We were simply having a chat, about nothing in particular though, and I was about to give up hope of any of his bizarre reminiscences, when we were saved and by a most unlikely person, not to say an improbable one.
A voice like a rusty foghorn sounded from the stairs, and the sound of heavy, clumping shoes. We all straightened in our chairs and even Ffellowes stopped talking. "This Godawful town! I ought to go down to Florida and check on my horses at that stud place, north of Tampa. I got a lot of dough in them things, and IRS ought to be easy on my trips down there. Nobody knows what a real horse-lover has to put out and the work he's got to do. Besides, any excuse to get the hell outta this shit-hole of a town and this weather, will do me." Mason Williams was in full cry and sounded as unpleasant as ever. So much for peace and quiet in the library, was my thought as I watched his bulky shape thudding over our way, red face and bulbous nose under a thinning mop of greying hair. I had forgot our secret weapon, and the incisive syllables stirred me as they always did.
"You seem a trifle out of shape, Williams. Going to put in some time as an exercise-boy? Nothing like it for a horse-lover such as yourself, is there?"
Williams' nasty face turned an even redder hue and verged on the purple in places. He hated Ffellowes anyway and was maddened by the cold contempt which was all he ever got from him. The Englishman fascinated him, more or less the way a cobra is supposed to petrify a bird, though, and he could never stay away from those cold eyes and the gelid tones, when they were about. Now he slouched into one vacant leather armchair and scowled in anger.
"I suppose you British know all about horses, pal," was his opening gun. "No crummy Yank can hold a candle to you jerks and your Grando National jazz. Jeez, why don't you give us a break, Genarul (he knew well that Ffellowes did not care for this title) and let the Amurrican peasants play with their toys in a back room, huh?"
As often he had done before, Brigadier Ffellowes smiled politely. It might have been a parrot squawking or a dog yapping at him. Williams could say nothing that even slightly ruffled him, then or ever. But the next words made us all, and that includes the unspeakable Williams, sit up straighter and also, shut up.
"Why I'm only a fair rider, old man. Hardly know one end of a filly from another. Equine, that is." He smiled gently, and I cast my mind back to other stories which gave the lie to this statement. I held my breath.
"Frankly, I think there may be too much trouble, hunting for horses, you know. Can be fraught with peril and all that sort of thing. To say nothing of experiences that one really doesn't care to recall. I remember the banks of the Danube in '45, now. Very odd and, d'you know, men, rather unsettling. Not at this time of year but just this sort of weather. Colder perhaps. No heat pipes running along the Donau banks, though once there was some decent heating. In Palaestrum, that is. Any of you know it?"
We shook our heads in silence and no one opened his mouth. I don't know about the others, but for me the windy and wet eve of outside Manhattan was totally gone. I wanted to hear this one as I always did, more than anything I could think of. The high, curtained windows of the club library made a good sound barrier and the roar of the city outside was dim and far away.
Ffellowes smiled gently and looked up and off into space for a second. No one opened his yap, and the Brigadier knew, I think, that we were waiting.
"Well, if it would not bore you, it's a vaguely interesting tale. Palaestrum is, or was, one of the old Roman bases on the Danube frontier. Got Roman cemeteries and the remains of amphitheaters, even a broken-down HQ or something, which might have had the structure of a palace. I think they're still rooting about there and even finding things now and again. Off in a field, there's some sort of big triumphal arch or something. The Russkies left it alone, though it was in their zone, which seems odd, but perhaps they had other things on their mind. More complexity in the Slav mentality than they often get credit for, you know."
This was more than Williams could take. His anger overcame his fascination, but it did no harm. "Very funny, my dear Genarul. All them Romans and their lousy Empire. Like you Limeys, they ain't around no more, are they? So what has any of this got to do with your Grando National winners? Nothing, right?"
We all held our breath, and I vowed once again to try and find out how Williams had ever got by the Election Committee. But it did no harm.
"Quite right, my dear man. Nothing at all to do with Aintree. But there are other steeds in the world, you know. And I was looking for some. Never found 'em though, To find these horses, it took an old cavalryman. I suppose you've heard of George Patton? Ever hear of the Lippizaners?"
We were all mute again. At the mention of a great American general, even Williams had to clam up. It was very deft, as it always was. And it went calmly on, with no more interruptions.
"As I say, we were looking for horses. At the time, they were far north and east of our location. The Allies, all of us, had swung wide of Vienna and Austria and kept driving north into Germany, quickly, with a sharp lookout being kept. Plenty of Kraut stragglers and broken units about. A lot of 'em wanted to surrender, but not all, not by any means. Several die-hard SS units were in our neighborhood, and God knows what else. The main army, ours, was U.S. and French.
"We ourselves were a special small unit. We had three American half-tracks though and more than a few bazookas. I was in command and had three officers and a half-company of other ranks. All volunteers and good men. Let me see, I seem to think they were Gloucesters. All combat-proofed and veterans. Some of them went back a long time, to the Western Desert and similar places.
"My Second was a Major Broke, and there were two lieutenants, named Garvin and Embey. A couple of good sergeants, too. All in all, a good, self-contained group.
"We'd been sent south, alone, to find the whereabouts of the famous Spanish Riding School of Vienna and above all, its mounts, the Lippizaners. What, or who, they were destined for, I have no idea. They're back in Austria now, of course, or their descendants are. Your Third Army leader saw to that. As I said, an old cavalryman. Ever know he designed the last saber ever thought of for issue to your mounted troops? Never used, but I've got one somewhere. Very good design, I always thought.
"Anyhow, some Intelligence wallah, probably in London, thought or heard that the damn horses had or were coming by a certain route. We were going to place ourselves, a lost company, on or across said route. Snaffle the animals and bring off a great coup for the British Army. It was all wrong, but so were a lot of efforts of that sort and many a lot more important. Not the intention, that was all right. But the dope we'd been given was very late and way off anyway.
We were miles from any of our own troops, let alone allies.
"So, as it happens, we found ourselves very close to the Blue Danube. Well, it may have been blue to Strauss, but I've seen a lot of it at one time or another, and it always looked brown and turgid as hell to me. Especially on a cold, spring afternoon, with the bare trees dripping with rain and patches of fog at low points. That, my friends, is how we got to Palaestrum. There's a town there, built in the 16th Century or so, just about the time that Spanish School got going, or even earlier. Called Sankt Udo or close to it, as I recall. There was a ruined baroque Schloss, or castle, the seat of a family named Antenstein, I think. We avoided the town altogether, which was common sense. Anyone or anything could have been in those old houses. But by the castle, which seemed more or less gutted and empty, there ran a narrow dirt track, which, if our info was correct, actually ran down to the river itself. Here, the horses were supposed to cross, on makeshift barges or some gear of that sort or other. And there, if all went well, we would nab them."
He paused and again his eyes went far away. "Wish you all could have seen what we did. Might even put Williams off on his devotion to rare equines. As we went left off a battered main highway, with gutted vehicles and ruins all about, it was around fourish in the afternoon of very early spring. The lines of tall trees on either side of our dirt trac
k were bare and dripping wet. There was no wind and only that dank and sodden sound of water dripping. One could hear nothing else when our vehicles had to break their progress and the rumble of their engines fell silent.
"Then, there was a break in the trees. We stopped, for the road or excuse for a road, led out into an open space, largish, with more trees on the far side. All the while the track, by the way, had been running downhill at a slight angle.
"It was Broke, sitting beside me in the back of the lead vehicle, who put a thought into speech. 'Someone destroyed something here, by God. Looks as if it had happened a long time ago, though.'
"Before us, through the thin rain, we could see a vast hole in the ground, bowl-shaped and shallow, grading down to a level and rounded center. There were serrated lines sort of cut all around the rim, actually cut level, into the earth. Here and there, other, deeper cuts made what seemed to be openings or even entrances, which led down ramped earth into the level at the bottom. At a couple of the gaps, battered columns of greyish stone lifted themselves out of the dark soil to about ten or so feet. It brought some memories back, of jaunts in southern Europe long before.
"I laughed, for all our men were swiveling their rocket launchers and machine guns about as they peered off into the obscurity. 'It was a long time ago, Major,' I said. 'I had a briefing by some of the Intell. brass that you missed. But tell the men not to worry, though not to relax. You're looking at some remnants of an old war indeed. We're at Palaestrum, friend, and this is a dug-up Roman amphitheater in front of us. Lions and Christians might have come through those gates, or chariots. But the last time troops had to be alerted here was against the Marcomanni or some other beginners at the Volkerwanderung. It's their descendants, and remote ones, we have to guard ourselves from. Especially if they have SS badges on the collar.'
"Word was passed through the line back to the other two vehicles, and I could hear a refreshing ripple of amusement when they heard what they were goggling at. But they were too much on the alert to relax entirely. Before I could order it, three men with Stens were out in front of us on foot, just in case something modern was lying in wait somewhere in the ruins of the past. We all waited patiently for an 'All Clear' signal. Far off, through the silence, I now could hear the drone of planes, either ours or Russian we felt sure. The Luftwaffe was mostly gone by now. Presently, our scouts came back to my half-track. But they had a surprise with them, our first prisoner. She was not very menacing.
"She must have been seventy at least and was a nice-looking old thing, though in ragged and much patched clothes with a ratty old scarf covering grey locks from the cold and wet. She was gabbling away at a great rate, her squint orbs darting from one to the other of us in fright. My German is passable, but I could only make out an occasional word or two. I had had an instructor of the Potsdam variety, and the slurred patois of Austrian peasants was beyond me. But, my luck was in, as usual. From beside me, Broke took over. Turned out he'd spent summers in Austria as a boy, and it was nothing to him. He told the men to let go of the poor old thing and was soon chattering away happily with her, while she began to smile and wave her arthritic paws as she prattled at him. He turned to me at length with a smile on his face.
" 'Can I tell the men to let her go, sir? She lives not far away and was only gathering herbs. She knows what we are and has no use for Germans or even her own folk in the German ranks. I think she'll keep her mouth shut'
"I had a few questions, which he put and she was prompt to answer. She had seen no sign of armor, wagons, horses or uniformed men, save for occasional stragglers in the past weeks. She was delighted to see us, as a matter of fact, since we were not what she was dreading from over the Volga. But as I waved her politely away and the men all smiled at her kindly, she burst out in a torrent of expostulations, pointing ahead in the direction we were going.
"I turned to Broke and he was smiling even more broadly. He bowed and waved the poor thing off and she went, often looking back at us, until she disappeared into the side woods and the gathering mist. Then she was gone and I turned to my companion.
" 'Well, sir,' he explained, his teeth showing, 'seems we are still in danger, at least if we push on to the river. There are dread spirits down there, 'on my word, hexerei of the most nasty sort. They've always been there by the river, and she meant that too, having been warned by a great-grandfather or somesuch, when a kid herself. Think we dare risk it? We mustn't camp there at night, was an emphasis in that chatter.'
"I laughed. I told him I thought that we could manage that sort of thing, and the men near us laughed as well. So we signaled the others and all of us in our truncated column started engines and we went on past the amphitheater of a lost empire and entered the woods again at the other side. I had sent word that no one was to slack off and all were quite on the qui vive.
"It was now getting very dark and gloomy, though we could still hold the track without lights, though just. The rain had stopped and we went on through a cold and windless dark under the tall shining dark tree trunks, still down a long and gentle slope.
"The man sitting by the driver up front gave us a hand signal then and we all saw it. We had come to great willows, whose dripping branches, still with many small leaves, hung down all about us. But this was not why we had stopped. There in front was dark water, smooth and almost silent in the gathering night, save for a chuckle where a log broke the surface and caused the great river to ripple about it. We were on the Danube, that ancient waterway of races since time began.
"Swirling mists lay on the water's surface also, but not constant any more than they had been in the woods on the slope above. They veiled the waters but only in patches and shifted slowly to reveal new and shadowy vistas and then closed again and reformed anon some way off. In one opening of the white fog, I had seen a thing quite close to us and only a little way upstream, a couple of hundred feet. It had intrigued me for very obvious reasons, since dark was now coming fast I gave orders and the wagons, all three, were put in a half-circle with the water at our backs. Sentries were posted at good points and silence imposed. I told the men to eat their combat rations cold and keep mum and lightless. Then I took Broke and a couple of well-armed men and all went to what I had spotted. When we got there, I got out a hooded flash and used it on what lay on the ground and also went out into the water.
"It was nothing more than a broad jetty or the shore portion of one. I looked it over carefully and so did the other three. A very thin layer of soil and leaves did not hide what lay underneath. I was struck silent by it. There were massive blocks of some stone or other, rough and worn yet still strong and solid. The chief wear was logically on our left side, the upstream side. The whole mass thrust out into the Danube for some fifty or so feet and then came to a stop.
" 'Not built yesterday, men,' I said at length. 'This is part of ancient Rome, if I'm not wrong, and was one of their piers. Probably been used by fishers and such, since the 4th Century, and still has uses. I rather think that what we're looking for will be coming this way. Good place to tie up to, and a riverman, coming from the other side, would not have too much trouble finding it. Even at night and a night like this one.'
"So that was all. We went back and sent the same two men with one of the veteran sergeants back to the pier we had found. They were to stay low and keep a sharp lookout. We were deep in enemy country. We were winning but not here or yet.
"The rest of us, having arranged watches and checked all the posts where the inland advance guard was to keep watch, ate and turned in. I chatted for a bit with the three officers and then curled up in my waterproof under a blanket on one of the half-tracks. The night was very silent, save for the burble of the river and the steady drip from the trees, which blended with it. Every so often, planes would hum in the distance and once I heard a far-off thud which may have been a major explosion. But that was all, and I soon fell into an easy slumber, having satisfied myself that I had taken all precautions and done the best I could.
I had a quiet smile as I dropped off. Even the ghosts the old girl had been so afraid of, wherever they were, were good and quiet."
Outside the big, high-ceilinged room, the thunder of one of man's great cities seemed very far away. Save for our breathing and an occasional crackle from the fire, all was silent about us. I saw more than one mouth stay open as we waited for the next words of that silent, far-off night in an alien land.
"It was one of the younger officers who woke me up. I flicked a glance at my watch and it was two a.m. on a very dark morning. I could hear nothing and the night was silent, save for the splash of water and the fainter drip of that on the trees.
" 'Don't know what's up, sir,' was the low-voiced message. 'The sergeant sent one of his watch back a second ago, from the bridgehead you found. They've heard some sound they don't like, I gather.'
"I was on my feet quickly. I hissed at him to alert all hands and that I would go over and check myself on whatever it was. I drew my Webley from its holster and, at a crouch, eeled over to where the sergeant was waiting for me, in the shadow of a willow trunk by the ancient pier. I could feel his tension, even in the dark, and I could not even see his face clearly. The fog was heavier now and, with the night as well, we were in a lightless shroud.
The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes Page 15