War Game

'Not much of a marching song, but they're in good voice,'

said William Strode. 'They make a brave show, think ye not?'

'Aye, Sir Matthew. I doubt not they shall give a good accounting of themselves this day,' said Audley.

Away from across the valley, but still hidden and muted by the earthworks, an insistent drumming commenced—

Tarr-rumpa-tumpa- tum, tarr-rumpa-tumpa- tum, tarr- rumpa- tumpa- rumpa-tumpa- tum- tum- tum . . .

Strode smiled at him and nodded approvingly. 'That's very good, Audley— you're learning. You just missed one thing, though.'

Mitchell urged his horse into the marshy bottom of the valley, where the Willow Stream meandered sluggishly between barely defined banks which would have been bright with king-cups earlier in the year but which now carried little to betray its treacherous swampiness. It had come as a shock to the advance party that the openness of this approach to dummy5

the Royalist stronghold was an illusion; they had found out the hard way why every attack but the last one had been delivered up the other side of the defences. And they had laboured mightily all the afternoon to lay corduroys of brushwood to give the assault columns access to the firm ground of the rampart ridge; as no doubt Black Thomas Monson's engineers had once had to do themselves. . . .

The horse plunged and high-stepped frantically for a minute or two in the ooze, sending Mitchell lurching from one side of the saddle to the other. But he held his seat admirably and with a final effort the animal heaved itself out to the boos and yells of the Parliamentary infantry, who had obviously been hoping for an early Royalist setback.

'What did I miss?' inquired Audley.

The drums sounded a final elaborate tattoo and then settled down to a steady marching beat—

Tum, tum, tum-tum-tum.

Tum, tum, tum-tum- tum—

Up on the skyline of the old earthwork, as though growing out of the ground, came the battle-flags of the enemy.

'You left out God,' said Strode. ''By God's grace' you should have added.'

The breeze caught the flags, opening them gaily above the long lines of men who rose out of the earth beneath them: musketeers, pikemen, officers with drawn swords . . . bright sashes and scarves and the sunflash of polished steel helmet dummy5

and breast-plate. The opposing hillside was transformed from the parched green of a hot August to a blaze of colour.

Tum, tum, tum-tum- tum—

'Of course,' said Audley. ''When I saw the enemy march in gallant order towards us, and we a company of poor ignorant men, I could not forbear but to cry out to God in praise for the assurance of victory, because God would, by those things that are not, bring to naught those things that are'—will that do?'

Strode laughed. 'Bravo! Cromwell at Naseby—almost word for word. You have an excellent memory, Audley.'

'Yes. Except that Cromwell's 'poor ignorant men'

outnumbered the Royalists two to one, I seem to remember.'

'Very true. Whereas we're due for a licking today—or tomorrow, to be exact,' admitted Strode. 'But it's a splendid showing, you must admit that. We've already got a turn-out of nearly seven hundred—and that's not counting the Angels and the Royalist camp-followers. And there'll be more by later this evening when the muster's complete, so I think we'll give everyone something to remember Standingham by

—wouldn't you say?'

Mitchell had wheeled his horse at the foot of the ridge and had trotted to the extreme right of the Parliamentary line.

Now he wheeled again and galloped the whole length of it insolently, to a barrage of boos and catcalls, until he was level with the corner bastion on which the Parliamentary standard dummy5

flew.

'Yes, I think we might at that,' agreed Audley.

With a flourish Mitchell produced a large white handkerchief above his head.

'Parley! Parley' he shouted.

Strode leaned over the top of the bastion to call to a mounted Roundhead—the same trooper, thought Audley, who had advanced across the bridge at Easingbridge.

'Galloper!' Strode's voice was properly military now. 'I pray you approach that gentleman and bid him advance under truce, according to the customs and usages of war.'

The galloper saluted and spurred forward, up the worn side of the counterscarp and down the glacis towards Mitchell.

Strode turned to the officer on his left, who was busy checking the typed scenario against a very twentieth- century stopwatch.

'How's the timing going, Johnny?' he asked.