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
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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.'
'Because Monson was a Royalist and Steyning was a Roundhead?'
'That was the way it was. But that wasn't the only reason why they hated each other. There was also bad blood between them over a lawsuit of years before, when they'd both laid claim to the same piece of land somewhere, or something.
And the King's court ruled in Monson's favour—he had more influence with the King, so the story goes. It was a typical feud situation—like a range war in the Wild West.'
Audley nodded. 'I see. So when the Civil War broke out Monson naturally sided with the King.'
'Exactly. And Steyning declared for Parliament.'
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