Harry looks around the field. The graves stand in orderly lines, quite straight, and the grass is neatly cut around them. Most are a standard wooden cross, a metal strip stamped with the details of the man they represent. He wonders, looking at the stretching lines, how long it is going to take him to find his brother. He thinks about the furrows of the plowed field.

“I am glad of your stubbornness,” he says. “I am grateful for it.”

“Barnes was our battalion carpenter, Dobson our quartermaster, Alfred here is a scholar with a shovel, Edwards is a wonder with a lawn mower, and I’m good at making lists and waving my arms around.”

“All the scattered graves are being rounded up,” says Alfred.

“You make it sound like sheep.”

“That might be easier. Mr. Blythe here has been floundering around in the fields with an old trench map.”

“I can’t find anything that I recognize.”

Ralph lights a cigarette and offers the packet around. “Turkish,” he says. “My one vice. Do you think it terribly unpatriotic?”

They share a match. Harry shakes his head. “Will you help me?”

FROM THE WINDOW of Ralph Fielding’s office he can see piles of iron shards and barbed wire pressed into bales. There are stacks of wooden stakes, corkscrew pickets, and a great tangle of telegraph wire. It looks like some sort of satanic scrapyard.

“I’m a great one for paperwork,” Ralph tells Harry over the ledger. His now-washed finger is working along the lines. “I love a bit of alphabetizing and an index card. It makes me feel efficient, you see. It’s just a pity that my handwriting is so god-awful.”

There are a great many names in the ledger. Harry can’t help but scan the page. “A battalion’s worth?” he asks.

“And more. The problem is the ones who we can’t name—the unlistable, the noncategorizable, the untidy noncompliers with alphabetical register, those who refuse to stand in A-to-Z line. There are far, far too many graves to which we can’t attach a name strip.”

Harry thinks about Rachel. Is her David one of the rebelliously noncompliant? Is he lying in a field somewhere under a nameless cross? He thinks about Francis. Could it really all be as simple as an administrative omission? Is he simply sleeping silently in an anonymous grave?

“Far, far too many,” repeats Ralph, his eyes entirely unsmiling. “But mercifully your brother isn’t among them.” He looks up from the ledger and nods.