He had been buried alive on the Somme, when their salient had been blown up by a shell falling short of the German lines. The miracle was he had lived through it, but lying in the suffocating darkness, pinned there by the weight of the body under which he lay and the heavier earth above them both, he had known no one could reach him in time. He could hardly breathe, as the minutes turned into what seemed like hours, and then just as the small pocket of air that had sustained him was used up and his mind was beginning to struggle to keep track of where he was in that cold black void, help had finally come. Hands dug frantically, the weight lifted, and as he was pulled out, loose earth cascading from his hair and uniform like water, he had seen the face of the man who had saved him. It was Hamish MacLeod’s dead body, and the pocket of air that had been a gift of life had been created by Hamish’s clothing. The shock had left him unable to speak, and his rescuers had put that down to near suffocation.

It was not until he’d reached the aid station and was given a few hours of rest that he’d heard Hamish MacLeod’s voice in his ear, taunting, reminding him that his men were dead, and he had no excuse for being alive.

Getting a grip on the memory now, Rutledge called Hopkins’s name, and the man dropped his arm, swung his legs to the floor, and looked toward the barred window of his cell. He hadn’t been asleep. That was obvious. “What do you want? Is this another trick?”

He was a tall man, slim and very fair, Nordic fair rather than English, with dark blue eyes. But he had broad shoulders and was at second glance a great deal stronger than he first appeared. Deceptively so, Rutledge thought.

“We’re keeping you here for a few more days,” Rutledge told him. “For your own safety. But I need to know. What was your relationship with the four Eastfield men who have died? Did you go to school with them?”

“I was apprenticed at the furniture works when I was young. We were in school together for perhaps three years. And then my mother taught me in the evening, when I came home with Mr. Kenton at the end of the workday.”

“What do you remember most about them?”

Hopkins didn’t need to think about his answer. “They were all of an age. Except for the Pierce brothers. And good at sports. Less so in the classroom. I was far better in mathematics, I remember. And better at spelling as well.”

“Were they troublemakers?”

“No more so than most boys.”

He changed the subject. “I’m told you hated the English for what happened to your family during the war.”