For the Good of the State

by Anthony Price

The two old men considered each other in silence, and Tom decided it was time to hear his own voice again. ‘I think what Dr Audley means is that I’m not so good at doing what I’m told, Professor—unlike Major Sadowski—’ He realized too late, as he pronounced the name, that he had made the mistake of inflecting it correctly ‘—even though I am equally overawed by meeting the celebrated Professor Panin, naturally.’

  ‘Hah! And so you’d better be, Tom,’ agreed Audley. ‘Not every day do you get to meet an old Central Committee man who was dandled on the knee of Vladimir Il’ich Lenin as a baby, and given a revolutionary blessing! Or is that just a story, Nikolai?’

  ‘It is just a story.’ Panin was giving his whole speculative attention to Tom now. ‘Vladimir Il’ich did not dandle babies on his knee.’

  ‘No—of course!’ Audley nodded agreement. ‘Only poor devils who have to win the proletariat vote have to dandle babies—of course! And your old dad fought with the White Army in any case, didn’t he? In the Semenovski Guards, was it?’

  Panin continued to stare at Tom. ‘And I am no longer on the Central Committee.’ He ignored Audley’s flippancies. This place was a fortress, Sir Thomas. Correct?‘

  Tom had just registered the Semenovski Guards: they had been among the Imperial guards regiments of the Tsar himself. So Audley was playing dirty, as was his custom. ‘Yes, Professor.’ He was tempted to leave it at that, but found that he couldn’t. ‘It was probably built by a man named Gilbert de Merville in the mid-1130s, who was a supporter of a great baron named Baldwin de Redvers. If it is, then it’s Mountsorrel Castle.’

  Panin turned away for a moment, to the gorse-and-bracken-covered line of bailey ditch-and-rampart again, and then to the higher motte across the few yards of cow-hoofprinted and cowpatted expanse of coarse pasture which separated the bailey gate from the ditched motte overlooking the river crossing below. But when he came back to Tom there was something in his face, or behind his eyes, which betrayed an insight into what it had once been, before it had been trodden down and demilitarized by eight-and-a-half centuries of time and cows.

  ‘So how is Mountsorrel Castle appropriate to us now, Sir Thomas?’

  ‘Ah!’ Audley burst back into the conversation like a Cromwell finding its gap in the bocage at last. ‘Now … now what I meant, Nikolai … was not so much related to place, you see … Although this particular place is also not inappropriate—’ He gave Tom a quick sidelong glance ‘—it is an adulterine construction, is it, Tom?’

  The question caught Tom off-balance. ‘I’m not sure, David—’

  ‘ “Adulterine”?’ The word unbalanced Panin too—quite understandably, thought Tom.

  ‘ “Illegal”, Nikolai.’ Audley didn’t want to be interrupted. ‘In the days of our strong kings, you couldn’t just put up a castle when you felt like it—you had to have a licence to build and crenellate … Although “crenellate” is a bit later, I suppose—like, to put up battlements and loopholes; so this was probably no more than a stout palisade, like an old US cavalry stockade, to keep the native English-Indians out, eh?’ Because he didn’t want to be interrupted he didn’t wait to be understood. ‘What I meant was the timing of it, not really the placing … do you see?’

  Tom didn’t see. But, nevertheless and loyally, he looked towards the Russian as though he did.

  ‘The timing?’ Under their combined scrutiny Panin had to ask the question, even though he must know he was walking into some prepared ambush. But then, instead, he gestured towards the motte. ‘Shall we walk a little way? I feel … a little overlooked here, is the truth—?’

  Quite suddenly Tom remembered Audley’s terrace, and the flesh up his backbone crawled at the memory, so that his feet moved before his brain stamped their movement order, taking him towards the protection of Gilbert’s earth mound.

  Panin moved with him. And Tom felt a breath of wind on his cheeks, and the topmost growth of gorse and bracken and old winter bramble shivered on the mound ahead of him, in the same breath of moving air, which had a decided hint of rain-to-come in it, sweeping up the Bristol Channel between Lundy Island and the Gower Peninsula from the distant Atlantic Ocean.

  ‘Timing—?’ Panin reached relative safety, but turned to find Audley still rooted to his spot behind them in the entrance, snuffling into his handkerchief again. ‘David—?’

  ‘Coming … ’ Audley took his time, even adding to it with a scrutiny of the nearer hillside, on which Major Sadowski was now presumably doing his invisible guard-duty. ‘Coming’

  Willy! thought Tom, staring into the junction of the bailey ditch with that of the motte. At this point on the Mountsorrel spur the topsoil had been thin, but Gilbert’s forced-labourers hadn’t been allowed to skimp their ditching: the outer edge was still an eight-foot vertical rock-wall, overhung with trailing brambles growing over it from the top, and he would have liked Willy to have seen that ruthless Norman attention to essential detail —

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Audley strode up, with that long, purposeful stride of his. ‘I was busy sneezing again. And then I was thinking.’ He looked around, up at the mound, then again at the Major’s ridge, and finally back to Panin. ‘Is this safe enough for you, then?’

  Panin sighed, but seemed to accept that Audley had taken the lead again. ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘I was thinking of my dear wife again, actually.’ Audley peered at the rock cut ditch. ‘That’s a good piece of work there, Tom—do you see—?’

  ‘Yes.’ A bit of Tom was irritated at being taught to suck eggs. But he also admired the old man’s powers of observation and his determination at least to pretend that the shared memory of the terrace didn’t frighten him.

  ‘Yes.’ Panin watched Audley peering into Gilbert’s good work. ‘I trust that Mrs Audley is well?’

  ‘Uh-huh. She’s very well … Are you sure this is “adulterine”, Tom? This ditch must have taken a hell of a lot of digging.’ Suddenly he turned back to Panin. ‘She’s well. But she’s not happy, Nikolai. And neither am I.’

  ‘Yes.’ Panin nodded. ‘That I can understand.’

  ‘You can?’ Audley waited for more.

  Another nod. ‘I too am not happy, David.’

  This time Audley nodded. ‘Yes. That I can understand, also.’

  The lines in the Russian’s face were like dry wadis in a stony desert, in an enlarged satellite photo. ‘Someone made an attempt on your life yesterday, I have been informed.’

  ‘You have been informed?’ Audley repeated the words mildly. ‘It wasn’t you, then?’ he raised his hand quickly. ‘No—of course I didn’t mean that, old comrade. I never thought for a moment that it was you. And Tom will bear me out there—eh, Tom?’

  ‘I am most relieved to hear that, David.’ The Russian gave Tom no time to bear true witness. ‘But—’

  ‘Because if it had been you—’ Audley cut him off ‘—then I wouldn’t be here now, would I?’ He gave Panin his Beast-smile. ‘And you, old comrade … you would have been looking for a very deep hole, somewhere east of Nizhni Novgorod. Although you would know, because Jack Butler is a stickler for etiquette—and the son of a good trade unionist too, who knows his Rule Book backwards, and his “Custom and Practice”, which covers what isn’t actually written into the book … and what maybe can’t be written into it—’ He switched to Tom, with a glint of mischief in his eye ‘—old Jack’s dad was a printer, so Jack was brought up on “old Spanish customs”—’ The mocking eye returned to Panin ‘ — so you would know, Nikolai, that there wouldn’t be a hole deep enough, not even in Holy Mother Russia—not even in the little monks’ cells in Zagorsk Monastery—where Jack wouldn’t find you in the end, if he thought it was your finger on the trigger, eh?’ The slow Beast-smile became almost loving. ‘Right?’

  Panin’s immobility impressed Tom. ‘About Colonel Butler … I bow to your superior knowledge, David.’ Then the dry wadis twisted. ‘But about me … of course, you are also quite right: if I judged you better dead, t
hen you would be dead. But the rest … that is irrelevant, because we both know that we are concerned with the perceived welfare of our respective mother-countries. And we are both on “borrowed time” now, I think.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Audley interjected the blasphemy hotly. ‘Are you trying to frighten me?’

  ‘I am stating a truth, David—’ Panin cut back at Audley. But then he inclined his head stiffly, as though uncharacteristically. ‘It’s forty years now—fortyone, for you … more than forty for me—since we both saw too many better men killed in a good cause—dead, and rotten, and forgotten … But we are both still here: that is all I mean.’

  ‘Okay!’ Audley raised his hand again. ‘Okay, okay, okay!’ The hand came down. ‘So it wasn’t you, Nikolai! But it was someone—’ The last vestige of the Beast-smile was long-gone ‘—and it was also someone with Basil Cole yesterday. So let’s start with him. Or not at all.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Panin studied Major Sadowski’s ridge again. ‘About your … experience, of yesterday … I have been told, of course, David.’

  ‘I should hope so!’ Audley followed the Russian’s gaze. ‘And that’s why the loquacious Major is on guard-duty, is it? Or did you just want to get his little pocket tape-recorder out of range?’

  ‘About Basil Cole I do not know.’ Panin came back to them. ‘That is to say … of him I know. But that was in former times. And he never worked for you—for either Colonel Butler, or for Sir Frederick before him, to my knowledge.’ The mournful sheep-face expression betrayed nothing. Only the pale brown eyes hinted at life behind the mask. ‘Also he is retired. Or would “dismissed” be the correct word?’

  ‘No. “Murdered” is the correct word.’ The cold matter-of-fact tone of Audley’s correction somehow emphasized the anger it concealed.

  ‘Of that I know nothing, my friend.’

  Audley winced visibly at what he clearly took to be another incorrect word—so visibly and so clearly that not even Panin could ignore the reaction.

  ‘You do not believe me?’ The Russian countered that banked-up rage with an asbestos-covered curiosity.

  Audley sniffed. ‘I tell you what, old comrade—’ he sniffed again, and began to search for his handkerchief ‘—old comrade—’ he found the handkerchief, but waved it at Gilbert de Merville’s overgrown strongpoint above them before applying it to his nose ‘—I said this place was appropriate … you remember?’ He buried his face in the handkerchief.

  Panin studied the motte for a moment, then waited until Audley had completed his noisy ‘having-a-cold’ ritual. ‘Yes. And you also said “timing”, equally mysteriously —I do remember, David.’

  ‘Good!’ Audley spread a hand round the bailey, proprietorially. ‘Place: Gilbert de Merville’s cosy hideaway, Mountsorrel Castle. And I suppose you could say Gilbert had the instincts of a Lebanese war-lord plus the military know-how of an Israeli tank-commander … Timing: mid-twelfth-century England, give or take a few years—mid-Civil War, anyway. King Stephen: played 20, won 5, lost 5, drew 10; the Empress Matilda: played 20, won 5, lost 5, drew 10.’ He shook his head. ‘Not so easy to assess Gilbert’s score, because he probably changed sides half-a-dozen times. The only side he was on was Gilbert de Merville’s side—’

  ‘David—’

  ‘Uh-huh! Haven’t finished yet.’ Audley wagged a finger. ‘You may have diplomatic privilege, old comrade. But you’re on my patch now, so I get to do the talking when it suits me—right?’

  Panin closed his mouth and battened down his face, reducing his vision to reptilian eye-slits. Or … feline, if not reptilian, Tom amended the image, recalling the look in the eyes of Mamusia’s vile old neutered tom (‘My other darling Tom!’), which always gazed at him with a thwarted malevolence hinting at a very different relationship if their sizes had been reversed. But then he sensed the eyes catch his own scrutiny, and the hungry glint behind them was extinguished, and the terrifying old man was giving Audley a slow, almost stately, nod.

  ‘Right!’ If Audley had received the same frightening signal he showed no sign of it: he seemed to be enjoying himself again. ‘Very interesting century, the twelfth, Nikolai. The Gothic cathedrals were on their launch-pads—from Chartres and St Denis, and Sens, all the way across Europe, even to the Middle East—the ideas, and the style, and the geometry … Well, as far as Poland, anyway, if not Russia … And nothing like that has lifted off into the heavens until you and the Americans lifted off, but much more disagreeably, back in the fifties.’ Sniff. ‘More technology, but less spirit—?’

  Panin held his peace, without difficulty, even though Audley paused very deliberately, as though to allow him the Right of Reply, knowing quite well that he would not exercise it. And Tom’s mixture of fascinated fear and curiosity moved further up the gauge, even though it was already well into the red in the knowledge that these two veterans of an on-going war, which had started long before he was born, were consumed with old men’s hatred for each other, in spite of their elaborate politeness.

  ‘Marvellously good things.’ Audley agreed with Panin’s silence. ‘And marvellously bad ones too. And Gilbert de Merville was almost certainly one of those … like, there was this Peterborough monk, who wrote up the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for those times, which I learnt by heart as a young lad come up to Cambridge fresh from laying waste Normandy, and sacking Germany, and buying the Fräuleins for a few packets of Lucky Strikes: “Every strong man made his castles … And when the castles were made they filled them with devils and evil men … And then they seized those who they supposed had any riches—”—and I don’t need to tell you, of all people, the sort of riches we were after in ’45, because you were after the same bloody things, pretty much—“—and they tortured them with unspeakable tortures, so that I neither can nor may tell all the horrors and all the tortures that they did to the wretched men of this land, but it was said that ‘Christ and His angels were asleep’.” ‘ Audley gave the Russian his purest and sweetest Beast-smile. ’And you may not be able to recall the Monk of Peterborough on the “Anarchy” of Stephen and Matilda, but you were in Khalturin’s Guards Division, so you surely remember what you did in Germany. And afterwards, eh?‘

  ‘Yes.’ Panin couldn’t duck so direct a challenge. ‘And I remember the Ukraine also, before I was transferred to the Berlin front at the last—’

  ‘And Poland?’ Audley didn’t look at Tom. ‘You remember the Warsaw Rising? Did you hear the sound of our planes trying to drop supplies to them, when you were just across the river there—? When you bastards wouldn’t give us landing rights, so we had to make the round trip—do you remember that sound, too?’

  Every Pole knew that story, thought Tom. And not a few Poles still remembered the names of the Polish Lancaster bomber crews who had died on those abortive mercy trips, delivering half their loads to the Germans. But if that was designed for his benefit it was a crude and unnecessary reminder of unsettled scores, of which he needed no reminding … But then, at times, Audley was crude—

  ‘What are you saying, David?’ Audley’s sudden obsession with Polish history seemed to confuse the Russian. ‘I was a staff officer with the Guards—’

  ‘Huh!’ Audley tossed his head like a two-year-old.

  ‘A staff officer—’ Unbelievably Audley had drawn blood from Panin, the momentary emphasis suggested ‘—and I thought we were in the twelfth century—? Or … the mid-twelfth century?’

  ‘So we were!’ All Audley wanted was that tell-tale stain through those very old bandages, apparently. ‘And … what I mean is that they built their marvellous cathedrals, which took them closer to heaven than anyone’s ever been since … but then, the other half of their time the Normans were beasts—just like the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead:

  When she was good

  She was very, very good,

  But when she was bad she was horrid—

  and, in fact, if you want a really good example of that, the
n who better than King Henry II Plantagenet himself, who came after Matilda-and-Stephen, eh?‘ Audley shook his head sadly at the Russian. ’A great king, Henry—knew his Latin and his Law. Ruled half of Western Europe. Made short work of bastards like Gilbert de Merville, and his like … Loved the Fair Rosamund—married the fair Eleanor, and all that … “ He shook his head again, and trailed off with a sigh.

  Panin waited, not patiently but nonetheless well-contained within himself again now and not to be drawn. And in that moment of silence Tom knew exactly what Audley was about, and what was coming now.

  ‘So there he was, keeping Christmas like a good Christian in his own private two-thirds of France—’ Audley flicked a glance at Tom ‘—in Chinon, would it have been, Tom—in 1170—? Somewhere like that, anyway—’ He transferred the glance back to Panin ‘—when this news arrived from England, about this damned inconvenient priest, who’d been shooting his mouth off again, because he reckoned the Church was above the State. Which drove Henry right up the wall, naturally. So he shouted—shouted supposedly to no one in particular, but to everyone in general—“Is there no one here among all you skunks, who owe me everything—your horses, your lands and your castles and your droits de seigneur—”—or, as it might be in your set-up today, Nikolai, “your Mercedes cars, and your dachas and Black Sea holidays, and your pretty ballet-dancers, and special shopping privileges”—“Is there no one who’ll get rid of this priest for me, with no questions asked?” ’ He drew a quick breath which was only half a sniff. ‘So Fitz-Urse and a few of the lads jumped in their Mercedes—on their horses—and took the next cross-Channel ferry and chopped up the priest right in front of his own altar.’ This time he grimaced quickly at Panin. ‘A proper bungled job, it was—they didn’t even bother to silence the witnesses. So Henry had to throw them to the wolves officially, the murderers—’ He cocked a frown at Tom ‘—but what did happen to Fitz-Urse and the other three, Tom? I really ought to know, but for the life of me, I can’t recall at the moment—?’