War Game (9 page)

“Well, as a battle so-called it was rather dull,” Mitchell nodded at Audley, wisely ignoring her challenge. “But it did produce one celebrated anecdote that lost nothing in the telling. A real bloodthirsty story—literally bloodthirsty.”

“Literally?”

“Literally, it’s the exact word for once. You see, Black Thomas was so desperate to get here before the Roundheads did that he wouldn’t let his men halt. Kept them going non-stop after they’d run out of water, and it was a hot August day—hot and humid, because it had rained during the night before. So by the time they reached this ridge they were pretty damn thirsty, and they’d been grumbling about it.

“So when he finally got them here he pointed down to the Swine Brook—which was beyond the enemy, of course—and told them there was plenty of water there, and they could drink to their heart’s content when they’d reached it. All they had to do was to remove the base, vulgar fellows who were in their way.

“At least, that’s the story according to Royalist propaganda as told by
Mercurius Aulicus
in Oxford afterwards. But the Roundheads had a different version— according to
Mercurius Britanicus
in London. He claimed that since Black Thomas had sold his soul to the devil, water couldn’t quench his thirst, only blood. And when he reached the stream it was running red with the blood of the slain, so he ordered a trooper to bring him a helmet-full, which he promptly drank, thus proving he was in league with Beelzebub.”

“Yrch!” exclaimed Frances. “You are disgusting, Paul.”

“Not me, Frances dear. This is straight
Mercurius Britanicus
.”

“And what really happened?” asked Audley.

“A bit of both, I’d guess. They would have been thirsty right enough. And he could well have said ‘There’s water down there’, or some such thing.”

“And did the stream run with blood?”

“That’s the story. There were a lot of men killed along it, so there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s supposed to have happened either—didn’t the River Cock run red at Towton in the Wars of the Roses?”

“But would they have drunk from it then?” asked Frances.

“You bet they would. Thirsty men have drunk a lot worse than that—and been grateful for it.” Mitchell nodded towards Audley. “David’ll quote you
Gunga Din
in support of that, if you like—how does it go?

It was crawlin’ and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I’ve drunk
I’m gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.

That right, David?”

Word perfect, thought Audley suspiciously. Paul Mitchell had done his homework on Swine Brook Field; or it might be that with his military history background, and his eerie faculty for total recall of every fact he had ever encountered, no homework had been needed; but by the same token he wouldn’t have forgotten Audley’s own weakness for quotations, particularly from Shakespeare and Kipling, and that he was now deliberately and maliciously exploiting it.

“Absolutely correct.” In other circumstances he might have capped Mitchell with another quotation. But with Mitchell it might be as well to resist such temptations. The young man’s knowledge was once more going to be as useful as his brains, and he could see now why the Brigadier had supplied him. But it was going to take some getting used to, the handling for the first time of a subordinate who could equal him at his own game, and had no scruples about trying to do so.

“That’s very apposite, Paul. And most interesting.” He smiled patronisingly. “So the Royalists won the battle of Swine Brook Field. Now then—“

“But there’s more to it than that,” cut in Mitchell quickly. “You see, if it hadn’t been for that—the bloodthirsty Monson story—it’s a hundred to one we wouldn’t be here now. Because the Double R people —the Royalist and Roundhead Society— arranged to have the stream run red again for their mock battle. And in the end it was that which gave the game away. The murder, that is—“

“No, Paul.” Audley held up his hand. “I want to get that first hand.” He looked at his watch. “We’re due to meet the police at the scene of the crime in ten minutes from now. I need to hear their side first before your interpretation of it.”

That was the truth, or at least the truth only slightly bent to bring it home to Mitchell that it was David Audley, not Paul Mitchell, who was running the operation.

“What I want now, before we meet them, is a rundown on this Double R Society. Not the mock-battle, just the Society,” Audley said innocently, still pretending to concentrate on Mitchell.

Mitchell’s face fell. “Oh—well, you’ll have to ask Frances about them, they’re her pigeons.”

“I see… . Well, Frances?” He turned towards her.

With Frances there were no special reservations to be made. But there was, he was instantly reminded, one disconcerting tendency to be mastered. Being all of eight inches taller than she was, he was forced to look down on her, and in looking down he found it extremely difficult to stop at her face. Indeed, no matter that the faded denim shirt was chastely buttoned to the neck—by some unjust alchemy that seemed to emphasise what it was intended to conceal—he found himself now looking directly at her chest.

Damnation!

He tried again. One quick look at her

“The Double R Society?”

And then away from her altogether. Anywhere.

“In one word …” If she had observed the first glance she gave no sign of at. Probably she was used to men with eyes like organ-stops, poor girl. “In a word— weird.”

“Weird … meaning?”

She shook her head. “It’s not easy to explain. There are a number of these Civil War groups … the Sealed Knot was the first one. Then there’s the King’s Army and the Roundhead Association, who operate together. They all do pretty much the same thing—mock-battles for charity mostly. Charity and the fun of it, that’s how it seemed to me at first …”

“On the actual battlefields always?”

“For choice. They will put on a show anywhere, of course. But they prefer authentic locations. They like to get as close to the real thing as possible.”

Weird. He had to make allowance for her prejudice against military history—and against war itself. Weird or not, these Civil War buffs would start out with two strikes against them so far as Frances Fitzgibbon was concerned.

“And they do it for the fun of it, obviously. Dressing up and all that?”

“That’s what I thought at first.” Frances frowned. “But there’s more to it than that … I don’t know about the other groups, but with the Double R Society it’s rather more complicated. They stage the battles for charity like the others, with thousands of people watching. And the battles are combined with seventeenth-century fairs and plays and concerts—also like the others. But they don’t actually do all this for the spectators and the audiences—if nobody turned up they’d do it just the same. They do it for
themselves
, if you see what I mean. It’s not a game or a hobby, it’s almost an obsession. And in a strange way it’s even more than that … not just obsession. There’s almost an element
of possession
.”

“You mean—they don’t just play at being Royalists and Roundheads? They
are
Royalists and Roundheads?”

“I think that’s what I mean …” She nodded doubtfully. “But I still don’t really understand what makes them tick.”

“There’s a lot of
esprit de corps
in the different regiments, that’s for sure,” agreed Mitchell. “They have their own badges and they’re proud of them.”

“Oh, no—it’s more than that, Paul. The other Civil War groups have that too.”

“I don’t just mean that.” Mitchell caught Audley’s eye. “They’re also extremely knowledgeable. And they won’t let you join just to have a punch-up in costume; you have to know your history pretty damn well first.”

“You’re both in the process of joining, I gather?” Audley looked from one to the other.

“That’s right—in fact we’ve both just joined. Young Frances there is a brand new Angel of Mercy for God and Parliament—“ Mitchell pointed and then tapped his own chest “—and I’m one of King Charles’s laughing cavaliers.”

“A Malignant,” murmured Frances.

“A Malignant. And a profane and licentious limb of Satan—that is, if I can find a horse in time for Saturday.” Mitchell smiled boyishly at Audley. “That was the chief reason they let me in so quickly. There’s a waiting list for the pikemen and musketeers, so they vet them much more carefully. But they’re dead short of people willing to supply their own horses. Once I showed my heart was in the right place
and
I had a horse, I was in.” The smile broadened to a wicked cavalier grin. “Whereas they’re always on the lookout for good-looking Angels of Mercy, I suspect… . Though I must say, Frances, you’re going to have quite a problem looking like a modest Puritan maiden. You haven’t got the figure for the job.”

“Fiddlesticks!” Frances turned towards Audley. “But Paul’s right about having to have one’s heart in the right place. You can’t join the Roundhead Wing or the Royalist Wing unless you believe in the appropriate politics.”

Audley nodded. “Naturally. I’d expect the Royalists to believe in the monarchy, and the Roundheads to believe in Parliament.”

Frances shook her head. “It goes much further than that. They asked me which party I’d voted for in the last General Election.”

“They?”

“There’s a membership committee which meets once a month to interview applicants. We were lucky to get a hearing so quickly—it’s quite a complicated procedure, really.”

“You can say that again,” agreed Mitchell. “They’ve even got a form to fill in—with spaces on it for religion and politics, and God knows what else.”

“So what did you tell them?”

Mitchell laughed. “I told ‘em what I thought they wanted to hear: that I was a good Tory and a practising member of the Church of England. And that I thought socialism was as bad as communism—they liked that almost as much as when I said I had my own horse.”

Audley looked at Frances.

And at Frances’s bosom.

Damnation again!

“I had a different committee,” said Frances. “And I told them I was a paid-up member of the Labour Party. Which happens to be true.”

“I asked my lot what they would have done if I said I was a Marxist-Trotskyite,” said Mitchell.

“And?” Audley felt the sun hot on his face.

“There was one chap with a sense of humour. He fell around as though I was pulling his leg—as though the idea of anyone being a Trotskyite was a joke. But the other one next to him took it seriously, like I’d said something dirty. And he said that Anabaptists and Fifth Monarchy men and Levellers all went into the Parliamentary Wing.”

So that was the way of it, thought Audley. Or it looked very much as though it
could
be the way of it. And if it was—

“I think your policemen have arrived.” Frances pointed down the hillside towards the Swine Brook.

“I left my field-glasses on the monument,” said Mitchell. “One look through them and we can be sure.”

Audley followed him down to the stone cross, his mind too full of possibilities to take anything else in.

If that was the way of it …

Mitchell adjusted the field-glasses. “That’s Superintendent Weston… . And the sergeant.”

Audley found himself looking at the inscription chiselled into the granite:

SWINE BROOK FIELD
1643
We are both upon the stage and must
act the parts that are assigned us in this
tragedy; let us do it in a way of honour.

And so they must. Except if that was the way of it, then it was unlikely that there would be much room for honour.

“WESTON
’
S
a sharp fellow, don’t be deceived by appearances,” warned Mitchell. “He goes by the book—they all do, of course—but he’s got quite a reputation, according to Cox.”

So Mitchell had consulted their own Special Branch superintendent, thought Audley. A very thorough young man, Mitchell … in his place he would have done exactly the same, because Cox’s memory was encyclopaedic. But it was still another score to Mitchell that he had known exactly who to go to for first-hand information.

He stared at the memorial. It not only looked new, it was new: he could see the fragments of fresh mortar trampled into the grass around it.

He pointed. “How long has this been here? Not long?”

“A month. Wherever they do a re-enactment the Double R people always set aside some of their profits for a memorial if there isn’t one already there. It’s part of their public relations,” said Mitchell. “Are we going to see Weston and the sergeant now?”

A thorough young man. … He took in the inscription again. It summed up very well the sad plight of the moderate man pushed at last by the extremists to take his stand, and discovering then that he had delayed too long and that the only chance left to him was to join one hated side or the other.

Like—who was it? The man had also had a memorial dedicated to him, on, a battlefield of this same Civil War where he had fallen, he remembered having seen it years before.

“Are we going to see Weston?” Mitchell repeated.

Who was it? It suddenly became important to Audley to dredge the name out of his memory, as though it was the key to other forgotten things. Mitchell wouldn’t have forgotten, damn him.

Not John Hampden. He had a memorial somewhere—at Charlgrove, where Prince Rupert and the Royalists had killed him. But Hampden had been a Parliamentarian.

This man had been a Royalist … and a poet—

Falkland!

Little Falkland, with his ugly face and his shrill voice; but everyone had loved him for his kindness and his generosity and his learning… . And when the last hope of a negotiated peace had vanished and he had understood at last that whoever won, the moderates on each side had lost, he had saddled up and joined the King’s cavalry and had calmly and deliberately ridden to certain death.

Suicide while the balance of the mind was undisturbed.

But not a mistake that David Audley would make.

“This quotation—“ he looked at Mitchell “—who’s it from? Falkland?”