In any age the long, reedy lake and the treacherous bog on either side of the causeway would have been a sufficient obstacle to a regular military assault. But after those hazards the cliffs of the crag line themselves rose sheer, making the approach not so much difficult as impossible, so long as there was a corporal's guard of pensioners on the Wall, which the Romans had built along the crest regardless of all these advantages.
Butler shook his head in admiration. The tattooed Picts must have been spunky little devils if they'd ever attacked here; it would have been no joke with rocket-assisted lines, and smoke and a full range of support weapons.
Probably they never had—and probably that was why the Romans had run the causeway northwards here, straight through the Boghole milecastle. In peacetime it would have been a well-defined customs post, while in time of trouble it would have been an easily-defended sally-port for flying columns of Dacians and Lusitanians from the fortress less than a mile to the south of it.
Nevertheless the Roman military engineers (a corps apparently accustomed to obeying all orders to the letter) had taken no chances in the gap itself: for twenty-five yards on each side of the causeway's junction with the milecastle, they had laboriously scooped out the standard fighting ditch. Now half-full of fetid, green-scummed water, it was still clearly discernible on either side of him now as he reached the Wall.
By contrast the milecastle itself had come down sadly in the world. The fine ashlar stonework—Christ, dummy2.htm
what stonemasons the men had been!—still stood almost shoulder-high, but the old gateways were plugged with a depressing jumble of hurdles, old iron railings and barbed-wire, festooned with trailing knots of wool.
Butler found a foothold and heaved himself up and over the stonework. He had plenty of time in hand before Polly Epton and the American came to this spot for the start of the hare shoot, so there was no call for undignified haste. From here to Ortolanacum was no more than a light infantryman's five-minute march, on the good firm going of the old military road.
But he could no longer fool himself by pretending to study this historic ground through a soldier's eye: the moment of decision was almost at hand and after a night's sober reappraisal he was still uncertain of the better course—whether to settle the account now, cutting both profit and loss, or whether to raise the stakes by waiting and watching a little longer.
There was no text-book answer—there never was and there never would be—to this hoary intelligence dilemma. You acted or you waited according to your instinct and your experience, knowing that each time the only measure of your prudence would be the outcome. That was the name of the game, and when it started worrying you too much it was time to quit while you still could.
Ortolanacum lay clear ahead now, a confusion of mounds and stones and low, grey-weathered walls, like a half-disinterred skeleton in the level between the two rising shoulders of the crags.
But not really a confusion; nothing these Romans did was ever confused—even the fortress's ridiculous defensive site was simply their assertion that it was built to house attackers, not to shelter defenders.
And built, too, to that logical, invariable plan which Handforth-Jones found so dull, but which in its day meant a man could ride from Arabia to Scotland and still find the same welcoming pattern of barracks waiting for him—and could give his report to someone waiting for him there in the same Headquarters building, where Audley was waiting for him now.
'Hullo, Butler,' Audley said equably. 'A bit chilly this morning.' He nodded towards the 12-bore.
'Going shooting?'
Butler looked down at him. 'Aye, for my supper.'
'For—?' Audley raised a mocking eyebrow. 'Not for one of Gracey's famous dinners?'
'Aye.'
'My dear fellow! You must have made a considerable impression on him. He doesn't cook for just anybody, you know. He—'
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'You got my message?'
'That's why I'm here.'
'We've got it all wrong.'
'Yes, I know.'
Butler felt the back of his neck taughten under the raised collar of the donkey-jacket.
'Not quite all of it, actually. Just some of it,' said Audley.
'How long have you known?' Butler kept a tight rein on his temper, listening to the bitter end without interrupting.
'What I've just told you?' Audley shrugged. 'Not very long. But I suspected they'd set this student business up just for our benefit, even before you made your report yesterday. And when they put Alek on view for me to identify—then I was certain. After that it wasn't so very difficult.' He smiled. 'Eden Hall and Oxford—it was all there once we knew what to look for, as I've just said. You saw it for yourself in the end, too.'
Butler stared at him, balanced between irritation and admiration.
'What made you suspicious—at the start?'
'My dear Jack,' Audley waved airily, 'it was a great little nightmare of Sir Geoffrey Hobson's, but that's all it ever was. It wasn't like the Russians—Theodore Friesler said so, and you said so, and I couldn't find one bit of real evidence to back it—' Audley's voice hardened suddenly '—and I don't make that sort of mistake.'
'Then what the hell was all that rigmarole on the Wall yesterday?'
'Rigmarole?' Audley shook his head. 'Say rather that was just Adashev and I playing chess with each other. I needed to give him the chance of telling me what he wanted me to know.'
'Why?'
'Because this student thing is for real, too, Jack. It's not a blind—even a new boy like Adashev didn't reckon he could draw off my attention from the real thing with an imaginary operation. The real thing dummy2.htm
