War Game

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.'

dummy5

'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.