“David—“ began Lexy.
He was drunk, thought Roche. But not totally drunk, because there still wasn’t a word out of place, and not stupid drunk either. He simply hadn’t liked the drift of Bradford’s interrogation—the piling up of circumstantial evidence against him, piece by piece—and was seeking instead to divert it with the one thing he had to give them which might intrigue them more.
“Go on, David,” said Jilly.
“Where was I?” Audley blinked owlishly.
“You were demolishing Germany,” said Stein.
“In a good cause,” said Lexy. “And it had something to do with barbarians.”
“Ah … of course, they crossed the Rhine from East to West—the Franks, and then the Vandals and all the rest … but we crossed it from West to East, as the Romans did, complete with hostile Germans on the other side.” Audley nodded at Stein. “And I remember thinking … ‘This time we’ll get it right, the conquest of Germany—we won’t fluff it, like the Romans did’. But, of course, it didn’t work out like that, with the Russians—I was escorting one of the T Force groups ferreting out German technological secrets, and we ran into them doing the same thing straight off, and I knew then what sort of brave new world we were heading for.” He paused. “Nine months of fighting Nazis … and others … and eighteen months of fighting Russians … and others—that was my war. Uncomfortable, but highly educational, you might say.” Another pause. “Then I went up to Cambridge, into the tender care of Professor Archibald Forbes—“ he raised his glass, only to find that it was empty; and then that the bottles on the table, tested one after another, were also empty, and focussed finally upon Lexy “—another bottle, pot-girl!”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough, David?” said Jilly.
“Huh!” Audley grunted derisively. “My dear Gillian, I haven’t started to drink yet—not by rugger club standards, anyway.”
Lexy drew another bottle from the rack.
“Make it two—or three, seeing as how the night is yet young … Stein—Bradford—Captain Roche … fill your glasses! Let us drink to our dead youth—you remember your Kipling, Roche? Parnesius and Pertinax on the Great Wall, with the barbarians on the warpath?” Roche held out his glass obediently.
Audley grinned back at him. “A libation is what we should make—“ he looked around, his glance finally settling on the potted plant at his elbow “—just a drop for my lost opportunities, then—“ he inclined his glass carefully “—but not too much! Roche?”
Roche leaned forward to bury his own glass among the leaves. “And for mine too!” He tipped as much of his wine as he dared into the heart of the plant.
“Good man!” Audley beamed at him. “Stein—Bradford?”
“I don’t sacrifice,” said Stein.
“And I don’t waste good wine,” said Bradford.
Audley shrugged. “Well… that’s your funeral. I mocked the gods once, and I was punished for my hubris—appropriately punished, too.”
“What hubris, David?” asked Jilly.
“I thought I knew better,” said Audley. “I turned Forbes down when he offered me the real world, and chose the other Dark Ages instead. I thought I was uniquely well-placed to interpret them—I thought I had an insight denied to lesser mortals after my wartime education.”
“Why the Dark Ages?” asked Jilly.
“Because that was the other time when the world changed, love—the other barbarian age—from the fall of the Roman Empire to when the Arabs were three days’ march from Paris, or thereabouts. After which nothing was ever the same again—I found it fascinating.” Audley shook his head. “What a time to live in—fascinating—“
“Ugh!” Lexy shivered. “Sidonius Simplicius didn’t think it was fascinating—he thought it was dreadful! Like the beginning of the end of the world, he said.”
“So it was—of his world.” Audley grinned at her. “But, don’t you see, that’s what makes it so interesting—the world turned upside down and history speeded up. What an age to live in!”
“You’re just like Sidonius Simplicius,” said Lexy. “He decided in the end that it was interesting, once he’d worked out how to play both ends against the middle. Then he said it was all the will of God, anyway. But he hadn’t been raped in the process, of course.”
“Indeed?” Audley half shrugged. “But… well, that’s what I thought, at all events, mes amis: I really believed that I could lose myself in the past, in the old dark ages, using my understanding of the uncomfortable present as the key to it all …” his expression twisted “… from the comfort of a senior common room at Cambridge, naturally—that goes without saying.”
The man’s bitterness went without saying also, thought Roche. He was eaten up with it, beneath his self-mockery.
“But you didn’t get a fellowship,” said Bradford brutally.
Audley bowed to him over his glass, which was empty again. “Hubris, my dear fellow. And it was a rather juvenile theory, anyway.”
“Oh, come on, David! You haven’t done too badly,” Lexy’s natural instinct, once she had realised the concealed wound, was to apply soothing ointment to it.
“Yes,” Stein nodded. “And, come to that, you could probably get a fellowship somewhere now, if you wanted to. That book of yours was well reviewed in the TLS—the Byzantine one … Maybe not Oxbridge, but one of the newer places. Or the States—“
Audley winced. “I don’t want a bloody fellowship in one of the newer places—or the States… or Oxbridge, damn it.”
“Yeah—of course! You told us. You want your old job back.” Bradford twisted the blade. “Maybe you should go crawling back to Forbes, and ask for forgiveness.”
“Mike!” admonished Jilly. “Lay off!”
The American shrugged unrepentantly. “Tit for tat, honey. Just being helpful.”
“Helpful!” Jilly gestured impatiently. “But why, David? You still haven’t explained why.”
“Haven’t I?” Audley blinked at her. “I thought I had.”
“You haven’t, darling,” said Lexy. “Not a word. But—“
“Sssh!” Jilly waved her down too. “Go on, David.”
Audley shifted on his stool uneasily, as though unwilling to strip his seventh veil at the last.
Stein chuckled darkly behind his glass. “The great David doesn’t want to admit the truth.”
“What truth?”
“He’s bored, Jilly dear—plain, old-fashioned bored … Bored and lonely—lonely and bored!” The Israeli nodded to himself, and then to Audley. “And it’s a dangerous combination, that—in a man like you, my friend. It makes you ripe for any mischief, any wickedness in this wicked world.” He looked around at the rest of them. “Such men are dangerous, believe me. We would do well to leave him alone—to leave now, before it is too late … or he will drag us down with him into some fatal adventure of his.”
“Bored?” Lexy echoed the word incredulously. “But he can’t be bored— with all he’s got… And he can’t be lonely—he’s got us, Davey.”
“My dear—we’re merely the ingredients of his boredom. Boredom isn’t just not having anything to do. It’s not being able to do what you want to do. If you can’t do that, then everything else is weary, stale, flat and unprofitable—believe me, I know.”
“How do you know, Davey?” asked Jilly.
“Because it’s an infection, Jilly dear—a parasite in the blood that never leaves you once it’s there. It can lie dormant for a few years, but it’s there waiting for you to weaken. I know because I’ve got it too, you see—maybe not David’s particular bug, but my own special bug.”
What bug, Davey?” asked Lexy.
“None of your business, Lady Alexandra,” said Stein.
“He likes to fly planes,” said Bradford. “A common bug.”
If you say so,” Stein shrugged. “But I’m not complaining.”
Audley laughed. “You’ve got nothing to complain about. You get your jollies fro
m the poor damned Egyptians at regular intervals. All I get to do is write books. And they’re no substitute for the real thing, I’ve discovered.”
Lexy sat up once more, this time almost as though pricked. “Simplicius!” she exclaimed.
“I beg your pardon, Lexy love?”
“You’re Simplicius—you really are! Sidonius Simplicius to the life, darling—sort of in reverse.”
Lexy love—“
“No, you are—it’s quite weird, darling!” Lexy turned to Jilly “You’ve read the book, Jilly—you tell him, he’ll believe you!”
Tell him what?”
“You remember! How he’s always on about wanting to write a book about that boring old saint who was martyred by some emperor or other— Saint Somebody-or-other of Somewhere—“
“Saint Vinicius of Capua? The one Diocletian parboiled?”
That’s him! And he’s always saying—Simplicius is always saying—that Vinicius lived in much more interesting times …” Lexy spread her gaze round them “… but of course he never does write the book, because he’s far too busy running the whole show from behind Galla Placidia’s skirts, which is much more interesting.”
Jilly nodded. “You’re quite right. That’s the whole point of the book— ‘What the Lord God, our Emperor, and Jesus Christ, his Caesar, purpose for Their servants’—that’s right.”
“Huh! Audley grunted derisively. “This fellow Simplicius sounds … doctrinally unsound!”
“I don’t know about that, darling—all your heresies and things are beyond me. But what he’s saying is that taking part in the real world now is the only proper job for a real man. Right, Jilly?” Lexy turned from Jilly to Bradford. “You’ve read the book, Mike—isn’t that so?”
“Yeah. He sure as hell didn’t regard life as a spectator sport. He wanted to run with the ball.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Lexy turned back to Audley. “And you want to run with the ball too, David—and get your head down in the scrum, and do all those other beastly things you get so worked up about. So you’re Simplicius, don’t you see, darling?”
Roche saw.
And, suddenly, in seeing, saw more than that.
Saw Lexy, enchanting Lexy, half embarrassed at the sound of her own voice, the lamplight catching the slight sheen of perspiration on her face—
Saw Jilly … and on Jilly’s plain little features it was the sheen of intelligence which animated that face into something close to beauty—
Saw the handsome blond Israeli, the compulsive pilot; and the dark angry American … both his adversaries—
But saw Audley most of all, and at last.
“Here’s Steffy!” Lexy held up her hand, listening. “I can hear her on the steps outside.”
“And about time too!” said Audley irritably. “I just wish she’d regulate her love life more thoughtfully—“ he cut off suddenly, frowning at the scrape of hobnails on stone, which was followed by a thunderous knocking. “But that’s not our Steffy, by God!”
Jilly peered at her wrist-watch. “It’s past midnight, David.”
“So what? We argued until three last time over Stein’s esoteric prehistoric gobbledegook, and Madame didn’t turn a hair.”
“She thinks there’s safety in numbers,” said Lexy, smiling up at Roche. “She believes we wouldn’t call it ‘an orgy’ if it really was one.”
The knock was repeated, even more heavily, and they looked at each other like guilty children, each waiting for the others to move.
“Well, someone bloody answer it,” snapped Audley. “I’m too far away.”
“Yeah. Well, someone’s got to,” said Bradford. “Otherwise she’ll think we really are screwing around.”
The knock was repeated a third time.
“All right, then,” Stein stood up. “Muggins does it.”
Roche craned his neck round Lexy to get a better view, but the angle was awkward and the light confusing.
“Gaston?” Stein injected a masterly mixture of ninety per cent innocent inquiry and ten per cent surprise, as any man with two girls but a clear conscience might employ after midnight. “It’s old Gaston,” he called unnecessarily over his shoulder.
“Old Gaston?” Audley’s equally unnecessary repetition substituted a rather forced heartiness for Stein’s tenth of surprise. “Well—don’t stand there, man! Ask him in! Get another glass, Lady Alexandra.”
But Old Gaston did not seem disposed to be drawn into the Tower. Rather, he drew the Israeli out into the darkness beyond with an urgent, indecipherable mutter of words.
“What’s he want, for God’s sake?” Audley called through the doorway, at Stein’s back. “Stein?”
Mutter-mutter-mutter. Stein took no notice of the question. “Gaston’s Madame Peyrony’s odd-job man,” said Audley across the table to Roche. “He stokes the boiler, and does the repairs, and digs the garden, and that sort of thing.”
Digs the garden sent a shiver down Roche’s spine. If Old Gaston dug Madame Peyrony’s garden from way back, then he had planted more than roses in it, for sure.
“Stein!” Audley’s voice had lost its heartiness. “What does he want?” There was a touch of bluster about it now, and under that uneasiness. “Stein?”
The Israeli turned round suddenly just beyond the doorway, but then stood there for a moment in silence, without moving. “Well?” snapped Audley.
Stein straightened up—until he did so Roche didn’t realise that his shoulders had slumped—and came back into the light. “Well?” said Audley again.
Stein looked at Jilly. “Get your wrap, dear. We’ve got to go.”
“What’s happened?” asked Lexy.
“There’s been an accident.”
Steffy?” Lexy stood up quickly. “To Steffy?”
Jilly had risen just as quickly, pulling her wrap from the back of her chair on to her shoulders.
“Not you, Lady Alexandra,” said Stein. “Jilly will do.”
Lexy had started to move, but now she stopped. “What sort of accident?” She knew, of course. They all knew, thought Roche—they knew without the fractional pause before Stein gave up trying to edit the answer.
“She’s dead, Lexy,” said the Israeli.
XIV
ROCHE’S TRAVELLING CLOCK woke him to order before dawn, into blind man’s darkness inside the Tower.
Against all the odds of alcohol and exhaustion, and the too-few hours the night’s events had left him, he became fully aware of all the co-ordinates of his mind and body long before the tiny bell mechanism had exhausted itself beneath the folds of his shirt, with which he had deliberately muted it.
He had to get up and get on with the job. Thinking about Steffy— knowing just so much, and nothing at all—only brought back the sour taste of nightmares which he shouldn’t remember, like the taste of last night’s alcohol.
He fumbled for his torch under the camp-bed; found the torch, and found the matches on the table beside him; put down the torch and struck a match to light the candle Audley had left for him—the flaring match and the sputtering candle-flame illuminated the tower room around him, sending thousands of shadows everywhere creeping into their holes, in the great rack of bottles—the bottles winking and blinking at him.
Before he could think more about it, he forced himself out of his sleeping bag and set his bare feet on the floor. And he saw, as he did so, the slim red gold-embossed book which he had pulled out of his hold-all, with his torch and his little alarm clock—which he had tried to read for a few moments in that same candlelight so few hours before, wanting to sleep and needing to sleep, but fearing to do so … Wimpy’s gift, Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill … and thought of the old Roman general on the Great Wall, with his world falling in ruins around him, listening each morning to his sword and saying to himself ‘And this day is allowed Rutilianus to live’…
He drew his shirt over his head, and hauled his trousers on to his legs; and pulled on his socks and pushed his f
eet into his shoes, and tied up the laces; and, just as automatically, picked up the torch and acquiesced in the Plan of Action he had formulated the half-night before, as he had assembled the camp-bed and unstrapped the sleeping-bag.
The very automation of these simple actions carried him beyond the getting-up which had been no more than the reverse of lying-down. What the Tower had once been, before Audley had worked on it, he still wasn’t sure: it was the size of a great dovecote or a small defensive donjon … but there was nothing now in it to indicate which it had been, if it had been either of those, only the new wooden floor beneath his feet and the new wooden ceiling twelve feet above his head, with the smell of the fresh timber faint in his nostrils.
He flashed the torch-beam around him. Well… maybe it had been both those things in its time: in the bad old days Aquitaine had been famous for its petty barons, who had all needed their castles, and this Quercy region of it had also been celebrated for its dovecotes and pigeon-lofts, over which the avaricious peasants had litigated endlessly to establish their rights to the valuable bird-droppings. On balance, judging from the thickness of the wall in which the doorway was set rather than from the total lack of windows in the room, he was inclined to guess castle bastion originally, even though he had seen nothing outside very clearly in the yellow beam of the Volkswagen’s headlights to support that theory; most of his attention had been caught by the little cottage in the trees just below, which the lights had transformed into another Perrault fairy-tale house, with its dormer windows and pantile roof.
Not that it mattered either way—whether this was the last remnant of the Beast’s castle or Beauty’s father’s pigeon-loft; what mattered now was that it was Audley’s tower, remodelled for his purposes—for his argumentative orgies down below and … according to Jilly, for his writing work-room above, up that ladder and beyond that trap-door.
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