learnt . . .
'History does not relate whether this misfortune was due to inadvertence or to a stray shot from the enemy, for there was none left to tell the tale; all that is certain is that he and his principal officers perished instantly in the ensuing disaster in circumstances and upon the very spot that are recalled by a monument raised by his posterity, Mr. Algernon Ratcliffe JP, esteemed father of the present Lord of the Manor, upen the two hundredth anniversary of its tragic occurrence:
'Stranger! Now gaze on gallant Steyning's urn, Who ne'er upon the foe his noble back did turn, But, Earth to Heaven, was untimely sent By fierce explosion. Mark the dire event!
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Once close besieged, now by dread
Death set free,
Lord, from Life's Battle take my Soul to Thee!
'Now, once again, we may observe the role of the hero in the divine plan, which the death of the noble General Gordon at Khartum in recent times must surely remind the reader. For, deprived of Sir Edmund's guiding hand and implacable resolve, the defences on that instant crumbled.
The great cannon being dismounted (which it had been his constant charge to play upon the foe), the enemy burst in upon the defenders at that point, scattering all before them. Colonel Parrott, the sole survivor of the explosion, took to horse and essayed to escape (and who shall cry 'faint heart'
or 'treachery' in such an extremity?), only to perish in the carnage which ensued.'
The gold, thought Audley suddenly. Why was there no mention of the gold?
Burton waved at him again.
'Just coming.'
'For sure it was that, as the holding of Standingham had been a great feat of arms, so was its overthrow the more terrible. In a letter to King Charles (who had furnished him with a body dummy5
of soldiers, together with siege armament), Lord Monson wrote: 'In the extirpation of this nest of viperous rebels above 200 persons were slain, and an hundred taken prisoner, mostly of the baser sort: together with a great store of plate and all manner of household stuff, together with gold and silver pieces, being the fortune of the late owner, to the value of 3,500
Here it was that dark deeds were committed, it being rumoured that Colonel Parrott had brought with him a great treasure into the castle. But that brave man being beyond the power of his enemies to question, and certain poor prisoners revealing nothing, even upon torture, no part of this was ever discovered (giving rise to the legend which is even yet cherished by local folk); this even though much further damage was wrought to the fabric of the house and surviving buildings, the which was laid at Lord Monson's door, so that when he was shortly afterwards slain by a bullet through the mouth at the battle of Newbury it was said of him that 'he sought the gold and drank the blood of the godly in his life, but he found but one ball of lead and drank his own blood in his death'.'
Nasty. The sack of Standingham had been nasty—the proportion of killed to captured emphasised that as no mere words could—and the exultation of the Godly Reverend Musgrave over Lord Monson's come-uppance was nasty too.
But what was certain was that Charlie Ratcliffe hadn't derived much use from the Musgrave
Musgrave obviously rated the gold no higher than legend and rumour.
Burton was waiting for him beside an enormous cannon, Sir Edmund's original monster now bedded in a carriage of stone and set in the middle of the bastion between two pyramids of equally ancient cannonballs. But Audley had eyes neither for the man nor the gun, only for the kitchen garden behind and beneath them.
Killed in the explosion of a magazine behind the north wall—
But that had been over three hundred years ago, not the day before yesterday!
And yet there, directly below him, was a huge raw crater in the earth, surrounded by all the debris of an explosion: uprooted apple trees, dead in full leaf with the fruit hanging obscenely at unnatural angles, crushed rose bushes in bloom and piles of broken stone half buried in heaps of soil. Even beyond the area of total devastation the garden was scarred by wheel tracks which ran straight across flower beds and neat grass paths as though they hadn't existed. The whole place looked as though a battle had been fought across it, like the gardens of Normandy after D-Day. The fact that it had been a garden in full bloom, full of fruit and flowers, somehow made the scene more horrible; but what made it worse even than that was the feeling that the destruction beyond the crater had not really been mere carelessness, but a deliberate act, with each tractor journey cutting through a dummy5
different and hitherto undamaged area.
Burton read the stricken expression on his face. 'Makes a man feel sick, don't it?'
Audley nodded. Sick was the right word. If a child had done this the stick would have been needed; in an adult, the psychiatrist.
'Did he hate you, from way back?'
Burton shook his head. 'Didn't even remember my name.
Them, maybe he did . . . maybe he didn't. I can't rightly say.'
'But they're dead.'
'Aye.' Burton surveyed the ruin of his work. 'She loved flowers when she was alive, the old lady did. Roses and dahlias and chrysanths, mostly. And daffs in the spring . . .
filled the house with 'em. And after she died the old man kept them on. Said they reminded him of her, like.' He stopped suddenly, as though he felt he'd spoken too much.
Audley stared down at the pile of stones. He could make out the top of a cross with one arm broken off short, and nearby lay an accusing fragment of inscription: MARK THE DIRE EVENT!
