"It was a genuine seventeenth-century copy of a letter."
"To John Pym from John Dangerfield?"
"To John Pym, certainly. But it wasn't signed—it was obviously the author's copy.
"Didn't you want to know where Ratcliffe obtained it?"
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Nayler's face screwed up with embarrassment. "He said he'd been given it. But he made me promise to keep that a secret until he was ready to reveal it."
There was no point in picking that sore at the moment.
Nayler knew well enough how ugly it looked.
"So you knew the gold was there, then?"
Nayler stared fixedly at the carpet. "No, Audley, to be honest
—I didn't."
"You—didn't?"
Nayler looked up. "I believed it had been there. I didn't believe it was there until Ratcliffe actually found it." He sighed. "Oh, I worked out with Ratcliffe where it might have been, and how it might have got there. But I never believed it was there until he found it."
"Why not?"
"Because I thought Cromwell had found it in '53, that's why.
It takes money to make a revolution, and he needed money to make his. Not to mention making war with everyone in sight. ... He needed money—and he went to Standingham for it. 'He made great excavation in that place', that's what the record says. So I told Ratcliffe the odds were a hundred to one against him, letter or no letter. And I was wrong."
Audley shook his head. "I've got news for you, Professor. You weren't wrong."
Nayler stared at him, humility melting into surprise, surprise yielding to horror. "Oh, my God!" he said. "Oh—my— God."
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This wasn't the face of the Gestapo victim, thought Audley; this was the proud man who saw himself a laughing-stock among his peers, and that made them both brothers under the skin.
He grinned at Nayler encouragingly. "You and me both, Nayler," he said. "Two high IQ's equal one big zero. Because I was wrong too."
The grin wasn't catching. "What are we going to do?" asked Nayler.
What indeed!
Audley thought of Superintendent Weston, who would do anything he was asked to do, short of breaking the laws by which he lived.
And then of Robert Davenport, who had all the resources of the CIA and would exchange most of them for getting himself and the agency off the hook.
And then of Frances Fitzgibbon and Paul Mitchell, who would do exactly what they were told, but would report back to someone what they had done.
And even of William Strode, officer commanding the Roundhead Army, who would serve the cause of law and order in the cause of social democracy and a better prospective Parliamentary seat.
And now Professor Stephen Nayler, who probably thought he had most to lose —and certainly knew more about the storming of Standingham Castle than anyone else alive, dummy5
Charlie Ratcliffe included.
And finally David Audley, who wasn't nearly as sharp as he'd thought he was—
No. Not finally David Audley.
Finally Sergeant Henry Digby, who was to be avenged.
He nodded at Professor Nayler. "I think we might manage something nasty between us," he said.
4
AUDLEY raised the perspective glass to his eye and watched Paul Mitchell guide his horse down the steep side of the earthworks which marked the line of the Old Castle across the valley.
Somebody had taught the boy to ride well, he thought enviously. But then whatever Paul Mitchell did, he did well, and whatever Jack Butler might think of the resemblance between the young bull and the old bull, Mitchell would go further up the ladder than Audley. Twenty years from now, barring wars and revolutions, he wouldn't be mere top brass, he'd be the boss-man; he had the cold heart for it.
But twenty years was twenty years away from today, and today he was a gorgeous messenger boy playing Cavaliers and Roundheads at the Double R Society's dress rehearsal of the storming of Standingham Castle, no less and no more.
Beside him on the rampart the Parliamentary banners stirred dummy5
in the breath of the early evening breeze which had forsaken them during the hottest hours of the day; and below him, beyond the ditch and the glacis, the first of the regiments of the Parliamentary battle-line began to debouch from the trees on his right.
Who would true valour see, Let him come hither—
"Not much of a marching song, but they're in good voice,"
said William Strode. "They make a brave show, think ye not?"
"Aye, Sir Matthew. I doubt not they shall give a good accounting of themselves this day," said Audley.
Away from across the valley, but still hidden and muted by the earthworks, an insistent drumming commenced—
Tarr-rumpa-tumpa- tum, tarr-rumpa-tumpa- tum, tarr-rumpa- tumpa- rumpa-tumpa- tum- tum- tum . . .
Strode smiled at him and nodded approvingly. "That's very good, Audley— you're learning. You just missed one thing, though."
Mitchell urged his horse into the marshy bottom of the valley, where the Willow Stream meandered sluggishly between barely defined banks which would have been bright with king-cups earlier in the year but which now carried little to betray its treacherous swampiness. It had come as a shock to the advance party that the openness of this approach to dummy5
the Royalist stronghold was an illusion; they had found out the hard way why every attack but the last one had been delivered up the other side of the defences. And they had laboured mightily all the afternoon to lay corduroys of brushwood to give the assault columns access to the firm ground of the rampart ridge; as no doubt Black Thomas Monson's engineers had once had to do themselves. . . .
The horse plunged and high-stepped frantically for a minute or two in the ooze, sending Mitchell lurching from one side of the saddle to the other. But he held his seat admirably and with a final effort the animal heaved itself out to the boos and yells of the Parliamentary infantry, who had obviously been hoping for an early Royalist setback.
"What did I miss?" inquired Audley.
The drums sounded a final elaborate tattoo and then settled down to a steady marching beat—
Tum, tum, tum-tum-tum.
Tum, tum, tum-tum- tum—
Up on the skyline of the old earthwork, as though growing out of the ground, came the battle-flags of the enemy.
"You left out God," said Strode. "'By God's grace' you should have added."
The breeze caught the flags, opening them gaily above the long lines of men who rose out of the earth beneath them: musketeers, pikemen, officers with drawn swords . . . bright sashes and scarves and the sunflash of polished steel helmet dummy5
and breast-plate. The opposing hillside was transformed from the parched green of a hot August to a blaze of colour.
Tum, tum, tum-tum- tum—
"Of course," said Audley. "'When I saw the enemy march in gallant order towards us, and we a company of poor ignorant men, I could not forbear but to cry out to God in praise for the assurance of victory, because God would, by those things that are not, bring to naught those things that are'—will that do?"
Strode laughed. "Bravo! Cromwell at Naseby—almost word for word. You have an excellent memory, Audley."
"Yes. Except that Cromwell's 'poor ignorant men'
outnumbered the Royalists two to one, I seem to remember."
"Very true. Whereas we're due for a licking today—or tomorrow, to be exact," admitted Strode. "But it's a splendid showing, you must admit that. We've already got a turn-out of nearly seven hundred—and that's not counting the Angels and the Royalist camp-followers. And there'll be more by later this evening when the muster's complete, so I think we'll give everyone something to remember Standingham by
—wouldn't you say?"