was distinguished by some anecdote, or restaurant, or person (usually a girl, but often enough a blood relative). And most of what he said was now coloured with the conviction that his mother's native Amalfi was superior in every respect to the rest of Italy.
'—met this guy Mac—MacLaren, MacSomething—I can't remember, but he came because he'd read we'd got St.
Andrew's body in the cathedral—'
Boselli's headache had gone, dissolved by the General's approval, but the flashing lights and the motion of the car made it hard to think constructively.
'—and he suffered from piles, only being an idiot he thought they were boils—'
The continuous narrative confused him, as perhaps it was intended to. It reminded him again that they were lying, despite their apparent frankness when he had returned to the terrace.
'—and there he was, squatting over a mirror on the floor, trying to put a hot poultice on his—'
Boselli tried to shut out the end of the tale, doubly grateful dummy2
that he had not eaten too much at dinner. Whatever happened he had been the one to see the reason for their smokescreen of co-operation, anyway, and it was up to the General now to trace that missing piece in the jigsaw.
'—married his nurse in the hospital. And I was his best man.' Richardson's voice cracked with the memory. 'So you could say it all came right in the end—'
The car was slowing down at last.
'The Castel di Ruggiero, signori,' said the driver. 'Please hold tight.'
He brought the car first through a full right angle to the left, directly over the cliff edge so it seemed to Boselli, and then, almost in its own length, through another right angle, until they were parallel to the coast road again, but facing the way they had come. Only now the car was tilted alarmingly downwards.
'That bastard,' said Richardson.
Boselli, who had been trying to brace himself against the angle of descent, jerked back, striking his head against the side of the car.
'I wouldn't have called him that,' murmured Audley. 'A great man by any standards, I'd say he was.'
'A bastard by any standards, you mean.'
'Who—?' Boselli began, bewildered, only to be cut off instantly by Audley.
'Ah, but that's because of what he did to Amalfi, so you're dummy2
biased. He was the greatest ruler of his time—the greatest ruler of the greatest kingdom. God help us, we could do with a few King Rogers today,' Audley grunted. Then, turning to Boselli he continued more courteously: 'King Roger II of Sicily, signore—he conquered all this coast and half the central Mediterranean in the twelfth century.'
Boselli had made the mental adjustment one second earlier, but too late to forestall the explanation. It was humiliating to be informed about one's own history by a foreigner, though their sudden shedding of eight hundred years to argue about a dead king on the very threshold of Eugenio Narva's house was utterly inexplicable to him at the same time.
The car stopped suddenly in its descent as a figure looked up in the headlights. A powerful flashlight ranged over them, pausing at each face.
'Carry on!' A voice outside commanded.
'So Narva takes precautions,' murmured Richardson. 'And we're expected, too.'
'We are expected,' said Boselli primly. 'But the precautions are ours, signore. There has been a guard here ever since we learned of Signor Narva's—involvement. For his protection, of course, you understand.'
'Against Ruelle?' Richardson nodded. 'That's why they let us come halfway down the cliff, eh? They'd just love him to come calling, wouldn't they!'
Boselli shrugged off the observation, deciding that he too dummy2
could show his coolness. He addressed Audley: 'I had forgotten for a moment that you are an authority on the Middle Ages, professore. And on the Middle East, too—and did not King Roger use many Arab soldiers in his conquests?'
'Ruddy Normans would use the devil himself if it suited them,' said Richardson hotly, as though that old conquest of his beloved Amalfi had happened the week before.
'That's your Catholic upbringing doing your thinking for you, young Peter,' replied Audley patronisingly. 'The Norman kings of Sicily practised religious toleration in these parts somewhat before it became fashionable—if it ever has.'
Boselli's feeling of unreality was now complete: it was as though they were deliberately playing some game of their own, talking about anything but the matter in hand, in order to confuse him.
He dredged into the cloudy memories of his own historical education, which had mostly been at the hands of an aged priest whose views of King Roger, as he now recalled, had exactly coincided with those of Richardson, though perhaps for very different reasons: it had been that wicked Norman, surely, who had not only opposed the policies of the great St.
Bernard, but had also driven an entire Papal army to muddy death in the Garigliano and had taken the Holy Father himself prisoner. He was saved by the car's sudden emergence through a great bank of oleanders into a brightly lit forecourt. The twisting drive down the cliff in the dummy2
darkness, coupled with the historical argument which had risen between the Englishmen like a summer storm, had served to disorientate him. He opened the car door quickly and hopped out on to the pavement gratefully.
