"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."
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"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 dummy5
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 dummy5
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. ..."
"David!"
Audley woke with a start to find them both staring at him:
"I'm sorry. I was just thinking. ..."
"There were these two Militiamen," prompted Mitchell.
"They distracted Digby while James Ratcliffe was having his neck broken."
"Distracted, possibly. They certainly talked to him, and one of them even restrained him, or tried to. Philip Oates and David Bishop."
"Do you want me to look them over?" asked Frances.
"Just keep an eye open for them. Colonel Butler is running a full check on them for me at the moment. And on Robert Davenport too."
"Where does he come in?"
"He was also on the spot at the right time. He preached a sermon on the wrath of God and the wickedness of the Royalists."
"He's always doing that."
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"Yes—but apparently this was a particularly good sermon.
Digby couldn't resist listening to it."
"Which was what Davenport intended him to do, you mean?"
Audley spread his hands. "It's another possibility."
Mitchell nodded. "And the fourth distractor?"
"Ah, the fourth is a long shot—and one of yours, too."
"Mine? You don't mean he's a Cavalier? A Royalist gentleman?"
"He is indeed. And not just any Royalist gentleman, either.
Have you met Major John Lumley yet, Paul?"
"Major John—? You're kidding!"
"Alias Black Thomas Monson of Swine Brook Field—not at all."
"You're still kidding. Never in a thousand years," Mitchell shook his head vehemently, "not in a million years, either.
Not John Lumley."
"A long shot, I admit. But as Black Thomas he made a special point of telling Digby to keep on pouring his red dye into the stream. And Digby says that simply wasn't necessary."
"So he was just making sure Digby did his job, then."
"Precisely. And if I was Charlie Ratcliffe's contract man that's the one thing I'd require of my employer: to ensure that Digby went on doing his job while I did mine. So Lumley stays on the list until we can prove otherwise."
"A waste of time." Mitchell's tone was obstinate. "Gates and dummy5
Bishop—maybe. Davenport—probably, from the way he talks.
But John Lumley—never."
"What makes you so sure?" asked Frances.
"I also happen to have met the man himself and I know how his mind works. And it would never work on behalf of Charlie Ratcliffe, not ever."
"Maybe." Lumley was the longest shot of the four, but in the circumstances the more suspects he had, the better. "You may well be right, Paul. And if you are, then he'll emerge whiter than white from Colonel Butler's inquiries, and I shall be perfectly happy to accept his verdict."
"And if not?" said Frances.
"Until I hear from Butler in a few minutes' time that's academic. They may all be clean . . . they may all be dirty. But at the moment they are all suspect and we're going to lean on all of them and see what happens. That will be when you must keep your eyes skinned."
"Hmm ..." Frances frowned slightly. "Talking of keeping our eyes skinned . . . there are several rather equivocal non-Roundhead types who've been loitering around the camp from the minute we arrived yesterday evening. And asking questions too, evidently."
"That's right. They've been lent to us by—some of our friends."
"Well, they're not exactly treading with fairy feet."
"They aren't meant to be. They're just softening up the dummy5
targets."
"Which include Charlie Ratcliffe, I trust." There was a faint echo of his anger in Mitchell's voice, as though the slur cast on Major Lumley constituted a large addition to Charlie Ratcliffe's overdue account.
"Don't fret, Paul. We've been leaning on Ratcliffe since early yesterday morning."
"How?"
"He's been trying to raise money—and quite a lot of it, too—
on the strength of his golden expectations," Audley began.
Frances stirred at that, her long skirts rustling. "That wouldn't be for the new printing press of his own he wants for The Red Rat, would it?"