But Swine Brook had to be the key, and in the valley to the west a straggle of willows and thick bushes marked the line of a stream. On his right the pastureland ran down towards the stream, flattening for the last two hundred yards into a rich water-meadow.
Swine Brook Field: the field where they once let the pigs loose.
He followed the signpost's finger down a rutted track along the line of the hog's back between overgrown hedges of bramble and hawthorn. If this had been the battle-front of one of the 1643 armies it would have been a strong position, no doubt about that with the hedge to hide the musketeers and the reverse slope to the east to snug down the cavalry out of sight.
Except that he didn't know which side had fought where at Swine Brook Field yet, only that it had been the King's Cavaliers who had won the day.
Cavalier—wrong, but romantic; Roundhead—right, but repulsive.
Which side would Sir David Audley have been? Would he have followed his head or his heart? Or his religion? Or his father? Or his county? Or the source of his income?
But there was another thing for sure: of all wars, civil wars dummy5
were the cruellest, 1640s and 1970s no different. Because the winning and the losing was rarely the end of them, as old Sir Jacob had seen—
Paul Mitchell was leaning on a farm gate set back in the thickness of the hedge, waiting for him with well-simulated patience.
No mistaking Paul. The first time Audley had seen him, across a table strewn with maps and documents in the Military Studies Institute, he'd been hidden under a near-revolutionary shock of mousey hair, and the last time the shock had been tamed to an army trim, blond-rinsed. Now the mouse-colour was back and the length too, with a van Dyke beard and moustache, cavalier-style and flecked with ginger. But no disguise, natural grown or artificial, could hide the predatory Paul underneath; at least, not from the eyes of the man who had recruited him to the Queen's service.
At the time, almost at the first glance, it had seemed the clever thing to attempt it; and every aptitude test and training report since then had confirmed his intuition. If there was any logic and justice to promotion, Paul would be running a section in five years' time, and a department five years after that, and the whole bloody show five years after that.
And in the meantime, what could be more sensible than to let him win his spurs under the control of the man who had dummy5
identified his natural talents at a glance?
God help us all, thought Audley. Paul is a fine feather in my cap—and how glad I am that I won't be wearing that cap in fifteen years' time!
"Hullo, David. You're looking bronzed and fit."
For a bet, Mitchell knew where he'd been these last weeks.
"Bronzed and fit, my eye! I'm tired and bad-tempered, and you had better believe that. . . . Good afternoon, Paul. You look like a sociology lecturer at a radical polytechnic. Does this gate open, or do I have to climb over it?"
"It doesn't open."
"But you have to watch out for your trousers—there's a strand of barbed wire on the top, just this side. I've already torn my jeans on the danm thing," said Frances Fitzgibbon as she came into view at Mitchell's shoulder. "And I think I've spiked my bottom, too."
Audley stared at her against his will. The thought of Frances Fitzgibbon's little bottom was arresting, as was the thought and sight of all her other components, miniature though they were. It wasn't that she was in the least beautiful, or even that she was pretty except in a pert, early-flowering, childish way. But at first sight she was the sensual essence of every man's imagined indiscretion with the girl glimpsed across the shop counter.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Fitzgibbon— Frances," said Audley carefully.
dummy5
It was always the same: after that first sight the truth about Frances Fitzgibbon dowsed desire like a bucket of ice-water.
Despite appearances—which so totally belied reality that she was worth a fortune to the department as she stood, torn jeans and all—Frances was a kindly and serious-minded young woman trapped in the wrong body, who deserved a better fate than having to work with Paul Mitchell . . . and maybe with David Audley too.
"How are Faith and little Cathy?" asked Frances.
"They were fine when I last saw them some weeks ago."
The brown eyes became sympathetic. "Like that, is it? They double-crossed you again? Poor David—I'm sorry."
"And I'm sorry about the—barbed wire."
Mitchell grinned. "I offered to render first aid, but she wasn't having any."
The eyes flashed. "I should hope not!"
Mitchell too, thought Audley. But that was the predictable male response, a sort of protective lust, and at least they were of an age. Two more babies.
"Never mind, Frances dear," Mitchell went on unrepentantly,
"you have an honourable injury On Her Majesty's Service to console you—
Then will she strip her . . . jeans
and show her scars
dummy5
And say, 'These wounds I had on
Swine Brook Field'
—and David has us to console him."
Babies. Or if not babies then mere children, they had given him to do this job. Clever children, but children all the same.
And now they were making him feel older than he really was, and not a little jealous too.
"Some consolation!" murmured Frances.
Audley cleared his throat. He had to stop this sparring and start asserting his authority.
"Very well, then ..." He pointed to the plain stone cross which rose from the grass a dozen yards down the hillside. "I take it that is the monument, and Swine Brook Field is beyond it."
"That's right," said Mitchell. "And the stream down there is the Swine Brook, no less."
Audley was unhappily aware that he had observed the obvious, and that Mitchell had capped him deliberately by adding the equally obvious.
"So what happened?"
"What happened ..." Mitchell paused momentarily. "Well, we're standing just about midway along the spectator line.
They filled in right along the ridge—" he spread his arms out on each side "—about a quarter of a mile to the left and right dummy5
of us here. And there were ropes strung along to keep them from spreading too far down the hill and getting mixed up in the battle. So—"
"I meant,what happened in 1643?" said Audley waspishly. It was just possible that Mitchell hadn't considered it necessary to take his researches that far back, and nothing would put him down more surely than having to admit a little healthy ignorance.
"In 1643?"
"In the battle. Swine Brook Field, 1643," said Audley with exaggerated patience. "I like to start at the beginning."
"Okay." Mitchell shrugged. "We're on the attack line—they came over the hill from behind us—"
"Who is they?"
Mitchell looked at him uncertainly.
"You don't know anything about the battle?"
"If I did I wouldn't be asking. Who came over the hill?"
"The Royalists." Mitchell's voice was just a shade sharper.
"The Roundhead relief convoy was travelling up the valley, on the old road to Standingham alongside the stream, more or less."
"A convoy?"
"Wagons and carts, that's right. They call it a battle, but the truth is it was more like an ambush—or an overgrown skirmish that worked like an ambush. The Royalists weren't dummy5
really lying in wait for them, they were simply trying to stop them getting to Standingham and this was where they collided. It just happened to work out badly for the Roundheads and perfectly for the Royalists, that's all."
"What was in the wagons?"
"General supplies, but mostly cannon-balls and gunpowder, apparently. . . . There was this man Monson—Lord Thomas Monson, or 'Black Thomas' as they called him—who was besieging Standingham Hall. It wasn't a big affair: Monson had about 700 men and there were maybe 250 inside the perimeter at Standingham—maybe less. In fact, it was more like a local feud, because the Monsons of Ingham Hall and the Steynings of Standingham Castle were neighbours. Only they just happened to hate each other's guts."