Soldier No More

hundred years ago. But if we make him a Visigoth and move on another hundred years . . . then he's here, by God!'

'The frontier didn't hold,' said Jilly.

'You didn't do your goddamn job, Captain,' said Bradford accusingly. 'You let the Krauts in!'

He had to play—

'We didn't have enough men. It was the government's fault

—' he spread his hands '—you expected us to hold the line all the way from the Black Sea to the Irish Channel—'

'Excuses, excuses! You had a job to do, and you didn't do it, dummy5

soldier!' Jilly leaned forward towards Audley. 'But I thought it was the Huns that were the cause of it all, not the Germans? I mean, they pushed the Germans westwards again, and the Germans were just shunted into the Roman Empire, running away from them?'

Lexy sat up. 'I thought the Huns were the Germans?'

Oh, for God's sake, Lexy!' Jilly turned on her irritably.

'You've read the book—don't you remember? Germans—big and blond and hairy; Huns—short and dark and ugly.'

'I read somewhere that if you were downwind of the Huns, you could smell them at twenty miles,' said Stein. 'Is that true? Or was it the Mongols?'

'Much the same article,' said Audley. 'But twenty-five miles, not twenty, if there were enough of them.'

'Anyway, they forced the Germans back to the west,' said Jilly firmly.

'If they smelt that bad I don't goddamn wonder,' said Bradford.

'Well, the book didn't say they were different,' complained Lexy. 'They were just nastier, that's all.'

'What book?' inquired Stein. 'You haven't been actually reading a history book, have you, Alexandra?'

' No!' snapped Jilly irritably. ' Not a history book—a historical novel, that's all.'

'Well, it's like a darned history book, anyway,' said Lexy.

dummy5

'It's got footnotes at the back, saying that it all really happened—all about this Roman princess, and how the Visigoths carried her off, after they sacked Rome, and how she had to marry the king's brother . . . At— At- something—'

'Ataulf.' Audley sounded surprised. 'Brother of Theodoric the Great?'

'That's him—Atwulf—' Lexy plunged on breathlessly '— and because of her he decided to save the Roman Empire instead of destroying it—'

'That's a large assumption,' said Audley.

'Well, she said so.'

'She?'

'This princess—Galla Placidia, of course. And she ought to know, after having been thoroughly screwed by Atwulf and his elder brother! Only their little son died, and the Romans got her back, and she married this great general, Constantine

—'

'Constantius.'

'That's the one. And after he died she ruled the whole empire, with the help of her confessor, Simplicius —'

'Who?'

'Simplicius. He's the one who tells the story—who's in bed with who, and who's double-crossing who—'

'Lexy—there's no such person as Simplicius,' Audley shook his head. 'And Galla Placidia didn't leave any memoirs.

dummy5

You're talking fiction, pure and simple, nothing more.'

'Huh!' grunted Bradford, from behind his bottles. 'Maybe fiction, maybe not. But not pure and not simple, by God!'

'Eh?' The tone in the American's voice made Audley drop Lexy. 'Not . . . ?'

'Not pure—damn right not pure, because the Hays Office threw a fit over it. And sure as hell not simple, because a million bucks isn't simple, old buddy.' Bradford shook his head. 'In fact, that was one dirty, crafty book, if you ask me.

And written by one crafty lady, too.'

'What lady? What book?' Audley looked around him.

'Hell, David—are you really telling us you haven't heard of Antonia Palfrey and Princess in the Sunset!'

'I don't read historical novels.'

Roche was glad of the shadows which masked his reaction to this most palpable and absolute untruth, the