'Officially, just travelling for pleasure. He's supposed to have had a legacy, or an inheritance of some sort, and decided to do Europe on it. He hasn't got past England yet.' Butler paused. 'Been here eight months now, and clean as a whistle.
But he's still the obvious one—and we're working on him.'
The years had mellowed Butler, thought Audley.
'But . . . I'll tell you one thing . . .' Butler spoke slowly, as though he wanted the words to sink in deeply '... we're not really working on Ratcliffe himself. We're pushing him, but we're not investigating him. That's specifically outside the brief.'
'Uh-huh?' And saying as much was also outside the brief, at a guess, thought Audley. It was a glorious defect of Butler's dummy5
that his loyalties, even his overriding loyalty to Queen and Country, were still limited by his ideas of fair play.
'You know, eh?' Butler spelt out his warning with a shrug.
'I've been fairly explicitly warned off,' Audley nodded. 'And the file on Ratcliffe is an edited one, too—which means that they already have a shrewd idea what Charlie intends to do when he's able to do it. So this is in the nature of a spoiling operation.' He smiled at Butler in sudden gratitude; fair play wasn't friendship, but among equals it was the next best thing, and possibly a better thing at that. 'But thanks, Jack.'
Butler shied away from the smile as though it were a snake in his path, half turning towards the window and putting his nose back into the tumbler. As he did so there came a shout of command from outside and the same brittle drumming which had marked the change of the guard on the bridge fifteen minutes earlier.
'Well, if you want anything else from me you'd better make it quick,' said Butler. 'Your man's arrived.'
Audley peered over his shoulder down at the bridge. The Royalist musketeers had formed up in a line alongside one parapet, complete with drummer and standard bearer, all standing rigidly to attention. From the other side of the bridge a trumpet pealed out and a Roundhead trooper rode into view, less gorgeous than the knot of cavalier officers who had gathered at the Royalist end, but much more warlike in his lobster-tailed steel helmet, polished breast-plate and leather buff-coat. For a moment or two he fought with his dummy5
horse, which clearly disapproved of the trumpet call, but having mastered it rose in his stirrups and lifted a white flag of truce high above his head.
'You're getting the full treatment,' observed Butler.
One of the cavalier officers advanced a few steps and doffed his plumed hat, holding it across his chest. The Roundhead dismounted and advanced on foot across the bridge to meet him. The cavalier, still bareheaded, gave a small bow and the Roundhead lifted his gloved hand in salute—presumably his helmet was rather more difficult to remove. Then, after a few minutes of conversation, each returned to his own side.
'Just like a film,' said Audley.
'Aye. And us in the one-and-nine-pennies,' said Butler.
'That dates you, Jack—the one-and-nine-pennies.'
The trumpet pealed again and a new figure appeared from the Roundhead side; like the troopers, he wore a steel breastplate and a buff-coat, but these were topped by a wide lace collar and a large, stiff-brimmed black hat.
'Except I was always in the one-and-threepences,'
murmured Butler. 'But there he is, anyway: the Parliamentary Labour candidate for Mid-Wessex . . . alias Oliver Cromwell for today. Which isn't altogether inappropriate, I suppose.'
The black-hatted Roundhead paused for a second in the centre of the bridge. The Royalist drummer beat a fierce little ruffle and the King's flag came down in salute. Once more the dummy5
cavalier officer advanced to meet his enemies, but this time he wore his hat—and this time when he swept it off he bowed much lower.
'What's he like?' asked Audley.
'William Strode?' Butler sniffed. 'He'll never sit for this seat, I tell you. It's rock-solid Conservative, no matter how moderate he tries to be, they'll never elect him here.'
'But he will sit for somewhere, sometime?'
'Oh aye. When he's done his time losing they'll give him a winner. If your Minister stays in power, that is.'
Audley ignored the jibe; Butler's contempt for politics, left, right or centre, was always apt to make him irascible. 'He's a genuine moderate, then?'
Butler sniffed again. 'Aye.'
'Security rating?'
'Clean as a whistle. He'll not be one of Charlie Ratcliffe's friends, that you can rely on.'
That was altogether very convenient, thought Audley. The way the moderate left viewed the far left was like the old orthodox Christians had felt about heretics: whereas pagans just didn't know any better, not having had the True Faith revealed to them, heretics were the devil's Fifth Column in their own ranks. . . .
Which hatred the heretics returned with compound interest, because they also knew that the only historical difference between orthodoxy and heresy was the final winning or dummy5
losing.
He nodded at Butler. 'So maybe we can do business with him.'
'Not
