The Best of Men Read Online Free Page B

number of English and a mixed contingent of Germans and Swedes who’d been sent to help Charles Louis win back the Palatinate. Not a wise choice of mine, in retrospect.”
    “Why? You were finally fighting for a noble cause.”
    “Noble, perhaps, but doomed to failure, and partly by His Majesty our king, who wasn’t prepared to give his nephew enough funds to succeed. Poor Charles Louis lost hope of ever reclaiming his lands afterhis army was wiped out at Vlotho. You should have seen it, man. The fields were red with blood.”
    “And then what did you do?”
    Beaumont shrugged. “I fell in with another cavalry regiment under Bernard of Weimar. When he died, we were sold over to French command and pushed all the way south down the Rhine, taking town after town, and then across the river …” He tailed off, as if remembering, then shook himself. “Look, Ingram,” he said, gazing straight at his friend, “as you well know, there aren’t just Protestants fighting the Emperor – the French are as Catholic as the Spanish. And of those that are Protestant, there’s a host of little German states that shift alliances constantly, and of course the Swedes, who are still the most feared of the mercenaries. The destruction they wrought was incredible – most unchristian, you might say. It’s not a religious war any longer, if ever it was,” he concluded, in a bitter tone. “It’s a struggle for power – an obscene game played out all the way from the Alps to the Baltic Sea. So please don’t talk to me about causes. They make no sense to me.”
    Ingram belched more loudly, gagging as the oily taste of the liquor came back up into his throat. “I feel ill.”
    “Has our little talk upset your stomach?” Beaumont inquired, jokingly, but with an edge to his voice. Ingram did not answer, busy attempting to stand. His legs buckled and he nearly toppled over. “Let me help,” Beaumont said, grasping his shoulders to steady him.
    Together they negotiated a circuitous route over holy ground, finding at last the gate through which they had entered the churchyard. They had not gone far when Ingram was violently sick, though it made him no soberer, and he had to lean on Beaumont for the rest of the way. Some time afterwards he was vaguely conscious of a voice raised in argument, and an icy weight crashed over his head, depriving him of breath. Then he was lifted up bodily, and he knew that he was being carried upstairs to his bed.
II.
    Stretched out on his narrow pallet at the Lamb Inn, in Oxford, Sir Bernard Radcliff was too hot to sleep, and too uncomfortable, for the blankets were alive with vermin. He was also troubled by an irrational foreboding. He had hoped to see Walter Ingram in the city that day, but Ingram had sent a message to explain that he would not be coming until the following afternoon. An old friend of his had got back from the war abroad and they were to meet for the first time in years.
    Radcliff recollected Ingram talking about the friend, whom he had known since he was up at university. Heir to a wealthy lord, Beaumont was apparently a heavy drinker with an eye for women. In all likelihood some insolent, red-faced nobleman, Radcliff thought; just the type he had always envied bitterly for the ease with which they could pay for their vices and escape moral disapprobation, quite apart from punishment under the law. To enjoy their freedom and exalted rank in society he must see his plans come to fruition and meanwhile put up with his lowly status as a country squire, owner of a few boggy acres near Cambridge that he could not even afford to drain and make productive, and that he was half ashamed to show to his future bride. He would have to put up with Ingram’s friend, too: Ingram had insisted they be introduced, and was even hoping that the fellow might join their troop.
    Radcliff turned onto his side, trying to avoid the worst lumps in the mattress. It was true, he acknowledged, that he was in need of