" He does. And that's where the elusive Miss Palfrey lives."
Bradford pointed at Audley.
Audley tossed his head. "This is ridiculous. I've been to Zurich once or twice in the last three months, I have an account there. It isn't a crime yet, for God's sake!"
Stein chuckled. "No flies on our David!"
" Flies is right—" Bradford sat up "—flies is exactly right. Eh, David?"
Audley grimaced at him. "What d'you mean? F-f-flies?"
That's what I mean: 'f-f-flies'." Bradford pounced on him. "
'F-f-flies'. Big ones, little ones—fat ones, black ones, green shiny ones—squashy ones— flies, David—"
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"Don't be disgusting, Bradford!" Audley hunched his shoulders.
Lexy tossed the hair from her face. "Now you're being beastly, Mike—"
Not at all, honey—"
"You are so! We all know David hates flies, he's told us so.
But so do I and so do you—" she gave Audley a quick, sympathetic glance, and then carried on to the Israeli "—and when we talked about them . . . Davey there said there were more flies in that desert of his—"
"Sinai." Stein nodded. "Sinai is the fly capital of the world."
For Christ's sake!" said Audley.
Bradford nodded at Roche. "There you are, Captain. We don't like 'f-f-flies'—but he's obsessive about them!"
Roche observed Audley's face contort, though whether with disgust or anger the shadows didn't tell.
"So . . . just get the book, and I'll prove my point," went on Bradford. "Lexy—?"
"What point?" asked Jilly. "What book?"
Lexy blinked. "Book—?"
Bradford gestured dismissively. "It doesn't matter—you can take my word for it, I can give you chapter and page—
chapters and pages, rather— it's all there to be seen . . . and heard—they buzz around from battlefield to battlefield to annoy Simplicius, and from corpse to corpse on the dummy5
battlefield. On one page she has a whole paragraph about the Devil being 'lord of the flies', and how each fly is a black soul from Hell sent to plague the faithful—"
"Flies!" Lexy buried a hand into her tangled hair. "Of course—
yes, you're absolutely right, Mike—and the flies in the food at the wedding banquet, when she's forced to marry Atwulf—
Galla Placidia—"
Ataulf—" Audley corrected her automatically.
"So you have read the book, David!"
"I have not read the book." Audley closed his eyes. "I do not want to read the book—I will not read the book. I know perfectly well what happened during the period without having to read any semi-pornographic historical novel."
"I'll bet you do," said Bradford. "Flies included."
Audley opened his eyes. "I ... happen to have particularly unpleasant memories about. . . flies." He pronounced the word carefully. "Wartime memories, not historical ones. I'd prefer not to remember them, if it's all the same to you, Bradford."
"You remembered them for Antonia Palfrey."
Shut up, Mike," said Jilly.
"The hell I will!" Bradford's voice was obstinate. "If you think I—"
However . . ." Audley's own voice was obstinate too, and louder ". . . however ... I will tell you one thing you want to know, if it'll make you feel better."
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"Oh, goody-goody!" exclaimed Lexy. "He's going to tell us something that'll make us feel better!"
Audley's mouth twisted. "It won't make you feel better. It's all about barbarians—"
"Oh— merde!" Lexy's shoulders slumped.
"But it does answer your question, nevertheless—"
"What question?" Lexy cocked her head. "How—"
"Sssh, dear!" Jilly hushed her. "He's about to tell us how he ticks. Go on, David."
"Barbarians make him tick?" Lexy blundered on. "Oh—come on, David—"
" Lexy—" Jilly's tone became dangerous.
"Okay! Okay!" Lexy raised her hands. "Barbarians make you tick, David—anything you say!"
Audley stared at her. "They did—yes. After the war . . . during the war for that matter . . . they say war's a great leveller, and so it is. It levelled Aachen—Charlemagne's Aix-la-Chapelle . . . and Cologne . . . Colonia Agrippina . . . all in a good cause, of course—I levelled one little Norman church myself, with a few well-placed shots at a discreet distance—
there was this brave bugger with a panzerfaust in it, who'd just incinerated a friend of mine in the tank ahead of me . . .
good causes don't come any better than that."
"David—" began Lexy.
He was drunk, thought Roche. But not totally drunk, because dummy5
there still wasn't a word out of place, and not stupid drunk either. He simply hadn't liked the drift of Bradford's interrogation—the piling up of circumstantial evidence against him, piece by piece—and was seeking instead to divert it with the one thing he had to give them which might intrigue them more.
"Go on, David," said Jilly.
"Where was I?" Audley blinked owlishly.
"You were demolishing Germany," said Stein.
"In a good cause," said Lexy. "And it had something to do with barbarians."
"Ah ... of course, they crossed the Rhine from East to West—
the Franks, and then the Vandals and all the rest ... but we crossed it from West to East, as the Romans did, complete with hostile Germans on the other side." Audley nodded at Stein. "And I remember thinking . . . 'This time we'll get it right, the conquest of Germany—we won't fluff it, like the Romans did'. But, of course, it didn't work out like that, with the Russians—I was escorting one of the T Force groups ferreting out German technological secrets, and we ran into them doing the same thing straight off, and I knew then what sort of brave new world we were heading for." He paused.
"Nine months of fighting Nazis . . . and others . . . and eighteen months of fighting Russians . . . and others—that was my war. Uncomfortable, but highly educational, you might say." Another pause. "Then I went up to Cambridge, into the tender care of Professor Archibald Forbes—" he dummy5
raised his glass, only to find that it was empty; and then that the bottles on the table, tested one after another, were also empty, and focussed finally upon Lexy "—another bottle, pot-girl!"
"Don't you think you've had enough, David?" said Jilly.
"Huh!" Audley grunted derisively. "My dear Gillian, I haven't started to drink yet—not by rugger club standards, anyway."
Lexy drew another bottle from the rack.
"Make it two—or three, seeing as how the night is yet young . . . Stein—Bradford—Captain Roche ... fill your glasses! Let us drink to our dead youth—you remember your Kipling, Roche? Parnesius and Pertinax on the Great Wall, with the barbarians on the warpath?" Roche held out his glass obediently.
Audley grinned back at him. "A libation is what we should make—" he looked around, his glance finally settling on the potted plant at his elbow "—just a drop for my lost opportunities, then—" he inclined his glass carefully "—but not too much! Roche?"
Roche leaned forward to bury his own glass among the leaves. "And for mine too!" He tipped as much of his wine as he dared into the heart of the plant.
"Good man!" Audley beamed at him. "Stein—Bradford?"
"I don't sacrifice," said Stein.
"And I don't waste good wine," said Bradford.
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Audley shrugged. "Well. . . that's your funeral. I mocked the gods once, and I was punished for my hubris—appropriately punished, too."
"What hubris, David?" asked Jilly.
"I thought I knew better," said Audley. "I turned Forbes down when he offered me the real world, and chose the other Dark Ages instead. I thought I was uniquely well-placed to interpret them—I thought I had an insight denied to lesser mortals after my wartime education."