Free Gunner Kelly by Anthony Price Page A

being true to his salt, to the death, like a good mercenary? Or was he a raider who came up the valley from the east, or over the hill from the south, to get his comeuppance and his just deserts, eh? Only time will tell!”
    So that was it, thought Benedikt: Audley could hardly have made it plainer if he had inscribed it in deeply-chiselled stone for his benefit.
    “So! Yes …” He met the big man’s stare with obstinate innocence, refusing to be overborne by it. “That is something which only your experts will be able to tell—and perhaps not even they will be able to provide an answer to satisfy you.”
    “Were there foederati in Germany?” Benje’s eyes were bright with intelligence. “The Romans had German provinces, didn’t, they? They must have had German soldiers—they had British soldiers in their army, you know.”
    It was impossible not to meet a boy like Benje.more than half-way. “There have been German soldiers in the British Army, young man. Our Hanoverian Corps in my grandfather’s time carried the name ‘Gibraltar’ among the battle honours on the flags of its regiments—‘ Mit Eliot zu Ruhm und Sieg’ was written on their standards: ‘ With Eliot to Glory and Victory’ —we helped to defend your rock once upon a time, under a General Eliot … And we fought in Spain, for your Duke of Wellington—”
    “Garcia Hernandez,” said Audley suddenly. “The King’s German Legion broke a French square there—the 1st and 2nd Dragoons, under Major-General von Bock … He’d already been wounded—it was after the battle of Salamanca—and he was extremely short-sighted, like you, Mr Wiesehöfer …. But he was a splendid chap, and those KGL regiments were by far the best cavalry Wellington had—the best ones on either side, in fact … the British were the best horsemen, but as soldiers they were undisciplined rubbish, most of them—Garcia Hernandez was the finest cavalry action of the whole campaign. Rommel would have been proud of them.”
    Benedikt looked at Audley in total suprise. The man had been in a British armoured regiment in 1944, of course, so he was a cavalry man of sorts—the dossier said as much. But it had also stated quite clearly that he was a medievalist when not an eccentric ornament of British Intelligence.
    Audley registered his surprise. “I had an ancestor there—at Salamanca … an idiot officer in our dragoons. He was killed earlier the same day, when they smashed the French in Le Marchant’s charge,” he explained almost shyly. “Family history, you might say … my mother’s family, Mr Wiesehöfer.” Then he nodded. “But you’re quite right about the Germans in the British service—Hessians in America, but most of all Hanoverians against Napoleon, whom they didn’t like at all… . They used to slip across the Channel and enlist in a depot not far from here, at Weymouth—the 1st and 2nd eventually became the Kaiser’s 13th and 14th Uhlans … ‘ Tapfer und Tret ? was the 1st’s motto at Salamanca and Garcia Hernandez—” he looked down at Benje “— Fortis et Fidelis to you, young Benjamin. Not a bad motto for anyone, foederati or native.”
    “ Brave and faithful ,” translated Benedikt.
    “So what was our Fighting Man?” Audley considered him, unsmiling this time. “We may never know—you may be right. All we do know for sure is that he came into Duntisbury Chase alive, and he stayed for fifteen hundred years—dead.”

III
    “A FASCINATING OLD mechanism.” The priest nodded towards the contraption of cog-wheels and weights and ropes which Benedikt had been dutifully studying for the last five minutes. “They say that it is the oldest clock in England still in working order. But that is not strictly true, of course, for it was silent for many years, and it has been extensively restored.”
    As though it had been listening for its cue, the mechanism jerked suddenly, and the ropes on the wall quivered, and somewhere far away and