Audley registered his surprise. “I had an ancestor there—at Salamanca ... an idiot officer in our dragoons. He was killed earlier the same day, when they smashed the French in Le Marchant’s charge,” he explained almost shyly. “Family history, you might say . . . my mother’s family, Mr Wiesehöfer.” Then he nodded.
“But you’re quite right about the Germans in the British service—
Hessians in America, but most of all Hanoverians against Napoleon, whom they didn’t like at all. . . . They used to slip across the Channel and enlist in a depot not far from here, at Weymouth—the 1st and 2nd eventually became the Kaiser’s 13th and 14th Uhlans . . . ‘ Tapfer und Tret? was the 1st’s motto at Salamanca and Garcia Hernandez—” he looked down at Benje “—
Fortis et Fidelis to you, young Benjamin. Not a bad motto for anyone, foederati or native.”
“Brave and faithful,” translated Benedikt.
“So what was our Fighting Man?” Audley considered him, unsmiling this time. “We may never know—you may be right. All we do know for sure is that he came into Duntisbury Chase alive, and he stayed for fifteen hundred years—dead.”
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III
“A fascinating old mechanism.” The priest nodded towards the contraption of cog-wheels and weights and ropes which Benedikt had been dutifully studying for the last five minutes. “They say that it is the oldest clock in England still in working order. But that is not strictly true, of course, for it was silent for many years, and it has been extensively restored.”
As though it had been listening for its cue, the mechanism jerked suddenly, and the ropes on the wall quivered, and somewhere far away and high up a bell rang in answer to the movement, joining the other bells which had been calling the faithful to prayer. In God’s world it must be time for evensong, to give thanks for the day’s blessings and to pray for safety during the hours of darkness to come.
The priest plucked nervously at the folds of his long black cassock.
“Mr Wiesehöfer?” He smiled tentatively at Benedikt.
A priest? But a priest, of course! Who better, in a cathedral, than a priest?
Benedikt nodded. “Good evening, Father. I am Thomas Wiesehöfer, yes.”
“Mr Wiesehöfer.” The priest looked half relieved, half fearful.
Perhaps he really was a priest. “If you would follow me, please.”
Benedikt crossed the nave silently in the wake of the black cassock, pausing only to pay his duty in the central aisle in dummy1
conformity with his guide. There was a small gathering of evening worshippers far down the rows of chairs towards the high altar, he observed. It would have been pleasant to have been able to join them—it would have been something to tell Mother in his next letter, the reading of which would have pleased her. But he had other gods to worship now, the unforgiving old earth-bound gods of man’s world.
The priest waited for him by a doorway, flanked by an elderly black-gowned verger who regarded him with a mixture of disapproval and slight suspicion as he squeezed through the half-closed door into the gloom beyond.
It was a cloister. He turned, expecting the priest to follow him, but the man remained in the gap, unmoving.
“Down to your right, Mr Wiesehöfer—you will see a light.”
Benedikt looked to his right. On one side the cloister was open, but the evening had come prematurely for the time of year under a canopy of low clouds and the passage ahead of him was full of shadows. Far down it he could see a faint yellow light diffusing out of a gap in the wall.
He turned back to the priest. “Thank you, Father.”
To his surprise, he saw the priest’s hand, pale against the cassock, sign the cross for him. “God bless you, and keep you always in His mercy, Mr Wiesehöfer.”
Then the door closed with a thud which echoed down the cloisters ahead, towards where the light waited.
Amen to that—his own thought mingled with the blessing.
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But why all the precautions? The blessing was fair enough, and better than fair, and any man far from home might feel the better for it. And it had been a good contact. But this was their territory, where their writ ran on their terms. So ... why all the precautions?
The wall on his left was rich with memorial tablets, all probably dedicated to the departed faithful of the diocese but which he could not read in the half-light. Then, of course, the English loved their memorials: they had a Roman weakness for cutting words into stone, as he had observed in the body of the cathedral, not merely to recall its past servants, but also the servants of the state who had died in their imperial wars and lay in faraway graves. Their
‘Fighting Men’, indeed!
The opening out of which the pale yellow light came was a doorway: a tiny arched doorway, so low that he had to duck his head to pass beneath it.
“Mind the step, Captain Schneider,” said a voice which he had never heard before—which was certainly not the voice of the Special Branch man Herzner had introduced to him.
Outside, the light had been pale, but inside it was bright enough to make him blink at the single unshaded bulb which hung low in the little room, surrounded by the smell of old stone and damp, slightly flavoured with furniture polish.
Polish—polished shoes— highly polished shoes, glistening ox-blood red-brown . . . then trousers with old-fashioned turn-ups in them, immaculately creased in expensive British tweed, lifting his eye up, past the matching jacket, and the Old School or regimental striped tie.
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“Captain Schneider—” Above the tie, the face was fierce, almost brick-red, to match the receding pepper-and-salt hair, and unmistakable from its photographs “—I’m Colonel Butler... and Chief Inspector Andrew you already know.”
Benedikt snapped into top gear. Chief Inspector Andrew, slender and sharp-faced, and sharp-witted, he did already know, and had expected; but Colonel Butler he also knew, but had never met, and had certainly not expected to meet here— now. And Colonel Butler changed all his points of reference.
He straightened up. “Sir . . . Chief Inspector . . .”
The thing to remember—Herzner on the Chief Inspector, and the Kommissar print-out from Wiesbaden on Colonel Butler—was that neither of them was a quite typical specimen of the breed he represented: the system had worked on them both, moulding them to its traditions, but they were also both meritocrats who had risen from the ranks, each therefore with his own element of unpredictability. And that wasn’t an altogether comforting thing to have to remember.
“Captain.” The Chief Inspector acknowledged him with a nod of recognition. “You found Duntisbury Chase, then?”
“Yes.” Benedikt had expected the Colonel to conduct the meeting, but the Colonel studied him in silence. “I have been there—I have looked around it, as you asked me to do, Chief Inspector.”
“Interesting place, is it?”
“Most interesting.” If the Chief Inspector was going to ask the questions, then he would ignore the Colonel until the Colonel dummy1
chose not to be ignored. “Duntisbury Royal is the name of the village. I arrived there just before midday. I went to the public house, which is named the Eight Bells. I drank a glass of Lowenbrau there, but I was unsuccessful in booking a room for the night. The landlord directed me to the Roman villa which is being excavated nearby. On the site I met Miss Rebecca Maxwell-Smith, who is the owner of most of the land around the village. She introduced me to Dr David Audley, who is presently staying at Duntisbury Manor, where she lives. I returned to the public house, where I had lunch. After lunch I walked round the village, and then on up to Duntisbury Rings, which is an Iron Age earthwork on the ridge to the south. From there I walked along the ridge, westwards, until I reached another earthwork, which is known as Caesar’s Camp, but which is certainly not a Roman construction—it is more likely a tribal fort, like the other earthwork, only much later in date. I then spent the rest of the afternoon ostensibly searching for the line of the Roman road which crosses the valley from south-west to north-east. I left the Chase at 1730 hours, and came directly here, as arranged with you yesterday.”