War Game

by Anthony Price

  “And all that jazz, yes,” said Frances evenly.

  “But it was a little lie, Frances dear. And it was a little unnecessary lie on the face of it. Because I’ve been talking to some people who know him—the last two-three years he’s been working on a post-graduate thesis on the Paris troubles of ‘68—and the thing that comes over is that he never talked about the Civil War until about a year ago. Or about his family either, come to that. He was plain Charlie Ratcliffe until then, but then he started to let slip his real name was Steyning-Ratcliffe—and that’s also when he joined the Double R Society.”

  “All right.” Frances spread her hands. “So that’s when he was bitten by the Civil War bug.”

  “Then why didn’t he admit it? I mean, he should have said ‘Until a year ago I’d forgotten all about the family treasure legend and I didn’t know Cromwell from a hole in the road’. But instead he said ‘I’ve been studying the period for many years, I’ve always been fascinated with its political parallels with our own revolutionary struggles’. And that just wasn’t true.”

  “And what was true?” said Audley.

  Mitchell looked at him triumphantly. “What was true was that about eighteen months ago he ran out of bread—he’s on an LEA research grant, which doesn’t go very far these days. So when he dropped out of circulation for a time no one thought twice about it. In any case, he’s always going over to Paris to do research and gab with his revolutionary friends there. But my little BBC girl just happened to find out what he was really doing. Quite by chance, actually, because one of her unemployed graduate friends was in on the same job … which was sorting the archives of the Earl of Dawlish and packing ‘em up ready for the Historical Manuscripts Commission to catalogue and calendar.”

  “The Earl of where?” Frances sounded disbelieving.

  “Dawlish. It’s down the south coast somewhere, near Torquay.”

  Frances shook her head. “I’ve never heard of the Earl of Dawlish.”

  “You wouldn’t have done, because the title’s been extinct since 1944. The archives have been given to the HMC by the Honourable Mrs. Somebody Someone, the last earl’s niece.”

  “So what do they reveal?” asked Audley. “Get to the point, man.”

  “Yes … well, the point is that the Earldom of Dawlish was created in 1690 by William III for services rendered by a certain George Dangerfield, who’d helped to raise the West Country against James II in 1688—“

  Frances took a deep breath. “But—“

  “Who in turn happened to be the grandson of a certain John Dangerfield— wait for it, Frances—who was the boon companion and crony of Captain Sir Edward Parrott, our Nathaniel’s piratical father. How’s that for size, then?” Mitchell smiled at them both. “And what is even more to the point is that John Dangerfield corresponded regularly with John Pym in Westminster. There are copies of letters he wrote to Pym in 1642 and 1643 in the archives, which means that he had a courier of some kind who was prepared to run the gauntlet through Royalist country.”

  For a moment no one spoke, then Frances said: “But he didn’t write about the gold.”

  Mitchell’s face creased with sudden irritation. “Aw—come on, Frances! What d’you want, a miracle? Look at the way it fits in—“ he raised a hand with the little finger extended “—one—Charlie Ratcliffe, who isn’t interested in Civil Wars or family history, gets a job sorting seventeenth-century documents; two—“ a second finger came up “—the documents he sorts belong to a neighbour of his gold-robbing ancestors, the Parrotts; three—Charlie is suddenly in love with history and ancestor worship; four—Cousin James dies; five— Charlie starts looking for gold, and finds it; six—“ the second thumb came up “—Charlie quietly suppresses all reference to one.” He seized his little finger again. “Which means if there was evidence of the gold’s existence, then Charlie’s got it.”

  Audley rubbed his chin. “It would only be just that—evidence of its existence.”

  “Oh, sure. Nathaniel couldn’t have known he’d have to hide it en route. But you wanted to know why Charlie was so sure there was gold to be found, and I reckon I’ve given you a pretty damn convincing sequence of possibilities. Everybody who ever looked for that gold could only hope that it wasn’t a legend. But Charlie—he knew it was there somewhere. And I’d guess that Nayler knew it too.”

  Audley looked quickly at Mitchell. Not only a warm young man, but a hot one was Paul Mitchell. Because that was probably the key to Charlie Ratcliffe’s achievement: the faith which moved this mountain was no relative of pious conviction, it was a positive certainty based on inside information. And that, at the moment, was also what made Paul Mitchell formidable too: he still believed with that same positive certainty that he had the inside information about himself.

  And doubly hot, because the final conclusion of that sequence of possibilities of his—the seventh finger conclusion— had to be the correct one. Indeed, it was the logical extension of that midnight brainwave which had disturbed Faith: only something of quite extraordinary importance could have caused the Royalist and Roundhead generals to detach men from their field armies at the start of a desperate campaign, the campaign which had ended with the relief of Gloucester and the battle of Newbury, to intervene in an unimportant castle siege which was little better than a private feud.

  It was just possible, in fairness, that the Royalists were reacting to a Roundhead intrusion into their territory: a quick cavalry dash was the sort of risk Prince Rupert would have relished. But the solid Parliamentary commanders of 1643 would never have countenanced such a move for precisely that reason. For them there had to be a certainty, and for certainty there had to be—again—inside information.

  Which meant that there must have been communication between Colonel Nathaniel Parrott in North Devon and John Pym in Westminster. And what better for that than John Dangerfield’s own private courier?

  “David—“ Frances interrupted his train of thought.

  And the irony was that almost all the details of this tapestry of events had been known long before Charlie Ratcliffe had chanced on the proof of it. It had all been there fossilised in history, like the bones of the dinosaurs, waiting for somebody to treat it not as a curious and amusing footnote, but as a rock-hard fact.

  “There’s someone outside, David,” said Frances.

  Audley’s train of thought halted abruptly. He had half-noticed a mouse-like scuffling on the landing, but had dismissed it as the ordinary sound of the house; now, as he roused himself, the scuffling nerved itself into a sharp little knuckle-tap on the door.

  “Come in,” said Audley.

  The door-knob shivered, then turned slowly. Mitchell came up out of his chair with uncharacteristic clumsiness, catching Champion’s galloping leg on his sleeve and setting the horse rearing and plunging wildly on his stand. As the door began to open—and to open with the same terrifying slowness with which the doorknob had turned—he reached across for the hilt of his sword, for all the world like the young D’Artagnan surprised by the Cardinal’s guard with the Queen’s emeralds in his pocket. Incredibly, he even started to draw the blade; Audley’s hold on reality went spinning as his attention was held by the mad grin of the rocking-horse and the madder sight of cold steel.

  Then the sword-hand froze—and relaxed.

  In the open doorway were two exquisite children, the seventeenth-century owners of the playroom, the boy an exact miniature of Paul in red taffeta and the girl a tiny blonde mite enveloped in apple-green watered silk.

  The sword rasped back into its scabbard. It was an insane world, thought Audley—an insane, wicked, self-destructive world. And he had just witnessed (and, from the pounding of his heart, taken part in) one of its more horror-comic moments.

  “Ahah!” The forced jollity of Mitchell’s voice betrayed the same insanity. “Mistress Henrietta Rushworth and Master Nigel Rushworth—well met, once again.”

  The little boy’s eyes shifted from Mitchell to Au
dley, and Audley’s own eyes dropped to the plain buff-coloured envelope the child held to his chest.

  “Mistress Henrietta and Master Nigel are going to watch the battle this afternoon,” explained Mitchell. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Everyone’s dressed up,” said Mistress Henrietta breathlessly. “Even Grandpa’s going to dress up.”

  “Is that so?” said Audley. “Do you like dressing up?”

  Mistress Henrietta nodded solemnly. “Why aren’t you dressed up?”

  “I didn’t have time—and I haven’t a costume.” But I am dressed up really. It’s the four of you who are in your real clothes. “I shall dress up next time.”

  “Next time.” Mistress Henrietta gave him a comforting nod.

  “Next time.” Audley nodded back.

  “Nigel’s got something for you,” said Henrietta, reaching out for the envelope as she spoke. “The man gave it to Grandpa.”

  Nigel quickly lifted the envelope above her reach, though without attempting to offer it to Audley.

  “What man?”

  “The man with red hair and a red face,” said Mistress Henrietta graphically. “He’s waiting for you downstairs—Nigel!”

  Nigel solved his problem by taking a step forward and handing over the envelope.

  “Thank you, Nigel. Will you tell the man I shall be down in a moment?”

  Nigel nodded, took a step back and dug Mistress Henrietta in the ribs with his elbow.

  “Lay off!” said Mistress Henrietta angrily.

  Blushing to the roots of his hair, Master Nigel bent over and whispered in her ear urgently.

  “Oh!” Mistress Henrietta’s gaze shifted from Audley to Mitchell. Then, as her brother straightened up, she searched in the leather bag which hung from her wrist and triumphantly produced a handful of rather crushed parsley. “For you,” she said, holding it out to Mitchell.

  Mitchell accepted the gift with one hand, and then swept off his plumed hat in the elaborate figure-of-eight bow with the other. “My lady … and you, sir—“ he looked down at Master Nigel “—remember what I told you—

  God for King Charles! To Pym and such carles

  The devil that prompts ‘em their treasons parles!

  —don’t forget. And if they want to know where your father is, tell them he’s riding with Prince Rupert, like every other true-hearted English gentleman.”

  Audley slid the photographs out of the envelope.

  Robert Davenport—a lean, nondescript face sandwiched between the tall black hat and the plain white collar of the Puritan divine.

  David Bishop—button nose and chubby cheeks, a baby-face made more for laughter than for the steel helmet perched incongruously above it.

  Philip Gates—another ordinary Anglo-Saxon face, fair hair falling across eyes which stared in surprise directly into the camera.

  John Lumley—those at least were memorable features, the arched nose and jutting chin framed by the black cavalier wig and beard: it had to be a disguise because that sort of expression went with short hair in the twentieth century, no matter what the fashions of the seventeenth might have decreed.

  He watched as Frances and Mitchell swopped the prints between them, noting Mitchell’s cheek muscles tighten with irritation as he came to Lumley’s.

  “Philip Oates knew he was being photographed,” said Frances, holding up the snap.

  “I hope they all knew they were being photographed,” said Audley. “These are four people we’re leaning on—I told you. Plus Charlie Ratcliffe himself. All five of them, they’re going to hear their phones go ‘click’ when they lift the receiver. They’re going to notice cars parked across the street from where they live—the same cars that were parked across the road from where they work. Their friends are going to tell them that people have been asking questions about them. And the people they see aren’t going to be the people who are doing the real watching, either. They’re each getting the VIP treatment.”

  Frances frowned. “You mean … Fail-Safe Surveillance?”

  “For a week, yes.”

  “Even for a week, that’s pretty expensive stuff.” Frances’s brow furrowed with the effort of the mental arithmetic she was doing. “I didn’t know your budget stretched to that sort of thing just now.”

  Mitchell laughed suddenly. “Maybe we’re expecting a profit for once. A ton of gold would pay a fairish dividend on the deal.”

  “Don’t be silly, Paul.”

  “I’m not being silly, honeybunch. If David does pull this rabbit out of the hat not even the Tribune Group will be able to complain about the high cost of security —we could probably put in for a Queen’s Award for Industry, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “But there’s something not right about this.” Frances shrugged him off simply by staring at Audley. “There are too many people getting involved, David. First there were just the three of us—or four, with that policeman of yours. But now there are five surveillance teams … and they can’t possibly operate at fail-safe level without four to a team. Plus a field controller and a technical services adviser for the electronics.” She shook her head. “That’s an awful lot of people, David.”

  “Plus the red-haired, red-faced gentleman,” murmured Mitchell. “But of course we do have ‘friends’ helping us this time, according to David.”

  “Special Branch,” said Frances, still watching Audley. “Special Branch doing the harassment bit—which they hate doing. And we hate making them do it… So you can talk about us leaning on Charlie Ratcliffe, but it feels more like someone’s leaning on us.”

  Another bright one, thought Audley. But then Mitchell, the trained military historian, had enjoyed his part of the assignment, which was little more than doing what came naturally to him. Whereas Frances, who had cut her teeth on very different problems, would have little sympathy for her task, and none at all for dressing up like this. And that had spurred her on to question its nature.

  But with such a bright one, doubt was a corrosive which had to be treated seriously. “There’s a political angle to this, Frances,” he said gently. “Sometimes the politicians require us to pick their chestnuts out of the fire, and we have to do it.

  “Of course there’s a political angle,” said Mitchell dismissively. “Charlie Ratcliffe is a political animal. And the lunatic left is a political force—a disproportionate force too, even without a war-chest full of gold. We’ve got to take his goodies away from him, Frances. It’s as simple as that.”

  “It isn’t simple at all,” snapped Frances.

  “No, it isn’t simple.” Audley recognised the source of her doubt: it was the knowledge that there on the left, but for the grace of God, went Frances herself, in the ranks of Charlie Ratcliffe’s regiment. “But it isn’t improper either. If Ratcliffe had played straight to get his gold, we wouldn’t touch him. But he didn’t play straight, he played dirty. He had another human being killed—“ he had to hold her here “—like a rabbit.”

  Kill it, Audley—go on, man—kill it!

  “Yes—“ Mitchell started to speak, but caught Audley’s eye just in time. As though to stop up his mouth he started to munch the parsley which Mistress Henrietta had given him.

  “Like a rabbit, Frances,” Audley repeated. “And he didn’t even have the guts to do his own killing. He hired someone.”

  He could feel her doubt weakening. In the end it was always a matter of trust and now she wanted to trust him, not knowing that he had won her by summoning up that old, dark memory of the harvest field.

  She stared at him. “You’re sure?”

  No.

  But that trust was a two-way thing, like the feudal bond he had almost accepted in the Minister’s car.

  “Yes.”

  No more doubt: it was gone like a shadow in the sunlight. Frances would serve now, consenting to whatever had to be done.

  “So what next?” asked Mitchell through the parsley. “You really want me to lean on John Lumley?”

  “I
don’t want you to do anything, either of you. Keep an eye open for them, but don’t do anything. Just fight your battle today the way it’s scripted. You’re my Tenth Legion.”

  “More like Fifth Column. So what are we being reserved for, my lord?”

  “The storming of Standingham Castle next Saturday.”

  Mitchell’s eyes lit up. “Of course! Forgive me for being so dim, David—I’d got my parts mixed up.”

  “Your what?”

  Mitchell laughed. “I was still doing my Henry V bit—your favourite play, as we all know, David—

  To horse, you gallant princes! Straight to horse!”

  “Don’t be a pain, Paul,” said Frances.

  “You can’t talk, Frances dear. You’ve been doing it far worse than me—

  But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make …”

  What a young snake the boy was, thought Audley ruefully.

  “But now you know our cause is just, our quarrel honourable, you can safely shift from Agincourt to Elsinore, my lady.” Mitchell was enjoying himself. “Because we’re going to be Hamlet’s Players in The Murder of Gonzago—

  The play’s the thing

  Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

  “Bravo and good on you, David. We’ll pronounce our lines trippingly, I promise you. Is there anything else you want?”

  Yes, just one thing so far as Mitchell was concerned, thought Audley fervently. But he would have to settle for something less drastic.

  “Yes, there is one thing,” he said heavily.

  “Be my guest.”

  “I’d like to know why the hell you’re eating parsley.”

  But that only stopped Mitchell for a fraction of a second. “Mistress Henrietta’s gift? But of course—I asked her for it.” Mitchell pointed to the corner of the playroom, to a small table laden with Air Vice-Marshal Rushworth’s forgotten sandwiches and beer bottles. “The Royalist cavalry aren’t allowed to drink today—a shocking anachronism, because they were pie-eyed back in ‘44. But I’ve had a beer and I can’t afford to be dismissed the service until after I’ve stormed Standingham next week. Didn’t your father ever tell you that parsley takes away the smell of booze, David?”