Gunner Kelly

Benedikt looked at him questioningly.

“He was killed close to the door—almost in the doorway. They know that because of the position of the post- holes left by the door-posts.”

“So?” He thought there was something curiously mischievous in Audley’s smile.

“So . . . how was he killed? And who killed him?” Audley paused.

“Supposing the barn didn’t fall on him and kill him . . . and if it was just about to collapse he would hardly have gone into it ... did some poor frightened little Briton stab him from behind as he went in—someone lurking just inside the door, say? Or did some hulking great German—I beg your pardon!— some hulking great Saxon or Jutish warrior spear him from the front, while he was defending the doorway like Horatius on the bridge?”

Benedikt frowned. “But did you not say—or was it not Miss Maxwell-Smith who said . . . that he was a Saxon warrior?”

The smile was almost evil now. “That’s what the experts think, yes. But apparently there were people called ‘ foederati’ in those days, Mr Wiesehofer.”

“Foedus” piped up Benje suddenly. “Foedus— foederis ... ‘a league between states or an agreement or covenant between individuals’— that’s the noun . . . But there’s an adjective foedus which means ‘foul, filthy and horrible’—L ike foedi oculi means

‘bloodshot eyes’, like Blackie Nabb’s got on Sunday mornings—”

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“Benje!” snapped Miss Maxwell-Smith, suddenly much older than her years. “You mustn’t say that about Blackie.”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Benje was not overawed by his heroine.

“Dad says if it wasn’t for the Old General, Blackie ‘ud ’ave been disqualified from driving years ago—” he caught himself too late as he realised he had mentioned someone the memory of whom would pain her. “Sorry, Becky!”

“My fault—” interposed Audley quickly “—I told young Benjamin about foedus and the foederati.... We were having a discussion about the Latin language, and we decided the Roman-Britons must have made a joke of it—how their new Foreign Legion of great hairy beer-swilling Ger— Saxon— mercenary bodyguards were a filthy lot, with bloodshot eyes, like—”

“David!” Miss Maxwell-Smith treated Dr Audley with the same disapproval as Benje.

“Sorry, Becky.” Audley accepted the rebuke meekly, as though accepting also that Mr Blackie Nabb’s drinking habits were now under Miss Maxwell-Smith’s special protection. “The point is, Mr Wiesehofer, that there were these Saxon foederati who were hired, and eventually given land to settle on, in return for protecting the Britons against their own Saxon folk who came raiding.” He stared at Benedikt for a moment. “So . . . was our Fighting Man one of the foederati being true to his salt, to the death, like a good mercenary?

Or was he a raider who came up the valley from the east, or over the hill from the south, to get his comeuppance and his just deserts, eh? Only time will tell!”

So that was it, thought Benedikt: Audley could hardly have made it dummy1

plainer if he had inscribed it in deeply-chiselled stone for his benefit.

“So! Yes . . .” He met the big man’s stare with obstinate innocence, refusing to be overborne by it. “That is something which only your experts will be able to tell—and perhaps not even they will be able to provide an answer to satisfy you.”

“Were there foederati in Germany?” Benje’s eyes were bright with intelligence. “The Romans had German provinces, didn’t, they?

They must have had German soldiers—they had British soldiers in their army, you know.”

It was impossible not to meet a boy like Benje.more than half-way.

“There have been German soldiers in the British Army, young man. Our Hanoverian Corps in my grandfather’s time carried the name ‘Gibraltar’ among the battle honours on the flags of its regiments—‘ Mit Eliot zu Ruhm und Sieg’ was written on their standards: ‘ With Eliot to Glory and Victory’—we helped to defend your rock once upon a time, under a General Eliot . . . And we fought in Spain, for your Duke of Wellington—”

“Garcia Hernandez,” said Audley suddenly. “The King’s German Legion broke a French square there—the 1st and 2nd Dragoons, under Major-General von Bock . . . He’d already been wounded—

it was after the battle of Salamanca—and he was extremely short-sighted, like you, Mr Wiesehofer .... But he was a splendid chap, and those KGL regiments were by far the best cavalry Wellington had—the best ones on either side, in fact . . . the British were the best horsemen, but as soldiers they were undisciplined rubbish, most of them—Garcia Hernandez was the finest cavalry action of dummy1

the whole campaign. Rommel would have been proud of them.”

Benedikt looked at Audley in total suprise. The man had been in a British armoured regiment in 1944, of course, so he was a cavalry man of sorts—the dossier said as much. But it had also stated quite clearly that he was a medievalist when not an eccentric ornament of British Intelligence.

Audley registered his surprise. “I had an ancestor there—at Salamanca ... an idiot officer in our dragoons. He was killed earlier the same day, when they smashed the French in Le Marchant’s charge,” he explained almost shyly. “Family history, you might say . . . my mother’s family, Mr Wiesehofer.” Then he nodded.

“But you’re quite right about the Germans in the British service—

Hessians in America, but most of all Hanoverians against Napoleon, whom they didn’t like at all. . . . They used to slip across the Channel and enlist in a depot not far from here, at Weymouth—the 1st and 2nd eventually became