The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes (23 page)

             
We shook our heads in silence and no one opened his mouth. I don't know about the others, but for me the windy and wet eve of outside Manhattan was totally gone. I wanted to hear this one as I always did, more than anything I could
think of. The high, curtained windows of the club library made a good sound barrier and the roar of the city outside was dim and far away.

             
Ffellowes smiled gently and looked up and off into space for a second. No one opened his yap, and the Brigadier knew, I think, that we were waiting.

             
"Well, if it would not bore you, it's a vaguely interesting tale.
Palaestrum
is, or was, one of the old Roman bases on the Danube frontier. Got Roman cemeteries and the remains of amphitheaters, even a broken-down HQ or something, which might have had the structure of a palace. I think they're still rooting about there and even finding things now and again. Off in a field, there's some sort of big triumphal arch or something. The
Russkies
left it alone, though it was in their zone, which seems odd, but perhaps they had other things on their mind. More complexity in the Slav mentality than they often get credit for, you know."

             
This was more than Williams could take. His anger overcame his fascination, but it did no harm. "Very funny, my dear
Genarul
. All them Romans and their lousy Empire. Like you Limeys, they ain't around no more, are they? So what has any of this got to do with your
Grando
National winners? Nothing, right?"

             
We all held our breath, and I vowed once again to try and find out how Williams had ever got by the Election Committee. But it did no harm.

             
"Quite right, my dear man. Nothing at all to do with
Aintree
. But there are other steeds in the world, you know. And I was looking for some. Never found 'em though, To find these horses, it took an old cavalryman. I suppose you've heard of George Patton? Ever hear of the
Lippizaners
?"

             
We were all mute again. At the mention of a great American general, even Williams had to clam up. It was very deft, as it always was. And it went calmly on, with no more interruptions.

             
"As I say, we were looking for horses. At the time, they
were far north and east of our location. The Allies, all of us, had swung wide of Vienna and Austria and kept driving north into Germany, quickly, with a sharp lookout being kept. Plenty of Kraut stragglers and broken units about. A lot of 'em wanted to surrender, but not all, not by any means. Several die-hard SS units were in our neighborhood, and God knows what else. The main army, ours, was U.S. and French.

             
"We ourselves were a special small unit
.
We had three American half-tracks though and more than a few bazookas. I was in command and had three officers and a half-company of other ranks. All volunteers and good men. Let me see, I seem to think they were
Gloucesters
. All combat-proofed and veterans. Some of them went back a long time, to the Western Desert and similar places.

             
"My Second was a Major Broke, and there were two lieutenants, named Garvin and
Embey
. A couple of good sergeants, too. All in all, a good, self-contained group.

             
"We'd been sent south, alone, to find the whereabouts of the famous Spanish Riding School of Vienna and above all, its mounts, the
Lippizaners
. What, or who, they were destined for, I have no idea. They're back in Austria now, of course, or their descendants are. Your Third Army leader saw to that. As I said, an old cavalryman. Ever know he designed the last saber ever thought of for issue to your mounted troops? Never used, but I've got one somewhere. Very good design, I always thought.

             
"Anyhow, some Intelligence
wallah
, probably in London, thought or heard that the damn horses had or were coming by a certain route. We were going to place ourselves, a lost company, on or across said route. Snaffle the animals and bring off a great coup for the British Army. It was all wrong, but so were a lot of efforts of that sort and many a lot more important. Not the intention, that was all right
.
But the dope we'd been given was very late and way off anyway.

             
We were miles from any of our own troops, let alone allies.

             
"So, as it happens, we found ourselves very close to the Blue Danube. Well, it may have been blue to Strauss, but I've seen a lot of it at one time or another, and it always looked brown and turgid as hell to me. Especially on a cold, spring afternoon, with the bare trees dripping with rain and patches of fog at low points. That, my friends, is how we got to
Palaestrum
. There's a town there, built in the 16th Century or so, just about the time that Spanish School got going, or even earlier. Called Sankt
Udo
or close to it, as I recall. There was a ruined baroque
Schloss
, or castle, the seat of a family named
Antenstein
, I think. We avoided the town altogether, which was common sense. Anyone or anything could have been in those old houses. But by the castle, which seemed more or less gutted and empty, there ran a narrow dirt track, which, if our info was correct, actually ran down to the river itself. Here, the horses were supposed to cross, on makeshift barges or some gear of that sort or other. And there, if all went well, we would nab them."

             
He paused and again his eyes went far away. "Wish you all could have seen what we did. Might even put Williams off on his devotion to rare equines. As we went left off a battered main highway, with gutted vehicles and ruins all about, it was around
fourish
in the afternoon of very early spring. The lines of tall trees on either side of our dirt track were bare and dripping wet
.
There was no wind and only that dank and sodden sound of water dripping. One could hear nothing else when our vehicles had to break their progress and the rumble of their engines fell silent.

             
"Then, there was a break in the trees. We stopped, for the road or excuse for a road, led out into an open space, largish, with more trees on the far side. All the while the track, by the way, had been running downhill at a slight angle.

             
"It was Broke, sitting beside me in the back of the lead
vehicle, who put a thought into speech. 'Someone destroyed something here, by God. Looks as if it had happened a long time ago, though.'

             
"Before us, through the thin rain, we could see a vast hole in the ground, bowl-shaped and shallow, grading down to a level and rounded center. There were serrated lines sort of cut all around the rim, actually cut level, into the earth. Here and there, other, deeper cuts made what seemed to be openings or even entrances, which led down ramped earth into the level at the bottom. At a couple of the gaps, battered columns of greyish stone lifted themselves out of the dark soil to about ten or so feet
.
It brought some memories back, of jaunts in southern Europe long before.

             
"I laughed, for all our men were swiveling their rocket launchers and machine guns about as they peered off into the obscurity. 'It was a long time ago, Major,' I said. 'I had a briefing by some of the
Intell
. brass that you missed. But tell the men not to worry, though not to relax. You're looking at some remnants of an old war indeed. We're at
Palaestrum
, friend, and this is a dug-up Roman amphitheater in front of us. Lions and Christians might have come through those gates, or chariots. But the last time troops had to be alerted here was against the
Marcomanni
or some other beginners at the
Volkerwanderung
. It's their descendants, and remote ones, we have to guard ourselves from. Especially if they have SS badges on the collar.'

             
"Word was passed through the line back to the other two vehicles, and I could hear a refreshing ripple of amusement when they heard what they were goggling at
.
But they were too
much on the alert to relax entirely. Before I could order it, three men with
Stens
were out in front of us on foot, just in case something modern was lying in wait somewhere in the ruins of the past
.
We all waited patiently for an 'All Clear' signal. Far off, through the silence, I now could hear the drone of planes, either ours or Russian we felt sure. The Luftwaffe was mostly gone by now. Presently, our scouts
came back to my half-track. But they had a surprise with them, our first prisoner. She was not very menacing.

             
"She must have been seventy at least and was a nice
-
looking old thing, though in ragged and much patched clothes with a ratty old scarf covering grey locks from the cold and wet. She was gabbling away at a great rate, her squint orbs darting from one to the other of us in fright. My German is passable, but I could only make out an occasional word or two. I had had an instructor of the Potsdam variety, and the slurred patois of Austrian peasants was beyond me. But, my luck was in, as usual. From beside me, Broke took over. Turned out he'd spent summers in Austria as a boy, and it was nothing to him. He told the men to let go of the poor old thing and was soon chattering away happily with her, while she began to smile and wave her arthritic paws as she prattled at him. He turned to me at length with a smile on his face.

             
" 'Can I tell the men to let her go, sir? She lives not far away and was only gathering herbs. She knows what we are and has no use for Germans or even her own folk in the German ranks. I think she'll keep her mouth shut'

             
"I had a few questions, which he put and she was prompt to answer. She had seen no sign of armor, wagons, horses or uniformed men, save for occasional stragglers in the past weeks. She was delighted to see us, as a matter of fact, since we were not what she was dreading from over the Volga. But as I waved her politely away and the men all smiled at her kindly, she burst out in a torrent of expostulations, pointing ahead in the direction we were going.

             
"I turned to Broke and he was smiling even more broadly. He bowed and waved the poor thing off and she went, often looking back at us, until she disappeared into the side woods and the gathering mist. Then she was gone and I turned to my companion.

             
" 'Well, sir,' he explained, his teeth showing, 'seems we are still in danger, at least if we push on to the river. There
are dread spirits down there, 'on my word,
hexerei
of the most na
sty sort.
They've always been there by the river, and she meant that too, having been warned by a great-grandfather or
somesuch
, when a kid herself. Think we dare risk it? We mustn't camp there at night, was an emphasis in that chatter.'

             
"I laughed. I told him I thought that we could manage that sort of thing, and the men near us laughed as well. So we signaled the others and all of us in our truncated column started engines and we went on past the amphitheater of a lost empire and entered the woods again at the other side. I had sent word that no one was to slack off and all were quite on the
qui vive.

             
"It was now getting very dark and gloomy, though we could still hold the track without lights, though just. The rain had stopped and we went on through a cold and windless dark under the tall shining dark tree trunks, still down a long and gen
tl
e slope.

             
"The man sitting by the driver up front gave us a hand signal then and we all saw it
.
We had come to great willows, whose dripping branches, still with many small leaves, hung down all about us. But this was not why we had stopped. There in front was dark water, smooth and almost silent in the gathering night, save for a chuckle where a log broke the surface and caused the great river to ripple about it. We were on the Danube, that ancient waterway of races since time began.