'Four and a half minutes extra, crossing the stream. We shall have to allow for that —and it'll take their footmen longer too.'
'Very good.' Strode stared down at the two horsemen now approaching.
'Gentlemen . . . hats and helmets on, please. This is a full-dress rehearsal, remember.'
Discipline was as tight in the Double R Society as dummy5
Superintendent Weston could have wished, thought Audley bitterly as he adjusted the uncomfortable lobster- tailed helmet. Nobody had demurred when Strode had ordered full costume for the afternoon. The general was the general, and that was that; his officers made suggestions, but once an order was given it was obeyed to the letter.
In fact he had already made the interesting discovery that a heavy leather buff-coat, with or without breast- plate, wasn't quite as bad as he'd expected: once a man started to sweat in it (which was within two minutes of putting it on) it trapped the sweat and delayed the dehydration a thin shirt would have accelerated. So even though the salt tablets which the Angels of Mercy had brought round were necessary, the discomfort was endurable.
But the lobster-tailed helmet was purgatory, especially since the hinged face-bars (which refused to stay up in the raised position) made him feel as though he was looking out at the world through the bars of a prison window. Paul Mitchell could just as correctly have provided him with a black wide-brimmed hat like the one Strode was wearing—it was more than likely that Mitchell had deliberately chosen the helmet, therefore. But all he could do was thank heaven that it was the half-armoured Civil War and not the fully-armoured Wars of the Roses which had taken this generation's fancy.
The horsemen checked on the lip of the counterscarp, almost at the same height as the bastion. Mitchell quietened his horse with a caress and swept off his plumed hat.
dummy5
'Sirs—I give you good day,' he called across the ditch.
Sir Edmund Steyning's hat remained on his head.
'Sir—say thou what thou camest to say. And then get you gone to the place whence you are come,' he called back in a loud, harsh voice obviously designed to carry to the battle-line.
'Sir—I will.' Mitchell raised his voice to match Steyning's.
The drumming on the hillside had stopped and the murmur of conversation among the Roundheads hushed. Even the wind seemed to have caught the sense of occasion, dying down so that the flags dropped on their poles.
'I am sent—' the voice rose to a shout '—to summon you ...
to deliver into the hands of the Lord General appointed by his Gracious Majesty . . . the House wherein you are, and your ammunition, with all things else therein . . . together with your persons, to be disposed of as the Lord General shall appoint . . . the same to receive fair quarter, save only those officers of quality who shall surrender to mercy. . . .
Which, if you refuse to do, you are to expect the utmost extremity of war.'
The twentieth-century had slipped away unnoticed, dying with the breeze. On this very ground the English had killed the English, and if that had been the original summons then killing had been the intention, for 'surrender to mercy' was only a hair's breadth away from 'no quarter'.
Audley felt the sweat cold inside his buff-coat. This was what dummy5
Civil War meant; brother against brother, neighbour against neighbour, north against south, you against me.
Steyning took a pace forward, to the edge of the crumbling parapet, and pointed at the horseman. 'Thy master hath shown himself to be—truly—the Beast of the Abomination . . .
and thou art but the serpent's tongue that spits the venom.'
He paused. 'I for my part shall abide by the Lord God, by true religion and by the just cause of Parliament unto my life's end.'
The horseman turned in a full circle, sweeping his hat to cover the Parliamentary line.
'Then these men shall perish by thy means—as thou art prodigal of thy blood, so thou art prodigal of theirs. For God shall give you all into our hands, and we will not spare a man of you when we put you to the storm.'
Steyning lent forward. 'Then shall men say—'Your storm—
your shame; our fall —our fame'. Depart, thou accursed!'
The horseman waved his plumed hat, jerked at his bridle and galloped back down the slope, the hooves throwing up gobbets of earth. As he passed between two of the Parliamentary regiments he let out a wild shrill cry—an obscene mixture of triumph and glee and menace.
Christ! thought Audley, shocked out of his trance: he had heard the famous Confederate yell in a peaceful English valley. But maybe it was no anachronism at that, for Prince Rupert's cavaliers and Jeb Stuart's cavalry had ridden the dummy5
same path down history into legend.
'I hope the young bugger falls arse over tip,' said one of Strode's officers vehemently. 'He wasn't fooling then.'
Audley watched Mitchell struggle through the mud, praying for that very disaster. But the man and the horse had both required only the one lesson.
'Quicker that time,' said the stopwatch man, clicking the button with his thumb and noting the time on his scenario.
'But I'll allow four extra minutes to be on the safe side.'
