Soldier No More (31 page)

“De Aquila?” Roche was almost certain of the reference, and it was interesting to him that Audley identified himself with the cunning old blackguard. For either by accident or design Kipling had drawn a classic blueprint for the successful spymaster there, using a judicious mixture of force, blackmail, threats and torture to turn an enemy agent. It was an irony that he himself had identified with de Aquila’s victim, the faithless Fulke, envying him his chance of changing to the winning side with honour and profit.

Audley nodded back, the lamplight glinting in his spectacles. “ ‘The Old Dog’ himself. Good man, Roche!”

“Kipling lives again,” murmured Bradford.

Audley drew himself up on the stool. “All right then—you barbarians, I’ll give you barbarians … barbarians all the way from the Rhine and the Danube into the Sea of Grass in the east, to the Volga—Angles, Saxons, Franks, Lombards, Thuringians, Burgundians … Alemanni and Marcomanni… Quadi and Rugians and Gepids and Vandals and Goths— Visigoths and Ostrogoths—“

“As far as the Volga?” Bradford emphasised the name disbelievingly.

“That’s right. Stalingrad wasn’t the first time the Germans were there. The Romans turned them away from the west, so they went east.”

“ ‘Lebensraum’, it’s called.” Stein nodded. “An old German custom.”

“But then they came back.” As ever, Jilly had her facts neatly cut-and-dried. “Third century AD? Fourth century?”

“Fourth’ll do. Say … sixteen hundred years ago … give or take a few decades.” Audley smiled. “Sixteen centuries ago we could all have been sitting here, nice and cosy, drinking our wine—the good wine of Cahors—“ he lifted his glass “—drinking our wine, and listening to … Lady Alexandra’s titbits of scandal from the City, and Stein’s news from Alexandria … and Jilly would be trying to convert us all to Christianity, probably—“ the glass moved from one to the other of them “—and Roche…now what would Captain Roche be doing here, among us fat civilians?” The lamplight caught the blood-red of the wine. “On leave from the frontier, maybe? From the heather and the bare hills where the wolves howl and the clouds play like cavalry charging? What price Britannia, Captain? Will the frontier hold next time?”

The American saved Roche with a grunt. “Huh! So where does a goddamn Yankee figure at the Court of King David?”

Jilly chuckled. “You don’t, Mike—you’re an anachronism.”

“A who?” asked Lexy.

“A Visigoth, honey,” said Bradford.

“And that’s exactly right,” said Audley quickly. “The hirsute Bradford doesn’t fit in our Roman orgy—not sixteen hundred years ago. But if we make him a Visigoth and move on another hundred years … then he’s here, by God!”

“The frontier didn’t hold,” said Jilly.

“You didn’t do your goddamn job, Captain,” said Bradford accusingly. “You let the Krauts in!”

He had to play
—

“We didn’t have enough men. It was the government’s fault—“ he spread his hands “—you expected us to hold the line all the way from the Black Sea to the Irish Channel—“

“Excuses, excuses! You had a job to do, and you didn’t do it, soldier!” Jilly leaned forward towards Audley. “But I thought it was the Huns that were the cause of it all, not the Germans? I mean, they pushed the Germans westwards again, and the Germans were just shunted into the Roman Empire, running away from them?”

Lexy sat up. “I thought the Huns
were
the Germans?”

Oh, for God’s sake, Lexy!” Jilly turned on her irritably. “You’ve read the book—don’t you remember?
Germans
—big and blond and hairy;
Huns
—short and dark and ugly.”

“I read somewhere that if you were downwind of the Huns, you could smell them at twenty miles,” said Stein. “Is that true? Or was it the Mongols?”

“Much the same article,” said Audley. “But twenty-five miles, not twenty, if there were enough of them.”

“Anyway,
they
forced the Germans back to the west,” said Jilly firmly.

“If they smelt that bad I don’t goddamn wonder,” said Bradford.

“Well, the book didn’t say they were different,” complained Lexy. “They were just nastier, that’s all.”

“What book?” inquired Stein. “You haven’t been actually reading a history book, have you, Alexandra?”

“
No
!” snapped Jilly irritably. “
Not
a history book—a historical
novel
, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s like a darned history book, anyway,” said Lexy. “It’s got footnotes at the back, saying that it all really happened—all about this Roman princess, and how the Visigoths carried her off, after they sacked Rome, and how she had to marry the king’s brother … At—
At-
something—“

“Ataulf.” Audley sounded surprised. “Brother of Theodoric the Great?”

“That’s him—Atwulf—“ Lexy plunged on breathlessly “— and because of her he decided to save the Roman Empire instead of destroying it—“

“That’s a large assumption,” said Audley.

“Well,
she
said so.”

“She?”

“This princess—Galla Placidia, of course. And she ought to know, after having been thoroughly screwed by Atwulf and his elder brother! Only their little son died, and the Romans got her back, and she married this great general, Constantine—“

“Constantius.”

“That’s the one. And after he died she ruled the whole empire, with the help of her confessor, Simplicius—“

“Who?”

“Simplicius. He’s the one who tells the story—who’s in bed with who, and who’s double-crossing who—“

“Lexy—there’s no such person as Simplicius,” Audley shook his head. “And Galla Placidia didn’t leave any memoirs. You’re talking fiction, pure and simple, nothing more.”

“Huh!” grunted Bradford, from behind his bottles. “Maybe fiction, maybe not. But not pure and not simple, by God!”

“Eh?” The tone in the American’s voice made Audley drop Lexy. “Not … ?”

“Not pure—damn right not pure, because the Hays Office threw a fit over it. And sure as hell not simple, because a million bucks isn’t simple, old buddy.” Bradford shook his head. “In fact, that was one dirty, crafty book, if you ask me. And written by one crafty lady, too.”

“What lady? What book?” Audley looked around him.

“Hell, David—are you really telling us you haven’t heard of Antonia Palfrey and
Princess in the Sunset
!”

“I don’t read historical novels.”

Roche was glad of the shadows which masked his reaction to this most palpable and absolute untruth, the evidence of which he had seen scattered on Audley’s own driveway. In the litany of the man’s defects neither Wimpy nor even Oliver St.John Latimer had included intellectual snobbery, but here it was. And yet, even allowing for the envy of a non-seller for a best-seller, it struck an oddly discordant note.

“You missed out, then,” said Bradford. “Because it wasn’t at all bad, minus the purple passages about Ataulf pawing Galla Placidia’s heaving bosom, and Constantius putting his hand up her toga.”

“Oh yes?” Audley spread a disparaging glance over Bradford and Lexy both. “As observed through the keyhole by the Right Reverend Sidonius Simplicius, presumably?”

“The
New York Times
gave it half a page, nearly,” said Bradford. “ ‘Scholarship prostituted’ was the theme.”

“Scholarship?”

“Apparently.” Bradford nodded. “It seems that when Miss Palfrey wasn’t groping around below the belt she kept a pretty tight hold on her history …. You know, I’m really quite surprised you haven’t read it—the
Times
man said it was a cross between
Gone With The Wind
and
I, Claudius
on one side, and
Forever Amber
and
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
on the other, but I think it had Kipling undertones—not just your children’s stuff, but the real McCoy short stories, like
Love-o
’
-Women
—“

“Good God!” exclaimed Audley.

“Oh yes—we Visigoths know our Kipling. And a lot better than most of your civilised Limeys, I’d guess. We haven’t got your hang-ups about him, for a start.”

“Not mine. I haven’t got any hang-ups about Kipling.” Audley was on the defensive, and clearly didn’t like it. “But you seem to know a great deal about this—what’s it called?—
Princess of the Sunset
?”

“
In
, not
of
.” The American began to move the bottles again, and then thought better of it and shifted them off the table altogether. “Goddamn empties—we’re running out of booze! Let’s have some more bottles out of the rack, Lex …
In
the sunset—the sunset of the Roman Empire—you’re damn right I know about it—the book anyway, if not the sunset. That’s why I’m here.”

“What d’you mean, Mike?” Jilly passed the corkscrew to Lexy. “I thought you were here to write?”

“Another Great American Novel,” murmured Audley. “About how Patton liberated Europe in spite of Monty and me.”

“Shut up, David,” said Jilly. “Mike?”

“Yes … I’m writing—sure. But I also have this little job on the side, for a friend of mine.” Bradford grinned at her. “A bit of intelligence work, actually.”

Roche forced himself to watch Lexy struggle with the corkscrew.

“Intelligence work?” Stein leaned forward. “For whom?”

Lexy looked up. “Just like David, you mean?”

Not at all like David!” said Audley.

“Not you, David—
that
David—“ she nodded towards Roche, and then addressed herself to the cork again “—how the hell does this thing work?”

Indeed?” Audley looked at Roche, whose astonishment had graduated to consternation. “Intelligence is your line, is it?”

Roche pointed at the corkscrew. “You screw it the other way, Lexy— clockwise.” He shrugged at Audley, and shook his head, and hoped for the best from the shadows. “Nothing so romantic, I’m afraid. Just Signals liaison with NATO—because I speak fluent French.”

“He jolly well does, too,” agreed Lexy enthusiastically as the cork popped. “He had La Goutard eating out of the palm of his hand—you should have seen it!”

“Oh …” Audley sounded disappointed. “Jolly good …” He turned back towards the American. “So what’s this cloak-and-dagger ‘little job’ then, Mike? A little something for Washington?”

The American chuckled. “Washington hell!
Hollywood
, I mean—“

For a film?” cried Lexy. “Mike—you didn’t tell us! Are you going to make a film of your book? Gosh! Let me fill your glass—then you can
discover
me. I’ve always wanted to be discovered—“

“Shut up, Lexy—“ Jilly waved her friend down “—it isn’t
his
book, it’s got something to do with
Princess in the Sunset
. Right, Mike?”

Dead right, Miss Smartpants.”

“Antonia … what’s-her-name?” Lexy refused to be waved down. “Wow! Come on—tell us, Mike—“

“He’s trying to tell us, if you’d only shut up! They’re going to make a film of it?”

“Yeah…That is, they’ve bought it… . There are these guys I know in the studio—I was over here with one of them in ‘44 … and I’ve done some script advising for them, and they sent me the
Princess
draft—that’s how I know about it—“ Bradford nodded to Audley “—there was this historical analysis from a history professor at Harvard, plus all the reviews from the papers, you see.”

“A professor from Harvard? Big deal!” Audley’s sniff of derision would have done credit to Jilly. “So what did he say?”

“Oh, he said the history was good. Like … well, it seems she really was beautiful, this Galla Placidia lady—beautiful and mean, like Scarlett O’Hara and Lucrezia Borgia rolled into one, with her pretty fingers in a lot of pies.”

“Yes?” Audley prodded him.

“Well … it was one hell of a time, with your barbarians flooding into the West, but the Romans still in there pitching—Theodoric the Gothic king … and this guy Constantius, the Roman general, who forced the barbarians to settle down beside the Romans—he was big time as well. And after him there was an even bigger man, with an unpronounceable name—“

“Aëtius,” murmured Audley. “ The last of the Romans—yes, I think you could call him ‘big time’, Bradford.”

“Right—and all the time the Huns are knocking on the door, ready to destroy everything if the Romans didn’t line up with the Goths somehow. And all the while Galla Placidia was playing both ends against the middle—I tell you, it’s one hell of a time, and one hell of a story.”

“I don’t think she was as bad as that,” said Lexy. “She had a lot to put up with—the way the Goths—the
Visigoths
—treated her, you know, Mike.” She nodded wisely. “Simplicius describes it all.”

Bradford laughed. “Yeah—the purple passages!”

“Who is Simplicius? I’ve never heard of him.” Audley rotated on his stool.

“He’s the one who tells the story. And ‘Simplicius’ is a joke-name, because he’s a real crafty son-of-a-bitch—he’s really the guy who pulls the strings, in fact.”

“But not historical, eh?”

“Maybe not. But he comes over like a real person. For my money he’s the best thing in the book. He ends up a bishop, but he’s really another pagan bastard just using the Christians as his intelligence service.”

Jilly held out her glass to be filled. “But… where do you come into all this, Mike?” She lifted the glass towards the bottle. “That’s enough—I want to stay sober to hear about Mike’s ‘intelligence’ assignment.”

“Fill ‘em all up, Lexy,” ordered Audley. “And then open another bottle.”

“Yeah … well, Antonia Palfrey is my assignment.” Bradford paused for a moment to watch the last of the bottle’s contents descend into his glass. “And Miss Antonia Palfrey’s small print is my problem.”

“In her book, you mean?” said Jilly.

“The purple passages, eh?” Stein chuckled wickedly. “The Hays Office doesn’t mind the barbarians murdering and looting, but they’re drawing the line at rape?”

“She’s just a simple little old spinster lady …” Bradford sighed and shook his head at no one in particular.

“They’re always the worst ones,” said Stein mildly. “They should have known better—your Hollywood friends.”