For the Good of the State

would be as much because of the rich mid-western American accent—foreigners were always tricky—as because of the contradiction between her dishevelled appearance and her abundant self-confidence, Tom estimated.

‘He’s looking for a gentleman, Willy,’ he advised her.

‘Uh-huh?’ She didn’t even look at him as she stood up, using her ex-deadly-weapon to help her. ‘Well, I guess he better go look somewhere else—’ she smiled her sweetest smile at the policeman Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘—because there’s no gentleman here.’

Tom knew then what he knew he had known from the moment the young policeman had materialized out of nowhere, which he had only been resisting because he didn’t want to know it; because, when a man was more nearly happy and carefree than he had any right to be, he also had the right to resist the inevitability of a 99- percent certainty, just in case that last one-per-cent was on his side.

But he turned back towards the policeman, hating himself because he was suddenly even happier —no longer carefree, but excited now, and utterly consumed by that old addictive drug—because they wanted him this badly. And it still fed his happiness, as their eyes met, that the policeman knew too… although with nothing like that 99- per-cent certainty even now… that this unlikely gipsy-looking non-gentleman was nonetheless his gentleman— just his gentleman being awkward, no more.

The policeman struggled for five seconds against his remaining doubts, but then surrendered to the slightly higher odds. ‘Sir Thomas Arkenshaw?’

Tom sympathized with him. Half his stock-in-trade was derived from the wild accidents of twentieth-century history, which had crossed unlikely genes with a different environment; and also he knew that it was always painful for such a good solid Englishman as this to throw a 350-year-old baronetcy on such a questionable product.

‘I am Sir Thomas Arkenshaw.’ As always, the foreign half of him threw down the Anglo-Norman half contemptuously: the Dzieliwskis had ridden in a hundred battles before the low-bred Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State merchant Arkenshaws had made enough money to interest any parvenu Stuart King of England. ‘Yes.’

‘Thank you, sir—Sir Thomas.’ The policeman stumbled slightly over Debrett’s Correct Form of Address, one part of him obviously still unwilling to accept the identification. But then he squared his shoulders and gave Tom the full benefit of the doubt. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Sir Thomas—’ with an effort he didn’t glance at Willy

‘—but there’s… there’s another gentleman who wishes to see you… urgently. He’s waiting for you back in the lane, by the gate.’

Now it was Tom’s turn for disbelief. ‘Here?’

‘Yes, sir—Sir Thomas. By the gate.’

That changed matters. Being sent for was one thing: by routine they knew where he was shacked up with Willy, and the hotel people knew where he was to be found this morning. So, despatching the nearest policeman to find him was the simplest and quickest way of effecting his recall. But this automatic assumption had been wrong, for the mountain had come to Mahomet. And that was another thing altogether.

‘Right. I’ll come at once—’ He had started to move before he remembered his manners, and turned back to Willy ‘—if you’ll excuse me for a moment, Miss Groot—?’

‘Be my guest, Sir Thomas.’ As a good servant of a great republic Willy accepted the call to duty without demur, only with a proper disrespect for the undeserved and unrepublican title he bore.

‘Thank you, Miss Groot.’ Tom threw the words over his shoulder as he scrambled up the side of the ditch towards the policeman.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State (Sending someone down to scoop him up, and presumably to brief him on the spot… that might mean a panic, minor or major —) His foot slipped, and he slid back half a yard—

(How exactly did they build their ditches? Revetted with turf or with wood?)

(Alternatively… whoever it was who’d pulled rank on the local police— another gentleman suggested rank, so it could even be Phillipson —)

The policeman observed his problem, and extended a helping hand.

(Did Norman ditches differ from Anglo-Saxon works? Or from Roman ones—had their expertise been passed on? That sounded unlikely—in England anyway, if not on the continent… But what about the pre-Roman ditches of the great hill-forts—?) The policeman hauled him up the last few feet, catching his sense of urgency as well as his hand.

(There must be some specialist research on ditch-digging somewhere—just as there had to be something on the incidence of stinging nettles; that was always the way of it, simultaneously enlightening and frustrating: there was always someone who had got there, or been there, before, asking the same questions—)

‘Thank you.’ He made his peace with the policeman with a smile.

He must stop thinking about old Ranulf‘’s adulterine castle now. It might not be a panic at all, but just Phillipson (or whoever) pulling rank unnecessarily, for any one of a thousand footling reasons, to pick someone else’s brains. Or even to take a look at Willy, maybe

—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State No, it could hardly be that. Willy was a known quantity, and he had registered his friendship with her, as the rules required. So they couldn’t read the riot act over her.

He lengthened his stride. Only another few yards and he would be able to look down on the lane which had once briefly been the busy road to Ranulf’s illegal strongpoint, but which must just as quickly have degenerated back to the mere farm track it had become for ever after, under Henry Plantagenet’s iron-fisted rule. Poor old Ranulf—

Poor old Tom! He amended the thought instantly as he looked down on the gateway, and saw Henry Jaggard. Poor old Tom!

Jaggard? Christ! When he’d thought of the mountain coming to Mahomet, he’d only thought of Snowdon or Ben Nevis, not Mont Blanc or the North Face of the bloody Eiger!