War Game

by Anthony Price

  “Full of—horses?”

  The constable nodded, deadpan. “That’s right, sir. The Royalist cavalry— it’s their headquarters. But it’s only a step from here.”

  Audley couldn’t prevent himself from looking across the gleaming new cellulose of the car bonnet towards the Ploughman, from which some of the more esoteric verses of “Kirriemuir” were now issuing.

  The young constable caught the look.

  “That’s all right, sir. Your car won’t come to any harm. I shall be here until they close.”

  I shall be here. A pub full of well-oiled soldiery, armed cap-a-pied, but I shall be here.

  The constable grinned. “It’s just high spirits—they don’t make any real trouble. It’d be more than their lives are worth if they did, their own people ‘ud court martial ‘em double quick. And with me out here …” He shook his head. “No trouble at all.”

  “And no one drunk in charge of a horse?”

  “Cavalry don’t drink, sir—they’re very strict about that.”

  “And the infantry?”

  “No car keys. They collect all the keys and label ‘em the night before, and the general has ‘em under lock and key. And they put up a £50 bond with the publicans, for broken glasses and such like … so the only thing they’ve got to worry about is running out of beer.” He shook his head again. “Much better to let them let off steam. And they’ll all be sweating off the beer this afternoon, anyway.”

  Air Vice-Marshal Rushworth was a tall, very thin, stooping old man, with washed-out blue eyes and short, untidy grey hair that stood up at the back as though he had allowed it to dry in the wrong position and had forgotten to brush it.

  As soon as he had established to his own satisfaction that Audley was who he claimed to be he gestured him into the long, shadowy hall of Bridge House with curious jerky movements of a hand the fingers of which were crooked into a permanent arthritic claw, fussy imprecise movements which made it difficult to imagine that the same hand, strong and supple with youth, had once wrestled a bomb-laden Lancaster into the air.

  “Up the stairs, up the stairs … right to the top, right to the top—door in front of you, straight in front of you, white door, brass handle—waiting for you there. Ringside view, too.”

  Audley wasn’t sure what “ringside view” meant, but that would no doubt reveal itself beyond the white door. In the meantime he had the young constable’s courteous example to guide him.

  “It’s extremely good of you to give us house-room, Air Marshal.” He paused with one foot on the bottom stair. “We’re very grateful.”

  With an effort the Air Vice-Marshal straightened up and looked Audley in the eye. “No need to be. Been thanked already—by a pretty girl too, what’s more. And I expect Tommy will send me a proper bread-and-butter letter on expensive notepaper in his own good time … which reminds me: there’s a plate of sandwiches up there if you haven’t had any lunch, granddaughter cut them. And a few bottles of beer … but you tell Tommy it isn’t necessary—save the cost of a stamp, and God knows they cost enough now… . No need at all, glad to be of service for a change. Besides, makes life more exciting—battle outside and cloak and dagger inside—real cloak and dagger too, by golly.” He cackled briefly at whatever the joke was and then waved the claw again upwards. “Don’t keep them waiting —up you go. Right to the top, remember —white door straight in front of you.”

  Audley fled up the stairs. The Brigadier’s Christian name was Thomas, yet he had never in his life heard anyone refer to him as “Tommy”. Even Sir Frederick, in moments of rare camaraderie, had never gone further than “Tom”, but presumably the Air Marshal dated from some unimaginable time when the Brigadier was a pink and scrubbed subaltern. Always supposing it had been the Brigadier who had pulled the string and opened this particular white door with the brass handle. But whoever it was, it was a piece of “old boy” expertise such as Audley loved and admired. Good for Tommy, whoever he was!

  Bridge House was lovely, the more so as he climbed: up from the coolness of the hall to the light of the first-floor landing, white doors everywhere and sunshine streaming in through the tall windows. For a moment he felt quite euphoric, with the warmth and the whiteness and the good omens—and the intelligence that Brigadier Stocker had once been “young Tommy” to everyone, and still was to someone.

  Then the shallowness of the euphoria steadied him. Arrogance was his besetting sin, he knew, because those who loved him were always warning him against it— arrogance that was fathered on pride by boredom. But arrogance had never betrayed him, all the same; it had been his passion for secrecy which had come closest to doing that, half a dozen years or more back, in the aftermath of the June War. And if that was another great sin it was at least the occupational sin of his work—and he had paid for it in full over the years since then.

  But what threatened him now was smug self-satisfaction, which wasn’t so much a decent, God-fearing sin as a mean little weakness. His battle hadn’t even started, and he was already trying Cromwell’s hat for size when he ought to be worrying about his feet fitting Colonel Sir Edward Whitelocke’s boots.

  White door, brass handle.

  It was the playroom—and the children were playing in it.

  Children in fancy dress, under the disapproving eye of their tutor.

  Grown-up children.

  What hit him first was their beauty: they were both beautiful as they never had been before.

  Paul Mitchell was a good-looking young man, he had always known that, though without remarking on it. But Paul Mitchell the cavalier, in loose light-rust tunic and dark-rust breeches, with exquisite cobwebs of white lace cascading over his shoulders, at his wrists and even falling over the tops of his soft-leather calf-length boots, wide yellow taffeta scarf at his waist and broad-brimmed hat, ostrich-plumed, on his flowing hair—this Paul Mitchell took his breath away.

  This Paul Mitchell was beautiful.

  And Frances—

  Where Mitchell was a blaze of colour and elegance, all velvet and lace and embroidery, Frances Fitzgibbon was total severity, starched white cap and collar, cut square and sharp, and a voluminous black gown censoring every curve beneath it.

  And yet Frances too was beautiful now; and also in a new way which suited her as the old way had never done.

  Which suited her—

  That was it, of course: they were not dressed up at all, any more than they were children at all—for all that Mitchell sat astride a huge old Victorian rocking-horse and Frances knelt before a marvellous Victorian dolls’ house. They were changed —even their expressions were different: they stared at him with the heavy-lidded calm of Van Dyck’s portraits—but they had changed from strangers into themselves as they really ought to have been.

  Panache for Mitchell.

  Purity for Frances.

  Mitchell rose effortlessly from the rocking-horse, checking its movement with a long-fingered hand. It was the first time Audley had ever noticed how long those fingers were.

  “Steady there. Champion—steady,” Mitchell commanded. “Well, my lord, how do you like us?”

  Before Audley could reply Mitchell swept off the broad-brimmed hat with an exaggerated figure-of-eight movement, ending with its plume brushing the floor as he completed the elaborate ceremony of a seventeenth-century bow.

  “Where be thy manners, my lady?” he hissed out of the corner of his mouth at Frances. “Show the Lord General proper respect, I pray you.”

  Well—fiddlesticks would be her quick answer to that, thought Audley. There was no nonsense about Frances Fitzgibbon.

  Frances looked at him doubtfully for one fraction of a second only, then lowered her eyes modestly and sank into a deep curtsey, her black skirts billowing up around her.

  “My lord—forgive me. I bid you welcome.”

  So … but if they were playing games, damn it—and they would never know how unsettling their games were after that eerie first impression—then it would b
e as well for him not to lose his temper straight off.

  “Thou hast my forgiveness, child.” He bowed to her.

  Mitchell straightened up, squinting at him in the sunlight. “I pray you, my lord, to be not short with us. We do but—ah —practise those strange usages which thy command hath thrust upon us. By our words thou must needs know the problems that beset us in this enterprise.”

  “Aye.” Frances had the grace to blush, and that was at least something to hold on to. “We, being persuaded in the love of Christ that thou hast ordered us rightly, have purposed to the utmost to serve you in our places and our callings. But thou needest not reply to us in like manner.”

  “ ‘To serve thee’,” corrected Mitchell. “You is wrong.”

  “But they do say you.”

  “Only in the plural, at least colloquially.” Mitchell shook his head emphatically. “But that bit about ‘the love of Christ’ was good—absolutely right for you—thee.” He turned to Audley. “The bloody trouble is, I don’t know how to swear any more. I just don’t know how to say ‘Fuck off ‘ in these clothes—I’m darn sure they said it somehow, and I’ve already wanted to say it a couple of times. But I’m a trooper—and I don’t know how to swear like a trooper.”

  “They weren’t singing like seventeenth-century troopers when I last heard them,” said Audley. “It was strictly twentieth-century stuff, ex-British Army.”

  Mitchell nodded agreement. “Ah—they make an exception with the songs. It’s the spirit that counts there, not the words.”

  “Same with us,” said Frances. “It’s Hymns Ancient and Modern.”

  “And political,” said Audley.

  “That’s right—“ she gave him a quick glance “—but you know about that?”

  “Not nearly enough yet. So tell me more.” What had ever made him think she looked sexy? As a puritan maiden she was not every man’s mistress, but every man’s daughter.

  “Well, I’ve only had one evening of it. As far as I can see there are three regiments to the far left—the others call them ‘the Angry Brigade’—but I haven’t found anyone making bombs yet. It’s just talk.”

  “What sort of talk?”

  “Oh, the usual stuff, but all in seventeenth-century language.” Frances fished in a small leather bag, producing a mini-recorder. “I went to a camp-fire service last night, down by the river—on our side of it. And there was one chap sounding off—listen—“ She held the recorder to Audley’s ear, clicking the button with her thumb as she did so.

  Crackle—crackle—crackle—

  “I couldn’t get as close as I’d have liked—“

  “Yes, I tell you all, good people … the liberties of this land have been lost since the coming in of William the Conqueror … and that, ever since, the People of God have lived under tyranny and oppression worse than that of our forefathers under the Egyptians. But now the time of deliverance is at hand; God will bring His people out of this slavery, and restore them to their freedom in enjoying the fruits and benefits of the earth …”

  Crackle—crackle—crackle—

  The voice was high and nasal—an American voice. … A New England voice.

  “That’s the American—Davenport— isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. Bob Davenport— Preacher Davenport, they call him.”

  “… to make it fruitful for the use of man. And the time will surely be—I tell you, my comrades—my brothers, I tell you all—when all men shall willingly come in and give up their lands and estates, and submit to this community of goods.”

  Frances clicked the button off. “That’s about as much as I could get of that. But it was all much the same—new stuff in old bottles.” She gestured from herself to Mitchell. “Dressed up like us.”

  Like them? Well, she was half-right there.

  “Not new stuff.” Audley shook his head. “That’s the genuine article, word for word—pure seventeenth-century revolutionary communism. It’s the Thoughts of Gerald Winstanley—‘Digger’ Winstanley. His big idea was that you can only achieve a political revolution through a social revolution, not vice versa.”

  Mitchell laughed. “I can’t see Oliver Cromwell going on that much, any more than we would have done.”

  We? Mitchell was certainly identifying with his fellow cavaliers, no doubt about that.

  “He didn’t,” replied Audley. “They put him down damn quick… . What else have you got on Davenport, Frances?”

  She shrugged. “Not a lot. He puts over his stuff as though it just came into his head. And he’s strictly non-violent—he’ll preach all day, and help the wounded out of the battle too, but he won’t carry a pike.”

  “The word is ‘trail’—‘trail a pike’, murmured Mitchell. “So Davenport is one of our possibles, then?”

  “He is, oddly enough.”

  Frances frowned. “How did you come up with him? He doesn’t seem quite the type for subversion … in so far as there is a type.”

  “You may well be right. It’s just a hunch I’m starting on, there’s no evidence to back it yet so far as I know.”

  “What sort of hunch?”

  “Maybe hunch isn’t the right word— assumption might be better. An assumption of what precautions I would have taken if I’d hired someone to knock off James Ratcliffe the way it was done at Swine Brook Field.”

  He had them both with him in the twentieth-century now: the Van Dyke aura was fading visibly.

  “Go on, David,” said Mitchell.

  “It’s nothing very special. As a matter of fact, the police thought of it too and checked it out as far as they could… . The killer obviously had very exact inside information about the place and the timing. So he obviously had precise information about the people as well.”

  “Charlie Ratcliffe did, you mean,” said Mitchell.

  “What people?” asked Frances.

  “Henry Digby, for one,” said Mitchell quickly.

  Trust Mitchell for that, thought Audley. And trust him also to sit on it until he was good and ready.

  “Henry Digby—exactly.” He nodded. “If I was going to kill a man just twenty yards from a young police sergeant in front of thousands of people I should want to make very sure he was minding his own business.”

  Mitchell nodded. “Very true. I should want him tied hand and foot for choice.”

  “I’m with you there,” said Frances.

  “Well … I’ve gone over Digby’s evidence twice, and there are just four people who attracted his attention at the material time—or distracted his attention, as the case may be. He was talking to two of the mock casualties, Philip Gates and David Bishop.” He looked questioningly at Frances.

  “Don’t know them.” She shook her head. “The names don’t ring any bells, anyway, not among the Angry Brigade people I’ve heard of yet.”

  “They wouldn’t be in the Angry Brigade. I don’t know what the Roundhead Wing would call them, but according to Digby they were Labour Party moderates from the way they spoke.”

  “Ah—well, they’d probably be Militiamen. Sort of … well, moderate English Presbyterians. Meaning good Parliamentarians, but they don’t want to get rid of the monarchy—would that be about right?”

  “Spot on, exactly. And they hadn’t much time for the Ironsides either, Digby said.”

  “That would be them.” Frances nodded vigorously. “Militia regiments—there are half a dozen of them.”

  Mitchell sniffed disparagingly. “I’ll never get the hang of your motley lot, Frances dear. In our army, we’re all good King’s men, and we’re nearly all Church of England, and we’re all good Conservatives. And that’s that.”

  Frances smiled sweetly at him. “It’s just a rumour about the Fascists, then?”

  “Slander, more like. Got a few Monday Club supporters—quite good chaps. And some Roman Catholics, of course. Also good chaps. But nothing really weird, like your Tower of Babel… . Which, as I say, I don’t really care to understand at all.”


  She lifted a black and white shoulder. “Well, you must be dim, Paul dear. Parliamentarian Presbyterian equals Labour Party—plus one or two Church of England left-wingers, who are Social Democrats. Then there are the Independents—they’re the Communists—“

  The light dawned on Audley in a blaze of understanding. Oliver Cromwell had metamorphosed into Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, none other. And that meant—

  “—the Communist Party, anyway. And all the rest are the non-conformists: the Anabaptists and the Fifth Monarchy men and the Diggers and the Levellers and so on—they’re the Trotskyites and the Marxist-Leninists and the Maoists and the Revolutionary Workers.” She turned towards Audley. “I don’t know really how they number off with each other yet—they can’t possibly fit each other historically— but that’s more or less how they go.”

  No, they could hardly fit exactly, thought Audley. History never repeated itself so neatly; technically Cromwell’s own Independents had included all the rag tag and bobtail of the religious sects that the Puritan revolution produced like fleas on a mangy dog—

  Fleas on a mangy dog … He closed his eyes for an instant as the words struck a chord in his memory, and was back in Cambridge half a lifetime before in Highsmith’s sitting room—

  “… like fleas on a mangy dog. But if you learn them, my dear David, you may at least impress the examiners even if you never impress anyone else. Baptists and Anabaptists; Brownists and Barrowists; Anti-Trinitarians and Anti-Sabbatarians— they’re all listed in Masson’s Life of Milton—Antinomians and Famulists; Divorcers and Seekers; Soul-Sleepers and Millenaries; Sceptics and Atheists; Ranters and Quakers—how the Quakers got into such company heaven alone knows, but at least they managed to get out of it; and the Muggletonians—I’ve really never been able to establish what they believed. And then there was Cromwell himself, but he took an agreeably pragmatic view of everyone other than Episcopalians and Catholics: ‘If they be willing faithfully to serve the State, that satisfies’. And if not —when the Levellers tried to subvert the Army, for example—he clapped them straight into the Tower of London. … Or shot them. ‘You have no other way to deal with these men but to break them, or they will break you’—for which devastatingly simple pronouncement the University of Oxford promptly conferred on him an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law, my dear David. …”