Panin watched him depart through Gilbert of Merville’s bailey gateway. “The advantage of having a Pole is that he does what he is told,‘ said Panin to the Major’s back. Then he came again to Audley. ’And, of course, my dear David, the poor creature has been overawed by your presence. And by our medieval crusaders of the twelfth century. And I’m sure he doesn’t know your T. E.
Lawrence from D. H. Lawrence—do you think Lady Chatterley’s Lover has ever been translated into Polish? I would think not, eh?‘
He continued to stare at Audley, but so fixedly that Tom felt he himself was very deliberately not being looked at, even though his reciprocal dismissal was now presumably what the Russian required.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘Oh… do you think so?’ Audley cocked his head, frowning slightly, as if the question was of importance. ‘ Lady Chatterley must have been… mid-1920s? And it must have been one of Lawrence’s last books, because he died in 1930. So Poland was still a free country then.’ Then he nodded, still frowning. ‘But the Catholics might have banned it, I agree.’ He drew a sudden breath and then sneezed explosively, and began to search for his handkerchief. ‘So you may well be right, at that.’ He buried his face in the handkerchief. ‘I do beg your pardon, Nikolai.’
‘You have a cold?’ inquired Panin sympathetically.
‘I have a cold.’ Audley nodded. ‘And Sir Thomas stays, Nikolai.’
Now Panin glanced at Tom, but then quickly returned to Audley.
They do not trust you even now, David? Even less than they trust me?‘
Sniff. ‘Nobody trusts me.’ The thought seemed to brighten Audley.
‘Not even my dear wife.’
The two old men considered each other in silence, and Tom decided it was time to hear his own voice again. ‘I think what Dr Audley means is that I’m not so good at doing what I’m told, Professor—unlike Major Sadowski—’ He realized too late, as he pronounced the name, that he had made the mistake of inflecting it correctly ‘—even though I am equally overawed by meeting the celebrated Professor Panin, naturally.’
‘Hah! And so you’d better be, Tom,’ agreed Audley. ‘Not every day do you get to meet an old Central Committee man who was dandled on the knee of Vladimir Il’ich Lenin as a baby, and given Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State a revolutionary blessing! Or is that just a story, Nikolai?’
‘It is just a story.’ Panin was giving his whole speculative attention to Tom now. ‘Vladimir Il’ich did not dandle babies on his knee.’
‘No—of course!’ Audley nodded agreement. ‘Only poor devils who have to win the proletariat vote have to dandle babies—of course! And your old dad fought with the White Army in any case, didn’t he? In the Semenovski Guards, was it?’
Panin continued to stare at Tom. ‘And I am no longer on the Central Committee.’ He ignored Audley’s flippancies. This place was a fortress, Sir Thomas. Correct?‘
Tom had just registered the Semenovski Guards: they had been among the Imperial guards regiments of the Tsar himself. So Audley was playing dirty, as was his custom. ‘Yes, Professor.’ He was tempted to leave it at that, but found that he couldn’t. ‘It was probably built by a man named Gilbert de Merville in the mid-1130s, who was a supporter of a great baron named Baldwin de Redvers. If it is, then it’s Mountsorrel Castle.’
Panin turned away for a moment, to the gorse-and-bracken-covered line of bailey ditch-and-rampart again, and then to the higher motte across the few yards of cow-hoofprinted and cowpatted expanse of coarse pasture which separated the bailey gate from the ditched motte overlooking the river crossing below. But when he came back to Tom there was something in his face, or behind his eyes, which betrayed an insight into what it had once been, before it had been trodden down and demilitarized by eight-and-a-half centuries of time and cows.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘So how is Mountsorrel Castle appropriate to us now, Sir Thomas?’
‘ Ah!’ Audley burst back into the conversation like a Cromwell finding its gap in the bocage at last. ‘Now… now what I meant, Nikolai… was not so much related to place, you see… Although this particular place is also not inappropriate—’ He gave Tom a quick sidelong glance ‘—it is an adulterine construction, is it, Tom?’
The question caught Tom off-balance. ‘I’m not sure, David—’
‘ “Adulterine”?’ The word unbalanced Panin too—quite understandably, thought Tom.
‘ “Illegal”, Nikolai.’ Audley didn’t want to be interrupted. ‘In the days of our strong kings, you couldn’t just put up a castle when you felt like it—you had to have a licence to build and crenellate…
Although “crenellate” is a bit later, I suppose—like, to put up battlements and loopholes; so this was probably no more than a stout palisade, like an old US cavalry stockade, to keep the native English-Indians out, eh?’ Because he didn’t want to be interrupted he didn’t wait to be understood. ‘What I meant was the timing of it, not really the placing… do you see?’
Tom didn’t see. But, nevertheless and loyally, he looked towards the Russian as though he did.
‘The timing?’ Under their combined scrutiny Panin had to ask the question, even though he must know he was walking into some prepared ambush. But then, instead, he gestured towards the motte.
‘Shall we walk a little way? I feel… a little overlooked here, is the truth—?’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Quite suddenly Tom remembered Audley’s terrace, and the flesh up his backbone crawled at the memory, so that his feet moved before his brain stamped their movement order, taking him towards the protection of Gilbert’s earth mound.
Panin moved with him. And Tom felt a breath of wind on his cheeks, and the topmost growth of gorse and bracken and old winter bramble shivered on the mound ahead of him, in the same breath of moving air, which had a decided hint of rain-to-come in it, sweeping up the Bristol Channel between Lundy Island and the Gower Peninsula from the distant Atlantic Ocean.
‘Timing—?’ Panin reached relative safety, but turned to find Audley still rooted to his spot behind them in the entrance, snuffling into his handkerchief again. ‘David—?’
‘Coming…’ Audley took his time, even adding to it with a scrutiny of the nearer hillside, on which Major Sadowski was now presumably doing his invisible guard-duty. ‘Coming’
Willy! thought Tom, staring into the junction of the bailey ditch with that of the motte. At this point on the Mountsorrel spur the topsoil had been thin, but Gilbert’s forced-labourers hadn’t been allowed to skimp their ditching: the outer edge was still an eight-foot vertical rock-wall, overhung with trailing brambles growing over it from the top, and he would have liked Willy to have seen that ruthless Norman attention to essential detail —
‘I’m sorry!’ Audley strode up, with that long, purposeful stride of his. ‘I was busy sneezing again. And then I was thinking.’ He looked around, up at the mound, then again at the Major’s ridge, and finally back to Panin. ‘Is this safe enough for you, then?’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Panin sighed, but seemed to accept that Audley had taken the lead again. ‘What were you thinking?’