The Roundhead horseman, who had remained on the counter-scarp in readiness for further orders, raised his hand in salute. "Sir!"
Strode pointed towards the right of the line. "I pray you, carry my compliments to Colonel Ratcliffe together with this strict order: I charge him to repair with the utmost despatch on this instant to the Great Bastion, there to receive of one of my officers further intelligence concerning my will and pleasure."
"Sir!" The galloper wheeled away down the slope.
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Strode turned back to Audley. "But don't keep him too long.
He's in command of the right wing, and although we're not actually fighting today I do want him down there to see that angry brigade of his obeys orders—they're a damned quarrelsome lot."
Audley saluted. "I shalln't keep him long, sir. And then, by your leave, I shall strictly attend your grace once more upon the field of battle."
There was a puff of smoke and a bang from the ridge opposite. The first of the Royalist guns had been brought into action ahead of the scenario's schedule.
Audley put his telescope to his eye and focused on the Roundhead guns just in time to see Billy Rodgers shaking his fist first at the enemy, and then at his own general.
Tum, tum, tum-tum-tum—
The Royalist musketeers were advancing towards the stream, pacing themselves with their musket rests, their ammunition bandoliers dancing. Now the whole elaborate ritual of the seventeenth-century fire-fight was about to begin, with the rival sergeants intoning the long sequence of orders—"Blow off your coal", "Cock your match", "Guard, blow and open your pan" and so on—which preceded each volley, and which according to Strode was an enormous favourite with the watching crowds.
Now too there was movement in the Roundhead ranks as dummy5
their musketeers detached themselves to the sound of drum-and-fife—
Tumpty-tum, tumpty-tum, tumpty- tum—
Charlie Ratcliffe was coming up the hillside, from the right.
Audley swept the telescope to the far left, where the militia regiments were lined up in the shadow of the trees, next to the guard ropes which would keep the spectators off the battlefield tomorrow.
Superintendent Weston was watching him like a hawk.
He snapped the telescope shut and started along the rampart towards the Great Bastion. He could just make out the top of the red powder-tent in the crater behind it.
Red for danger.
Tum, tum, tum-tum- tum—
Charlie Ratcliffe was there ahead of him, scrambling up the half-ruined rampart wall with the agility of a monkey and ducking under the restraining rope.
DANGER!
Authorised persons only may proceed beyond this point Under the broad-brimmed black hat the face was shadowy, but as Audley approached him he lifted it off and shook his fair hair free in the fitful breeze.
Fair hair, blue eyes, high colour—the English subaltern face par excellence, like a million others which stared out of dummy5
group photographs on the walls of school studies and regimental messes, betraying nothing except self-confidence.
"What's all this then?"
"Master Ratcliffe? Master Charles Neville Steyning-Ratcliffe?
Or should I say Colonel Ratcliffe?"
"Who are you?"
"Colonel Hog, you might call me, if I'm to call you Colonel Ratcliffe." Audley felt a trickle of perspiration run down the side of his face inside his cheek-guard. "Hog would be your seventeenth-century name for me."
"Hog?" The blue eyes were bright with intelligence, but just a shade too close together. "I see! 'Hog' in the seventeenth century, so presumably 'Pig' in the twentieth—is that it?"
"Very good! I can see we're going to understand each other very nicely. But I'm a special breed of Pig, just as you are an unusual variety of Rat. And we do have one or two very important things in common which should help us to understand each other."
"You don't say?" A good education had taught Charlie Ratcliffe the art of being insolent without trying. "Such as what?"
"Gold, for one thing."
Charlie Ratcliffe cocked his head on one side. "Do we have that in common? Well, that's news to me. I didn't think it was gold that pigs wallowed in, you know."
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A sudden ragged volley of musketry burst out below them in the valley.
"Ah! Now the battle's starting," murmured Audley, looking at his watch. "And not more than five minutes behind schedule, too. . . . Yes, gold is one thing —see those fellows down there?" He took a casual step sideways and caught Ratcliffe's left arm in a tight grip just above the elbow. "I think it would be as well if we pretended to watch them."
Ratcliffe tried to move his arm, wincing as the grip bit.
"You're hurting my arm," he said in a surprised voice.
"Yes, I know I am. But the pain will help to concentrate your mind on what I'm saying—please don't struggle, you'll only hurt yourself more."
Charlie Ratcliffe graduated quickly from surprise to incredulity. "You're a fucking madman— ouch! ''
"No I'm not. But I am very strong, and if you don't relax and listen I'll cripple you." Audley pointed with the telescope in his free hand. "Now—see those pikemen with the blue flag?
They make a brave show, don't they?" He increased the pressure. "Don't they?"
"Yes—bloody hell!—yes."
"Good. First gold, as I was saying. Then treason. Then murder. And then gold again. That's what we've got in common, Charlie lad."
"You're crazy."
"Next time you say that I'm going to hurt you a lot, Charlie.
dummy5
So just look to the front and listen. What I have to say is very much in your interest, I promise you that."
Charlie gritted his teeth. "You have to be joking."
"Joking is the very last thing I'm doing. I don't like you, lad—
but I need your help. And you need mine—look to the front!"
Charlie made the start of a sound and the first twitch of a movement, and then thought better of both. It was beginning to occur to him that if this was madness he was dealing with there might be method in it.
"Your gold first. I know all about it, from A to Z. I know where it came from, and how it was planted—understand?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Madrid - Cartagena - Tunis - Odessa -Moscow. . . .
Standingham."
Ratcliffe still managed to register a proper mystification, but he couldn't control the muscles in his arm.
"I know how you set up Nayler, and I know about the Dawlish letter. And about the Paris meeting, and the other little side-trips—I know about them."
The muscles were like whipcord now, tensed under his hand so that he had to tighten his grip to hold them.
"And I know about Swine Brook Field —that was my old friend Tokaev I presume—and about the Ferryhill Industrial Estate . . . which was a very much better organised operation
—the police haven't tumbled to it, I can tell you that. And you did me a good turn there too, getting rid of that nosey Special dummy5
Branch man—I'm grateful for that."
The musketeers' fire-fight was reaching it's climax, with the dead being carried away behind the clumps of pikemen to recover surreptitiously and rejoin their regiments as reinforcements. Death in the early stages of a Double R
Society battle was clearly a tidy and economical business.
"But I'm not going to bore you with what you already know, lad. Your treason doesn't interest me any more—nor the murders you've ordered either. It's my treason that interests me now—and the next killing. And my gold."
Charlie Ratcliffe grunted derisively. "So it's your gold now, is it?" He shook his head.
"My gold—yes."
"Oh, no ... I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about with your treason and your killing, and all that—
hogwash. . . . But when it comes to gold at least I can begin to understand you. And the answer is—go take a running jump at yourself, fuzz."