Our man in Camelot

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Anthony Price

OUR MAN IN CAMELOT

For John Grassi

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Prologue:

Captain Finsterwald and AIC Merriwether

THE MAILMAN DELIVERED the packet just as Captain Finsterwald and Airman First Class Merriwether had finished searching Major Davies's cottage.

The click of the letterbox flap caught Harry Finsterwald halfway down the stairs. With letter-bombs uppermost in his mind he froze where he was and waited until the delivery had been accomplished. By that time, however, he was reassured about the packet's contents, because with the treatment it had received, if it could ever have exploded it, would have done so already. It had been too wide for the aperture, and folded double it was almost too fat, but not quite; with a dry rasp of disintegrating paper it tore its way into the cottage, hung for a moment by a tattered corner, and finally dropped with a dull thump on to the mat.

Merriwether's black face appeared round the sitting room door as the sound of the mailman's footsteps died away in the distance.

"He got some mail?" Merriwether sounded surprised.

Finsterwald looked down at the crumpled packet. "Some sort of catalogue. Or maybe a circular." He turned it over with his foot. "Nothing interesting."

"That figures. You finished upstairs, Harry?"

Finsterwald nodded. "Uh-huh. He's clean."

"Same here. He's so clean it hurts."

" Was so clean. Nothing in the desk? Nobody write to him?"

"If they did he didn't keep their letters. Just bills in the desk, and not many of them. Seems he liked to pay cash."

Finsterwald frowned at him. "You don't reckon so clean is too clean, maybe?"

The big negro shrugged. "Nothing to say it is, and they checked him out good before he did that little job for them in Israel. No next-of-kin, no girlfriends, far as we know, so no one to write him. Like they say, he was a loner. Some pilots, they're like that."

Finsterwald grunted disapprovingly. "Just a goddamn birdwatcher, and birds don't write letters."

"Not his kind, anyway." Merriwether wiped his face with his handkerchief. "There's a pile of his bird books back there…" He thumbed over his shoulder, "… funny thing though…"

"Funny thing?"

"They's all brand new, almost never been opened. You'd have thought, the way he was always looking out for them, they'd have been more- dog-eared, I guess. Like my Air Force Manual."

Finsterwald nodded. It had become a standing joke between them which no longer required even a smile, the Air Force Manual. "Maybe he knew it all too."

"Which is more than we know about him." Merriwether looked round uneasily. "Eighteen years in the Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

service, but nobody really knew him. High security rating, flew planes, watched birds. Period."

"He was one damn good pilot. Remember that citation in the file for those Hanoi bridge pictures—like he was a little bird perching on the girders?"

Merriwether looked down at the Busy Lizzie plant on the window-sill. It was just beginning to droop for lack of water.

He shrugged again. "So he was a good pilot. But not good enough when it came to the crunch."

"We don't know that, Cal." Finsterwald sat down on the stairs.

"That's right. We don't know that. Nice day, not too high, not too fast, no malfunctions, navigator transmitting, radar plot on course—then pow! No pilot, no co-pilot, no plane, no nothing." He pointed a long brown finger like a stick of milk chocolate at Finsterwald. "And that's what we got—nothing."

" 'Like it was a missile'," quoted Finsterwald.

"Except we know it wasn't, because there was nothing in that whole bit of sea to throw it at them."

"Which the British confirm," agreed Finsterwald. "And their radar cover's on the top line in the Irish Sea these days, you can bet." He paused. "So it had to be the plane —okay. So we'll recover the wreckage and then we'll know. Don't get so hot."

"Then we'll still know nothing—" the chocolate finger jabbed the air savagely "—because we'll still not know why."

"Means they got a man on the base at High Wodden."

Merriwether laughed. "Oh, man—tell me something I don't know. They got a man at Wodden—we got a man at Archangel. Every base with a major nuclear strike capability we got men at, they got men at, sweeping away the snow, tending to the garbage, delivering the goddamn laundry… But you tell me, Harry—you just tell me why their man 'ud want to knock down one little old RF-4c on a routine training mission over the Irish Sea."

Harry Finsterwald stared at his feet. "Well, it sure wasn't because they didn't want us to see something, because Davies wasn't on a fixed mission course. They wouldn't know where the hell he was going until too late."

"Right. And if I wanted to keep something under wraps in that whole area I wouldn't turn it into an air-sea rescue zone." Merriwether shook his head.

"And it wasn't just to screw us up, because they'd have taken out an F-lll, not an RF-4c."

"Right again. So it has to be the crew—and the way young Collier checks out all the way down the line he wasn't the one. One will get you ten he was an innocent bystander. And for my money, one will get you a hundred that it was Davies, clearance or no clearance." Merriwether looked round the hallway suspiciously. "I can't put my finger on it, man, but there's something about this place that doesn't feel right. Like there's something I've missed."

"They should never let aircrew live off base," grumbled Finsterwald. "They got every last thing they need there, for God's sake."

"Except birds, maybe."

"They got those too. With feathers and without."

"But he was only interested in the feathered kind. He even used to walk down the runways spotting them."

Their eyes met in perfect disbelief and perfect accord. What was too good to be true could never be safely accepted: it was the vacuity of Major Davies's personal file that was damning. Because like Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

nature, the CIA abhorred a vacuum. "So we re-check everything," said Finsterwald. "Every last goddamn thing, man." Merriwether smiled at his partner. "Starting with the mail."

Finsterwald bent down and picked up the packet.

Major David Davies,

USAF, c/o Rosemary Cottage,

Middle Green,

Paynsbury, Wiltshire.

He turned it over.

James Barkham & Son,

New, Second-hand and Antiquarian Bookseller,

7-9, Archdeacon's Row,

Salisbury, Wiltshire.

The buff-coloured, manila envelope was already ripped down one side, revealing the edge of a thin grey booklet. Finsterwald inserted his ringer in the tear and completed the job. He stared in wonder at the booklet. "Oh, brother…" he murmured. "Oh, brother!" Merriwether frowned. "You got something?"

Finsterwald read the address again.

Major David Davies, USAF…

"Harry, what have you got?" Merriwether said sharply. "What have I got?" Finsterwald looked up for a moment, then down again. "I've got The Welsh Latin Chronicles: 'Annales Cambriae' and Related Texts.

By Kathleen Hughes. Sir John Rhys Memorial Lecture, British Academy 1973. Price 30p net. From the Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume LIX (1973) London: Oxford University Press. That's what I've got, Cal."

Merriwether shrugged. "So they sent him the wrong thing. He asked for Birds of Britain and they glitched the order. It happens."

Finsterwald opened the pamphlet.

"I guess so… There's a letter here, anyway—and a bill—so whoever it was—" He stopped suddenly.

"Uh-uh, it's for real, because it's addressed to him— Dear Major, Herewith, as per your esteemed order, a copy of Kathleen Hughes's Rhys Memorial Lecture on the Welsh Latin Chronicles ..." He looked up again to meet Merriwether's frown. "There's no mistake. This is what he wanted and this is what he got.

There's a lot of other stuff about it."

"Okay, okay. So read the letter, man, read the letter," said Merriwether.

"Well, there's nothing about birds in it—that's for sure."

"So he'd gone off birds, that makes sense. Read the damn thing or give it me, for God's sake."

"All right. Where was I?" Finsterwald bent over the typescript.

"You were up to Welsh Latin Chronicles."

"I've got it—"

…Welsh Latin Chronicles… As I foresaw, it contains no information of special interest to you, except perhaps a passing reference to Badon on page 7, at the foot of paragraph one, Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

in which it concedes the importance of the battle as a reason for its inclusion in any British chronicle. You will, of course, note the footnote on that page, with its cross-reference to page 13. I can no doubt obtain for you the paper by T. Jones in the Nottingham Mediaeval Studies and K. Jackson's 'Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages'; L. Alcock's 'Arthur's Britain', mentioned in the same note, you already possess.

"I have so far been unable to obtain the relevant issues of The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodrian, but these are notoriously difficult to track down.

As to the —

Finsterwald stopped abruptly, as though his pickup arm had been lifted off the record.

"Go on," commanded Merriwether. "Don't stop when you've gotten me hog-tied, man."

Finsterwald cleared his throat.

"As to the Leningrad Bede, I can confirm that this is in the Leningrad Public Library (CLA XI, No. 1621), and that it is a handsome manuscript with fine ornamentation, probably copied from the author's original by four scribes at Wearmouth or J'arrow not later than A.

D. 747. A complete facsimile of this was published by Arngart of Copenhagen in 1952. I have written to a colleague of mine in Copenhagen with reference to this, but I do not believe that it contains more of interest than the Cambridge MS which you have already examined. I must advise you that the cost of obtaining this would be considerable, but I will await your instructions in this regard.

"No information is forthcoming from the Russian Embassy about the Novgorod Bede. The official on the cultural attache's staff to whom I spoke had never even heard of it, and I frankly do not place much reliance on his promise to enquire further into the matter. (For the record, incidentally, the splendid euphony of 'Nizhni Novgorod', where the MS came finally to rest, was replaced after the Revolution by the name 'Gorky', after the celebrated revolutionary of that name, So that we should properly refer to the 'Gorky Bede'. But I cannot bring myself to do this).

"The origins of the Novgorod Bede are certainly mysterious, not to say romantic. Legend has it that the MS travelled eastwards to 'New' Novgorod with the great spread of Russian monasticism after A.D. 1200. Although not as fine as the Leningrad MS it is without doubt very ancient indeed. There is a story, though an unsubstantiated one, that it was damaged by fire, possibly during the Revolution but alternatively during a German air raid in 1941

or 2. Gorky was certainly bombed by the Germans, and it was the objective of a great sweeping drive up the Volga from the South—the drive which took them to Stalingrad (formerly Tsaritsyn and now Volgograd—the Communists have no poetry in their souls).

"But I digress

—I'll say he digresses—"

"Go on."

"Okay.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

But I digress. A friend of mine in Cambridge tells me that there is a particularly acute essay on Badon by the late Professor Bullitt in the 1935 volume of the Transactions of the Cambrian Archaeological Society. TCAS volumes rarely if ever come on the market, but there are complete sets in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and the Public Library at Cardiff.

"As per your instructions, I enclose a full account of your purchases, rendered to the above date.

"Wishing you all success in your continuing researches, Yours very sincerely,

James Barkham"

Merriwether was silent for five seconds. "That's the lot?"

"The lot?" Finsterwald stared at him. "What more d'you want for God's sake? He was in communication with the Russian Embassy—a serving officer on active duty. That's not just breaking the rules, boy.

That's the rule book down the toilet."

"Hell, man—he asked some bookseller about a book, he didn't ask them himself. And an old book too.

So let's not go into orbit till we know what this Bede-thing is. One in Leningrad and the other in Gorky—

you know what it is?"

"Never heard of it. Leningrad and Gorky are both non-strategic targets. They're industrial/population primaries—iron and steel, oil refineries, major generating centres. They'd maybe figure in a second strike."

Merriwether started to giggle, then checked himself quickly. "Harry, Harry—he's talking about history books, not nuclear warfare. Old books and old history."

Finsterwald examined the letter again. "Well, he sure isn't talking about birds, and that's the truth," he admitted grudgingly.

"Now there you've got a point," Merriwether agreed. "It looks like his bird watching was strictly for the birds. Seems he was doing one thing for our benefit and another for his own, and that is kind of suspicious. Let me have a look for myself."

Finsterwald watched in silence as his partner read the letter.

" 'Wishing you all success in your continuing researches'."

Merriwether repeated finally. "Whatever he was doing, sounds like he meant business… You ever heard of this battle of—what was it?—Badon?"

Finsterwald shrugged. "Search me. But it'll be easy to look up—unless it's some kind of code-word."

"Uh-uh." The negro shook his head. "If Davies wasn't on the level and this was coded it'd be about birds, not battles."

"Then why the hell the bird cover?"

"We don't know it was a cover. He could have been interested in battles as well as birds. No law says what a man does in his own time."

"And I say it still doesn't add up. It smells from here to—to Novgorod."

"Could be you're right at that…" Merriwether flipped over the typescript to reveal the bill beneath it. For a moment he stared at the list of items casually, then he stiffened. " Jesus!"

"What is it, Cal?" His partner's sudden excitement hit Finsterwald like a shock-wave. "Pay dirt?"

"Pay dirt?" Merriwether's lip curled. "Man—I've been slow. I've been one stupid black son-of-a-bitch."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"How?"

Merriwether held out the bill. "Look at it—just look at it."

Harry Finsterwald looked at the list.

The Observer's Book of Birds.

A Guide to the Birds of Britain.

The Bird-Watcher's ABC.

"So he did bird-watch," said Finsterwald.

"He bought a pile of bird books," corrected Merriwether. "That was four months ago—see the date?"

Edward Grey: The Charm of Birds.

British Birds in Colour.

Gildas. De Excidio et Conguestu Britanniae. Trans.

Nennius: Historia Britonum. Trans.

Malory: Le Morte d'Arthur. Trans.

Bede: Historia Ecclesiastica. Trans.

"Bede." Finsterwald looked up sharply.

"Keep going, man."

Geoffrey of Monmouth: Historia Regum Britanniae. Trans.

Alcock: Arthur's Britain.

Morris: The Age of Arthur.

Chambers: Arthur of Britain.

Bullitt: Britain in the Dark Ages (Two vols.).

O'Donnell Lectures: Angles and Britons.

Stenton: Anglo-Saxon Britain.

Finsterwald's eye ran on down the page—

Continued overleaf

"For God's sake—it goes on forever," he protested. "He must have spent a goddamn fortune!"

"Not a fortune. About £220—say about 500 bucks."

"But just on books."

Merriwether grinned. "In four months? On his pay that was just the loose change. If it was women or horses you wouldn't think twice about it."

"But these are—hell, they're weird." Finsterwald slapped the list as though it offended him. " The Archaeology of Post-Roman Britain…A Gazeteer of Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites. Just those two set him back—nearly 25 dollars. Cash money."

"Cash money." Merriwether echoed the words happily.

"Sure. It says 'cash' down here." Finsterwald consulted the list. "As of this moment he owes just 38 pence

—30 for the pamphlet and 8 for the postage."

"Exactly right, man. He paid cash money for everything he bought—that's what his cheque counterfoils say. And from the dates on that bill he must have called at that bookshop almost every week to pick up what he'd ordered. Only the last time he must have asked for a full list of what he'd bought—'as per your instructions' it says. And when he didn't turn up last week the bookseller just popped the latest thing in the same envelope and brought him up to date with the news."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Finsterwald nodded. "Okay—so what?"

"Harry—" Merriwether spread his hands "—so this is probably the first letter Barkham ever wrote to him. If he called in every week, and paid cash for what he bought, there wouldn't be any need to write to each other. And the guys who cleaned this place out must have known that. They just didn't know there was a letter in the post."

Finsterwald opened his mouth, then closed it.

"The guys who—? What guys?"

Merriwether waved his hand, for the moment ignoring him. "I knew there was something wrong with this place—it's got a wrong feel to it, like 'who's been sleeping in my bed, man?'. Only I was dumb, and I just had to go looking for something that 'ud tell me I had the right feeling."

"For Pete's sake—what guys?" Finsterwald pleaded.

"Who knows what guys? The ones who stopped Davies's mouth. The guys from Nijni Novgorod, maybe, I don't know. But for sure someone's been here before us."

"How do you know?"

Merriwether pointed. "That piece of paper you're holding tells me how. Because there's not one of the books on that list in this house but those five bird books—" He thrust four chocolate fingers and a chocolate thumb at Finsterwald. "So where those books go? They didn't fly away like birds, man. 'And good luck with your continuing researches'—what researches? There's not one scrap of paper in his desk says he was researching anything, nothing… And you can't tell me someone who buys all those books doesn't make a single note 'bout what he's working on."

Finsterwald stared at the list.

Keller: The Conquest of Wessex.

"There must be forty—fifty—books here," he said finally.

"Not here now, there aren't. Just five—on bird-watching." Merriwether's derision was unconcealed.

"And we nearly bought it, Harry. We came looking for a pilot who watched birds, and that's what we got, and that's what we were meant to get. Until the mailman delivered the mail."

"But for God's sake—" Finsterwald lifted the list "—what would anybody want with this lot? It's crazy."

"Not to somebody, it isn't. Looks like the Major researched into the wrong piece of history."

The Tale of Sir Mosby and King Arthur

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

I

IT WAS LIKE they said: the seventh wave was often the biggest one.

The last big one had slopped over into the castle moat, smoothing its sharp edges. Then there had been six weaker ones which had all fallen short. And now came the fatal seventh.

Mosby had watched it gathering itself out in the bay. At first it hadn't looked much, more a deep swell than a conventional wave like its white-capped predecessors. But where they had broken too early and wasted their strength in froth, the seventh had seemed to grow more powerful, effortlessly engulfing the first fifty yards of the line of saw-toothed rocks to the left and only revealing its true nature when it burst explosively over one tall pinnacle which until now had remained unconquered.

As the pinnacle disappeared in a cloud of spray the castle-builder looked up from his work. For a second he stood still, the sand dropping from his hands, staring at the oncoming wave. Then he swung round and lifted up the toddler beside him and deposited her within the innermost walls of the castle.

Mosby took in the scene with regret. It wasn't just that the big Englishman had been working like a beaver for upwards of an hour getting the castle just the way he wanted it, but also that the end-product was a work of art the like of which Mosby had never seen.

It wasn't just a pile of sand, but a real castle, with inner and outer walls and regularly-spaced towers, each capped with a conical fairy-tale roof, rising to a massive central keep. There was a moat and a drawbridge complete with a barbican and a defensive outwork, all of which had been constructed to a carefully drawn ground plan which had been marked out in the smooth sand before construction had started.

In fact it wasn't only a real castle, but obviously an actual one—he had watched the man count off the towers one by one as though checking them in his memory, finally nodding in agreement with himself that he'd got it right. It was a good bet that somewhere, maybe not far from here, on some hill above some sleepy English town, he'd find a great grey stone pile, dog-eared by centuries of neglect, matching those walls and towers. And maybe once upon a time some highly-paid craftsman had built just such a model to show the King of England what he was getting for his cash.

The child's squeal of excitement broke his flash of historical inspiration. Defeat on the natural breakwaters of the rocky headlands on either side of the bay seemed to have concentrated the wave's power: it swallowed the last retreating remnants of the sixth wave and surged forward up the beach towards the castle.

The outer walls and towers were instantly overwhelmed, dissolved and swept away irresistibly as the rushing water encircled the castle, meeting in its rear in a triumphant collision on the site of the drawbridge.

For two seconds the child stood surrounded by the towers of the inner keep. Then, as the wave began to retreat, these last defences cracked and toppled outwards to be swept away with the rest. The ruin of the castle was complete. It was a goddamn pity.

As far as the child was concerned, nevertheless, the breaking of father's masterpiece was the making of the occasion, and presumably that was the nature of the deal between the two because he showed no sign of irritation as she danced in triumph on the wreckage.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Ozzie, Daddy—say Ozzie," squealed the child.

Shirley lifted her head from the towel on which she lay sunbathing beside Mosby. He saw the little two-way radio tucked under a folded edge and, in the same glance, couldn't avoid also seeing the shapely breasts which had been freed from the bikini top.

"Harry says he's fixed the car," she murmured. "He's getting out now."

"Great." Mosby's eyes felt like chapel hat-pegs.

"And stop peeking, Mose honey. Watch the birdie, not the boobs."

" Say Ozzie, Daddy—Ozzie-mandy!"

Mosby smiled a warm, husbandly smile. "Shirley Sheldon is a shameless slut," he hissed.

"Shirley Sheldon is trying to revive her long-lost tan." She lowered herself back on to the towel. "You just mind the store like a good boy—just keep your mind on our business."

Mosby shook his head in despair and turned back to observe the big Englishman.

"Ozzie-mandy, please, Daddy."

"All right, all right."

The Englishman looked around him, first to his left, then his right and finally behind him. Mosby lolled in his deck-chair as one half-asleep, his arms hanging loosely. There was no one else at all on the tiny beach; either it was not well-known or (which was more likely) Harry had devised some way of temporarily closing the track which led to it.

Secure behind his dark glasses Mosby watched himself being scrutinised. He sensed that there would be no ozzie-mandying unless he could give the impression of being dead to the world, so as a final piece of encouragement he drew a deep breath and returned it by way of what he judged to be a realistic snore.

The Englishman struck an attitude.

" I met a traveller from an antique land—" he intoned in a deep voice.

"Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert…"

He accompanied the words with gestures in the style of some great nineteenth century tragedian, the child watching him with her mouth hanging open, obviously understanding nothing, but enjoying everything.

"Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command—"

He paused in order to frown, twist his lips hideously and finally sneer horribly. The child gave two little excited jumps, but made not a sound even when her hands came together.

"Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:"

Mosby was overwhelmed by a feeling of unreality. He knew there couldn't be any mistake, the identification was utterly positive.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' "

Shirley raised her head again, this time clasping herself to herself more modestly. "What the hell's going on?" she grated.

The sound of her voice couldn't possibly have carried over the crash of the waves; it must have been his own involuntary movement which the man caught out of the corner of his eye.

" Nothing beside remains—" he faltered. Mosby shifted his position, sinking further into somnolence, and snored again obligingly as a warning to Shirley and an encouragement to Ozymandias.

"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Ozymandias bowed to his daughter and the child applauded him. Mosby himself concentrated on adjusting his preconceptions about the British.

But now there was a movement in the corner of his own eye. The man's wife had risen from the tartan rug on which she had been lying and was strolling down towards the sea's edge, a tall willowy ash blonde with that haughty don't-give-a-damn British aristocratic expression which repelled and attracted him at the same time, at least when he encountered it in the female of the species. He smiled inwardly as he remembered arguing with Doc McCaslin over that look, as to whether it was bred or bought, with Doc finally convincing him that if caught young enough any little sow's ear from the East End of London

—or Brooklyn—could be converted into this sort of silk purse by English private education. All one needed was forty thousand spare dollars, give or take a few thousand, over ten or twelve years.

The woman stopped at her husband's shoulder. "If the king of kings is ready it's high time we were going. Cathy's had quite enough sun for one day and the tide's coming in fast. And we're late for tea already."

A nice voice, less refined than the expression, with affection taking all the sting out of the marching order. That heart was present, and in working order. Lucky Ozymandias.

Mosby felt envious, but also benevolent. Whatever happened afterwards, he didn't want to spoil this moment of family togetherness: the least—and the most—he could do was to give them a last bit of privacy. He snored again.

"Come on then, love," said Ozymandias, taking the little girl's hand and turning his back on the sea. As he did so another seventh wave swirled round their feet. When it receded the castle site was no more than a dimpled irregularity in the sand. The woman was right, the tide was coming in fast now. Another five minutes and it would be around his own feet, which would account nicely for their own movement from the beach—as he had intended it should.

He waited until the Englishman and his family had reached the cliff path before touching Shirley's shoulder.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"You nearly spoilt it," he explained.

"Uh?" She wrinkled her nose. "Spoilt what?"

"The poetry. He was reciting poetry for his daughter. Shelley I think, or maybe Keats. I guess I'm a bit rusty."

She looked up at him curiously. "Shelley or Keats?"

"One or the other. Shelley for choice."

"Well, well! I sure never would have tagged you as a poetry buff. Sex maniac—yes. Poetry buff—no. Or him, come to that." She stared at the cliff path. "He doesn't look like a civil servant either, come to that—

more like a retired quarter-back."

"Don't underrate him." Mosby left the "or me" unsaid. "Remember what Harry said: his IQ goes off the top of the graph."

"If that child of his is already sold on Shelley and Keats then it runs in the family."

Mosby shook his head. "I think she just likes the performance." He stood up, still staring down at her.

Sixty-six inches and one hundred and sixteen pounds, all nicely tanned and landscaped. And every inch, every pound, inaccessible. "But now it's time for our performance, Mrs Sheldon. And we'd better be good."

She rose effortlessly to her knees, fixing the bikini top as she did so. On mature consideration Mosby decided that she was as disturbing with it as without it.

She met his eyes. "You've got that hungry look again, honey. Like you could eat me. It's getting kind of wearisome."

Mosby turned away to gather up the towels. Hungry was right: it was a fact that starvation had to be less bearable when you travelled in permanent company with a three-star Michelin dinner, but it was a fact she would never concede. He was suddenly very glad that they were actually starting work at last.

As they topped the cliff path he saw at once that Harry had done his work well. There were still only two cars in the dusty little parking place, and the Englishman already had his head stuck under the raised bonnet of his.

As he watched, the man straightened up, scratching his head in a gesture eloquent of bewilderment. Very soon, when he realised that the trouble had no simple diagnosis, that bewilderment would turn into the despair of a holiday father marooned with his family five miles from the nearest telephone.

He raised the trunk of the Chevrolet and began to pack their gear. Just a little time now. Shirley was already establishing their curiosity by staring in a frankly American fashion.

Finally she came round the wing of the car.

"Say, Mose honey—" her voice carried clear as a bell in the stillness following the despondent whine of the Englishman's self-starter "—that poor man's having awful trouble with his car."

Mosby straightened up. "Huh?"

"Why don't you go and help him?" There was much more of the Old South in Shirley's voice than usual

—it was only half a mint julep away from the Southern belle's "You-all".

Mosby looked quickly at the other car, noted that the Englishman's wife had heard—she could hardly avoid hearing—and was looking at them, and ducked round the side of the car.

"You want me to go and help?" he said loudly.

"I think you ought to, honey." The order was wrapped in velvet pleading. "It'ud be neighbourly."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"I'm no goddamn mechanic. Besides, if he wants help he'll ask for it."

"Honey, they don't ask—don't be mean. Go on." The velvet wrap was off and he could hear the Fort Dobson psychologist's final admonition: the British expect American wives to wear the pants—true or false, they expect it. When Shirley wears them, that's better than waving a marriage certificate.

"Okay, okay. So I'll be a Samaritan if it makes you feel good," he waved his hand in submission before pivoting away from her towards the Englishman's car.

For a moment the Englishman pretended not to see him, then he lifted his head.

"Got some trouble?" Mosby began tentatively.

Understatement of a summer's day. Trouble with a car here and now, and all sorts of trouble to come one way or another if everything goes according to plan.

The pale blue eyes blinked behind the spectacles. "The bloody thing won't start, that's the trouble."

"Could you use a second opinion?"

The Englishman grinned ruefully. "To be honest—I could use a first opinion. It's probably something ridiculously simple, but… I'm afraid I'm just not mechanically-minded."

That was what Harry had said, but it was nice to have confirmation straight from the horse's mouth: it made for confidence in other directions.

"Gas okay?" Mosby lent over and sniffed. "Yes, you're getting gas all right… And she turns over, so the battery's fine."

"Doesn't fire…" Mosby busied himself doing nothing very much. "No spark—the plugs are okay too—I guess it could be the ignition. And odd things happen with ignition parts, they go faulty for no reason. If there's something wrong with the coil—or maybe the distributor—then you're going to need a garage job…"

Shirley was advancing across the open space between the cars, heading towards the wife.

"Have you got far to travel?" she asked.

"Far to go?" The woman was slightly taken aback at the directness of the approach, her natural reserve battling with an equally natural inclination to be courteous with a friendly and helpful foreigner. "No, not very far—six or seven miles. We've got a cottage at Bucklandworthy."

"Bucklandworthy? Say, that's where we are. We're renting the white house on the headland—St Veryan's."

"Down the road to the lighthouse?"

"That's right." Shirley nodded eagerly. "You know it?"

"Our cottage is on the corner—the Old Chapel—"

"With the thatched roof? Why, that makes us almost neighbours."

Mosby finished his examination of the distributor. "I can't see anything wrong, but that doesn't mean a thing…" He shook his head doubtfully.

Shirley craned her neck over his shoulder. "Have you fixed it, honey?"

" 'Fraid not." Mosby wiped his oily hands together. "I just don't get it—I guess it must be electrical."

"Is that bad?"

"Well, it looks like a garage job." Mosby looked at the Englishman apologetically. "Like you say, it's probably nothing much, but…" He shrugged, frowning again at the engine. At least there was no need for play-acting: whatever Harry had done was bound to be undetectable as well as ingeniously simple.

"Well, not to worry," said Shirley cheerfully. "Because these good people have that thatched cottage just Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

two steps up the road from us at Bucklandworthy—they're our neighbours, honey."

"Huh?" Mosby looked up from the engine. "What did you say?"

Shirley gave her new friend a despairing look. "Once he gets his head in an engine—" her voice sharpened "—they live just next door to us almost, in that cute thatched cottage up the road from St Veryan's."

Mosby allowed the light to dawn. "Is that so?"

"We don't actually live there," the wife explained. "We're renting it for two months."

"Two months!" Shirley looked around her. "It really is beautiful down here, but I don't think I could last that long."

Mosby gave a derisive grunt. "Just because we have to pump the water from the well—honey, you just haven't any of the old pioneering spirit. You're a two-bath-a-day girl, that's the trouble."

"I've got plenty of pioneering spirit. I just happen to prefer civilisation and company," Shirley snapped.

"But never mind that—" her tone softened "—if you can't get that engine going, just quit playing with it.

We can take these good people right home to their door with no trouble at all."

The wife looked uncertainly at her husband, then at her daughter. The child was hanging out of the car window staring round-eyed at Shirley. As well she might, thought Mosby: Ozymandias himself had nothing on Shirley, with the sculptor not born who could read those passions and the ice-cold heart that fed them.

Mosby grabbed the moment of uncertainty. "We surely can—nothing easier. It'ud be a pleasure." He swung towards the man. "Besides, if I know anything about the local garage they're not going to have anyone to send down here straightaway, it'll be more like tomorrow morning. And you sure as hell don't have to worry about leaving the car down here, because no one's going to drive it away."

"Well…" The man paused diffidently "… it's most awfully kind of you—"

"—it really is," echoed the wife gratefully. "I don't know what we should have done."

"Not at all. There's plenty of room, and like my wife says, it's right there on our way. No trouble at all."

The fish was hooked: now was the moment to make sure it didn't escape. He grinned at them both, playing out his assigned role to the last syllable. "Come to that, I reckon you'd be doing us a good turn.

We haven't said a word to anyone since we've been down here but 'good morning' and 'thank you' and we're beginning to feel kind of cut off from society."

"Isn't that the truth!" exclaimed Shirley. "It's been almost as bad as when we got stuck in that village in the middle of nowhere in Spain, and there wasn't one single breathing person who spoke one word of English. I got so tired of my single Spanish phrase— Hay alguien que hable ingles?—and the answer was always No, which is the same in Spanish as it is in English. Muchas gracias and adios, that's how I felt."

Mosby gave the man a meaningful look, almost a pleading one, and received a guarded flicker of sympathy in return. So Harry's psychology had been right on the button: the moment of gratitude was also the most vulnerable one. Remember what the Good Samaritan probably said to the guy as he rolled on the bandages: "Going down to Jericho, eh? Say, maybe you could give me an introduction to the Chamber of Commerce there?"

"I'm afraid we do tend to be rather stand-offish as a people," admitted the wife apologetically, in an attempt to fill the awkward silence. "It's a national defect, you know."

"I think the language has a lot to answer for," Mosby grinned at her. "I'll never forget Shirley's face Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

when the milkman said he was going to knock her up on Sunday morning. And all he wanted to do was settle the week's bill, but she thought—"

"That'll do, honey," Shirley cut in quickly, frowning at him. "I'm sure these good people would rather be on their way home than hear about how I pay the milkman—"

Mosby caught the Englishman's eye again, saw that the double-entendre had registered, and burst out laughing, "Oh, God, honey—how you pay the milkman—!"

Shirley sighed helplessly as she turned back to the English couple. "You have to forgive my husband…

There are times when he's just not fit for decent company."

This time the Englishwoman laughed. "I have just the same trouble with my husband. It's the nature of the male animal—'Slugs and snails and—' "

" 'Puppy-dogs' tails'", supplemented her daughter. " 'That's what boys is made of.'"

That's right!" Shirley's good humour returned with the discovery of well-informed allies. "And you are made of sugar and spice and all things nice, I can see that right away. And what's your name, honey?"

"Cathy." The little girl extended a small, dirty hand.

"Cathy. Why, that's a lovely name—aren't you lucky!" Shirley shook the hand formally before turning again to the mother. "And I'm Shirley—Shirley Sheldon. And this is my husband, Mose."

"Mosby," corrected Mosby quickly, bitter for the ten millionth time that he had never been able to escape that hideous diminutive.

"Mosby," echoed Shirley, flashing him a malicious smile. "Mosby Singleton Sheldon the Third—he doesn't like anyone to get the idea that 'Mose' is short for 'Moses' but he still answers to it if I smile nicely."

The Englishwoman smiled. "Well, I'm Faith Audley, and this is my husband David."

"Hi, David," said Shirley.

"Hullo." Audley nodded to Mosby. "It's very kind of you to come to our rescue, Mr Sheldon."

Smiles all round, ice broken, small talk in the afternoon sunshine: Hi, David—call me Shirley… Hi, Faith—call me Mosby.

Meet your friendly neighbours from the CIA

They rode in silence for a few moments, while Mosby manoeuvred the big car round the worst of the pot-holes to reach the beginning of the track. But silence was okay at this point; the hook was well and truly fixed, only the fish was a big one and needed careful handling still or it might break the line and get clear away. This was the time to let a sense of obligation and good manners combine to override that self-confessed national defect and force one of them to make the running.

"Mosby?" Naturally it was Faith who spoke first. "That's an unusual Christian name—obviously a family name."

"Yes, ma'am. At least, it's become one."

Shirley gave a short laugh, half derisive and half affectionate. "Actually it's a piece of genuine American history. But you'll never have heard of the original Mosby, I'll bet."

She was good, she was real good, thought Mosby with admiration. Good and quick to turn an opportunity into an opening the subject would find irresistible. Even that last 'I'll bet' was a shrewd piece of psychology aimed at the target.

"American history?" The challenge roused Audley.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Uh-huh, American history," she led him on lightly.

"Mosby… Mosby…" Audley repeated the name, frowning. "I seem to remember there was a Mosby—in fact a John S. Mosby. If that 'S' stood for 'Singleton' that would be the one, I take it?"

"Why, you're absolutely right!" Shirley clapped her hands in admiration. "Well, fancy your having heard of him. Isn't that something, Mose? You're famous even over here."

Faith Audley turned towards her husband. "And who was John Mosby, darling?"

"Colonel John S. Mosby." Audley looked at Mosby with obvious interest. "American Civil War. He was a celebrated Confederate guerrilla leader. Played merry hell with General Grant's lines of communication. That right, Mr Sheldon?"

Mosby grimaced. "Well, not a guerrilla leader—that's damn Yankee propaganda. He was a regular horse soldier, 1st Virginia Cavalry, and then a scout to old Jeb Stuart himself. And what the Yankees called guerrillas were Mosby's Rangers— 43rd Battalion of the Virginia Cavalry."

"I do beg your pardon." Audley's eyes lit with pleasure. "And the 43rd's pardon too."

"Aw, honey, they were guerrillas," exclaimed Shirley, coming to Audley's rescue. "Why, the Yankees even hanged some of them. And they put a price on Mosby's head too—what was it, $5,000?" She grinned at Audley. "So he wasn't all that expensive."

"Honey, five thousand bucks was good money in those days," Mosby disagreed. "Come to that, I could use five thousand bucks now… But that doesn't make him a guerrilla, anyway—it's like David said: he played hell with Yankee communications. Burnt their bridges, blew up their trains, grabbed their payrolls

—"

"Huh!" Shirley goaded him, entering the spirit of the game with more than a suggestion of sincerity.

"—which he sent back to Richmond, every last dollar accounted for," Mosby overrode her scorn. "And no one ever collected on him either, I can tell you. Not one dollar."

"And he was your ancestor?" Faith Audley inquired quickly, as though trying to nip a new historical-marital discord in the bud.

"Well, not exactly. My great-grandfather rode with him, and later on he married a Singleton from Virginia. So he called his son Mosby Singleton in their honour. And after that it got to be a habit."

Faith nodded. "And you're the third. How fascinating—don't you think so, David?"

"I do. The Confederacy produced some remarkable cavalry commanders. J. E. B. Stuart and Nathan Bedford Forrest were in the Murat class. And there was Morgan and the Lees, and Wade Hampton and Joe Wheeler." He bowed towards Mosby.

"And John Singleton Mosby, of course."

Shirley gave him her most dazzling Scarlett O'Hara smile. "Well, I sure have lost my bet, and that's a fact. I can see you're a real expert, David—and I can see your heart's in the right place too."

"With the South, you mean?" Audley took the implied question seriously, ignoring the charm. "I wouldn't say my heart was involved on either side, to be honest. But it was an extremely interesting war certainly."

"You mean you don't have sympathy for Dixie? But I thought Britishers always favoured the underdog, no matter what."

Audley looked at her over his spectacles, aware at last that he was being gently needled. Then he smiled slowly. "Madam, anyone who had to contend with generals like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, not to mention Stuart and Forrest— and with someone like John S. Mosby at his back—cannot have felt Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

very much like an overdog. My sympathies are distributed evenly, if not my admiration."

They were both playing parts now.

"But you just have to admit the South was more romantic. Everybody admits that, even the Yankees do now."

Audley considered the proposition gravely. "Ye-ess. I'll give you romantic. Wrong, but romantic—and the North was right, but repulsive… It's just like our own civil war, Mrs Sheldon. The Cavaliers were romantic and the Parliamentarians were right. Our Prince Rupert would have made an absolutely splendid Confederate. And if Oliver Cromwell would have disapproved of Grant's drinking habits he would certainly have respected Abraham Lincoln, no doubt about it… Though if he resembles anyone in your war—Cromwell, that is—I rather think it would be Stonewall Jackson." He pursed his lips and nodded at Shirley.

"Gee!" Shirley breathed out admiringly, allowing her mouth to drop open rather as the child's had done earlier. "Now I know why I lost my bet. You've just got to be a professor of history. I'll bet that instead."

Audley smiled his slow smile again, obviously rather taken with her despite himself.

"What are you betting?"

"David!" Faith Audley chided him. "You—"

"I'll bet—" Shirley overrode the warning heatedly. "I'll bet drinks and dinner at our house tonight against drinks and dinner at your house. That's what I'll bet."

"David," Faith repeated urgently. "You are the limit, really." She turned to Shirley helplessly. "He isn't a professor of history, Mrs Sheldon."

"He isn't?" Shirley laughed happily, obviously in no way put out by losing her bet again.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mrs Sheldon," said Audley.

"Shirley's the name, please—and you don't disappoint me at all. You interest me. You know all about John S. Mosby—and Oliver Cromwell—but you're not a professor… and you sure don't look like a schoolteacher."

"I don't?" Audley's eye flickered. "And what does a schoolteacher look like?"

"Kind of mild, at least deep down. You don't look mild."

True, thought Mosby. It was like being on the foothills of a mountain range: things still grew and blossomed there, but you only had to scrape away the thin covering of soil to reach the same hard rock as that which towered into the clouds ahead. There was a line there where civilisation and savagery overlapped, a no-man's-land. And that, for all his fine culture, was this man's land.

"Indeed?" Audley's amusement was evident. "Then what do I look like?"

"A professional confidence trickster," said Faith drily, "who is this time not going to be allowed to escape with his ill-gotten gains. If anyone's dining with anyone tonight, then you must both come to us."

Mission accomplished.

"Shucks, no!" Shirley protested. "I lost."

"Not at all," replied Faith firmly. "My husband isn't a history professor. As a matter of fact, he works for the Government. But he is a historian too."

"I didn't say I wasn't."

"And you weren't going to say you were." She shook her head in despair at Shirley. "We're actually down here so that he can put the finishing touches to a book."

"A book?" Shirley echoed the words reverently. "A history book?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

She was out-running the script, but with things going so well it was the right thing to do.

Audley grunted modestly.

"On Oliver Cromwell, maybe?"

"No. Someone a bit earlier."

"Who would that be—if you don't mind me asking?"

"Not at all. I'm writing a biography of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke. But I don't expect you've ever heard of him."

"I'm afraid not. I guess he was before Sir Walter Raleigh and John Smith founded Virginia, huh?"

Mosby recognised his feed-line and acknowledged it with a snort of derision. The corner where the road to St Veryan's branched to the left was just ahead now, so he had just enough time to whet Audley's appetite.

"Some, honey, some. Four hundred years, give or take a few." He glanced sidelong over his shoulder at Audley. "Right?"

There was a moment's pause, during which Audley was no doubt wondering whether he'd hit the button by guess or by God.

"That's right," said Audley, with the merest touch of surprise in his voice.

" 'The best knight that ever was'," quoted Mosby. "It was Archbishop Langton who said that, wasn't it?"

The pause was a fraction longer this time, while Audley tried for the first time to place Mosby in anything narrower than the 'Tourist, male, American' classification. And with reason, because the odds against casually meeting an American familiar with twelfth-century William Marshall were about as long as those against meeting an Englishman who'd ever heard of John Singleton Mosby.

"That's right, it was Langton." Audley controlled his third-degree surprise well. "Are you a mediaevalist, then?"

"Heck—no. But I was reading about him just a few days ago… Well, actually I was reading up Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter—and Chretien de Troyes…" He trailed off.

"Chretien—?" Audley had difficulty in keeping the disbelief out of his voice. "And you're not a mediaevalist?"

Mosby was relieved to see the thatch of the old cottage just ahead. The narrow English country roads, meandering between high banks, required just too much concentration for comfort.

"Far from it." He laughed.

"Say—" Shirley leant forward excitedly "—is this William Marshall one of your Round Table guys?"

"It was Wace added the Round Table, honey—I told you," he replied patiently. "Chretien de Troyes added Lancelot. But I guess William Marshall could have doubled for Lancelot okay any time."

He braked to a standstill under a roaring jungle of honeysuckle alongside the cottage. Sandcastles and honeysuckle and thatched cottages; Confederate colonels and mediaeval heroes—and now even Sir Lancelot du Lac himself.

For a moment he saw Mosby and Lancelot galloping down the runway at Wodden, plumes flying in the wind, Navy Colt and lance against the SRAMs of General Ellsworth's F-llls. And if that was mind-boggling it was hardly more so than some of his recent reading; if the Agency accountants ever studied the slush fund in detail they might have difficulty swallowing Gilda's De Excidio Britanniae and the Venerable Bede's History of the English Church and People.

Faith Audley shook the sleeping child in her arms gently. "Come on, sleepy head—wake up." She Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

smiled at Mosby. "No problem about bedtime this evening… I'm sorry Mr Sheldon—"

"Mosby. It may sound odd, but it's easy to remember."

"Mosby—I don't think it's odd. My husband's second Christian name is Longsdon, anyway—" Good manners struggled with her desire to break up the conversation and get the tired child out of the car. "But I'm beginning to lose track of the conversation. You're not a historian—?"

"No," cut in Audley decisively. "An Arthurian."

The change in inflexion was small, almost unnoticeable. But it was there and it was significant, Mosby sensed instantly. And it reminded him of something which momentarily eluded him: with most Britishers you had to multiply any sign of emotion by ten to get the real message, even among friends.

Among strangers the factor was considerably higher, so that minute distinction could mean—

He had it.

Scorn, contempt and disdain—in an American that Arthurian would have been a sneer of unconcealed derision: to Audley Arthurians were flat-earthers, UFO watchers, Bible Belt ignoramuses, kooks and weirdos of no account.

"Tintagel," said Audley coolly. "That's why you're here— to see Tintagel."

Yes, that had to be it, thought Mosby, remembering Tintagel's clear dedication to the separation of money from the crowds of perspiring tourists who had come to pay homage to King Arthur—but a King Arthur who obviously owed more to Walt Disney and Camelot than to history.

"Gee, how did you guess?" For once Shirley had missed the warning signs, but Mosby could see a Grand Canyon opening up between them. In another moment Audley would be remembering a previous engagement for tonight, and all their good work would have gone down for nothing.

"Tintagel— yuk!" He flogged his brain to separate the legends from the facts. The trouble was that in forty-eight hours of concentrated study he had encountered damn few facts, far too few with which to cross swords with an expert.

"I didn't dig Tintagel too much," he observed cautiously, playing for time.

"Too many tea shops and souvenirs?" Faith nodded under-standingly. "David positively refuses to go there. But then he doesn't believe in King Arthur anyway, do you darling?"

Final confirmation beyond all doubt—and God bless you, Mrs Audley, ma'am.

Audley gave a scornful grunt. But as things stood that might well include Mr and Mrs Mosby Singleton Sheldon as well as King Arthur, so the sooner that short-lived alliance was broken, the better.

"Me neither," said Mosby quickly. When it came to facts there was only one he was reasonably sure of, and although it had been planned to keep it for the second phase he judged now that it was the only bait that might recapture Audley. "But I do believe in Badon Hill."

"Badon?" Audley's tone was different at once, edged not with disdain but with curiosity.

The child on Faith's lap stirred, stretched and opened her eyes.

"What about Badon?" repeated Audley.

Mosby met his stare steadily. "It'ud be one hell of a thing to find it—for sure."

"It would be interesting, certainly… But impossible now, short of a miracle."

Little Cathy looked around her, momentarily unsure of where she was until her mother's arms tightened around her.

"Mummy, I'm hungry," she said loudly.

Mosby grinned at her, then back at her father. "Come on up to our place tonight for drinks and I'll show Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

you something."

"What?"

"A miracle, maybe."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

II

A YEAR OF proximity had sharpened Mosby's awareness of Shirley's meteorology; even before the front door had closed on Audley he sensed the fall in her barometer.

"So now we don't believe in King Arthur, huh?" she challenged him.

He glanced at her quickly before reaching for the gear shift, confirming the storm warning. But for once he felt no inclination to come out of the weather. "Yep. As of now, he stinks."

"Just because Audley. doesn't believe in him?"

He let the car roll forward slowly. "You got it in one, Shirl honey."

"Great. And what if he believes the moon is made of green cheese?"

"Then I should give the proposition very serious consideration. You want I should tell him he's crazy?"

"Is he crazy?"

"What do you mean 'is he crazy?' So he recites poetry to his daughter and builds sandcastles and writes books on mediaeval history—" Mosby broke off as he remembered the Englishman's eyes behind the spectacle lenses. Cold eyes not easily to be forgotten. "You ask me, I think he's a whole lot tougher than he talks. Which you pretty well told him to his face, I seem to recall."

"I don't mean that…" She trailed off uncertainly as they broke through the last belt of woodland at the head of the valley which stretched down to the sea. He caught a glimpse of the grey-white facade of St Veryan's halfway up the right-hand shoulder of the valley and beyond it the terrible black lines of jagged shark's tooth rocks which stretched out into the ocean as continuations of the headland. Far beyond them, though deceptively close, Lundy Island stood up high out of the white-topped rollers.

Lundy high, sigh of dry.

What was frightening about this beautiful coastline was its contrast: on one side the little green fields snug behind their high banks, and on the other the hungry sea rolling endlessly against the land.

"I don't mean that," Shirley repeated herself. "I know I'm supposed to be the dumb one, and you've read the books—"

So that was it, of course. He ought to have allowed for that uncongenial role playing the devil with her temper.

"—But at least I can read the titles. And I don't see how people can write whole books about someone who doesn't exist—according to Audley."

Mosby shook his head. "It isn't as simple as that. And besides, we're after Badon, not Arthur."

"But Harry Finsterwald said Badon was Arthur's greatest victory. Now Audley says there was no such person—and you behave as though we're still in business."

"You're damn right, we're still in business. You saw the way he sat up the moment I mentioned Badon?"

Mosby looked at her quickly. "Harry Finsterwald may not know as much as he thinks he does, but someone's got Audley figured right, that's for sure. They supply the box of tricks to play the next act with, like they promised, and I think we can get him moving the way they want us to."

"But I still don't see—" She checked as the house came into full view; there was a large grey utility van parked beside Finsterwald's little British Ford. "We have company."

Mosby relaxed as he read the 'TV and Radio Repairs' legend on the utility. "It's okay. That's Harry's Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

partner—he said to watch for the TV repairman, remember?"

Shirley stared at the utility. "I wonder which one of them he is," she murmured.

Mosby grinned at her wryly. They had intermittently shared a private game of trying to spot the other members of the Special Operations Unit at Wodden, but they had been dead wrong about Harry Finsterwald so there was little chance that they'd be right about his partner.

"Just so it's not General Ellsworth himself, I couldn't take that," he murmured back. "He hates my non-combatant guts."

"So does Harry. Let's face it, honey: you're just not popular."

"Harry's a creep—so's General Ellsworth. They don't sweat, neither of them. And you can't trust a man who doesn't sweat." He reached for the door handle. "So long as they don't like me I can't be all bad."

He smiled to himself. She was right about Finsterwald taking an instant dislike to him, but it was an endearing blank spot in her understanding that she was quite unable to grasp the reason for it. And one of life's smaller ironies, too: that to a man who fancied his looks and talents as much as Harry did it was not only an error but also an injustice which had turned her into Mrs Sheldon, and not Mrs Finsterwald.

But it was a total stranger, or at least someone he could not instantly recognise from High Wodden, who greeted them in the hall of St Veryan's.

"Captain Sheldon—Mrs Sheldon. Good to meet you." The stranger offered his hand to each of them in turn, Shirley first.

Civilian manners. And hair longer than General Ellsworth permitted, military or civilian. But hair cut as expertly as the British tweed suit, and neither the hair nor the suit fitted the face: hair black and shiny as a raven's wing and face swarthy as a Mexican bandit's.

"Howard Morris. UK Operations Control." The voice was wrong too—anglicised mid-Atlantic, if not Ivy League. The man was a mass of contradictions.

"Hi, Doc." Harry Finsterwald appeared in the sitting room doorway. "How d'you make out then?"

Mosby sickened as Finsterwald gave him a comradely smile for Control's benefit, revealing some spectacular crown and bridge work as he did so. Typical fancy West Coast dentistry—the smile of a man who was willing to pay for his smile.

"According to Mose we're in business," said Shirley.

Morris looked at her. "But you're not so sure?"

She gave him back the look with interest. "I don't know. But then I don't know what the hell's happening anyway."

"So what's the problem?"

"Just Audley doesn't believe in the existence of King Arthur."

"The devil he doesn't!" Morris turned towards Mosby. "Is that so?"

Something stirred in Mosby's subconscious as he met the man's direct stare, but he had no time to identify it. "You want Audley to look for Badon, like Major Davies was looking, not for King Arthur—

that's what Finsterwald here briefed us to set up. If that's what you still want—and if you've brought the stuff Harry promised—then I reckon we're in with a chance. But Shirley's right, the way she feels: it's time someone explained why we're doing what we're doing."

Finsterwald emitted a derisive sound, half laugh, half snarl. "Oh, come on, Doc, be your age. You don't expect the reason why to be part of the deal, do you? You different from the rest of us or something?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Uh-huh. Not me, Harry. I'm not different." Mosby kept his eyes on Howard Morris. "But this deal is different. And for my money so is Audley."

"I go along with that," said Shirley. "I don't know about King Arthur, but there's something not quite right about Audley."

"You think he's suspicious of you?" Morris frowned.

"No, I wouldn't say that." She shook her head slowly. "I think he's bought us so far… It was just—I don't know— just the way he looked at each of us when Mose offered to help him fix the car. Like he was trying to recognise us…

It wasn't he was suspicious. He was more like kind of watchful."

Morris stared from one to the other in silence for a moment, as though trying to gauge the accuracy of their joint impression. "But you're quite sure he wasn't suspicious?"

"Why the heck should he be?" said Mosby. "What's a Home Office statistical analyst got to be suspicious about when a couple of Americans give him a lift?"

Morris's lips parted. "Always supposing he is a Home Office statistical analyst. Which he isn't."

Mosby glanced angrily at Finsterwald, but before he could speak Morris intervened. "Don't blame Captain Finsterwald. The Captain only did what he was told to do."

"Oh, just great." Only Shirley could get so much scorn in three little words. "So now you're going to tell us what he is?"

"At the moment he's exactly what he says he is: a man writing a history book on—" Morris looked at Finsterwald questioningly, "—on who was it?"

Finsterwald swallowed. "William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke. Born about 1146, died 1219," he said grudgingly, as though he didn't like hearing himself admit any knowledge of such esoteric information.

"Doc has the run-down sheet on him."

"On the level?" Shirley balanced the question delicately between insolence and a genuine request for confirmation.

"William Marshall, that's right." Morris ignored her. "Audley started getting interested in Marshall when he was in the Middle East ten years back, studying crusader castles. He's been working on him off and on ever since—couple of years ago when he was a visiting professor in Arabic studies at Cumbria University."

Mosby remembered the sandcastle, its meticulous layout, the careful counting off of the towers…

William Marshall had been a crusader, and later on one of Richard the Lion-hearted's top advisers, so the biographical sheet had stated. And the whole thing was crazy, except that he was beginning to lose the capacity of being surprised by anything.

"And now he has a six-month furlough to complete his book." Morris paused to nod at Shirley. "On the level."

"Uh-huh." Her voice was almost neutral this time. "So he's a real-life historian pretending to be a statistical analyst. And I was beginning to think he was King Arthur in disguise, maybe."

"Not quite King Arthur, Mrs Sheldon. But perhaps Merlin the Magician, that's what we're hoping."

Morris smiled at her, tolerantly, still unprovoked.

"He'll darn well need to be a magician," said Mosby quickly, "if you want him to find Mount Badon for us."

"You think so?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Mosby weakened under the intensity of the dark eyes. "I'm not an expert on Arthurian history."

"But you've read the books on Davies's list, Captain."

"Not all of them." Mosby rallied. "You don't become an expert on the Dark Ages in forty-eight hours by reading a few books, anyway. It'd need more like forty-eight months."

"Unfortunately we don't have forty-eight months."

"How long do we have?"

Morris shrugged. "That we don't know. Perhaps no time at all. Certainly very little time."

"To do what?" asked Shirley. "To find this—Badon Hill place? Which Mose doesn't think can be found at all?"

"Is that what you think, Captain?" Morris paused. "That it cannot be found?"

"Nobody's found it yet. There's no Badon on the map."

"But I understand people have suggested where it might be."

"Oh, sure—half a dozen places. But there's no way of proving any of them… after fifteen hundred years."

"Except Major Davies thought differently."

"But Major Davies is no longer with us."

"Exactly. Which we are assuming is a case of cause and effect. All evidence that he was searching for Badon Hill was most expertly removed from his lodgings, and simultaneously he was also removed—

equally expertly."

Finsterwald stiffened. "We found the plane?"

"A portion of it."

"It was on the radio we'd given up the search," said Mosby.

"That was for public consumption. For the British—and others." Morris's voice hardened a fraction. "We got a piece Friday afternoon."

"Only a piece?"

"The major debris is probably several miles to the west, in deeper water. The section we have was detached because of a violent internal explosion."

"So the bastards fixed him," muttered Finsterwald. "And right on the goddamn base, too."

"They did. But that's no concern of ours—Air Force Intelligence will deal with that when we give them the word, and not before. At the moment it's an accident, with the normal accident procedures. Because the longer they believe they've pulled off the double, the longer we have to catch up on what they're really doing."

They.

What they are really doing.

"And just who is 'they'?" asked Mosby.

Finsterwald gave a snort. "Now who d'you think has the know-how—and the gall—to knock down one of our planes in a NATO backyard? Harold Wilson?"

Mosby gave him a half-smile. If UK Operations Control could take a bitching from Shirley in his stride, then he could take a squadron of Harry Finsterwalds with no trouble. "Yeah, well now you've mentioned him, Harry, I'd say he's got the gall and MI6 has the know-how. Only I just can't work out the connection between either of them and Badon Hill. But then the same applies to the KGB—Second Directorate, Clandestine Operations Division, that would be the one, I guess. Unless they've gotten Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

themselves an Ancient British History Division, that is." He looked back at Morris again. "But if you can't answer that one—"

"Or won't," murmured Shirley.

"Or won't—I'll settle for an easier answer first."

"Which is—?" Morris regarded him with interest.

"Which is—which side is Audley on? British or Russian?"

"What makes you think he's on either?"

"You've practically said as much. So did Shirley—'the way he looked at us' she said. I don't know about

'watchful', but whatever it was you remind me of him every time you look at me."

"Hah!" Morris beamed at him. "So you have an instinct—that's very good… Not reliable, but still useful, an instinct. But it doesn't tell you which side, eh?"

Mosby decided to rise to the challenge. "British, for choice."

"More instinct?"

"Uh-huh. Logic this time. The guys who took out Major Davies will be waiting for us to come knocking on their door. But you want them to go on hoping they've succeeded for as long as possible. Which means Audley isn't on their team. And as Harry doesn't fancy Mr Wilson as the villain of the piece that means he must be working for the British—Audley, I mean. Okay?"

"Logical certainly."

"You want more?"

"Whatever you've got."

"Okay. Theory this time. Shir—Mrs Sheldon and I represent a substantial outlay in Agency planning and resources. We've been over here four months just being ourselves, which is nice, but not very cost effective. And Captain Finsterwald arrived about the same time, and for a bet he's been doing even less in Base Publicity. And he's got a partner tucked away somewhere, so there are at least four of us—which sounds like a Special Operations Unit."

Morris nodded cautiously. "Could be."

"That's only Theory One. My Primary Operational Field is counter-intelligence—Mrs Sheldon's too, for another guess. And Harry's for a third." He looked quickly at Finsterwald. "Though I wouldn't be certain about that, maybe he's just a strong arm boy."

Before Finsterwald could react Morris said: "Go on."

"That makes us a counter-intelligence SOU, which the book says is a reaction pattern to early warning of a KGB clandestine action. And what little you've actually admitted so far confirms that—plus what you haven't actually denied. If this was Latin America or Africa it'd most likely be straight insurgency or urban terror, but over here the law enforcement is sophisticated and the people are—"

"You're beginning to lecture us, Captain."

Mosby grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. I was getting carried away."

"By your own brilliance." Finsterwald yawned.

"Which is better than getting bogged down in his own stupidity," observed Morris mildly. "Theory two: A KGB clandestine action is about to start. You don't have a theory of how King Arthur comes into it by any chance?"

"According to Audley he doesn't come in at all," said Shirley. "He never existed, remember?"

"And what do you say to that, Captain?"

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"Oh, I can account for that okay. It's really pretty simple. But do I rate another question first?"

"I guess you've earned it. So go ahead."

"The way Harry briefed us, we're not liaising with Audley—right?"

"Correct."

"Then we're going it alone—and the British don't know?"

"That's two questions."

"I'll just take the last one, then. They don't know what's going on?"

"So far as we know, they don't. Theory Three?"

Mosby drew a deep breath. "No more theories. Just I don't like this deal any more."

"Reasons, then."

"Reasons? My God, aren't they obvious? A KGB operation in Britain—we don't know what, but we know there is one—and we're not going to warn the British? Instead we're going to try and sucker one of their agents to work for us without knowing it. You want I should like the job?" He stared at Morris in genuine surprise. "No way, Mr Morris, no way."

"He isn't exactly an agent. Not in the formal sense, anyway."

"In what sense, then?" asked Shirley.

Morris smiled. "Your… husband's instinct flattered me, Mrs Sheldon. He's a senior executive adviser to their Joint Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee. Our last assessment ranked him Number Four to Sir Frederick Clinton."

"The Joint—" She bit the word off.

Jesus, thought Mosby with a swirl of bewilderment: Morris had quite calmly made everything ten times as bad. They were now messing with the topmost brass in the British Intelligence hierarchy, on the fringes of their equivalent of the 40 Committee, if not the National Security Council itself. Ozymandias was just two levels down in direct responsibility from the Queen of England, separated from her only by Sir Frederick Clinton and the Prime Minister.

Ozymandias, with his ordinary family and his ordinary family car… and his sandcastles…

"It isn't quite as crazy as it may sound, Captain," said Morris.

"It isn't?" The very severity of the shock-wave had the effect of steadying Mosby. Because they couldn't be that crazy they had to be stone-cold sane. Nothing in between would do.

"For a start, this operation isn't directed against the British. The USAF is the target."

"You mean we do know something about it?" said Shirley.

"We certainly do. In fact we had the first authentic word of it out of Moscow Control nearly five months back—of an operation against the USAF in Britain. Scheduled, some time July through September. We even know who's running it: Party Secretariat Member Comrade Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin.

One of their top men."

Just great, thought Mosby: two top men and Dr and Mrs Mosby Sheldon III in their appointed roles as a couple of slices of salami.

"And?" said Shirley hopefully.

"And we have their operational codename." He looked at Mosby. "Which ought to ring a bell with you now. Operation Bear."

"Bear?" Mosby frowned. "It's a pretty common Russian—" He stopped.

"The bell ringing, huh?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Uh-huh." Mosby shook his head. "Or only very faintly if I'm thinking what you want me to think. It's pretty goddamn thin reasoning."

"But a start."

"What is?" asked Shirley.

"Bear," said Mosby. " 'Bear' is one of Arthur's nicknames, at least according to those who believe he ever existed. 'Artos the Bear'—it's a sort of play on words, because artos, or something like it, means

'bear' in Ancient British. And there's a crack in one of the very early Welsh chronicles about some king being 'the bear's charioteer'. But it's damn obscure— and artos can mean a whole bunch of other things too. In fact it's a typical Arthurian puzzle: you can argue it a dozen different ways and it can mean anything or nothing."

"Very good—I'm impressed," said Morris encouragingly. "You've done your homework."

"Well, I'm not impressed," said Mosby. "It's like if the Thai Intelligence mounted an Operation Elephant and we decided it was connected with the Republican Party. It just doesn't mean a thing."

"Not by itself, I agree. But we do have one other fact which also didn't mean a thing by itself… You see, we do try to keep tabs on all the top SovCom personnel, especially the KGB controllers. What they do, where they go, who they visit, and the rest of it—it all goes into the data bank for processing.

"So we just happen to know that Comrade Professor Panin went on a trip about nine months back to Gorky, on the Upper Volga. And we also know that while he was there he borrowed a book from the Public Library—as a matter of fact we have that from two independent sources. And he's never returned it, either."

"He's going to have a big fine to pay, after nine months," said Mosby.

"The biggest. Because it was the oldest book in the library—it was written in the north of England about twelve hundred years ago." Morris smiled. "Does the name Bede ring any bells with you, Captain?"

Unreality again: John Singleton Mosby, William Marshall, Chretien de Troyes, Arthur of the Britons, David Audley… Nikolai Andrievich Panin.

And now Bede. Bede, the monk of the monastery of Saint Paul at Jarrow. Bede the Venerable, just two steps from becoming a saint.

"Sure. He wrote one of the main source-books for the period— A History of the English Church and People. I've got a copy in there—" he pointed to the sitting room behind Harry Finsterwald "—it was on Davies's list."

"But not this copy, Captain. This is the Novgorod Bede, one of the oldest Bede manuscripts in existence.

That's what Panin has got. And that was what Davies was enquiring about two days before his death."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

III

MOSBY FOLLOWED HOWARD MORRIS into the sitting room with misgivings churning up inside him.

Audley and Panin were bad enough, since for sure neither had reached his present eminence by the exercise of brotherly love. But at least they were bad enough in a known way: it was like meeting two tigers on his first trip in a foreign jungle where the larger predators usually remained deep in the undergrowth—just plain bad luck.

But Arthur and Badon were something totally different, totally unexpected. The pile of books on the table directly ahead of him was a reminder that up until now he'd managed to rationalise them, so that they had become part of his cover and a way of manipulating Audley, fundamentally no different from any other disguise or deception plan. Yet now, after what Morris had revealed, they were no longer the means to some unknown end; they were somehow part of the end itself.

Morris waved a hand towards the occupants of the room. "Dick Schreiner—State Department. Cal Merriwether—Harry's other half."

"Mrs Sheldon—Captain." Schreiner was too well schooled by his trade to look at Mosby with envy.

But it was Merriwether who caught Mosby's eye. He couldn't place the coloured man at all, not even when he'd mentally replaced the sober grey polo-necked pullover and well-worn blue jeans with uniform.

He frowned with embarrassment. "The BRU configuration crew? I'll place you in a minute—"

Merriwetber grinned hugely. "You ought to, Doc. You had me in your chair three-four weeks back."

"I did?" Mosby's embarrassment began to turn to annoyance with himself. "The name's familiar. If I could see inside your mouth there'd be no trouble, I tell you. I never forget a mouth."

"How about this, then?" But instead of opening his mouth Merriwether abruptly changed his expression from one of lively amusement to sullen vacuity. "That help you any, sir?" "The car pool—you're a driver… and I did fillings on your lower left—posterior four and six—right?" Merriwether signalled success by restoring his face. "I hope I didn't hurt you," said Mosby. "I didn't feel a thing, Doc. You've got the magic touch." He bowed towards Shirley. "Mrs Sheldon."

"Looks like we're going to need a magic touch," said Shirley.

"Audley'll need it too—to find Badon Hill," said Mosby. Schreiner glanced at Morris quickly, then back at Mosby. "It really is impossible?"

"Nothing's impossible—at least, according to General Ellsworth."

"Your base commander at Wodden?" "That's the one and only." Mosby nodded towards Finsterwald.

"You know the Holy of Holies?" "Huh?"

"Harry, Harry—the General's reception office. Where he keeps his flags and his model planes—and the desk you could land a B-52 on."

Finsterwald returned the nod unwillingly, as though he'd been too busy smartening his salute in Ellsworth's presence to notice whether the General had a desk or a brass bedstead.

"Well, there's a plaque on the wall right behind his chair—an oak plaque with gold lettering, remember?"

The flicker in Finsterwald's eyes indicated that the plaque had registered. Which figured, because it was fixed just six inches above the General's head, and that was where Finsterwald would have looked.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Finsterwald and most everyone else, to be fair; so it was probably the way the General intended.

" No Mission is Impossible—remember?"

"Sure, I remember." The nod was more confident. "Matter of fact I go along with the idea."

"Great."

"A man says a thing can't be done he usually means he can't do it."

"Is that a fact? Well, maybe you should be looking for Badon Hill, not Audley." Mosby turned back to Schreiner. "Let's settle for improbable, then."

"But there is such a place—that's definite?"

"There was." Mosby ran his eye over the table, and from there to the pile of books beside Shirley's chair.

"By your foot, honey—the little dark blue book."

The pages fell open obediently at the marked passage. "This is the earliest thing there is— On the Destruction of Britain. Written by a monk named Gildas in the middle of the sixth century. 'Gildas the Wise' they called him, but he's really rather a pain in the ass."

"A history book?" asked Shirley.

"The hell it is! It's about as much a proper history of Britain as the collected Washington Post editorials on Richard Nixon are to a history of the United States. Gildas wasn't interested in history—he was in the business of denouncing the rulers of Britain as a bunch of rat-finks who were letting the country go to the dogs. They'd won the war against the Saxons and now they were losing the peace—the old story."

"So where does Badon come in?"

"Ah—it comes in sort of incidentally when he's preaching about the good old days of Ambrosius Aurelianus, 'the last of the Romans'—a sort of George Washington who started the war of liberation against the Saxons. It's like he's reminiscing on the side…" He scanned the page for his pencil mark.

"Here it is:

…nowadays his descendants in our time have declined from the integrity of their ancestors…

—that's typical Gildas—

…From then on the citizens and the enemy were by turns victorious, so that God might test in this people, the modern Israel, whether it loves Him or not; until the year of the seige of Badon Hill, almost the last and not the least slaughter of those bandits, which was forty-four years and one month ago, as I should know for it was also the year of my birth…

He was a Badon baby, and he never forgot it."

"So when was he born?" asked Shirley.

"That's the trouble, honey—and it's also absolutely typical of the whole subject: nobody's quite sure. But round about A.D. 500, give or take ten or fifteen years."

"So the Britons had beaten the Saxons—the Anglo-Saxons?" said Schreiner. "I thought it was the other way round."

"So it was—in the end. Gildas was writing in about 550, maybe a year or two earlier. At that time the Britons had been on top for the best part of half a century, since the battle of Badon. The Saxons just had Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

toe-holds on the coast in a few places. But the next really reliable account of what happened dates from two hundred years later." Mosby nodded at Howard Morris. "From a monk named Bede."

He reached across the table for the orange-backed paperback. " A History of the English Church and People."

"Bede was like Gildas, then?" asked Shirley.

"He was a monk like Gildas. But that was about the only thing they had in common, honey. Because for a start he was one of the Anglo-Saxon bandits—by then they'd kicked out the Britons from most of the island, like Gildas had said they would. And the Anglo-Saxons had become the English and the Britons had become the Welsh, more or less."

"My God!" said Finsterwald fervently. "And who were the goddamn Scotch?"

"They were mostly Irish, man," said Merriwether helpfully. "And you can tell that because of the whisky and the bagpipes, which they both got out of the deal."

So Merriwether was the real brains of the Finsterwald/Merriwether partnership, thought Mosby.

"That's about right, actually." He nodded. "But the big difference is that Bede was a real historian, not a Biblethumper like Gildas—

…Ambrosius Aurelius, a virtuous man of Roman origin, the only survivor of a disaster in which his royal parents were killed…

—and so on… Let's see… Here we are:

Thenceforth victory went first to one side, then to the other, until the Battle of Badon Hill, when the Britons made a great slaughter of the invaders. This took place forty-four years after their invasion of Britain…

You see, he'd obviously got a Gildas manuscript to work from, but not quite the same one. Only he had a lot more material as well, and he knew how to use it. Not only oral tradition and local stuff—he even sent someone to Rome to check on the Papal archives, which must have been a haify trip in those days.

As I say, he was a real historian, all the modern historians agree on that."

"And he doesn't mention Arthur," said Howard Morris. "Neither does—what's his name—Gildas."

"You got it in one." Mosby nodded at him. "Arthur doesn't get a mention for another hundred years nearly—about A.D. 800, at least not one that ties him in with the right things."

"The right things?"

"Yeah. There's some early mention of an Arthur of some sort in the far north—'Artorius' was an old Roman name. But it doesn't look like our guy." He searched through the pile again. "Nennius is what we want now—"

"Another monk?" asked Shirley.

"Bishop of Bangor in North Wales, but it amounts to the same thing. Only the clergy could read and write in those days… Here we are: Historia Britonum—'History of the Britons'. Except it wasn't a history."

"What was it?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Just you wait and see…" He opened the book at its marker.

"Then Arthur fought against them with the kings of the Britons, but he was the war leader—

'them' being the Saxons. Then he lists all the battles Arthur fought… one at the mouth of the river Glein, four beside the river Dobglas, the sixth beside the river Bassass, the seventh in the forest of Celidon—"

"I've never heard of any of them," said Shirley.

"Nor has anyone else, seems. The next one was at Castle Guinnion—

when Arthur bore the image of the blessed Mary, ever virgin, on his shoulders, and through the strength of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the holy Mary, his maiden-mother, there was great slaughter of the heathen and they were put to flight—

—and the ninth was in the City of the Legion. That just might be either Chester or Caerleon. The tenth beside the river Tribuit; the eleventh on Agned Hill. And now we come to it—

The twelth battle was at Badon Hill, where Arthur slew 960 men in one charge, single-handed. And he was victor of all these battles."

"Phew! Nine-hundred-and-sixty at one go!" exclaimed Shirley. "That even beats General Ellsworth."

"Yeah, well let's say it runs him close. But that sums up Nennius: a lot of folk-history and superstitious hot air, plus one or two facts. It could be all true and it could be all hooey."

"Except Badon Hill," said Schreiner from the depths of the armchair into which he had sunk.

"That's right, exactly right. And Badon also turns up in the Annales Cambriae, which is a sort of calendar of important dates in Welsh history compiled by a bunch of monks in the eleventh century. It says in that for 'Year 72', which is somewhere about A.D. 500: Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ on his shoulders for three days and three nights and the Britons were victorious."

"Sounds like they had it mixed up with one of Nennius's battles," said Shirley.

"Honey, when you start digging into the Dark Ages, and especially into Arthur, most everyone seems to have everything mixed up. But when you come down to it out of this lot—" he waved his hand over the table "—apart from the serious modern history books, the only two worth a damn are Gildas and Bede.

Gildas because he actually lived in the period, and Bede because he was way ahead of his time as a historian. All the rest is strictly 'maybe'."

"But what about the Knights of the Round Table and Lancelot—and Camelot?" said Schreiner. "Is that all pure invention then?"

"Not quite pure, but damn nearly, so far as I can make out. I haven't read all the stuff—the further it gets away from the actual historical time, the more there is of it. Seems a lot was made up by a man named Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century—a lot of the traditional 'King Arthur' bits. It even had a political angle then, because the Kings of England wanted to keep up with the French kings—"

Harry Finsterwald stirred. "For God's sake, we have to have the history of France too?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Howard Morris started to speak, but Schreiner overrode him. "Until we know the exact specification of Operation Bear—and why Panin took the Novgorod Bede back to Dzerzhinsky Street with him—you're damn right, Captain. The history of France and the history of Britain, and the history of ancient Peru, if need be. Plus how many archangels can dance on the point of a needle too."

Mosby hurriedly revised his estimate of Schreiner: not just State Department Intelligence, but pure State Department. And not just State Department holding a watching brief if he was ready to slap down a CIA operative in the presence of UK Control—to do that required National Security Council authorisation for sure.

Another tiger?

Well, maybe he could find that out by giving the beast a gentle prod—

"I don't know, maybe Harry's right," he said doubtfully. "It's getting kind of way out, where we could end up."

Schreiner looked at him sharply. "You let me be the judge of that, Captain Sheldon."

"But—"

Howard Morris raised a finger. "Tell the man, Doc. Just tell him."

That made Schreiner a tiger for sure, right down to the last whisker. And a tiger in a hurry, too.

"Okay. It's like the English Joneses had to keep up with the French Joneses—the French had the Emperor Charlemagne as their royal ancestor. All the English had was a bunch of Norman pirates. But after Geoffrey of Monmouth had got through with Arthur they could trace themselves right back to Troy. And it made such a darn good story—the Arthurian part—that all the story-tellers of the time got into the act. So after that it just snowballed, all the way to Malory in the fifteenth century and Tennyson in the nineteenth—and Walt Disney and Broadway in the 20th. Plus any number of other guys—in fact Milton nearly wrote about King Arthur instead of Paradise Lost."

"All of which was just invented?" persisted Schreiner.

"Well… not quite all. This is where the thing gets kind of—strange. Like there's something deep down in it that's not invented. A sort of racial folk-memory."

"For example?"

"Okay, an example… Yes, well take the Knights of the Round Table, which is a load of crap. One guy added the knights and another added the Table, and they built the whole story up from that. Because mediaeval knights wanted to read about mediaeval knights… But if you actually go back to A.D. 500, that's the time when the heavy cavalryman is the big new secret weapon. And just before the Romans got to hell out of Britain they set up a mobile strike command. So if you add those two facts together, you've just maybe got something that isn't a load of crap. No knights rescuing damsels in distress and slaying dragons, but a disciplined cavalry force… the Saxons fought on foot, remember, so they'd have been at a disadvantage… And no 'King' Arthur, but just a first-rate cavalry commander—"

"A war leader," said Shirley.

For a moment Mosby thought she was making fun of his brand-new academic pretensions. But when he looked into her eyes there was nothing to confirm the suspicion; rather, she seemed on the edge of being interested.

He nodded cautiously. "A war leader, yes."

"Very good," Schreiner made no attempt to hide his approval. "That fits very well."

"Fits very well with what?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Never mind. It'll keep. So where does Badon Hill figure in this folk-memory?"

Mosby rubbed his chin, the hastily-acquired facts suddenly blurring in his memory. He was so used to Shirley cutting him down to size that she had diminished him now without even intending to, reducing him to what he knew himself to be: an instant expert whose shallow understanding was impressive only in the company of those more ignorant than himself. Up against Audley it would be very different.

"It doesn't really figure at all," he said finally.

"But you said there was such a place?"

"Sure I did. There was. In fact if there's one sure fact in the whole thing it's Badon Hill."

"Because Gildas and Bede say so?"

"Gildas and Bede and everyone who matter: somebody gave the Saxons the biggest hiding of their lives about A.D. 500. Even the modern archaeologists check it out, because Saxon burials inland stop dead about that time and don't really start up again for half a century or more—two, maybe three generations.

So it must have been a great battle."

Merriwether unwound gracefully. "Then how come most people never heard of it, Doc? I read some British history once. Long time ago, but I remember the battles—Hastings, Agincourt, Waterloo, Trafalgar and such. But no Badon Hill."

"Because the Britons threw it away, is why. If they'd carried on the good work they could have finished the Anglo-Saxons for good—the Britons were better organised, the Saxons were just savages. It was like

—like if the Red Indians had tried to invade the United States in about 1800… So the Britons had them licked but they squabbled among themselves, like Gildas said, and blew the deal. If they hadn't then there'd have been no England—and no English. It'd all have been Britain, all speaking Welsh or something like it. In fact we'd be speaking Welsh at this moment."

Merriwether laughed. "Man—you've made your point. If it'd got me speaking Welsh it must have been some battle!"

"You're darn right. One of the all-time big ones: Saratoga, Gettysburg, Midway, Waterloo—Badon. But as it is, we don't even know where it is."

Schreiner frowned at him. "No clues at all?"

"No real clues. It was a hill and it was a siege of some sort. So perhaps a hill-fort, or an isolated hill. But nothing for certain. There's a gloss in one Gildas manuscript, where some old monk wrote in extra words

—"

"Which manuscript?" asked Schreiner quickly.

"I don't know—not the Novgorod one, anyway." Mosby searched through the books again. "Here we are

—it's a footnote in Arthur of Britain…

usque ad annum obsessionis Badonici montis qui prope Sabrinum hostium habetur…

those last five words only appear in the Cambridge manuscript, seems."

"Meaning?"

Harry Finsterwald made a tiny, half-strangled sound.

"I've got it translated here somewhere… 'up until the year of the siege of the hosts at Badon Hill which took place near Sabrinum'."

"And I take it there's no such place as Sabrinum?" said Shirley.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"There's a Sabrina, actually, honey—Roman name for the river Severn. But nobody rates the gloss worth a damn. They usually don't even list it among the possible places. They reckon it dates from later mediaeval times."

He tossed the book back on to the table, watching Schreiner out of the corner of his eye as he did so. It all added up, but then at the foot of the column there was something wrong with the final figure: ultimately this interest in Arthur and Badon and the Novgorod Bede had to be simply a cover for something else, for the KGB and the CIA both. And yet Schreiner's concern for the historical details was curiously intense, as though it mattered to him what Mosby himself felt about it… the way he'd been allowed to run off at the mouth about it, when Harry Finsterwald had been slapped down…

He shrugged. "All of which means there's no way of finding Badon. And even if there was you'd have one hell of a job selling me the idea that the KGB gives a damn either way."

Schreiner cocked his head belligerently. "But I don't have to sell you anything, Sheldon. I just have to tell you."

Tiger, tiger! thought Mosby. The State Department really was calling the shots on this one.

"Okay. So just tell me."

"I intend to. Because there isn't going to be any foul-up on this operation." Schreiner looked round him coolly. "This isn't a goddamn banana republic where you can throw your weight about. So once we know the shape of things we're going to handle them diplomatically, with no brawling on the side between you and the KGB…And you—" he pointed at Mosby "—are going to do just exactly what you're told to do. No matter how crazy you may think it is."

"Uh-huh?" Mosby yawned. "Like playing pat-a-cake with David Audley?"

"Or even with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table?" said Shirley.

Schreiner turned towards her. "That just happens to be exactly right, Mrs Sheldon. As of now you're going to forget you ever heard of the KGB—because as of now your cover story is your actual mission.

You and your… husband are assigned to locate the map reference of Badon Hill, England. Just that."

"Just that?" Shirley flicked a glance at Mosby. "Which according to my… husband… isn't possible."

Schreiner smiled. "'Improbable' was what he finally settled for, I thought. And with David Audley to help you I'd rate your chances better than even—especially as you have an advantage no one else has ever had before you."

"Which is?"

"Which is that sooner or later—and it had better be sooner—you will pick up Major Davies's trail."

"And where's that going to get us?" said Shirley.

Calvin Merriwether stirred. "Just so you follow it, ma'am—it's going to get you all the way to Badon Hill," he said.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

IV

MOSBY STUDIED CALVIN MERRIWETHER'S dark, intelligent face for a moment. This time there was no trace of humour in it.

"So he really was on to Badon Hill."

"I told you so, Doc." Harry Finsterwald had lost a little of his stuffing, but his voice still had an edge to it.

"I thought that was just part of the cover story, Harry. I didn't actually buy it."

"Well, you better buy it now, man. Because it's true," Merriwether said. "He thought—"

"Thought?" Mosby pounced on the word. "You don't have any evidence?"

"Evidence? We know what he bought, if that's evidence. All the books you've been reading so carefully.

And we got what he said, if that's evidence—"

"Said to whom?"

Merriwether raised a long-fingered hand. "Just wait and let me finish, don't get over-heated, Doc. He talked to his bookseller, the man he got all his books from. Hunted all over for him, the bookseller did—

far as the Russian Embassy, to find out about the Novgorod Bede. Not that they told him anything, but he sure tried. 'Cause Davies was just about the best customer he had, so it made good sense."

Mosby looked at Howard Morris. "The bookseller's on the level?"

"The bookseller's straight down the line," Merriwether's hand cut through the air. "We've checked him out every way, and he's one hundred per cent pure. Part from the fact that if he wasn't he wouldn't have given us so much so easy."

"Right," said Finsterwald. "And apart from the fact that he's 78 years old."

"So what did he give you?"

Merriwether glanced at Howard Morris. "Okay I tell Doc, then?"

Mosby frowned. "What the hell? Shirley and I are supposed to have been friends of Davies, according to the cover story."

"Which 'ud make you about the only friends he had," said Merriwether. "Only person we can trace he ever spoke to was the bookseller. He was a real loner."

Morris nodded. "Go ahead, Cal. Not that there's much of it."

"Well, there is and there isn't according to how you look at it… but seems he first went to Barkham's four-five months back—Barkham being the bookseller. Old-fashioned firm. Talk to you about books as soon as sell you one, and rather you bought nothing than something you wouldn't like." Merriwether smiled reminiscently. "Took him quite a time deciding I was a fit and proper customer for him to do business with—I had to sweet-talk him round."

Shirley laughed. "What did you buy?"

"What did I buy?" Merriwether pointed to the table, grinning. "Most of those books your husband's been reading, that's what I bought. I told Barkham I was a friend of his Major Davies, who'd been posted back to the States suddenly and I'd come to settle his bill—"

"Yes?"

Merriwether held up a small black tape-recorder. "You want to hear the real thing?" He glanced towards Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Morris. "We got time?"

"When's Audley coming here?" Morris asked Mosby.

"Not till nine. We got all the time in the world."

"But we haven't… Keep it short, Cal."

"'Tisn't long anyway. But I'll give you the bit that counts…"

"—thirty-eight pence, Sir. Thank you—"

Sharp 'ting' and slither of cash drawer.

Clink.

"—and sixty-two pence change… fifty—"

Clink.

"—and ten and two… and your receipt, sir—"

Merriwether cut off the tape. "Not quite far enough. You don't want to hear about how interested I am in ancient history. I'll just run it some more."

"He owed only thirty-eight pence?" asked Shirley.

"Always paid cash money except the last time. Which was lucky for us, we'd never have got on to Barkham otherwise. Here we go—"

"—depends where your particular interest lies, sir. There is the formal history of the period, as represented by Collingwood and Myres, and by Stenton for example… and what might be termed the Arthurian history, by—ah—by those who take his historical existence for granted… which is a literature in itself."

Dry chuckle.

"Some might say more literature than history, a good deal of it… Malory and Spenser, for example, and the early French writers… But I don't think they would be your taste, sir… very specialised… And there's the modern literature of fiction—Miss Sutcliffe's Sword at Sunset and T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone are the superior representatives of that, I would say."

"Isn't that a kid's book— The Sword in the Stone!"

"Indeed it is, sir. And Miss Sutcliffe's book is also popular with the younger readers. But they are both a great deal more—ah—adult than much of the fiction their elders ask me for—"

"Get that," said Merriwether. "They ask for, but they don't receive, not from old Jim Barkham they don't.

He'd sooner sell canned beans than books he doesn't like."

"—may find them rewarding."

"I don't seem to remember Major Davies talking about them."

"Ah, no sir. The Major is strictly inclined towards the history. He is acquainted with the literature…

indeed, he is remarkably well-acquainted with it. But history is his first love, I would agree."

"Mine too, Mr Barkham. I was thinking of starting with, say, Bede?"

"Bede? Well, that really would be starting at the beginning… I take it you do not read Latin?"

"I'm afraid not. They didn't teach that at my school."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Nor do they teach it at many of our English schools now, I fear, sir… They maintain there is no call for it—a very short-sighted view, but there it is… However, there is Mr Sherley-Price's translation in the Penguin Classics, which is both excellent and inexpensive—a rare conjunction these days."

"You don't have a Novgorod Bede by any chance?"

Pause, then the same dry chuckle, this time more prolonged—

"I can see you've been talking to the Major, sir—Mr—?"

"Merriwether, Mr Barkham. I understood you were getting him a copy, huh?"

"Oh, no sir. I think you must have misunderstood him there, Mr Merriwether. Indeed, I'm now tolerably certain that no translation or facsimile has ever been made of the Novgorod manuscript… and I don't expect there ever will be now."

"Why not?"

"Well, frankly, I don't think the Russians are much interested in such things these days. The man at their embassy to whom I spoke—although he was alleged to be concerned with cultural matters—was singularly unforthcoming at first."

Pause.

"At first?" Merriwether's voice was casual. "You mean he came back to you?"

"That is correct. Yesterday in fact, and he was most discouraging… though I suppose we should be grateful that he followed up my enquiry in the first place, which I did not expect him to do."

"So what did he say?"

"Yes… well, it appears that many of the manuscripts from the old monastery there were severely damaged in a German air raid, and—though now I'm reading between the lines of what he said, as it were

—and no attempt was made to repair any of them until quite recently. Which means, of course, that many of them will have been allowed to decay irreparably, because you cannot leave a damaged parchment to its own devices for thirty years and expect it to improve… it is unpardonably careless of them, really…"

"Uh-huh?" Merriwether's voice was distant now rather than casual.

"Well, now it seems they have at last got round to it, and repairs are in progress. Which means, of course, that the manuscript will be totally unavailable for study for months, possibly years. Restoration is a very slow process, Mr Merriwether."

"Yeah, I guess it must be… So I'm not going to be atfle to write the Major that you've had any success, huh? We're never going to know what was in it?"

"Oh, no, Mr Merriwether, that's not quite true. There is Bishop Harper's description of it, don't forget that."

"Bishop Harper?"

Pause.

"There now! I was forgetting that I haven't seen the Major for a fortnight or so… And I didn't even learn about the good Bishop until this Monday, after I had written to him."

Pause.

"Uh-huh?"

"He was Suffragan Bishop of Walthamstow in the later 1850s and far ahead of his time in ecumenical matters, so it would seem. At any rate, he was particularly concerned to re-establish relations with the Russian Orthodox Church after the Crimean War… the war with the charge of the Light Brigade, Mr Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Merriwether… and he travelled extensively in Russia during the late 1850s and 1860s, visiting many of the monasteries there, including that at Nijni Novgorod. So he was very probably the first Englishman to see the Novgorod Bede since it was sent with the English missionaries to Germany in the eighth century… Did you know that the early English Christians played a notable part—one might even say a heroic part, since so many of them were martyred— in the conversion of the heathen Germans?"

Pause.

"Can't say that I did, no." Merriwether's voice was now not so much distant as hollow.

"Not many people do know, it's true. Yet it was one of the most glorious periods in our whole history.

Bede wasn't unique, he was one of a generation of great English churchmen… But there it is: the manuscript probably went to a German monastery like Fulda, and thence to somewhere like Wismar or Stralsund on the Baltic, and from there in a Hanseatic ship to the lands of the Teutonic Knights who were invading Russia in the middle of the Middle Ages—the 'Drang nach Osten', Mr Merriwether: Russian, Russian,

Wake yourself up!

The German is coming,

The uninvited guest—

"That's not a 20th century poem, it was written in the fourteenth century… and so to some German-Lithuanian monastery, at least according to Bishop Harper's theory— somewhere like Dorpat—where it was captured by a Prince of Novgorod. And from Novgorod finally to Nijni Novgorod, five hundred miles further east and fifteen-hundred miles from Jarrow, where it was written. Always travelling with the missionaries of God, English and German and finally Russian —isn't that fascinating, eh? Only to be threatened in the 20th century by another 'Drang nach Osten'—Hitler's bombers! There's the pattern of European history for you—twelve hundred years of it. And now two American gentlemen like the Major and yourself want to find out about it—even more remarkable!"

Pause.

"So what did the Bishop say, then, Mr Barkham?"

"Oh, I don't know yet, sir. I haven't been able to lay my hands on a copy of his collected letters. It was privately printed, you see—I've never even seen a copy, much less sold one. What I've been telling you comes from a colleague of mine in Cambridge, who once had a copy many years ago. But we'll both continue looking for one, if that is your wish, Mr Merriwether."

"Well, I'd sure like to see it—after that story you've told, Mr Barkham."

"Of course, of course… But I think you'll be disappointed. Most likely the Novgorod Bede was transcribed from one of our early English copies, possibly from the same one used for the Leningrad Bede. So it is more unlikely to contain any additional material about Mons Badonicus… not that that matters now."

Pause.

"No?"

Pause.

"Hah! I can see the Major didn't favour you with his absolute confidence… And I was rather hoping that he had. What a pity!"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Pause.

"You mean about—M—about Badon?"

"Exactly."

"Yeah… well, he was kind of close about it just recently."

"Close?"

"He didn't talk much. He just kind of hinted."

Chuckle.

"Exactly. In fact, I said to him: 'If you think you've found it, then you must prove it.' And all he would say was 'When I'm ready'."

"That's just what he said to me—'When I'm good and ready'. Is that all he said to you, Mr Barkham?"

"Those were his very words. And when I told him if it was true it was a very great discovery he said

'And a very great deal of trouble too'. And not one more word would he say.

Which was really rather provoking in the circumstances."

"After all the work you'd done for him, huh?"

"Not so much that, Mr Merriwether… but I was more afraid he might start digging. And he isn't an archaeologist —whatever happens it must be left to them. The only testimony now can be the testimony of the spade, I told him."

Door opening— door closing.

"Absolutely right, Mr Barkham."

"I'm glad you think so, sir. Though my personal view is that his enthusiasm was, shall we say, premature. In fact, if he hadn't been so confident I would have said it was impossible… But you must excuse me while I deal with this customer… If you would care to look over those shelves beyond the desk at the back—on the right—the ones marked 'History'… start at the very top. You'll need the library steps—"

Merriwether cut off the tape.

"Wow!" exclaimed Shirley.

"He's a great old guy," said Merriwether, smiling. "I had to prise those books out of him one by one, like they were his own flesh and blood."

"He thought you were after Badon too," said Howard Morris.

"That's it, man. I had to promise I wasn't going to start digging up the English countryside."

Mosby looked towards Morris. "The book the Bishop wrote—have we got it?"

"Not yet. But we're looking. And the one thing you mustn't do on any account, Captain, is start asking for the Novgorod Bede. Don't even mention it—leave it to us."

"Okay. But suppose Audley starts asking?"

"He won't."

"Why not?" said Shirley.

"Because he's not an expert on the period."

She frowned. "For God's sake—he's writing a book on it!"

"He's writing a book on a man who lived in the twelfth century—not the sixth."

"But it's all—what's the word—mediaeval."

"So it is. And George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt are all modern. But you wouldn't expect an expert on the Second World War to be an expert on the War of Independence, would you, Mrs Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Sheldon?" Morris looked at her expectantly for a moment. "He knows what any Cambridge history graduate—any good graduate, that is—ought to know. Which for our purposes is enough, but not too much."

"He knows enough not to believe in King Arthur—isn't that too much?"

Morris turned towards Mosby. "I think you had something to say about that, Captain?"

"Huh?" Mosby tore himself away from the contemplation of the Novgorod Bede. "I—what?"

"You said you knew why Audley doesn't believe in King Arthur."

"Oh, sure. He's just not romantic."

"What do you mean—just not romantic?" snapped Shirley.

"Just exactly that. Remember when you twitted him with the Old South being romantic, and he looked like he'd smelt a nasty smell—like an accountant looking at a bum set of figures? Old Jeb Stuart wasn't a knight in shining armour to him, he was just a 'competent cavalry commander'."

"But that's what you said King Arthur might be, Doc," murmured Merriwether. "In fact it's exactly what you said."

Mosby was unabashed. "Sure I did. Only I can show you a photograph of Jeb Stuart, and you can't show me one of King Arthur.

"With Jeb Stuart there's proof and with Arthur there isn't—which is what I've been saying all along. But Audley, he lives by facts, like any good historian and any good intelligence man should; lives with them, eats them and sleeps with them. And the facts on Arthur are mighty thin on the ground."

For a moment no one said anything. Then Shirley shook her head.

"So—okay. But then what makes anyone think he's going to help us find Badon Hill?"

"Well, for a start it's a fact." Mosby looked towards Howard Morris.

"But impossible to find, you said."

"I settle for improbable. And it seems Major Davies didn't do so badly."

"But we don't know how he did it," said Shirley.

"That's true," said Morris.

"And the idea of trying to use Audley is crazy anyway. The British are going to be so mad when they find out—"

" If they find out. Audley's still got a clear two months of his leave. He's not likely to report back that he's decided to take a day or two looking for a 1,500-year-old battlefield. It doesn't sound like a security risk," said Morris.

Merriwether grinned. "No one's going to argue with you there."

"Except we know better," said Shirley. "So suppose we run into trouble?"

"Then there's a fair chance that Audley's presence will protect you," Schreiner's voice came out of the depths of his armchair. "Even Panin might think twice about making that sort of trouble. It's even possible that Audley's appearance will put them off. Or at least buy us some more time."

Shirley stared at him. "Whereas Mose and I are strictly expendable?"

"Mrs Sheldon—" Schreiner sat up "—we don't even know you. If there is any trouble you are strictly on your own: just an American couple who stumbled into something nasty."

"Oh, great! The British will believe that, I'm sure."

"They'll have to. The chief reason you were both chosen for this is that your cover is perfect. The CIA will never have heard of you—we shall invite MI5 to check you both back to the cradle if they want to.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

You were trained and programmed for just such an operation as this."

"That's reassuring."

"It should be. I said the CIA won't know you. The State Department will fight for you as we would fight for any innocent American citizens in trouble abroad." He nodded. "But what matters is that the CIA remains uninvolved—completely. The situation is too delicate for us to take more scandal."

"You mean the domestic business?" Shirley went bald-headed at him.

Schreiner winced as though he'd bitten on a sore tooth. "Mrs Sheldon, the details don't concern you."

"When it's my neck that's sticking out they do, Mr Schreiner."

Schreiner regarded her balefully. Then he sighed. "Very well—domestic business, as you put it, plus interference in the affairs of a foreign country."

"We just can't do a thing right," said Merriwether lightly. "No way."

The lighter side of the situation was clearly not evident to Schreiner. "I used the word 'delicate' and I meant it. The CIA has had too much bad publicity, over here as well as in the States. They gave Watergate a lot of coverage… and after that the business of the domestic espionage. And they know we keep a big CIA presence over here keeping an eye on their trade unions, too… there have been questions about it in the Post story about the East German freighter that was rammed and sunk in the Thames a few years back—the Agency was blamed for that, and it didn't help us one bit." His voice became increasingly mournful as the litany continued. "Even the fact that Cord Meyer was a dirty tricks specialist was pretty well driven home by their Press. So we have a new Station Head now—and a new Ambassador at the Court of St James—and we don't want them compromised."

"But we still have to do our job," said Howard Morris. "So if the Russians are mounting an operation against us over here we can't hand it to the British. It's our baby and we're paid to look after it. You understand, both of you?"

Mosbv understood, to the uttermost part. Not for the first time, the Agency was between the devil and the deep blue sea. It could not afford to duck the dirtiest jobs, because handling dirty jobs was its designed function and any failure to handle them would be further proof of its incompetence. But if it glitched a dirty job, then that too would be disastrous—and doubly disastrous at this precise time, when its whole function was being questioned. On this one there would be no mercy either in Washington or in London.

"There's a whole bunch of left-wing Members of Parliament—and some of their journalists who admire the Watergate press job—who are just itching to crack the UK Station wide open," said Schreiner to no one in particular. "That's why you are on your own this time."

Mosby looked at Shirley. So that was why two innocent American citizens, who were not at all innocent, were about to sucker an innocent British citizen, who was also not in the least innocent… It was going to be just like riding point for General Custer in his advance to the Little Bighorn.

"But as to why Audley will help you," Morris changed the subject smoothly, "he will because he simply won't be able to resist it. The historian in him will snap at Badon Hill—and the intelligence man in him will snap at the puzzle. It's as near as dammit a psychological sure thing, knowing the way his mind works."

"Not without tangible evidence," said Shirley.

"Okay. So that's what we're going to give him, Mrs Sheldon. Tangible evidence."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

V

THEY SAT OPPOSITE each other beside the stone fireplace in the big soft chintz-covered armchairs, he with his massive copy of Keller's Conquest of Wessex and she with her Practical Flower Arrangement, the first fruits of which blazed on the hearth between them. Room dusted and polished, drinks and titbits on the sideboard, front door on the latch: the very portrait of domestic respectability waiting to dispense friendly hospitality, as painted by the Father of Lies.

Shirley glanced at her watch. "It's nearly nine," she said.

"No sweat." Mosby lowered Keller, trapping the pages with his finger. There was nothing more to be got from him; like Stenton, he was Anglo-Saxon orientated, conceding the existence and importance of Mount Badon, but relegating Arthur to one equivocal footnote. His heroes were not the unknown Britons of the years of resistance, but the invading chieftains, Aelle, Cerdic and Cynric and the all-conquering Ceawlin.

She frowned at him. "You're sure he'll come?"

"He said they would—I think they will. Honey, you know the British don't like arriving on time, they think it's bad-mannered." He smiled into the frown. "I think we've got him figured right—he won't be able to resist Badon. I certainly wouldn't if I was him. It's the 64,000 dollar question of the Dark Ages."

"64,000 dollars?"

"Uh-huh. And if you throw in Arthur I'll make it a million."

"The price of a hill no one can find and a king who maybe never existed." She stared back reflectively.

"The Sheldon valuation."

He shrugged. "Just a guess. You can't really put a price on a bit of truth like that—not that bit of truth, anyway."

Again she didn't react immediately, but continued to examine him, still with a trace of the original frown.

"What's the matter?" he asked finally. "I got egg on my face or something?"

"No, not egg… I was thinking, maybe you're a bit of a weirdo. And that's slightly unnerving."

"Huh? A sex maniac, you mean?"

"Hell, no. Nothing odd about that, it's standard red-blooded chauvinist American male… It's this Badon thing—and King Arthur?"

"Don't call him 'King', honey. That's the mark of ignorance. Remember your Nennius: he was the war leader. In those days British kings were fifty cents each and three for a dollar. But there was only one Arthur—if there was one. 'Fact, I wish Audley did believe in him. He's just about the most interesting thing I've ever come across."

"That's what I mean." She leant forward, clasping Practical Flower Arrangement to her chest. "I detect a note of enthusiasm you've never shown before, except for other people's teeth and my bed. This thing's really got under your skin."

"Under my skin?" Mosby looked at her in surprise. And yet maybe she was right at that, or at least half right. "I don't know about my skin, but it's certainly been bugging the British for a thousand years. You know what they called him? The Once and Future King—like he's going to come back from the dead one day. A man nobody knows anything about, not even for sure if he ever lived. And yet as far as Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

they're concerned he's really kept going. I don't care what Audley thinks. He's really strange, Arthur is."

"It's not Arthur who's strange, it's you getting steamed up about him."

"Not at all, just line of duty research. I'm just Mr Average."

The dark hair swung in disagreement. "Not in this company. Makes me wonder how you got into this business."

From her, after having been kept literally at arm's length for so long, it was an odd question as well as an improper one. "You're not supposed to ask that one, I thought."

"Oh, sure. But now I think I need to know what makes you tick, honey—same as you have to figure how David Audley ticks." She sat back. "Besides… sharing a bedroom with a strange man confers some privileges, I guess. Even when it's in the line of duty. Kind of special relationship."

"Special platonic relationship."

"That's the way it goes: up to the line of duty, not above and beyond it." She regarded him coolly. "But you don't have to answer, naturally."

It was ironic, not to say annoying, that the first signs of interest she was showing in him beyond the curiosity of a labourer in the same vineyard should coincide with more urgent matters.

"Naturally. But you're right: a man shouldn't have big secrets from the woman in his twin bed. I'm a volunteer, not a draftee, put it like Sam Smith did —

My country, 'tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

—General Ellsworth and I are brothers under the skin. Two old-fashioned patriots."

"I read somewhere that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel."

"Shouldn't believe all you read. I'm a Sam Smith patriot. Now Harry Finsterwald, he's a Stephen Decatur patriot—'My country, right or wrong'. What I call an interchangeable patriot, like those Action Man dolls

—dress him up in any uniform, CIA, KGB, MI5. Pull his string and he'll say 'buddy' or 'comrade' or 'old boy' for you. But not me."

"You only say 'buddy'?"

The doorbell rang.

"You'll find out when you pull my strings." He stood up. "But you just concentrate on Audley's string for the time being, honey. I'm on your side—remember?"

One trouble with the British was breaking the ice. Or rather, you could break it the first time and get on easy terms, only to find that they were frozen over again the second time and you were back where you'd started.

Mosby had been mildly worried about this, since it was important not to get off on the wrong foot, causing Audley to shy away from the curiosity he must be feeling. With a fellow American it would have been easy, and his approach would have been instinctive. But the average well-bred Britishers of his acquaintance generally twisted themselves into knots to avoid seeming curious about anything; and as for enthusiasm, they treated any manifestation of that as an infectious disease which they could best avoid by keeping their mouths closed.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

True, Audley was almost certainly not average—nobody with his job could be that. But he qualified as well-bred, one of Doc McCaslin's "establishment products" until proved otherwise, at least as far as ordinary social intercourse was concerned.

But here, quite unexpectedly, St Veryan's House came to their rescue. Both the Audleys immediately and unashamedly expressed their interest in the building itself, its present layout and the stages of renovation and conversion which had turned it from a spartan farmstead into a comfortable holiday home. Indeed, they poked and pried in such an unEnglish way that Mosby was already halfway to the correct reassessment of their behaviour when Faith presented him with the explanation.

"It's having an old house of our own—we can't resist looking at other old houses," she admitted frankly, having cased the house with the eye of a burglar. "Having an old house is like having a hobby—most people are only too pleased to show it off to a fellow collector."

"But I thought every Englishman's home was his castle," said Shirley. "Drawbridge up—strangers keep out."

"Oh, not any more. Besides, most castles are open to the public nowadays."

Her husband gave a disapproving grunt, as though he deplored the lowering of the drawbridges. "Well, it was 'Keep Out' here in the old days, that's for sure. I'd guess this was a fortified farmhouse once upon a time, complete with loopholes covering the entrance."

"Gee—fortified against what?"

"Uninvited guests." Audley pointed towards the sea.

Mosby stared down the gorse-covered hillside into the combe which cut the cliffs almost down to the little rocky beach below. Suddenly, unaccountably, he remembered the passage he had been reading a few moments before in Keller—the letter written by the Roman bishop bewailing the dreaded barbarian: Unexpected he comes: if you are prepared he slips away… Shipwrecks do not terrify the Saxons: such things are their exercise… For since a storm puts us off our guard, the hope of a surprise attack leads them gladly to imperil their lives amid waves and broken rocks…

The red-orange glow from the setting sun had seemed to warm the landscape until this moment. But now it was cold, with the promise of darkness to come. And now he felt what the bishop had felt fifteen centuries ago—and what Audley knew too, so well that he instinctively echoed it in an unguarded thought, because they were both in the business of watching for uninvited guests.

"Ugh!" Shirley shivered. "I must remember to lock the door tonight."

Audley looked at her rather vaguely over his spectacles; either he had a low sex-drive or Faith Audley was damn good in bed, Mosby decided. Then he was aware that the pale eyes had moved on to him, and that they were no longer vague. He had the uncomfortable feeling that his thoughts were being read with a remarkable degree of accuracy.

"What my wife means," Audley began, as though the previous remarks had never been made, "is that the possession of old property differs from ownership of new… A modern house is in the nature of a consumer durable, like a refrigerator or a mass-produced car. It may have more than one owner, but it has a decidedly finite life-span. But an old house is different: you don't use its life up—it uses up yours.

As a historian you should understand that, Mr Sheldon." He smiled suddenly. "But of course you're not a historian, are you. I was forgetting."

Of course he was not forgetting at all: his approach was at once typically British and as transparent as that of a well-mannered but inquisitive twelve-year-old.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Mosby laughed. "Sorry to disappoint you. I'm a dentist."

"A dental surgeon," amended Shirley quickly.

"Same thing. Pull 'em, fill 'em, straighten 'em. A plain honest-to-God dentist." He shook his head. "My wife has this thing about my being a dentist—"

"I do not!"

"Sure you do, honey—admit it, don't fight it. Lots of dentists' wives have it. Hell, lots of dentists have it."

"Have what?" asked Faith politely.

"The feeling that dentists are medical students who couldn't quite make it. Nice guys, but only good enough for pulling teeth… And I shouldn't really say 'pulling teeth' either. A lot of dentists, if you mention 'pulling teeth' they get excited and very upset. You got to say 'extract' or they get uptight—

they're very formal about what they do because they have to impress you how important they are… Me, I don't need that—I'm not a retarded doctor, I'm a dentist."

"And that's important enough," said Audley gently.

"Sure as hell it is. When a kid comes to me and he's knocked out his front teeth—or when a young girl comes to me, and she looks at me and I look at her, and I know she can't get a boyfriend because her teeth are all wrong—then I don't need anyone to tell me I'm important. And what's more, I can put it right, and that's one hell of a lot more than some doctors can do with some of their problems, poor guys."

He grinned all round.

"Mose, honey," Shirley protested, "I don't think any of those things you said."

"You do so. It's just you haven't learned to be a dentist's wife yet, that's all."

Audley coughed. "And you can always cry all the way to the bank," he observed helpfully. "In my brief experience of American dentistry I formed the opinion that it was… ah… shall we say, well-rewarded?"

Mosby nodded agreement. "You're so right. Beats most doctors any day. And you can be a good dentist and not kill yourself with overwork—you can see your families and have your hobbies. When I get out of this man's air force, you just watch me do it."

Audley frowned at him suddenly. "This man's—? Did you say 'air force'?"

"Sure." Mosby nodded back cheerfully. "I'm over here with the good old USAF—the 7438th Bombardment Wing."

"Stationed over here?"

"USAF Wodden—in Wiltshire."

Audley looked at him thoughtfully. "F-llls, that would be—or is that Upper Heyford?"

"Upper Heyford? Man, they're the enemy. In the event of hostilities we take them out first—Upper Heyford first, then the Russians, that's the word."

"What my husband means," chipped in Shirley, "is that on the base they spend all their time trying to be better than Upper Heyford."

"And Alconbury—don't forget Alconbury. The hell with the Reds—just beat Heyford, beat Alconbury,"

said Mosby breathlessly. "More sorties, better RBS figures—that's what the General lives on. One day he's going to come to me and he's going to say 'For God's sake, Sheldon, get off your butt and pull more teeth than Heyford'."

Faith Audley laughed. "And what will you say to that?"

"Ma'am, I'll say the only thing wrong with aircrew teeth at Wodden is their molars are too worn—they sit all the time and grind them down worrying about promotion."

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Audley gave a small snort. "Not just aircrew teeth…" He gave Mosby an oddly lop-sided smile. "Now, in early mediaeval times molars were also heavily worn, I seem to remember reading somewhere."

"Don't tell me King Arthur's knights were worried about promotion, surely?" said Shirley.

For a moment Mosby was irritated that she had revived the discredited Arthur. But then she was only acting in her assumed character, and—more to the point—she was reacting to what was almost certainly an attempt by Audley to bring the conversation round to the subject which really interested him.

He thought for a moment. "I guess that would have something to do with their diet, eh?"

Audley nodded. "Coarse-ground flour, full of fine grit."

"That would do the trick." He had to make it easy for Audley to come to the point. "That would be your special period—the early mediaeval one, huh?"

"Not really, no. I'm a 1066 man—the Norman Conquest onwards."

"William Marshall," said Shirley. "My husband's been telling me about him. He was quite a guy."

Again Audley smiled, wholly relaxed now. It was like she had once said: the way to a man's heart wasn't through his stomach, it was through an appreciation of what interested him.

" 'Quite a guy'," Audley quoted back at her.

"Sounds like a cross between Winston Churchill, Audie Murphy and Babe Ruth—married to Jackie Kennedy," she led him on.

Audley laughed. "That's right! With a bit of Eisenhower and Henry Kissinger thrown in."

"Who's Babe Ruth?" asked Faith.

"A famous baseball player, love," said Audley. "For us the equivalent might be… say Barry John."

"Who's Barry John?" asked Shirley.

"A famous rugger player." Faith raised her eyes to heaven. Then she frowned at her husband. "I didn't know Marshall was a sportsman?"

"Jousting—tournaments, love," replied Audley. "Marshall was the top man on the circuit in his youth.

He unhorsed 500 knights in single combat in his lifetime, and even when he was 66 there wasn't one man at King John's court who dared take up his challenge of a trial by battle." He nodded towards Shirley. "Quite a guy."

"Like Sir Lancelot."

"Sir Lancelot…" As Audley repeated the name his glance settled on Mosby. "… now he would be more in your special field, I take it, Mr Sheldon?"

Mosby had the feeling he was being double-checked for any lingering sign of the Arthurian heresy.

"Not Lancelot, no," he began warily. "He's strictly twelfth century."

"You surprise me. There aren't many non-experts who could pin him down as a twelfth century addition to the legend. For most people he's as important as King Arthur—or even more important."

"For Queen Guinevere certainly," murmured Faith drily.

"That's right. The quest for the Holy Grail is a bit out of fashion; three-quarters of the population's probably never heard of it. But they can recognise a sensational case of adultery when they see one, they understand that all right." Audley paused. "But then you said you weren't an admirer of Arthur's, I remember now."

The very obliqueness of the approach—the conveniently delayed memory of the final exchange in the car

—confirmed Mosby's conviction that the Englishman was hooked, and more than hooked: he was positively bursting with curiosity.

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"I'm not. It's the period around A.D. 500 I'm interested in—the real history."

"The real history." Audley repeated the words, and then fell silent, waiting for Mosby to continue.

"Uh-huh," Mosby agreed unhelpfully. This time Audley was going to have to work for what he wanted.

"It's a fascinating period."

Pause.

"But poorly documented."

"That's what makes it fascinating."

Again Audley waited—in vain.

"The only new evidence is archaeological nowadays, and there isn't a lot of that," he said finally, with a hint of self-doubt in his voice.

"There sure isn't," agreed Mosby. "Our mutual ancestors weren't exactly well-endowed with the world's goods to leave behind."

"No consumer durables," said Shirley brightly.

Audley flashed her a microsecond's worth of exasperation. Then he cracked. "You mentioned the battle of Badon Hill."

"You mentioned a miracle," said Faith. "That's what interested me. My husband doesn't believe in them

—he's got no romance in his soul, I'm afraid."

Audley raised a finger. "I have never said I don't believe in miracles, I've simply never seen one myself.

But I do believe in percentages."

"Percentages?" Shirley cocked her head on one side, questioningly.

"What most people call good luck or bad luck, depending on how it affects them." He stared at Mosby.

"I take it that you've had a slice of good luck."

"A slice of good luck and a slice of bad luck… And maybe another slice of good luck now if you can help me."

Audley pursed his lips doubtfully. "I'm not an expert on A.D. 500, if that's what you're hoping."

"Okay—but we'll see, huh?" Mosby shook his head. "You can't be less of an expert than I am. I've read a lot of stuff—" he gestured to the piles of books "—but that just tells me how little I know."

"Well, just show him the stuff, honey," exclaimed Shirley with a hint of weariness. "If it doesn't mean anything to him, he'll say so." She smiled dazzlingly at Audley.

"All in good time, Shirl. Don't rush me." Mosby waved vaguely at her. "Fact is, David, I've always been interested by King Arthur—don't get any ideas, that's just the way it started—ever since I had to do an English course at College."

"You have to do English as well as dentistry?" said Faith.

"This was in pre-dentistry. We don't specialize as early as you British—pre-dentistry's a liberal arts curriculum, because there's a philosophy in the States says you shouldn't go into medicine—or dentistry

—which is very limiting, straight from secondary school. They figure it makes for limited people, so everyone gets a pre-professional education… Me, I got a smattering of French and some biology, and bio-chemistry and elementary physics."

"And English." She nodded. "It's a good idea."

"And English, right. Only our English teacher was a nut—a Tennyson nut," lied Mosby. "We had In Memoriam and The Idylls of the King until they came out of our ears. And The Lady of Shalott—

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The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,

And flamed upon the brazen greaves

Of bold Sir Lancelot.

—not bad for a retarded doctor up to his ankles in other people's teeth, huh?" He grinned at Faith. "Even if it is lousy poetry."

Audley cleared his throat; there was only one thing he wanted, and they seemed to be getting away from it. "And when did the light dawn on you—about Arthur?"

"When I got over here, not until then, to be honest." Easy does it. "There was this pilot in the recon.

support squadron, Di Davies. He was a real, expert—"

"For heaven's sake, honey—show him the stuff," snapped Shirley. "Let him make his own mind up."

Mosby looked at her for a moment, as though undecided, and then shrugged. "Okay. Maybe you're right at that. Seeing is believing, I guess."

He brought the long shallow wooden box from its resting place on the oak chest by the door and placed it carefully on the coffee table.

Pandora's box.

With his thumbs poised on the metal catches he raised his eyes to meet Audley's. "You just take a look at this."

He lifted the lid and stripped away the glass-fibre covering gingerly. "Glass fibre makes darn good packing, but it itches like hell if you get it on your skin," he explained.

He watched Audley's face intently for signs of the same sense of anti-climax which he in his ignorance had felt at finding Pandora's box full of corroded scrap-metal. But no muscle twitched either with surprise or disappointment as the Englishman peered over his spectacles at the strange collection of objects nestling in their glass-fibre bed.

Then he leaned forward and gently lifted one of them.

"Brooch…" He squinted at it more closely. "A bronze brooch… Celtic maybe?"

"That's very good." Mosby didn't have to simulate pleasure this time: it was still a relief to find that the assessment of Audley was on the button. "Go on."

"That's as far as I can guess." Audley replaced the brooch as carefully as he'd lifted it. "There's another brooch, much the same as that one." He shook his head.

"Two Celtic brooches," Mosby read from the specification, "one perannular, Plas Emrys type, with enamelled terminals; the other zoomorphic, R.A. Smith's Welsh type. Both late fifth century, early sixth."

He pointed to the next object.

"Obviously a sword, rusted to pieces," said Audley. "Too big for a Roman sword, so I suppose it's Anglo-Saxon."

Mosby shook his head. "No, it is a late Roman sword—a spatha. Probably a cavalry sword." He paused.

"Try the coins."

Audley pushed his spectacles up on to his forehead and brought his face to within six inches of the box.

"I can't really make out much detail—they're very worn. But I guess they're late Roman, except for the four very little ones, which must be sub-Roman."

Mosby nodded at Faith. "He's good, your husband is. They are late Roman: two maybe Theodosius. And the little ones are minims, 'very debased radiate imitations' the book says, only don't ask me what it Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

means. But similar ones have been dated late fifth century, early sixth."

Audley straightened up, gesturing to his wife. "You have a go, love. I think I'd rather stop while I'm winning." He looked down again, and then stiffened suddenly. "Except I know what that is." He pointed towards an object in the extreme right-hand corner of the box.

"You do?" Mosby looked at him admiringly. "Now I'm impressed. To me that was the weirdest bit of all, you know."

"It looks like a giant tea-strainer," said Faith.

"Or one half of an Ancient British brassiere," contributed Shirley. "Who was that Queen Somebody in the chariot, shaking her spear at Big Ben in London—the statue?"

"Boadicea," said Faith.

"That's the one. It's just what she'd wear—a bronze brassiere, C-fitting." She turned to Audley. "But you know what it is, huh?"

"I've seen one before, in a museum up north. It's a piece of horse-armour, one of a pair that protected the eyes like goggles."

Faith Audley bent over the box as though its contents had suddenly become alive for her. "Yes… well, those buckles—they look like horse harness too. They're too big to be belt buckles."

"Dead right. Harness buckles is what they are," said Mosby. "Spot anything else?"

"Nothing horsey. But there's a spearhead, it looks like."

"Spearhead, Saxon, late fifth century."

"Can they date spearheads like that? I thought they weft all the same."

"No, ma'am. To the experts one spearhead's as different from another as—as a Navy Colt is from a Peacemaker. And that one's a rare late fifth century specimen, seems… But there are some more horse pieces—those little rectangles could be armour of a sort—" he reached inside his coat-pocket for the type-written list "—it says here 'compare fragments of horse-armour found in Dura-Europos excavations'. I don't know where Dura-Europos is, but it sure doesn't sound British."

"I'm sure it isn't," Audley agreed. "It sounds rather East European—Rumania, maybe. That would be Dacia or Sarmatia, where the heavy cavalry came from—" He stopped abruptly, his gaze shifting suddenly from Mosby back to the contents of the box. For a long minute he stared at them, his eyes moving from object to object.

"There are also some bronze pendants, more horse stuff," Mosby consulted his list ostentatiously. "Sort of decorative trappings… plus a couple of cuirass-hinges—what they call lorica segmentata—"

What would they look at with the same fascination in fifteen hundred years' time? he wondered. What would there be to look at after other great catastrophes and upheavals had convulsed and changed the world, swept it clean and buried its wreckage to be dug up again and argued over?

Fragments of Vulcan rotary cannon, American, late 20th century… blade from axial-flow turbojet, Russian, same period… part of starboard flap, unidentified jet fighter, probably West European, mid-20th century…

"But that's infantryman's stuff, Roman. 'Very worn', it says here," He offered the paper to Audley. "See for yourself."

Audley lowered his spectacles on to his nose again and studied the list. " 'Very worn'," he repeated to himself, frowning. "Yes, well I suppose it would be…"

Mosby waited until Audley had checked each of the things against their more detailed specification.

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There was no advantage in pressing him towards a hasty conclusion: his whole training both as a historian and a counter-intelligence man was weighted against that, and outside his own particular field he would be doubly cautious.

In the end it was Faith who broke the silence. "What do you make of it, darling?" she said.

Audley's first reply was a non-committal grunt. "I don't know that I'm competent to make anything of it, I'd need a lot more information." He looked at Mosby shrewdly. "Besides, it seems that an expert's already examined it."

Mosby shook his head. "Strictly speaking—no, not one expert. Different people have seen different pieces, but you're the first to see this lot all together."

Audley considered the implications of that statement for no more than five seconds. "Am I to take it that it was all found together?"

Gently now. "Supposing it was?"

"Then I'd want to know where it came from." Audley's voice hardened. "Did you find these objects?"

Again Mosby was warned of a pitfall ahead by the change in tone, but this time he could see no reason for it.

"No, I didn't," he replied cautiously.

It was the right answer as well as the true one: Audley relaxed visibly, as though he had been saved from an awkward situation. "But you know where it comes from?"

"That's still a sixty-four thousand dollar question—no, I don't. I told you there was a slice of bad luck, and that's part of it."

"What I don't see is where the slice of good luck comes in," said Shirley. "I mean, it isn't as if there's anything valuable there, like maybe gold and jewellery. It isn't even as if there's anything new, either—

I've read your old list, and it's all stuff they've found already."

She was playing smoothly now, reacting to Audley's unwillingness to commit himself and feeding him with fresh opportunities for bringing matters to a head. But again it was Faith Audley who rose to the feed line.

She chuckled uncontrollably.

Audley frowned at her. "What on earth's the matter, love?"

The chuckle became a laugh. "I was thinking—" she shook her pale head at Shirley in sympathy "—oh, dear—I can see you're not used to archaeologists, but we know several, and—" she turned towards her husband "—do you remember Tony Handforth-Jones's friend and his valuable coprolites?"

"What's a coprolite?" asked Shirley.

"You may well ask," exclaimed Faith. "A valuable coprolite—I thought it was a semi-precious stone of some sort."

"Well, what is it?"

"Well, to Tony's friend it was a semi-precious stone," said Audley. "But to the rest of us it was… not to put too fine a point on it—and actually you can't put too fine a point on it—it was a piece of fossilised animal excrement. In this instance belonging to a Neolithic dog, I think."

"A piece of—" Shirley stopped.

For an instant Mosby envisaged his final report of this conversation, but then hastily abandoned the vision: that way hysteria lay. CIA headquarters in Langley was not equipped to evaluate dog shit.

"Ah… I think what my wife means is that you can't use the word 'valuable' in a conventional way when Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

it comes to artefacts like this, Mrs Sheldon," continued Audley, gesturing towards the box. "All these objects can be identified because they've been found in different places, and in themselves they perhaps aren't especially valuable. But all together in one place—I've never heard of a find like this before, never."

"That's what I told you, honey," said Mosby. "The Roman stuff, all worn out and mended, and the Celtic stuff, and the Saxon stuff—all in one place and not one bit later than A.D. 500. And all the rest of it—"

Audley stiffened. "All the rest of it? You mean this isn't all of it?"

"Hell, no—it isn't the half of it. I only brought the bits that would travel. There are more weapons, all broken—there are two or three Saxon swords, what do they call them—scramasaxes? And more horse stuff. And bones—man, you name it, I've got it."

"Bones?"

"Sure. Human and horse. I've got a skull with the prettiest depressed cranial fracture you ever saw, a classic blunt instrument fatality. And another with what looks mighty like a sword-cut."

"It sounds as though someone's been ransacking a museum," said Faith.

"No, ma'am, not a museum. Most of it's still got the original dirt on it."

"God Almighty! It's far worse than ransacking a museum," Audley burst out angrily. "Someone's ransacked the most important Dark Age discovery since Sutton Hoo."

So that was the key to that earlier hint of anger: he should have guessed from Barkham's reaction that Audley would be as incensed by the possible destruction of an archaeological site as excited by the appearance of the objects from it.

"You're dead right," he agreed. "Badon."

"Badon?" Audley stared at him. "You mean—the date's right… and the equipment's right?"

"More than that. I mean the guy who had this stuff reckoned he could prove it."

Before Audley could speak, the phone in the hall pealed out.

"Honey, someone's actually remembered we're alive!" Shirley leapt into her role as the non-pioneer wife. "Go answer it before they change their mind."

Mosby hurried to complement her performance with that of the obedient American husband.

"Sheldon here. Who's that speaking?"

"Gallagher—"

For an instant Mosby was unable to place Gallagher in the ranks of his CIA colleagues, who had been sprouting in the most unlikely places since Davies's death.

"— Is Harry Finsterwald there?"

The sandpaper voice helped him decide: Gallagher's cover as a moronic CAS sergeant, a character straight out of "The Flintstones', was if anything better even than Finsterwald's.

"Blanche? Hi, Blanche." He held the receiver back from his mouth and called through to the sitting room: "Honey, it's Blanche Castillo."

"Gee, that's great. Does she want to talk to me?"

"You got someone else there, huh?"

"Yes, Blanche, we're both fine. Do you want to speak to Shirley?"

"Okay. Has Harry and that nigger of his gone?"

"Yes, she has… No, honey—she's calling about some remedial treatment… Yes, Blanche."

"They heading back to base?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Yes. Are you worried about it? You sound worried."

"Worried is right. You know an enlisted man named Pennebaker? AIC Pennebaker?"

"Not so as I recall. Should I?"

" If you don't you never will now. He's blown his brains out."

"He—how's that again, Blanche?"

"He's dead. The British police found him in his car about ten miles from the base. Suicide, it looks like, they say."

Shirley came to the doorway. "Has Blanche gotten herself into a tizzy again, honey?"

"Uh-huh… I'm sorry to hear that, Blanche."

"Not half as sorry as we are."

"Was he on the short list, then?"

"For the Davies job he was on the short list."

"Is that a fact? I guess that's where the trouble is, you'll find."

"Where it was. He had no right to be off base, so it looks as though he decided to run before anyone caught up with him."

"Certainly looks like that… But you don't go along with the local dentist's diagnosis?"

"The local cops? Officially we do. Unofficially we don't."

There was a pause. " You know where this leaves you, fella? Right in the front line, that's where."

Mosby could see that all too clearly. If the dead man had been a professional planted on the base it would be near impossible to trace his movements and contacts off it, if he would have exercised professional care. But why had his own side silenced him?

"Just watch yourself, that's all. These bastards aren't playing games."

"I know—and I will, believe me, Blanche. It's nice of you to say so… and I won't forget to tell Shirley too. 'Bye."

He turned back towards the sitting room slowly, the force of Gallagher's final warning weighing heavily on him. If Pennebaker had been a KGB plant, and not some poor devil blackmailed into sabotage… but the Davies hit had been too cold-blooded for that. So if the man had been a pro, then he wouldn't have been thrown away on some penny-ante operation, but only on something big and nasty which made the loss acceptable if it delayed pursuit.

Shirley smiled at him brightly. "You solved her problem?"

He shook his head. "No. But she's going to have to deal with it herself." He looked at Audley. "We've got problems of our own, huh?"

Audley nodded. "I think we have, Mr Sheldon."

"Mosby. I know it's one hell of a name, but I've gotten used to it—David."

The Englishman grinned. "I beg your pardon—Mosby…" Then the grin vanished. "Before you tell me anything more I think I'd better make one or two things straight."

"Okay. Shoot."

"Well, for one thing, if there's been an unauthorised dig—and from what you've said it looks as though there has been—there could be the very devil of a row about it."

"Does that sort of thing go on?" asked Shirley.

"Not so much now. But there was a lot of unprofessional work with metal detectors not so long ago, and the thing became a bit of a public scandal."

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"Is it against the law?"

"It could be—especially if there are precious metals found which could be treasure trove, because they have to be reported to the local coroner. But in any case the land owner has to give permission, you can't just dig where you like."

"Well, supposing he did give permission?"

"There still could be a scandal." Audley pointed to the box.

"And with this stuff there will be scandal, I can promise you that."

"With that!" Shirley sounded incredulous.

"I think your husband understands." Audley glanced at Mosby quickly. "Archaeological discoveries can be front page stories in Britain—Fishbourne and Vindolanda were. And if… if this really did turn out to be the key to Badon—" he shrugged "—I don't believe in the King Arthur legend, but—"

"But one hell of a lot of people do, huh?" Mosby completed the sentence.

"Passionately. Lots of people have never heard of Badon, but there isn't a single person in this country who hasn't heard of King Arthur."

"It'd be headlines, in fact?"

"The biggest. And there'd be hell to pay—there's going to be hell to pay."

"But—hold on—" Shirley began hotly "—my husband didn't dig this up. He just kind of… inherited it, that's all."

"Inherited it?" Audley frowned at Mosby. "From whom?"

"Well, I was going to tell you—I started to. There was this friend of ours, Di Davies—he was a pilot in recon."

Audley caught his wife's eye. "Photographic reconnaissance," he explained.

"That's right. There's been one extra squadron on the base for the last six, seven months—RF-4cs—what you call Phantoms, only these are reconnaissance versions of the ships the RAF flies… And Di Davies was a real Arthurian nut, he even called his ship the Guinevere II. He came to me for a check-up one day and saw I was reading Keller—Keller's "Conquest of Wessex"—and we got to arguing about Arthur before I even had a chance of getting a look into his mouth. He said Keller was a no-account Kraut-lover and Arthur was the real thing. And what's more he was going to prove it."

"And how did he propose to do that?" asked Faith.

"That's just what I asked him. I said fat chance he'd got of doing it when the British had been trying to do just that for years, and they'd got no place—what'd he got that all the historians and the archaeologists hadn't got?"

"And what had he got?"

Mosby looked at her. "Well, for one thing he said he'd got the exclusive use of one Phantom, with a whole battery of cameras that can do things you wouldn't believe—forward oblique, low and high altitude panoramic, side oblique, vertical, automatic exposure control, image motion compensation, black and white, colour positive or transparency or infra-red, you name it, he'd got it. Plus all the flying time in the world as well as the know-how, he'd got that too."

Faith started to open her mouth, but her husband forestalled her. "So he could take good pictures, I don't doubt it. But if that's his material—" he stabbed a finger at the box "—is it?"

Mosby nodded. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Well, if it is he's come down to ground level." He paused, frowning. "You say you inherited it?"

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"In a way."

"What way?"

"What way…" Mosby sighed. "Last time I saw Di was— well, it'd be about a month back, with one thing and another. I went States-side on a conference, then he had some leave and after that I rilled in at Alconbury for a spell when a couple of the guys were sick there. And then he was on exchange duty with the RAF in Germany, at Wildenwrath, for the NATO cross-fertilization programme—it'd be all of two months, wouldn't it, honey?"

"You didn't see him, and I didn't see you," said Shirley. "But I saw him."

"That's the point. Go on, honey—tell it how it was."

She shrugged. "There really isn't a lot to tell. When Mose was away at Alconbury Di came to me and asked if we could store some boxes for him. You see, we've got lots of room and he was in a little cottage off the base where you couldn't swing a cat. He said he just wanted somewhere dry and safe, that was all."

She shrugged again as though she found the repetitiofi faintly boring; and lapsed into silence.

"For God's sake—" Mosby exclaimed with a flash of simulated irritation "—that wasn't all. I told you: just tell it like it was."

"Huh?" The look of incomprehension was pure Billy Holliday.

"The bet, honey, the bet."

"Oh, that."

"Oh, that—yes." Mosby gave Audley an apologetic 'I-know-she's-beautiful-but-lefs-face-it-she's-also-dumb' lift of the eyebrow.

"You and your silly bet. I can't see why you make such a fuss about it, honestly."

"Because it was for real, that's why."

"Oh—phooey." She scowled at him, and then smiled sweetly at Audley. "Well, naturally I asked Di what was in his precious boxes, had he robbed a bank or something."

Audley nodded at her encouragingly. "Yes?"

"I said if it was a bank job we'd want our cut. And he laughed and said not a bank, but something just as good. And we'd get our cut, only it was going to cost us. Or rather, it was going to cost Mose, because that was the deal—'one bottle of Napoleon Brandy, the finest that money can buy. No more and no less', those were his exact words, and he said I was to make sure and tell Mose that."

"We had this bet—" Mosby started quickly as Audley switched his attention. "We had this argument in the club one night, started when I needled him whether he'd taken any good pictures of King Arthur lately. And he said how would I like a little bet on it—a proper wager entered in the squadron betting book the barman keeps under the bar for guys who are ready to put their money where their mouth is."

He nodded at Audley. "And I could see he meant it one hundred per cent."

"So what did you say?"

"Hell, I told him I wouldn't bet on Arthur—because I didn't take candy from babies. Then he said 'Okay, so you won't bet on Arthur—so we'll bet on Badon, I know you believe that exists…' And he turned to the barman and he said 'Get the goddamn betting book out, Paddy, and write this down: Major Davies wagers Captain Sheldon one bottle of Napoleon Brandy, the finest that money can buy, that he will locate the site of Badon Hill during this tour of duty in the UK, his evidence to be assessed by a mutually acceptable third party.' And he signed it right there on the bar. One bottle of the finest Napoleon Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Brandy."

There was a moment's silence, then Faith spoke. "You mean—" she looked from one to the other of them "—but, David, you said that no one knows where Badon Hill was—or is?"

"No one does." Audley continued to stare at Mosby. "Where's Davies?"

"He's at the bottom of the Irish Sea, somewhere between Anglesey and the Isle of Man, with what's left of Guinevere II," said Mosby "But the way I see it, I've still got a bet to settle."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

VI

THEY'D STARTED OUT at the crack of a grey dawn, following a cross-country route which Audley swore was not only simple and free from traffic bottlenecks, but which also encompassed some of the prettiest West Country and South Midlands scenery. But it rained miserably and one way or another they managed to lose their way four times, twice in a bewildering maze of tiny roads meandering in the middle of nowhere and twice in the middle of towns which they had never intended to visit.

The upshot of these minor disasters was Shirley's frayed temper, the product of her offer to navigate ("Scenery? I'm too busy looking for signposts to see the scenery"), and a time-loss which forced them to snatch a hasty lunch in an Olde Englishe pub so ruthlessly olde Englishe that it could provide no ice to cool the tepid drinks with which they tried to wash down their bread and cheese.

Yet with a perversity that brought Shirley's temper to fission point, Mosby enjoyed the journey: its sheer unpleasantness, recalling the family trips of his childhood, made him feel more genuinely married to her than he had ever felt before. His innermost and most secret fantasy, that this was really simply Dr and Mrs Sheldon, two innocent American tourists on the track of Arthur, required no special effort of self-deception for a few precious hours. For that brief space of time it was more real than the reality.

And then, with almost startling suddenness, as though the weather itself had caught his mood, the quality of their journey changed. They left the rainy country behind and drove into sunlight, with only a few puffs of high white cloud to set off the blueness of the sky. And when Shirley complained of thirst they stopped for early tea at a little roadside cafe which turned out to be closed but which nevertheless opened specially for them, with the plump little old proprietress fussing about them in a totally uncommercial manner, producing freshly-baked cakes from her oven, hot and delicious.

The change in atmosphere seemed to confuse Shirley.

"I don't know what you did to get that red carpet rolled out for us," she murmured gratefully as they took to the road again.

"All I said was that you were tired and thirsty."

"I guess she thought I was pregnant or something." She looked at herself critically.

"Chance would be a fine thing… But it can be arranged if you like the idea."

She gave a discouraging snort.

"Arthur for a boy, Guinevere for a girl." Mosby hastened to hide himself behind a shield of flippancy.

"That'll be the day."

Indeed it would be, thought Mosby wistfully. The millennium.

But now the excitement of journey's end took hold of him. For some time they had been travelling in distinctively Cotswold territory, a rolling landscape of weathered slate roofs and dry-stone walls enclosing small, neat fields—slate and stone which even in its grey old age retained a hint of the pale honey colour of its youth. And as they dropped down off the ridge from the main highway (even the signposts had now become easy to see and simple to follow) he was reminded of Audley's phrase: It's deep in the Cotswolds. Deep was right; there was a deepness in this little wooded valley, a sense not so much of secrecy as of privacy, which had somehow survived beneath the treetops he'd glimpsed from the turn-off above.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

The only indication that the valley was occupied had been the pinnacles of a church tower partially hidden among the leaves, but there was in fact a surprising number of houses clustered around the church, all linked and interlocked by high stone walls which turned the narrow streets into miniature canyons through which Mosby nosed the big car gingerly, knowing that he'd have to back up if he met any other vehicle larger than a wheelbarrow. But there seemed to be no other vehicles to meet, no other life even; the place was as empty as a Spanish village in the depths of its siesta.

Before he realised it they had cruised right through the place, over a tiny bridge, and on to the hillside beyond.

"Damn it," Mosby muttered, "he said to ask in the village, but there's no one to ask."

"They're probably all having tea," observed Shirley unhelpfully. "Tea and cucumber sandwiches."

With difficulty he backed the car into a farm gateway, and after much manoeuvring between the restricting stone walls managed to get it facing downhill again towards the trees.

This time he knew better what to expect, but there was still no sign of life anywhere until he was almost out of the village again, and then the life wasn't human: his way was blocked by a magnificent Dalmatian sitting right in the middle of the road.

As he slowed to a halt, the Dalmatian showing not the least inclination to move, he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.

"Here's someone now," said Shirley eagerly. "Ask him quickly before he disappears."

The someone was evidently a native of the place, a swarthy young man with a shock of black hair and devil-slanted eyebrows, by his frayed shirt, stained corduroy trousers and enormous muddy boots most likely a farm labourer. But that at least meant that he'd know the answer to Mosby's question and the expression of amiable curiosity on his face was encouraging.

"Excuse me, sir—" Mosby smiled out of the car at him. "—I'm looking for Forge Close House. Dr Anthony Handforth-Jones."

The farm labourer pointed away towards the dog. " Inside,Cerberus— at once!" he commanded sharply before turning back to Mosby. The dog rose lazily and ambled to one side of the road.

"Dr Anthony Handforth-Jones," Mosby repeated.

"That's me," said the farm labourer, returning the smile. "You must be Dr Sheldon—I thought I saw you go by just now and I knew you'd be coming back, so I sent Cerberus out to hold you— get inside, you idiot—I'm sorry, but I don't want him to think he can have the job full-time, he enjoys it too much already… Just back down the road five yards, and the gate's open on your right."

Mosby backed and turned obediently into a gap in the ivy-covered walls which let on to a well-tended circle of gravel bordered on three sides by a house and its outbuildings and on the fourth by a towering beech tree under which several cars were parked. One of them, he recognised at once, was Audley's.

"I guess we're rather late, but we got lost four or five times," explained Mosby apologetically.

"I'm not surprised. You followed one of David's crosscountry short-cuts." Handforth-Jones eyed Shirley with approval. "We've learnt by bitter experience never to take the slightest notice of them. Saves a lot of time that way—any way but his way… But we suspected you wouldn't know that, so we haven't been expecting you. Besides, he's only just arrived himself."

"Did he try to follow his own short-cut?" asked Shirley.

"Not if Faith was driving," Handforth-Jones chuckled. "But actually I gather he stopped off on the way at Liddington Hill. Looking for King Arthur, I shouldn't wonder."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Evidently another non-believer, thought Mosby. But what was more interesting was that Audley had taken a quick and rather surreptitious look en route at Winston Churchill's Number One choice for Badon Hill without letting slip his intention. Except—the one thought came quickly after the other—it would be a mistake to assume that he was up to something already, it was far more likely simple proof that he was committed wholeheartedly to the project, even if it wasn't in reality quite the one he believed it to be.

"Don't worry," Handforth-Jones hastened to reassure him, clearly mistaking his expression, "he didn't find anything— there's absolutely nothing to find. It's just an iron age earthwork. A perfectly good iron age hill-fort, but nothing more." "You don't fancy earthworks?" Mosby remembered what Audley had said about Dr Handforth-Jones: Not a Dark Ages man, but he'll know who is. Just what else he might be remained to be seen, but that in itself was the sound of their plan getting into gear.

"Rather depends on whose earthworks. Not yours, I'm afraid." "Mine?"

"Arthurian—is that the correct term?" On so short an acquaintance Handforth-Jones evidently didn't wish to sound scornful, but the scorn was there beneath the surface all the same.

"David's told you?" Mosby probed.

"Only what he said on the phone." Handforth-Jones raised a bushy eyebrow interrogatively. "Trouble is, term's been over for three or four weeks now and there aren't many people around in the University. In fact, you only just caught us—we're off to North Africa at the end of this week… I've done the best I can at such short notice, but whether it'll be good enough is another matter. But then you're something of an expert yourself, David says."

"Me? Hell, no. I'm a seeker after knowledge." "You are?" This time both eyebrows signalled polite disbelief. "Well, I've got you Sir Thomas Gracey but I wouldn't call him an expert in your field… But then I'm afraid you've chosen a period in which the seekers rather outnumber the finders. In fact there are precious few finders—or even no finders at all, that might be more accurate."

Handforth-Jones concluded with a half-grunt, looking towards Shirley as though for confirmation of the obscurity of her husband's obsession. But Shirley was now working hard on her well-rehearsed representation of the Little Flower of Southern Womanhood Drooping for Want of Attention and Refreshment. Mosby wasn't sure whether it was wholly simulated in this instance, or whether the imminent prospect of meeting Sir Somebody Someone was helping to give it authenticity. But he was gratified to see that it worked as quickly on the British male as it did on the American: Handforth-Jones's casual manner at once became solicitous, as though what he had originally noted as a pleasant piece of decoration he now recognised as a human being, and a guest as well.

"Yes—well… well, you'd better come inside and seek some tea first. We can collect your bags later." He pointed vaguely towards the front door. "In fact I think we'd better hurry, or we'll be too late."

Mosby couldn't help looking mystified.

Handforth-Jones intercepted the look. "Not too late for Arthur, they're not going to find him just yet.

Besides, David refuses to discuss him until you're present. It's just that if we don't get a move on he'll have eaten all the cucumber sandwiches. He was getting through them at a fearful rate when I heard your car the second time—"

It wasn't the moment to catch Shirley's eye, Mosby decided. Not because she might burst into hysterical laughter, but because she might see her own doubts reflected in his face. Dropped in a steaming Asian jungle full of communist insurgents he knew exactly what he ought to do, the Fort Dobson training had seen to that; and she was no doubt ready at a moment's notice to mingle unobtrusively with the Saturday Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

housewives of Novosibirsk. But the Fort Dobson familiarisation instructors had failed signally to prepare them for cucumber sandwiches in the Cotswolds with Sir Someone, in pursuit of the Once and Future King.

Which, to be fair to Fort Dobson, was hardly surprising.

They followed Handforth-Jones into the house. Nothing surprising there, anyway: well-heeled upper middle class English, still rubbing along in English-style comfort despite swingeing taxes, fast depreciating investments and the envious eyes of their new Trade Union masters. Rugs, maybe Persian, on the oak floorboards; pictures, maybe original, on the walls; delicate china on delicate furniture.

The only thing out of place here was Handforth-Jones himself, clumping along in his heavy boots with the dog at his heels, both equally oblivious of their surroundings.

But that only served to remind Mosby of what Audley had said of the man, half admiringly, half warningly, entirely without rancour: a sharp fellow, Handforth-Jones, a great raiser of funds for his archaeological projects; a sharp fellow who, wearying of raising money, had solved his problems permanently by marrying it ("David, that's a gross, slander! It was true love"—"I didn't say it wasn't my dear"—"I mean Margaret, not her money"—"And I mean Margaret and her money. The two are not mutually exclusive"); above all, a sharp fellow who could add two and two and therefore must not be supplied with enough facts now to make that addition.

They passed through an arched door, down an antique-timbered passage towards another door, with the tinkls of teacups beyond…

And Sir Somebody beyond, too.

Like the man said, the Fort Dobson man, the jungle, the desert, the sea, you fight 'em and they'll beat you every time. So Lesson One is— you don't fight 'em.

But the Fort Dobson man had never come down in the Cotswolds.

Handforth-Jones held the second door open for them, and over Shirley's shoulder Mosby caught sight of David Audley popping the last fragment of a sandwich into his mouth. There was something about the action—maybe it was the way Audley examined his fingers in search of stray crumbs— that suggested it was also the last sandwich. But then with the relative sizes of Audley and the genteel English sandwich that figured.

Faith Audley rose from the chair beside which her husband stood, relief at their arrival plain on her face.

"You made it!" she exclaimed.

"In the end we did," Shirley admitted.

"Margaret—" Faith turned to a dark-haired replica of herself who had also risen at their entrance "—

Captain and Mrs Sheldon—Shirley and Mosby—"

Lesson One in Cotswold survival had to be Good Manners, but it took every last bit of his willpower to keep his eyes on his hostess and not on the mountainous figure standing behind her. It would have been easier if she'd been outstanding in some way, or at least different from his preconceived idea of what this setting ought to produce. But it was like she'd been designed to blend into the scenery.

Shake hands and murmur-murmur.

"I don't believe you've met Sir Thomas Gracey," she said at last.

Blessed relief: he could look at the mountain at last.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"No," said Mosby. That was for sure, because once seen, never forgotten. "I don't believe we have."

"Thomas is the new Master-designate of the King's College at Oxford," said Faith helpfully.

Of course he was: Mosby held on to reality with the convulsive grip of a drowning man. The ringers here were only Audley and Shirley and himself, the three who looked like what they said they were, but weren't. Or were something else very different first and last. Dr Anthony Handforth-Jones only looked like a migrant worker, and Sir Thomas Gracey only looked like he'd stepped out of the pages of Raymond Chandler.

"Hi," said Shirley, smiling up at an angle of sixty degrees, offering her small hand to be engulfed by Sir Thomas's hairy paw.

It only made things worse: Velma was meeting Moose Mulloy for the first time.

Moose Mulloy shook him by the hand in turn.

"Captain—" the grip was firm and gentle "—or should it be 'doctor'? When I was over in the States at UCLA I had the misfortune to fall into the hands of some of your colleagues, and I recall that American protocol says 'doctor'."

If there was a sting there, then the smile removed it. True, it was rather like being smiled at by a gorilla, and yet it was oddly attractive and as gentle as the handshake.

"Doctor or Captain or mister—but for choice Mosby will do… They took you for a bundle, eh?"

"They did very good work." The large head moved in a curious circular motion which was neither positive nor negative, but which was somehow expressive of qualified gratitude.

"They would. They're the best, if you like their sort of thing."

"What sort of thing is that?" asked Margaret Handforth-Jones.

"West Coast dentistry? That's where all the big techniques are—the real high-powered technical gold work, and crown-and-bridge, and precision attachments, it's all done in the West. They think they're the best, and they probably are—technically."

"You don't sound as though you approve," said Sir Thomas. "Yeah, well…" Mosby tailed off. It was a hell of a way-out thing to be discussing at this stage of the proceedings? and not at all what he'd expected.

"Go on," urged Margaret, "it sounds fascinating." "It does?" Mosby wondered at such politeness, but maybe it was the custom here to show an interest in one's guest's profession, even when it was a gruesome one like dentistry. "Well, I think maybe I have a prejudice… but to my mind they ignore the underlying physiology and pathology. I mean, they take the teeth, which are solid substructures, and they build complex and beautiful bridge work, but they ignore the physiology of the living substances which are supporting these teeth. And I have a feeling—I've no real evidence, but it seems like common sense to me—that if you overload the teeth with this sort of very expensive treatment, then you could be playing tricks on your mouth and there'll be a price to pay at the end of it."

"You mean the shortened life of the teeth themselves?" said Sir Thomas.

"You're absolutely right, that's exactly it. And I think—"

"Honey!" Shirley cut through his enthusiasm warningly. "You're going to make everyone's teeth ache before you've finished, you know you are—" She smiled apologetically at the company. "He has this thing about the West Coast—he'll talk about it obsessively for hours on end if I let him."

Which was true enough, reflected Mosby, aware suddenly that for one happy moment he'd forgotten who and where he was.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Then you really are a dentist?" said Handforth-Jones.

Mosby looked at him in surprise. "Is there any reason why I shouldn't be?"

"No real reason at all. Very useful thing to be… much more useful than an archaeologist, as my wife will no doubt remind us all." The archaeologist grinned amiably. "We just didn't believe you were, that's all."

"Why on earth not?" said Shirley.

"Oh, your husband isn't to blame," Sir Thomas hastened to reassure her. "It's more the company he keeps. We've learnt to have the gravest doubts about anything David puts his hand to."

"David?" Shirley frowned. "I don't get you."

"Actually, it was King Arthur who made us suspicious, as much as David," explained Handforth-Jones.

"The idea of David wanting to help anyone research Arthurian history—we just couldn't swallow that at all."

"Why not?" asked Mosby.

"Not his cup of tea." Handforth-Jones wagged a finger at Audley. "I remember what you said about the South Cadbury excavation, the one that Sunday paper called 'The Camelot Dig'… It was in this very room—and you said to call it that almost qualified for prosecution under the Trade Descriptions Act."

Audley shrugged. "A man can always change his mind."

"Not you, David, not you," said Margaret.

"I'm always open to conversion, Maggie. You're not being fair."

"Fair?" Margaret echoed the word derisively. "Why, you're the most unconvertible man I know—the original Doubting

Thomas. 'Show me the marks of the nails' ought to be your family motto."

Mosby sensed, rather than actually saw, Sir Thomas stiffen.

"Ye-ess… the marks of the nails," Sir Thomas repeated the phrase slowly to himself. "If I taught you anything years ago it was to be sceptical, and that was a lesson you learnt almost too well… Which does raise an alternative possibility. And a much more interesting one, don't you think, Tony?"

Handforth-Jones met the glance. "An alternative?" His eye in turn switched first to Audley, then to Mosby, then back to Audley again. It was like watching a chemical reaction. "Yes, I take your point. It could be a case of 'What has it got in its pocketses?' And that would be much more interesting. More logical, too."

"Are we playing some sort of game?" asked Shirley.

"They're always playing games of one sort or another," said Margaret. "What sort of game are you playing now, darling?"

"A logic game. David was down in Devon finishing off the great work on William Marshall. Not to be disturbed by his friends—right?"

"Right," agreed Sir Thomas. "And David, as we all know, is likely to be exceedingly scornful of the Arthurian interpretation of early sixth century history—right?"

"And Dr Sheldon is exactly what he says he is."

"So the peace and quiet of Devon is abandoned—"

"And William Marshall is abandoned—"

"And little Cathy is off-loaded on her grandma?" Margaret joined the game tentatively. "Would that be significant?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"It would," agreed Sir Thomas. "It signifies business, not pleasure. Not—" he looked at Audley narrowly

"—official business, because Faith is along for the ride, but business all the same."

"Arthurian business," said Handforth-Jones. "Because—"

"Because Dr Sheldon is what he says he is."

"And a man can always change his mind."

They were both grinning now, increasingly sure of themselves.

"A man who insists on seeing the marks of the nails. Only now he wants to know the latest score on Arthur: who's writing, who's digging." Sir Thomas paused.

"Pure as driven snow," murmured Handforth-Jones.

"Pure indeed… What have you got, David?"

Handforth-Jones nodded towards Mosby. "Or what has Dr Sheldon got. Something to change David's mind, perhaps?"

"And that would have to be… quite something, I rather think," agreed Sir Thomas. "What have you got, the pair of you? The Holy Grail?"

So the infallible Audley could miscalculate too, thought Mosby, taking a quick nervous look at the man.

Or, if he hadn't miscalculated the extent of their powers of addition, he'd underrated their ability to sum him up. The only reassuring sign was that at least he didn't look much disconcerted at the way they played their little games.

"Christ, but we're sharp this afternoon!" Audley acknowledged the look with a nod. "It's exactly as Mr Toad said—The Clever men at Oxford know all that is to be Knowed'."

"Not all, not quite," admitted Sir Thomas modestly. "But we do know you, David, we do know you. So what have you dug up now?"

'"Dug up'?"

"Figuratively speaking. I know you don't soil your hands with work in the field."

Mosby breathed an inward sigh of relief.

"Except that it would have to be dug up," said Handforth-Jones. "Nobody's going to turn up an Arthurian text now."

"Are people digging any Arthurian sites?" asked Audley.

"Not that I know of. There's some early Anglo-Saxon work going on, of course. There usually is."

"On an Arthurian site?"

"All depends what you mean by Arthurian."

"What do you mean?"

"God knows." The archaeologist shrugged. "Not my field, as you know jolly well… But say, late fifth century, early sixth for argument's sake."

Mosby felt it was time he joined the fray. "Where would you look for an Arthurian site?"

Handforth-Jones regarded him silently for a moment, as though adjusting himself to a damn-fool question within the limitations of good manners. " If I did…" There were volumes in that if "… I suppose it'ud be anywhere west of Oxford, south of Gloucester, east of Bath and north of Winchester and Salisbury." "Why there?"

Handforth-Jones worked some more at the adjustment. "Why there? Well, I suppose that would be the sort of area someone like Arthur would have to defend. The Anglo-Saxons started off in Kent and East Anglia—and they were already in the Middle Thames, of course. That's where the early burial evidence Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

is. And then they were coming up from the south, from Sussex and Hampshire, in the early sixth century, and north-east from Cambridgeshire."

"But someone stopped them."

Handforth-Jones pursed his lips. "Yes… well that's the theory, and there is some evidence, I agree. But when they did finally break through in the second half of the sixth century, this is where they did it—

battle of Dyrham, near Bath, in 577. The Britons were finished then: the West Country and Wales were split in two… So I see your Arthur as fighting somewhere in these parts, yes."

Audley gave a grunt. "But the Arthurian place-name evidence doesn't exactly fit that, does it."

"It doesn't fit anything. If place-names are anything to go by he must have been a superman. Place-names aren't worth a damn, if you ask me—"

"They have their uses, Tony," said Sir Thomas.

"Not for Arthur, they don't."

"Why not for Arthur?" asked Mosby.

"Because they're too widely spread, for one thing. You can find Arthur's Tombs all over the place, even outside the old boundaries of Britain—where the Picts were, for instance, in Scotland. What he was doing in Pictland, heaven only knows."

"Gee, but I thought he lived in Tintagel," said Shirley breathlessly. "The guide-book said so."

"Yes… well, that's what guide-books are good at," said Handforth-Jones. "But there isn't a shred of proof—historical proof, that is. Geoffrey of Monmouth invented the Tintagel bit in the twelfth century."

"In the twelfth—" Shirley squeaked with outrage, as though for anyone to make up history so far back in history was dirty pool "—he just made it up?"

"Honey, I told you," said Mosby, "Malory and Tennyson and the rest, they all made things up."

"There are half-a-dozen places up and down the country where he's alleged to be sleeping in a cave, waiting for the call to come and save us all," said Handforth-Jones. "But if the last year or two haven't been bad enough to wake him, I can't imagine what will… Manufacturing Arthurian history has been practically a national industry for the last eight hundred years."

"You don't say?" Outrage had given place to disillusion in Shirley's voice.

"I'm afraid so. But you shouldn't find that very surprising, your people have been doing much the same for the Wild West—Billy the Kid and Jesse James and that lot—and that was practically within living memory. It's much the same process at work."

"But they were for real."

"And King Arthur wasn't?" Sir Thomas shook his head slowly at Shirley, smiling a curiously old-maidish smile. "Mrs Sheldon, you must understand the company you are keeping, and then allow for it.

These two, in their own twisted ways were once among the very best students it has been my fortune—

or misfortune—to teach."

"He was a bright young don once upon a time," said Audley, "though you wouldn't think it to look at him now."

"But over the years David has become a hopeless sceptic," continued Sir Thomas, "and Tony is a professional devil's advocate. They are exactly the wrong persons to be let loose on Arthurian history."

"Oh, come off it, Tom," said Handforth-Jones. "I read an article not long ago—no, it was a book, a perfectly respectable published book, or a respectable publisher anyway—in which some otherwise Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

reputable professor claimed that if you fly over Glastonbury at a great height you can see various mystical signs on the ground—something to do with field-patterns and rivers and suchlike—that prove the existence of Arthur. All quite mad, but it's all regarded very seriously by those who believe in such things. That's the trouble with Arthur: I haven't the faintest idea whether he existed or not, because there isn't any proof. But he does make people who believe in him behave in the most extraordinary way. For all I know he did the Saxons a lot of harm. But I know he's done even more harm to the study of his alleged period. And that's not devil's advocacy."

The archaeologist's tone was a degree less bantering now, though as unrancorous as Sir Thomas's had been. Obviously the two men disagreed pretty fundamentally, but not bitterly because this wasn't their particular speciality, so that no professional reputations were involved.

"But you believe in Arthur, Sir Thomas?" Mosby inquired.

"Believe?" The huge seamed face screwed up as though the word was being assessed for flavour.

"Perhaps that would be too strong… You see, Tony's quite right about the lack of evidence—and the place-names are extremely suspect. Many of them have been made up in comparatively recent times…

some of the arth ones in Wales may simply mean 'bear', which has been distorted in much the same way as the 'wolf' names have been—Woodhill Gate in one of the side valleys off the Whitby Esk, for example… the locals pronounce it 'Woodill', which is a corruption from Woodale—it never did have a wood and it's a valley not a hill. And if you turn up a pre-Ordnance Survey map, there it is: Wolf-dale."

He paused and then shrugged. "Or again, they may be related to shrine-names for the Celtic goddess Artio—"

High above and far away, the distant sound of aircraft engines rumbled. Not Pratt and Whitneys of the F-lll or the Phantom's General Electrics, Mosby's well-tuned ear told him, but the turbo-props of a big transport. Hercules, maybe…