Carlo unfastened the strap from my right wrist and put it with the truncheon in the hold-all, and they all three turned their backs on me and walked away across the field and through the wood to the waiting Mercedes.
It took a long inch-by-inch time to get my right hand round to my left, to undo the other strap. After that I sat on the ground with my back against one of the posts, to wait until things got better.
They didn't seem to, much.
I looked at my watch. Eight o'clock. Time for dinner, down at the Forbury Inn. Enso probably had his fat knees under the table, tucking in with a good appetite.
In theory it had seemed reasonable that the most conclusive way to defeat him had been to steal his son away. In practice, as I gingerly hugged to my chest my severely sore left arm, I doubted if Alessandro's soul was worth the trouble. Arrogant, treacherous, spoilt little bastard- but with guts and determination and talent. A mini battlefield, torn apart by loyalty to his father and the lure of success on his own. A pawn, pushed around in a power struggle. But this pawn was all- and whoever captured the pawn, won the game.
I sighed, and slowly, wincing, got back on my feet. No one except me was going to get me home and bandaged up.
I walked. It was less than a mile. But far enough.
The elderly doctor was fortunately at home when I telephoned.
'What do you mean, you fell off a horse and broke your collar-bone?' he demanded. 'At this hour? I thought all horses had to be off the Heath by four.'
'Look,' I said wearily. 'I've broken my collar-bone. Would you come and deal with it?'
'Mm,' he grunted. 'All right.'
He came within half an hour, equipped with what looked like a couple of rubber quoits. Clavicle rings, he said, as he proceeded to push one up each of my shoulders and tie them together behind my back.
'Bloody uncomfortable,' I said.
'Well, if you will fall off horses
His heavy eyes assessed his handiwork with impassive professionalism. Tying up broken collar-bones in Newmarket was as regular as dispensing coughdrops.
'Take some codeine,' he said. 'Got any?'
'I don't know.'
He clicked his tongue and produced a packet from his bag. 'Two every four hours.'
'Thank you. Very much.'
'That's all right,' he said, nodding. He shut his bag and flipped the clips.
'Have a drink?' I suggested, as he helped me into my shirt.
'Thought you'd never ask,' he said smiling, and dealt with a large whisky as familiarly as with his bandages. I kept him company, and the spirit helped the codeine along considerably.
'As a matter of interest,' I said as he reached the second half of his glassful, 'What illnesses cause sterility?'
'Eh?' He looked surprised, but answered straightforwardly. 'Only two, really. Mumps and venereal disease. But mumps very rarely causes complete sterility. Usually affects one testicle only, if it affects any at all. Syphilis is the only sure sterility one. But with modern treatment, it doesn't progress that far.'
'Would you tell me more about it?'
'Hypothetical?' he asked. 'I mean, you don't think you yourself may be infected? Because if so-'
'Absolutely not,' I interrupted. 'Strictly hypothetical.'
'Good-' He drank efficiently. 'Well.
Sometimes people contract both syphilis and gonorrhoea at once. Say they get treated and cured of gonorrhoea, but the syphilis goes unsuspected- Right? Now syphilis is a progressive disease, but it can lie quiet for years, doing its slow damage more or less unknown to its host. Sterility could occur a few years after infection. One couldn't say exactly how many years, it varies enormously. But, before the sterility occurs, any number of infected children could be conceived. Mostly, they are stillborn. Some live, but there's almost always something wrong with them.'
Alessandro had said his father had been ill after he was born, which seemed to put him in the clear. But venereal disease would account for Enso's wife's extreme bitterness, and the violent break up of the marriage.
'Henry VIII,' the doctor said, as if it followed naturally on.
'What?' I said.
'Henry VIII,' he repeated patiently. 'He had syphilis. Katherine of Aragon had about a dozen stillborn children and her one surviving child, Mary, was barren. His sickly son Edward died young. Don't know about Elizabeth, not enough data.' He polished off the last drop in his glass.
I pointed to the bottle. 'Would you mind helping yourself?'
He got to his feet and refilled my glass, too. 'He went about blaming his poor wives for not producing sons, when it was his fault all the time. And that extreme fanaticism about having a son- and cutting off heads right and left to get one- that's typical obsessive syphilitic behaviour.'
'How do you mean?'
The pepper king,' he said, as if that explained all.
'What had he got to do with pepper, for heaven's sake?'
'Not Henry VIII,' he said impatiently. 'The pepper king was someone else- Look, in the medical text books, in the chapter on the advanced complications which can arise from syphilis, there's this bit about the pepper king. He was a chap who had megalomania in an interim stage of G.P.I., and he got this obsession about pepper. He set out to corner all the pepper in the world and make himself into a tycoon, and because of his compulsive fanaticism, he managed it.'
I sorted my way through the maze. 'Are you saying that at a further stage than sterility, our hypothetical syphilitic gent can convince himself that he can move mountains?'
'Not only convince himself,' he agreed, nodding. 'But actually do it. There is literally no one more likely to move mountains than your megalomaniac syphilitic. Not that it lasts for ever, of course. Twenty years, perhaps, in that stage, once it's developed.'
'And then what?'
'G. P. I.' He took a hefty swallow. 'General paralysis of the insane. In other words, descent to cabbage.'
'Inevitable?'
'After this megalomania stage, yes. But not everyone who gets syphilis gets G.P.I., and not everyone who gets G.P.I, gets megalomania first. They're only branch lines- fairly rare complications.'
'They would need to be,' I said with feeling.
'Indeed yes. If you meet a syphilitic megalomaniac, duck. Duck quickly, because they can be dangerous. There's a theory that Hitler was one-' He looked at me thoughtfully over the top of his glass, and his old damp eyes slowly widened. His gaze focused on the sling he had put round my arm, and he said as if he couldn't believe what he was thinking, 'You didn't duck quick enough-'
'A horse threw me,' I said.
He shook his head. 'It was a direct blow. I could see that- but I couldn't believe it. Thought it very puzzling, as a matter of fact.'
'A horse threw me,' I repeated.
He looked at me in awakening amusement. 'If you say so,' he said. 'A horse threw you. I'll write that in my notes.' He finished his drink and stood up. 'Don't stand in his path any more, then. And I'm serious, young Neil. Just remember that Henry VIII chopped off a lot of heads.'
'I'll remember,' I said.
As if I could forget.
I rethought the horse-threw-me story and substituted a fall down the stairs for Etty's benefit.
'What a damn nuisance,' she said in brisk sympathy, and obviously thought me clumsy. 'I'll drive you along to Waterhall in the Land-Rover, when we pull out.'
I thanked her, and while we were waiting for the lads to lead the horses out of the boxes ready for the first lot, we walked round into bay one to check on Archangel. Checking on Archangel had become my most frequent occupation.
He was installed in the most secure of the high security boxes, and since Enso's return to England I had had
