sort of moral force that might set Ian free.

Has Lieutenant Kiernan ever mentioned in your presence his objection to bearing arms?

She was pleased to report he had. Even when we first met in 1915. Once we had become friends, he said many times he wanted to look after the wounded and sick but that his religion prevented him fighting.

And you and Lieutenant Kiernan are survivors of a torpedoed ship, the Archimedes ? How did Lieutenant Kiernan behave at that time? Was he at all cowardly?

I would say he was very brave.

How did he demonstrate that courage?

In the water he took control of our party. It was why so many from our raft survived. He kept us together and urged us not to let go. Some men did let go but it was not his fault. When we saw a ship, he let off our flare.

And sadly that was all Ian’s lawyer wanted to know. Ian looked at her with a half smile as she was taken out of the court. She did not intend to go politely. She turned and said, Gentlemen, everyone who ever met him was told. That his conscience would not let him bear arms.

The young officer who had represented Ian intercepted her and whispered, If you wait outside, I’ll tell you the outcome.

The humanity of this cheered her. She waited in a delirium on a bench in the corridor. Here, she surmised, in peaceful times shopkeepers and farmers had sat awaiting decisions on land boundaries and drainage. Her imagination swung between Ian set free and some improbable sentence of years or worse. There was no question but that she too was counted in whatever befell him.

She was aware as she waited of all the futile prayers, including hers, which filled the air—appeals to a deity who did not seem able to stand between artillery and this or that mother’s son or wife’s husband. She felt the uselessness and the silliness of adding her own. Yet it was an unstoppable impulse. She pleaded that the judges became drunk with wisdom and sent Ian back to his clearing station.

The young captain advocate came out of the court.

I’m sorry to tell you this, he said. It’s fifteen years.

The stated span of time made no instant impact on her. Fifteen years? she asked. What does that mean?

It’s the sentence, sorry to say. Everyone agrees it’s rotten luck. But it had to be done. And of course it’s better than… other possibilities. What you said about his bravery when your ship sank… that helped him.

The reality of this toll of years entered her now like a wave of heat. She stumbled. He caught her by both elbows.

Steady on, Nurse, he told her. The presiding officer said you could see the prisoner for a few minutes. Only this: it’s best not to get him or yourself distressed.

Two military police officers took her to a small room where she could say good-bye to him. He was already standing with his hands cuffed in front of him. The officers remained there and seemed anxious above all—like the ones at the prison days before—that no touch should occur.

This is ridiculous, she said to him. Ian, what can I do?