“Merchandising,” Vanderdecker said. “I mean, just think for a moment, will you? Think of all the spin-offs from discovering a new continent. America cart bumper stickers, America doublets, the official America cuddly bison; no, as soon as the Portuguese realised what they’d got hold of, they saw that unless they got the franchising side of it sorted out before the story broke, there was going to be absolute chaos, marketing-wise. So they sat on it while the lawyers sorted out the contractual basis. And you know what lawyers are like; by the time they’d got down to a preliminary draft joint venture agreement, Columbus had landed and the whole thing was up the spout.”
Danny’s brain reeled. “How do you know all that?” he said. “That was before your dine, wasn’t it?”
“Or take the Gunpowder Plot,” Vanderdecker said quickly. “I could tell you a thing about that, make no mistake.”
“Go on,” said Danny, changing tapes. “I always thought…”
“I mean,” Vanderdecker went on, “Guido Fawkes was set up. He was the biggest fall guy of all time. You won’t find anything about it down at the Public Records Office, but there was big money involved there all right. Oh yes.”
“So?”
“So it was only a conspiracy by Buckingham and Salisbury to get hold of the biggest monopoly of them all. I mean the big one. None of your fooling about with Rhenish wine this time; I’m talking…” He stopped, and searched for the right word. “…Megagroats.”
“What was it?”
Vanderdecker looked over his shoulder. “Milk,” he hissed. “They were after the milk monopoly. They were going to set up this holding corporation—like the East India Company or something like that—with themselves as the money-men behind it; and this company was going to have the exclusive right to buy all the milk in England and sell it to the ultimate consumer.”
“You mean,” Danny croaked, “like the Milk Marketing Board?”
“Keep your voice down, will you? Yes, just like the Milk Marketing Board. So now do you see why Guido had to take the fall?”
“I see,” Danny whispered. “My God, that explains…But why did they want to blow up King James?”
Vanderdecker sneered. “They didn’t want to blow up the King,” he said. “If they’d wanted rid of Big Jim, do you think they’d have gone about it like that? Gunpowder, treason and plot? Don’t be so naive. Look, just ask yourself this. Why was it that shortly after Guido did the November-the-Fifth bit, the price of clotted cream rose by a factor of seventy-four point six per cent in most of Southern England.”
Danny whistled. “That much?”
“That’s where they went wrong, of course,” Vanderdecker said. “Too much too soon, you see. And when Hampden and Pym found out…”
“You mean the Civil War?”
“Do yourself a favour,” Vanderdecker said. “Take a look at the Putney Debates; you know, towards the end of the War, when all the Parliamentary leaders sat down and tried to make up a new constitution. Is there one mention, one solitary word said about an overall dairy strategy for the 1660s? Nothing. Don’t you find that just a little bit surprising?”
Danny’s mouth hung open like a dislocated letterbox. “So the Restoration…”
“You’ve got it,” Vanderdecker said. “All that stuff with the oak tree was just a blind. And then, when you get on to the Glorious Revolution, and after that the Jacobites, it suddenly starts to fall into place. After all, why do you think they called George III Farmer George? He was as sane as…” Vanderdecker considered for a moment, “…as you are, but…Anyway, there’s the story for you, if you really do want something big.”
Vanderdecker’s mouth felt dry with so much talking, and he turned away in search of whisky, but Danny grabbed him by the arm.
“Listen,” he said, “you’ve got to tell me. Was the Milk Marketing Board behind the Kennedy assassination?”
Vanderdecker raised an eyebrow. “You what?” he said.
“The assassination of President Kennedy. Was it them?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Vanderdecker said. “That was Lee Harvey Oswald.” He leaned over, plucked a bottle of Famous Grouse from Pieter’s hand and took a long drink. Danny narrowed his eyes. Was Vanderdecker telling the truth? Or was he in on it too?
Below the helicopter Cirencester flickered dimly, and Vanderdecker wiped the spilt whisky out of his beard. The next hour or so was going to be interesting, and he felt that it was probably just as well that he had stayed relatively sober after all. He glanced across at Danny, who was drawing complicated diagrams on the blank pages at the back of his diary, using one of those pens you get from Smiths which has four different colours in it. He was happy, the poor fool.
The crew were singing again:
We’ve been together now for four hundred and eighty years,
And it don’t seem a day too much.
There ain’t a captain sailing on the sea.
That we’d swap for our dear old dutch…
