War Game (8 page)

“The Ratcliffes? Oh, they simply had the good fortune to marry the granddaughter—the Steyning-Parrott heiress. She was the only survivor of the whole affair, you know … and later on she became Cromwell’s ward. It’s interesting that he never married her off to anyone—interesting and possibly significant, because he was one of the first to look for the gold… . But then after the restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 she prudently secured her estates by marrying the first impoverished Royalist who came her way. A sharp fellow by the name of Charles Ratcliffe, oddly enough.”

The original Charlie Ratcliffe.

“Even without the gold it was a good match for him,” continued Nayler. “His family had lost everything in the war, confiscated or sold—I don’t know which, and she brought him about five thousand acres in exchange for his name. It was a good English compromise, even if he was a bit of a bounder.”

Pirates, religious and political fanatics— and now bounders. If Charlie was a throwback to the seventeenth century he had everything going for him, no doubt about that, from the Parrott-Steyning-Ratcliffe connection.

But time was running out—

“You don’t happen to know how the gold was found, do you, Professor?”

Nayler chuckled malevolently. “Yes I do—as it happens. But that’s classified, I’m afraid, Audley. You’ll have to wait your turn for that like the rest. It’s a little surprise we’ve got up our sleeves, don’t you know.”

Bastard, bastard, bastard.

“But I’ll tell you this, Audley: they were clever, Parrott and Steyning were. Both devious and ruthless men, no question about that. Just you wait for my little television programme, eh? Clever and devious and ruthless—and Parrott was the more ruthless of the two.”

The pips sounded, and an obscene insult formed on Audley’s tongue.

But then Dr. Highsmith shook his head: revenge was a dish which should always be served cold.

“Thank you, Professor. You’ve been extremely—“

The phone cut him off. Extremely, unpleasantly, humiliatingly helpful. Nothing was going to shake the historical existence of that gold. The first cutting had been accurate enough. It remained to be seen whether he could improve on the second one.

THE SIGNPOST
was just where the Brigadier had said it would be, exactly at the crest of the ridge. But then the Brigadier was always exact.

Audley parked his new 2200 carefully on the verge and studied the sign without enthusiasm. After his initial resistance he had felt the old inevitable curiosity stirring, not for the job itself, but for the ultimate
why
hidden somewhere at the heart of it. But now the reaction to the curiosity was setting in: such curiosity was well enough for Rikki-tikki the young mongoose, but for a respectable middle-aged husband and father it was a poor substitute for the soft breasts and soft cheeks of home after a long journey from foreign parts.

The sign was small and newly painted, or even brand new, and it bore the legend
To the Monument
in capital letters, and
Swine Brook Field 1643
in lower case beneath them.

He climbed stiffly out of the car and surveyed the landscape. The crest of the ridge was quite sharp, almost a miniature hog’s back compared with the undulations to the east and west of it.

But Swine
Brook
had to be the key, and in the valley to the west a straggle of willows and thick bushes marked the line of a stream. On his right the pastureland ran down towards the stream, flattening for the last two hundred yards into a rich water-meadow.

Swine Brook Field: the field where they once let the pigs loose.

He followed the signpost’s finger down a rutted track along the line of the hog’s back between overgrown hedges of bramble and hawthorn. If this had been the battle-front of one of the 1643 armies it would have been a strong position, no doubt about that with the hedge to hide the musketeers and the reverse slope to the east to snug down the cavalry out of sight.

Except that he didn’t know which side had fought where at Swine Brook Field yet, only that it had been the King’s Cavaliers who had won the day.

Cavalier—wrong, but romantic; Roundhead—right, but repulsive.

Which side would Sir David Audley have been? Would he have followed his head or his heart? Or his religion? Or his father? Or his county? Or the source of his income?

But there was another thing for sure: of all wars, civil wars were the cruellest, 1640s and 1970s no different. Because the winning and the losing was rarely the end of them, as old Sir Jacob had seen—

Paul Mitchell was leaning on a farm gate set back in the thickness of the hedge, waiting for him with well-simulated patience.

No mistaking Paul. The first time Audley had seen him, across a table strewn with maps and documents in the Military Studies Institute, he’d been hidden under a near-revolutionary shock of mousey hair, and the last time the shock had been tamed to an army trim, blond-rinsed. Now the mouse-colour was back and the length too, with a van Dyke beard and moustache, cavalier-style and flecked with ginger. But no disguise, natural grown or artificial, could hide the predatory Paul underneath; at least, not from the eyes of the man who had recruited him to the Queen’s service.

At the time, almost at the first glance, it had seemed the clever thing to attempt it; and every aptitude test and training report since then had confirmed his intuition. If there was any logic and justice to promotion, Paul would be running a section in five years’ time, and a department five years after that, and the whole bloody show five years after
that
.

And in the meantime, what could be more sensible than to let him win his spurs under the control of the man who had identified his natural talents at a glance?

God help us all, thought Audley. Paul is a fine feather in my cap—and how glad I am that I won’t be wearing that cap in fifteen years’ time!

“Hullo, David. You’re looking bronzed and fit.”

For a bet, Mitchell knew where he’d been these last weeks.

“Bronzed and fit, my eye! I’m tired and bad-tempered, and you had better believe that… . Good afternoon, Paul. You look like a sociology lecturer at a radical polytechnic. Does this gate open, or do I have to climb over it?”

“It doesn’t open.”

“But you have to watch out for your trousers—there’s a strand of barbed wire on the top, just this side. I’ve already torn my jeans on the danm thing,” said Frances Fitzgibbon as she came into view at Mitchell’s shoulder. “And I think I’ve spiked my bottom, too.”

Audley stared at her against his will. The thought of Frances Fitzgibbon’s little bottom was arresting, as was the thought and sight of all her other components, miniature though they were. It wasn’t that she was in the least beautiful, or even that she was pretty except in a pert, early-flowering, childish way. But at first sight she was the sensual essence of every man’s imagined indiscretion with the girl glimpsed across the shop counter.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Fitzgibbon— Frances,” said Audley carefully.

It was always the same: after that first sight the truth about Frances Fitzgibbon dowsed desire like a bucket of ice-water. Despite appearances—which so totally belied reality that she was worth a fortune to the department as she stood, torn jeans and all—Frances was a kindly and serious-minded young woman trapped in the wrong body, who deserved a better fate than having to work with Paul Mitchell … and maybe with David Audley too.

“How are Faith and little Cathy?” asked Frances.

“They were fine when I last saw them some weeks ago.”

The brown eyes became sympathetic. “Like that, is it? They double-crossed you again? Poor David—I’m sorry.”

“And I’m sorry about the—barbed wire.”

Mitchell grinned. “I offered to render first aid, but she wasn’t having any.”

The eyes flashed. “I should hope not!”

Mitchell too, thought Audley. But that was the predictable male response, a sort of protective lust, and at least they were of an age. Two more babies.

“Never mind, Frances dear,” Mitchell went on unrepentantly, “you have an honourable injury On Her Majesty’s Service to console you—

Then will she strip her … jeans
and show her scars
And say, ‘These wounds I had on
Swine Brook Field’

—and David has us to console him.”

Babies. Or if not babies then mere children, they had given him to do this job. Clever children, but children all the same. And now they were making him feel older than he really was, and not a little jealous too.

“Some consolation!” murmured Frances.

Audley cleared his throat. He had to stop this sparring and start asserting his authority.

“Very well, then …” He pointed to the plain stone cross which rose from the grass a dozen yards down the hillside. “I take it that is the monument, and Swine Brook Field is beyond it.”

“That’s right,” said Mitchell. “And the stream down there is the Swine Brook, no less.”

Audley was unhappily aware that he had observed the obvious, and that Mitchell had capped him deliberately by adding the equally obvious.

“So what happened?”

“What happened …” Mitchell paused momentarily. “Well, we’re standing just about midway along the spectator line. They filled in right along the ridge—“ he spread his arms out on each side “—about a quarter of a mile to the left and right of us here. And there were ropes strung along to keep them from spreading too far down the hill and getting mixed up in the battle. So—“

“I meant,what happened in 1643?” said Audley waspishly. It was just possible that Mitchell hadn’t considered it necessary to take his researches that far back, and nothing would put him down more surely than having to admit a little healthy ignorance.

“In 1643?”

“In the battle. Swine Brook Field, 1643,” said Audley with exaggerated patience. “I like to start at the beginning.”

“Okay.” Mitchell shrugged. “We’re on the attack line—they came over the hill from behind us—“

“Who is they?”

Mitchell looked at him uncertainly.

“You don’t know anything about the battle?”

“If I did I wouldn’t be asking. Who came over the hill?”

“The Royalists.” Mitchell’s voice was just a shade sharper. “The Roundhead relief convoy was travelling up the valley, on the old road to Standingham alongside the stream, more or less.”

“A convoy?”

“Wagons and carts, that’s right. They call it a battle, but the truth is it was more like an ambush—or an overgrown skirmish that worked like an ambush. The Royalists weren’t really lying in wait for them, they were simply trying to stop them getting to Standingham and this was where they collided. It just happened to work out badly for the Roundheads and perfectly for the Royalists, that’s all.”

“What was in the wagons?”

“General supplies, but mostly cannon-balls and gunpowder, apparently… . There was this man Monson—Lord Thomas Monson, or ‘Black Thomas’ as they called him—who was besieging Standingham Hall. It wasn’t a big affair: Monson had about 700 men and there were maybe 250 inside the perimeter at Standingham—maybe less. In fact, it was more like a local feud, because the Monsons of Ingham Hall and the Steynings of Standingham Castle were neighbours. Only they just happened to hate each other’s guts.”

“Because Monson was a Royalist and Steyning was a Roundhead?”

“That was the way it was. But that wasn’t the only reason why they hated each other. There was also bad blood between them over a lawsuit of years before, when they’d both laid claim to the same piece of land somewhere, or something. And the King’s court ruled in Monson’s favour—he had more influence with the King, so the story goes. It was a typical feud situation—like a range war in the Wild West.”

Audley nodded. “I see. So when the Civil War broke out Monson naturally sided with the King.”

“Exactly. And Steyning declared for Parliament.”

“So when Monson laid siege to Standingham Hall, then Steyning sent to Parliament for help. And they sent him these supplies?”

“That’s right. And when Monson heard about it he appealed to the King, and the King lent him two regiments of cavalry, and he rode back hell for leather to head off the supply column. Also, at the same time, he ordered up 300 of his best men from the siege lines to block the old road at the top of this valley.” Mitchell pointed upstream. “He probably planned to rendezvous here before the Roundhead convoy arrived. But they arrived ahead of schedule and ran into the road-block first, and they were just about to deploy against it when Black Thomas reached the ridge here with the cavalry.”

“I see. And being a good cavalier he charged straight in and beat them?” Audley stared down the hillside. The question was almost unnecessary; if the country had been anything like this in 1643 then the unfortunate Parliamentarians wouldn’t have stood a chance, caught deploying in the open by the Royalist horsemen on the ridge above them. Charging at the gallop was the one thing the cavaliers did well from the start of the war, he remembered.

The problem was to stop them from charging too far, right through the enemy and off the battlefield altogether. But here on Swine Brook Field, the Swine Brook itself would have prevented them from doing that. Plus, no doubt, the prospect of plundering the wagons.

“Yes, that’s just about it,” agreed Mitchell. “Most of the convoy escort ran away, but the Royalists butchered a couple of hundred on the banks of the stream. It was all over in a quarter of an hour.”

“It all sounds rather dull,” said Audley.

“It sounds rather nasty to me,” said Frances.

“The gentry killing the peasantry, you mean?” Mitchell raised an eyebrow. Then he grinned at Audley. “She’s a proper little Roundhead at heart, you know. A Puritan maid despite appearances.”

There was more truth in that than Mitchell intended, thought Audley.

“I simply don’t find killing attractive,” said Frances coolly. “Or military history interesting.”

That was one deliberately in Mitchell’s eye, for that had been his chosen career before Audley had tempted him into one even more suitable for his talents, as Frances well knew.