do you see that gap? Is that the main bailey entrance, Tom?’
The higher motte was diagonally on the far side, away from them; and it would be interesting to find out how deep the ditch was on that far side, and whether it cut down into the beginning of bed- rock there. ‘I think it probably is, David.’ That would fix the motte high above its river valley too, where he would expect it to be; because, when they had half a chance, the Normans never made a mistake, with their eye for ground.
‘Yes. I think you’re right.’ Audley gave him the undeserved credit for the insight. ‘So you just keep your eye on that—right?’ Pause.
‘So his brief could be… if Mr President and the Tsar don’t meet…
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to give aid and comfort to poor old CND, surreptitiously, contributing generously to the collections, like my darling wife does.’ Sniff. “That’s what I’d do, anyway, if I was calling the shots.‘ He gestured forwards. ’Shall we go then—where glory waits, Tom?‘
Something held Tom back on the crest, beside Audley, all his certainties and half-certainties suddenly hedged by doubt and half-uncertainty as he stared at the gap in the ring of prickly gorse which encircled and overran both the outer rampart and the motte itself. Because there were suddenly too many imponderables—too many conflicting bloody-minded interests, like the brackets and incomprehensible symbols of some mathematical equation which he lacked both the skill and the intelligence to unravel: Jaggard was playing his own game against Audley, as well as Panin; and Audley and Panin were each playing their own games too, probably against someone else as well as each other. And he was in the middle of all their games, hog-tied not only by his vengeful thoughts about Father Jerzy’s murderers, but also by his last-night memories of Willy, which broke every rule in the book because sexual encounters of the closest sort were still the commonest form of betrayal, still outperforming cash and ideology across the world.
But then, mercifully—mercifully, while he was still havering—
Audley reached towards him, to grasp his arm above the elbow.
‘ There, Tom—’ The grip tightened painfully ‘— do you see— ?’
He had already been told where he had to look, in that gap in the rampart out of which Gilbert de Merville had ridden for the last time in 1136, when he’d surrendered Mountsorrel to King Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Stephen’s man, who might have ridden past Bodger’s Farm to this very point, to make sure of Baldwin de Redvers’ castellan’s surrender.
There was someone in the gap —
Audley’s fingers squeezed his arm. ‘I told you—I should have known!’ After that final squeeze, the hand released his arm. “To get ahead of Nikolai Andrievich you have to get up very early in the morning—I should have known better!‘
Now there was another figure, beside the first one. ‘That’s Panin, is it?’
‘Huh!’ Audley grunted. ‘At this distance, with my eyes, it might be Jack Butler… or Henry Jaggard… or the Archdeacon of Truro, for all I know, Tom. But I’ll give you ten-to-one—or a hundred-to-one, if you want to put your money down — that that’s Nikolai Andrievich… and that that little one—the one that’s twitching around, like he’s got ants in his pants… that that one is his minder… his own Thomas Arkenshaw, all the way from Dzerzhinsky Square?’
Dzerzhinsky Square cut deep, as it always did: the historical truth that Dzerzhinsky had been a Polish aristocrat, who had founded Lenin’s secret intelligence and simultaneously betrayed his class and his country, was a wound which never healed—which certainly didn’t heal now, above Gilbert of Merville’s motte!
Audley waited, but again mercifully. ‘Okay, Tom?’ The merciful pause extended. ‘So let’s go and zap the bugger, eh? Let’s go and do it—eh?’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State 8
Audley had been right about Professor Andrievich Panin, and quite cruelly right: he looked like nothing so much as an elderly sheep, with his queerly bent nose and an inadequate lower jaw at the bottom of his elongated face; or, anyway, he didn’t look like what he was, and so much so that Tom had to look at Audley himself to accept his ‘I-told-you-so’.
But Audley himself was no comfort, for he didn’t look the part either, quite disconcertingly; and then, just as he was type-casting Audley once again, the little Russian minder whom he’d met so briefly before breakfast ducked out from the bushes again, with what was obviously his habitual expression of mild bewilderment, but also buttoning up the old-fashioned fly-buttons on his trousers quite openly.
So here we are! thought Tom: The Elderly Sheep, who must have seen a hecatomb of human lambs go to the slaughter, so that blood couldn’t worry him now, innocent or otherwise; and the one-time Fairground English Pugilist, who looked as though he had let the young hopefuls hit his face while he delivered the killing body-blows (and who looked so beamishly happy now, at the prospect of slugging it out with an old friend); and this little KGB Stan Laurel, from a hundred tragi-comedies, minus only his bowler hat; and, not least incongruous, Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, the dead ringer of Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Count Waldemar Osinski, Mamusias mother’s brother, who had led his lancers to victory against Trotsky’s machine- gunners against all military reason and elementary commonsense: altogether a most incongruous quartet, to meet in the entrance of Gilbert de Merville’s forgotten castle!
‘See that—?’ The Pugilist touched his elbow. ‘You don’t often see those now, Tom.’
‘What?’ This was the main entrance to the Mountsorrel bailey— he could see that now, at a glance. ‘What?’
‘Fly-buttons. There must have been a shortage of zip-fasteners when that suit came off the peg in the good old USS of R, Tom lad
—’ Audley hissed his opinion from the corner of his mouth ‘—
Professor Panin—Nikolai! It’s been a long time… in fact, more years than I care to remember, eh?’ But he advanced through the gap in the ramparts with all the confidence of King Stephen’s favourite baron accepting the surrender of Gilbert de Merville’s castellan in 1136 anno domini. ‘But… good to see you, anyway, Nikolai.’
‘Dr Audley— David!’ The Sheep’s accent was classless and stateless, and all the more curious for its lack of origin. ‘A long time is true.’ The Sheep stopped on his full stop, and took Audley’s hand and gave it one formal shake. Only then did he look at Tom officially, although Tom had been conscious of a long
