War Game (13 page)

True again. So presumably the lord of the manor, Sir Edmund Steyning, had been neither young and vigorous nor old and unversed in the arts of war—

“But it chanced that Sir Edmund Steyning was neither.”

Bingo!

“In Edmund Steyning, it might be said, piety and enthusiasm for the Protestant cause combined with a fiery and martial spirit which no physical handicap could altogether extinguish. From his earliest manhood he had followed the drum, first under the veteran Dutch commanders in their long war against Catholic Spain and then under the greatest captain of the age, the veritable ‘Lion of the North’, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, in his homeric struggle against the Imperial tyranny of the Holy Roman Empire on behalf of German Protestantism.”

There was no doubt where the Reverend Musgrave’s sympathies lay. No doubt he had also thundered from his pulpit against Catholic emancipation in his own time, so he certainly wouldn’t miss a chance of recalling the armed Catholic might of the Counter-Reformation—

“It was on the glorious field of Breitenfeld, when his hero and mentor smote the Catholic power, that the accident befell which ended Sir Edmund’s active career. For, while attending to his duties with the Swedish field artillery which was a novel feature of Gustavus’s army, he was desperately wounded by the premature explosion of a quantity of gunpowder. Although attended by the king’s own surgeon, his life was despaired of for many weeks; and even when that indomitable spirit and iron will which sustained him throughout his life had triumphed over his injuries, it was in a body so shattered by war that no thought of further service could be entertained.”

The track levelled between two low brick walls. Peering over the parapet of one, Audley realised he had reached the line of the Great Western Railway’s extension which had once been attracted by the Reverend Musgrave’s “happy juxtaposition of communications”. He was glad that the old Methodist minister was no longer alive to see the change which another century’s educational and scientific blessings had wrought on the railway: its tracks had long since been torn up and young trees were already pushing their way up through the granite chippings. So far as Standingham was concerned, the railway age was as much part of bygone history as Sir Edward de Stayninge’s crenellated manor.

“It was to his patrimony at Standingham that the crippled hero returned, from a Europe now wracked by the worst excesses of the Thirty Years’ War, which had reached its apogee in an unparalleled outburst of ferocity, unsurpassed since the fall of the Roman Empire, with the last vain and discredited attempts of the Papalists to impose uniformity on the unconquerable Protestants of the North.”

Hadn’t it been six of one and half a dozen of the other? Or was it that Musgrave had had to contend with a Newman-trained Catholic priest in his combined parishes? No matter—

“Yet even here, amongst the lush water-meadows of the Irthey and the Harwell, the stormclouds of war were gathering. Debarred by his physical infirmities from taking part in the events which preceded the English Civil War, Sir Edmund was yet not unaware of their genesis, which were borne upon him not only because of his staunch Protestant sympathies, but also because of the excesses of his Catholic neighbour, Lord Monson, ever a favourite with the Queen and her priests.”

Enter the Demon King himself, good old Black Tom!

And here was another sign, a printed poster pasted on to hardboard: PRIVATE. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. To which, in an egalitarian spirit which Charlie Ratcliffe ought to have approved, someone had added BALLS with a red felt-tipped pen.

“It seems likely, indeed, that Monson’s enmity and depredations, threatened in times of uneasy peace, had already animated Sir Edmund to plan that unique and formidable line of circumvallation which, even after the ruinous passage of two and a half centuries, yet remains for the discerning student of fortification to marvel upon; and which, with the aid of his willing and sturdy tenantry, he was to encompass so speedily when the war commenced.”

Audley looked around him. The Irthey ridge, which he had been steadily climbing, was now so heavily wooded that he had passed into the line of old Edmund’s circumvallation almost without noticing it. But here, where the track passed through what had seemed like a natural cutting in the hillside, he had actually come upon what the Reverend Musgrave required discerning students of fortification to marvel upon.

Directly ahead of him was a pair of ancient wrought-iron gates festooned with rusty barbed wire and heavily padlocked. But the track had curved first round an isolated mound crowned now with trees, the roots of which straggled between the remnants of what looked like stonework. Except for the narrow beaten path up to the gates there seemed no rhyme or reason in the construction, though.

“One cannot but reflect with satisfaction on the surprise with which Monson and his be-ribboned cavaliers, flushed with their early successes, gazed upon the cunning defences with which Sir Edmund had girdled his property in their absence, and upon which they were to dash themselves in vain for two long years—“

Audley looked round again, and then retraced his steps to the point where the path had begun to sink into the cutting.

Cunning defences? If they were, then they were as confusing as the Iron Age earthworks at the entrance of Maiden Castle, two thousand years older than Roundheads and Cavaliers, and their cannon—

Cannon?

He swung on his heel. Of course!—This had been the age of cannon, and he had been thinking foolishly of castles and towers!

That sudden steeper rise in the hillside wasn’t hillside at all, but the earth shifted from the ditch ahead. A—what was the name?—a
glacis
, that was it.

And the mound in front was a ruined horn-work, with ravelins on each side of it, behind the counterscarp, and with the flanking bastions of the main ramparts ahead of him. He was in the middle of a classic seventeenth-century defence line, far in advance of anything the amateur soldiers of the English Civil War normally built, much more in the style of Vauban and the great French military engineers.

But, of course, Steyning hadn’t been an amateur soldier at all, but a veteran of a dozen battles and sieges from the North Sea to the Baltic, who had learnt his trade from the great Gustavus Adolphus himself. There had been scores of others like him in both armies—men like Hopton and Waller, and the Scotsman Leslie—who had taken the same tuition, but they had all been fighting in the field, whereas Steyning had been caged by his injuries in his own great house in the middle of Royalist territory—caged with his Protestant zeal and his military know-how—

And, by God, he’d been an artillery expert too, if the Reverend Musgrave could be relied on! So he’d done the only thing left within his power to do: he’d turned his home into a strongpoint, overlooked by his enemies until too late, so that no one had had the knowledge or the resources to dislodge him. Or the incentive either … until Colonel Nathaniel Parrott had descended on him with a ton of gold in his saddle-bags. And then—

“Indeed, Standingham Castle might well have endured all the shocks of war until Cromwell and Fairfax had crowned the Parliamentary cause with the laurels of victory, but for the malevolence of fortune which, by a singular coincidence, visited upon Sir Edmund a second and final disaster.”

Audley glanced at his watch. The details of the second disaster would have to wait. A railing thickly encrusted with barbed wire now surmounted the rampart, but the beaten path he’d been following seemed to indicate that there was a way in to his right, among the trees.

He followed the path through a thicket of holly bushes until the way was blocked by a moss-covered tree-trunk. Where the tree had fallen there was a gap in the overhanging roof of leaves and also in the rampart above him: the fallen tree had grown on the very lip of the old parapet, and in falling had dislodged a five-yard stretch of it into the ditch below. Although the break had been long since plugged with a tangle of barbed wire, the abrupt end of the path and the regular footholds printed up the side of the bank of earth clearly marked the barrier as being weaker than it looked from below. But then the usual run of trespassers probably didn’t wear good suits, thought Audley as he clambered up; this was the second time today that he’d had to negotiate barbed wire, even though the field gate on the ridge above the Swine Brook—and Frances Fitzgibbon’s spiked backside— seemed like distant memories.

When he reached the wire, however, he saw at once that its strength was an illusion, for the whole concertina was held in place by an unbarbed loop hung loosely over the twisted end of a broken railing: surmounting the cunning defences of Standingham Castle wasn’t going to be such a problem after all, thank heavens!

He lifted the loop and stepped gingerly over the remains of the old railing. But then, as he was in the act of refixing the loop, he felt a sharp tug at his trousers, behind and right down by his heel.

Holding the loop in one hand and cursing under his breath at his clumsiness, he reached down to free the snagged material, only to encounter something warm and wet and soft.

There was something licking his hand.

Audley looked down into the eyes of a beautiful, half-grown red setter.

The red setter grinned at him, gave an excited but perfectly friendly little yelp, and made as though to grab his trousers again: the discerning student of seventeenth-century fortification was being invited to play a game with an idiot dog.

Correction: an idiot bitch. A beautiful, half-grown, well-groomed, amiable and totally inconvenient idiot bitch of a red setter.

Audley’s brain accepted the information. That the bitch was friendly was no surprise to him, because he was accustomed to animals liking him, even though he had no special affection to return. He had grown up in a household where there were only two kinds of animals: the ones which were eaten and the ones which worked for their living, guarding, mousing, pulling or carrying. He had never quite understood, when he became old enough to want to analyse their reactions, why they rewarded this unsentimental attitude with trust and affection, but he had had to accept the fact of it, that animals liked him. Maybe they just liked being treated like animals.

But it wasn’t the setter’s behaviour that mattered, it was the combination of her presence and her appearance. She wasn’t just anyone’s dog running loose in search of canine adventure: that shining coat had been brushed not long ago, and the little brass plate on the real leather collar shone pale with recent polishing.

This wasn’t anyone’s dog, it was
someone
’
s
dog. And the someone must be close at hand—and on the wrong side of the wire.

He dropped the loop into place and turned his full attention to the setter.

“Here, girl,” he commanded conversationally, extending the licked hand for further examination. “Have a good smell, eh?”

The bitch strained forward towards the hand, first sniffing and then slobbering over each finger in turn, tail beating with excitement. When he was confident that she was sure of him Audley bent over her, slid his sticky hand over her head and eased the collar sideways so that he could read the name on the brass plate.

Burton, Castle Lodge, Standingham.

“There’s a girl—there’s a beautiful girl.” He stroked the sleek head. “Aren’t you a beautiful girl then?”

The bitch nodded at him, steadied and soothed by the sound and the touch. If only she could speak now she would have answered all his questions; instead she offered a dusty paw.

Audley shook the paw. “Pleased to meet you.”

But where’s your master, beautiful girl? Is this the way he comes down from the Lodge to take his evening pint? Is he close by now, beautiful girl?

The bitch cocked her head on one side, looked straight at him, and then looked directly over his shoulder.

Audley straightened up slowly to give himself time to gather all his wits together, and then turned to look along her line of sight.

“Good evening,” he said.

The setter’s master was a tall, thin man with an all-weather face and an upstanding brush of grey hair less well-groomed than his dog’s coat.

“’Evening.”

A quiet-spoken man too, though his voice seemed to release the setter from Audley’s spell: she leapt up the side of the gap and came to heel obediently at the sound of it.

“You’ve got a good bitch there,” said Audley.

“Aye.” Absently, without taking his eyes off Audley, the man—Mr. Burton, I presume—reached down to touch her head, and she quivered with pleasure at the touch.

“Maybe a little too friendly with strangers, though,” said Audley, smiling.

The grey brush shook disagreement. “Not usually. If you were a bad ‘un she’d set her teeth to you, likely.”

Well, that was a compliment. And if Burton trusted his dog’s instinct perhaps David Audley should trust his own also— and play to win when there was nothing left to lose. He was the wrong side of the wire after all, clear beyond the notice to trespassers.

He cocked his head on one side as the dog had done. “Oh aye? Then I take it she’s left her mark on Master Ratcliffe already then?”

For a long moment Burton considered him. Then one corner of his mouth lifted. “Would have done if I’d let her,” he admitted.

Audley nodded, first at the man and then at the dog. He’d made the gesture and it hadn’t been rejected. But the next move wasn’t his.

Another moment passed. “You wouldn’t be from a newspaper, I don’t think?” It was more a reflection spoken aloud than a question. Or if a question, thought Audley, remembering his old Latin master, it was a
num
question, with the answer 120 built into it.

“No, I’m not from a newspaper. But I want to see what they weren’t allowed to see all the same.”

For a second or two after he had spoken Audley was afraid he had gone too far too fast. But instinct was still in charge, and instinct was all on the side of frankness now.

The man took a step forward and offered his hand. “Well then … you’d better come up out of there then, hadn’t you?” he said simply.