Soldier No More

But we do mind you, Lady Alexandra,' said Audley. 'You mustn't hide your light under a bushel—you're supposed to be the chief questioner tonight. You drew the short straw last time—remember?'

'And obviously she knows about the Visigoths,' said Bradford. 'Are they barbarians, Lex honey?'

'Maybe she thinks they're rugger players,' murmured Stein.

'Wasn't that your old team, Audley—the Visigoths?'

'Yeah, and they were barbarians,' nodded the American.

'When they played there was blood everywhere.'

'We haven't even defined what a barbarian is yet,' cut in Jilly sharply, moving to Lexy's rescue. 'All we've had is Hillard and Botting, and Charles Martel, and David's darling Arabs-who-aren't-barbarians.' She sniffed. 'A fine chairman you are, David Audley! You couldn't chair a cup of tea across a vicarage parlour!'

'And which barbarians, that is the question?' said Stein.

'Come on, David—Audley—which barbarians are you going to tell us about? Julius Caesar's ones—which I take it will dummy5

include your own woad-covered ancestors?'

'Boadicea's Ancient Brits, you mean?' inquired the American. 'Like the statue near Big Ben, by the Thames— the chariot with the scythes on its wheels?'

Jilly leaned forward. 'But I didn't think that was your period, David—I thought you were strictly medieval?'

Audley nodded. 'So I am.'

'So—'

Audley held up his hand. 'So listen, my children, and you shall hear what you shall hear!'

'And know neither Doubt nor Fear?' murmured Roche.

'Ah!'' Audley stared at him, and rocked dangerously on the three-legged stool, the huge shadow dancing on the wall behind him. ' You know then! 'I am born out of my due time'—remember? 'Five hundred years ago . . . five hundred years hence ... I should have been such a counsellor to kings as the world has never dreamed of.' He tapped his head. ' Tis all here . . . but it hath no play in this black age'—remember?

Puck of Pook's Hill?'

'De Aquila?' Roche was almost certain of the reference, and it was interesting to him that Audley identified himself with the cunning old blackguard. For either by accident or design Kipling had drawn a classic blueprint for the successful spymaster there, using a judicious mixture of force, blackmail, threats and torture to turn an enemy agent. It was an irony that he himself had identified with de Aquila's dummy5

victim, the faithless Fulke, envying him his chance of changing to the winning side with honour and profit.

Audley nodded back, the lamplight glinting in his spectacles.

' 'The Old Dog' himself. Good man, Roche!'

'Kipling lives again,' murmured Bradford.

Audley drew himself up on the stool. 'All right then—you barbarians, I'll give you barbarians . . . barbarians all the way from the Rhine and the Danube into the Sea of Grass in the east, to the Volga—Angles, Saxons, Franks, Lombards, Thuringians, Burgundians . . . Alemanni and Marcomanni. . .

Quadi and Rugians and Gepids and Vandals and Goths—

Visigoths and Ostrogoths—'

'As far as the Volga?' Bradford emphasised the name disbelievingly.

'That's right. Stalingrad wasn't the first time the Germans were there. The Romans turned them away from the west, so they went east.'

' 'Lebensraum', it's called.' Stein nodded. 'An old German custom.'

'But then they came back.' As ever, Jilly had her facts neatly cut-and-dried. 'Third century AD? Fourth century?'

'Fourth'll do. Say . . . sixteen hundred years ago . . . give or take a few decades.' Audley smiled. 'Sixteen centuries ago we could all have been sitting here, nice and cosy, drinking our wine—the good wine of Cahors—' he lifted his glass '—

drinking our wine, and listening to ... Lady Alexandra's titbits dummy5

of scandal from the City, and Stein's news from Alexandria . . . and Jilly would be trying to convert us all to Christianity, probably—' the glass moved from one to the other of them '—and Roche. . .now what would Captain Roche be doing here, among us fat civilians?' The lamplight caught the blood-red of the wine. 'On leave from the frontier, maybe? From the heather and the bare hills where the wolves howl and the clouds play like cavalry charging? What price Britannia, Captain? Will the frontier hold next time?'

The American saved Roche with a grunt. 'Huh! So where does a goddamn Yankee figure at the Court of King David?'

Jilly chuckled. 'You don't, Mike—you're an anachronism.'

'A who?' asked Lexy.

'A Visigoth, honey,' said Bradford.

'And that's exactly right,' said Audley quickly. 'The hirsute Bradford doesn't fit in our Roman orgy—not sixteen