The Beating of His Wings

11

Drawing his long knife, Lugavoy reached down and pulled the veil from Cale’s head to make sure he was going to kill the right person.

‘Thomas Cale?’ he asked.

‘Never heard of him,’ whispered Cale. Lugavoy, who was left-handed, drew back the long knife and stabbed at Cale who cried out, but then there was a loud THWACK! like an old woman beating a carpet of its dust. Trevor Lugavoy saw but did not understand that the lower half of his forearm, with the hand that had been holding the long knife, was now lying on the cloister floor. He raised his amputated arm and stared at the stump, utterly bemused.

Then the shock hit him and he sat down heavily on his backside. A blurred figure moved in front of him and struck Trevor Kovtun, who had moved directly behind Cale, in the chest. It is no easy thing to kill a man instantly with a sword but Kovtun was close to death within seconds of slumping to the ground. Lugavoy had moved onto his knees and had taken hold of his severed forearm, as if in the preliminary stages of putting it back on. Then he looked up and saw a creature whose very eyes and nose and mouth seemed to have been smeared across its face in colours of blue and red. Whether he saw anything more terrible after that cannot be known – no one returns from that place, scheduled or unscheduled.

Having finished off Trevor Lugavoy, something that, to Deidre’s vexation, took three strokes rather than one, she turned back to the astonished boy sitting knackered before her and said, ‘Are you Thomas Cale?’

Dog-weary as he was, Cale was too suspicious by nature to answer quickly. What if she was just a rival assassin and wanted to kill him herself? He panted more heavily to signal he could not speak and held out his right hand, palm forward, in a gesture of compliance. It didn’t work.

‘Are you Thomas Cale?’ she demanded.

‘It’s all right, Deidre. It’s him.’ It was Cadbury, with four alarmingly large men from the dangerous lunatic section of the Priory. ‘Marvellous work, Deidre. Marvellous, marvellous, marvellous. Now be a good girl and put away the sword.’

Meek as a little girl made from sugar and spice, Deidre did as she was told.

‘If I may say so,’ said Cadbury, to Cale, ‘you don’t look at all well.’

‘I’d say,’ a pause to stop being sick, ‘that things,’ another pause, ‘could be a lot worse,’ replied Cale, putting out his hand.

Cadbury pulled him up and looked him over, smiling. ‘I appreciate your desire to make up for all your wickedness but are you really sure you’re cut out for Holy Orders?’

Cale took off Sister Wray’s habit and picked up the veil Lugavoy had dropped on the pavement.

‘Stay here,’ he said to Cadbury and walked off wearily into the shadows of the covered walkway.

‘It’s all right, it’s me,’ he called out into the dark. ‘You’re safe, I’ve got your …’ he wasn’t sure what to call them, ‘… clothes.’ He placed the habit and the veil on a small section of pavement illuminated by the moon and then stood back. ‘The face thing’s a bit torn. Sorry.’ Nothing happened for a moment and then a shockingly white arm moved into the light and pulled the habit and veil slowly into the dark. There was a short period of rustling.

‘Are you all right? Not hurt?’ said Sister Wray from the shadows.

‘Not hurt.’ A pause. ‘Are you all right?’ Cale asked her.

‘Yes.’

‘Somebody rescued me. Do you think it was God?’

‘After you told him to his face he didn’t exist?’

‘Perhaps he wants to save me – for better things.’

‘You must think pretty well of yourself.’

‘As it happens I don’t think it was God – the woman who saved me, she doesn’t look like she’s had much to do with angels. Perhaps the devil was behind me all the time.’

‘So,’ said Poll, from the dark. ‘So you’re still the chosen one and not just a nasty little boy with a gift for bloodshed.’

‘I was hoping,’ replied Cale, ‘that you might have taken one in the gob. You’d better come and meet our redeemers.’

But halfway down the cloisters he changed his mind. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t. There are people, I don’t know … it’s better not to come to their attention.’

He vanished into the dark but Sister Wray decided she’d had enough of doing as she was told by Cale. She eased forward until she was able to hide at the left-hand corner of the cloister. Cale was talking to a tall man, elegantly dressed in black, and next to them a woman with her back to Sister Wray who had clearly lost interest in what was going on around her and was looking away into the darkness at the back of the cloister. When Deidre Plunkett turned around, Sister Wray drew back into the shadows and began to take the view that Cale had been right. It was a face best avoided.

‘We can’t stay,’ said Cadbury. ‘There was some unpleasantness earlier in the town and it’s time we weren’t here. She needs a scrub and to get out of these clothes.’

‘What about the bodies?’

‘Considering they were about to kill you before we stepped in I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask you to sort them out. Don’t think you have to thank her, by the way.’

‘Oh, yes. Thanks,’ said Cale, calling out to Deidre, who merely stared at him for a moment and then looked away again. He would have offered to take his rescuers to his room but it was clear from the presence of the watchmen that they were going nowhere. Then the furious Director of the Priory arrived and was about to demand an explanation when she saw the two dead men and the dismembered arm followed by Deidre Plunkett’s face. The blood drained from her lips, as well it might, but she was made of heavy-duty cloth. ‘Come here,’ she said to them both, and backed away from the cloisters’ entrance.

For several futile minutes Cale and Cadbury tried to explain what had happened until they were interrupted by Sister Wray. ‘I was a witness and participant. Those two men came to kill us both. Why I can’t say, but it was completely unprovoked and had the …’ she paused, ‘… young woman and this man not intervened it would be our bodies lying in the cloister.’

‘And what,’ said the Director, ‘am I supposed to do with the bodies that are here?’

‘I’ll deal with them,’ said Cale.

‘I’m sure you will,’ said the Director. ‘I’m sure that’s the kind of talent you have in abundance.’

‘Call the magistrate,’ said Sister Wray.

‘He’s in Heraklion,’ replied the Director. ‘He couldn’t get here until late afternoon tomorrow at best.’ She looked at Cadbury and Deidre. ‘We’ll have to keep you in custody until then.’

‘I don’t think that I, nor my young colleague,’ Cadbury nodded at Deidre, ‘would be at all happy about that.’ The news of the three deaths in the market had obviously not yet reached the Priory. Once it did they were cooked: there would be no explaining away those deaths as well as the Trevors. He started to consider their chances of cutting their way out of the Priory.

‘They can stay with me in my room,’ said Cale. ‘The windows are barred and you can put as many guards outside as you like. I think that’s fair.’

The Director had the sense to be unnerved by the prospect of actually arresting Cadbury and the weird young woman – if that was what it was. ‘I give you my word,’ said Cale, something that meant absolutely nothing but which, he noted, seemed to satisfy many people. But wanting the easiest outcome persuaded the Director. She turned to the most senior of the guards.

‘Show them to Mr Cale’s room. You and all of your men remain outside until I have you relieved.’ She turned to Sister Wray. ‘I’d like to talk to you in private.’

Five minutes later the three of them had been delivered to Cale’s room and the door locked. Before the key had turned Cadbury was checking the impressive looking bars on the window. He turned to Cale.

‘And we’re better off here because?’

‘Because I don’t care to have bars on the window if I can do anything about it.’ Cale took a shiv from the drawer in the single desk and started stabbing at the wall. It crumbled surprisingly easily, because it was made of gravel and dust stuck together with soap, to reveal a metal stud, the anchor to bars that looped through the wall under the window itself. ‘I’ve been loosening them off for a while. You can be out in ten minutes.’

‘How far down is it?’

‘About three feet. They haven’t kept dangerous head-bangers in here for years. The bars look impressive but inside the wall it’s mostly rust.’

‘Not bad,’ said Cadbury. ‘Forgive me for doubting you but one of my greatest faults is lack of trust.’ He looked over at Deidre. ‘Got any soap?’

It took Cadbury nearly half an hour of sullenly endured scrubbing to rid Deidre’s face of the greasepaint while Cale dug away at the already weakened wall. What gradually emerged from the soap and water was a more familiar Deidre – pale, thin-lipped but still mad-eyed. They put her in one of Cale’s suits; it was baggy, with the trousers held up by a belt that they had to cut out an extra notch a good six inches further on.

During the ten minutes more it took to remove the bars, Cale mined Cadbury for information about the Two Trevors. ‘I can’t be sure it was the Redeemers who sent them but for years they operated out of Redeemer territory for a price: if you want a peaceful retirement under our protection do what we ask when we ask it.’

‘There are other people who don’t care for me,’ said Cale.

‘Not who could get to the Two Trevors or afford them if they could. It was the Redeemers.’

‘You can’t be certain.’

‘Certain. No.’

‘If they were so wonderful, how come a little girl killed them?’

‘She’s not a little girl and the Trevors got unlucky. One job too far.’

‘The thing about your friend …’

‘She’s not my friend.’

‘… is she looks sort of familiar.’

Cadbury changed the subject.

‘You might want to think about coming with us.’

‘Me? I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘I don’t think the old dear who runs this place will think that.’

‘I’m not worried about her.’

‘You can’t stay here. They won’t stop.’

‘I know the Redeemers a lot better than you do. I’ll have to have a think.’

‘Got a message for Kitty?’

Cale laughed. ‘Tell him I’m grateful. And to you, and your mad friend.’

‘I told you, she’s not my friend, and I’m not sure Kitty is looking for gratitude exactly. You might be safer in Leeds than anywhere else.’

‘P’raps I’ll look you both up next time I’m there.’

And that was that.

Next morning the Director arrived with Sister Wray and flew into an almighty rage. ‘They overpowered me,’ said Cale, and that was all. There was much shouting and a good deal of personal abuse, and even more when it became clear that the two fugitives had been responsible for three further deaths, all of which had to be explained to the magistrate from Heraklion. They locked Cale up for three days, but as he had patently had nothing to do with the murders in the town and, as Sister Wray pointed out with considerable force, he’d been the intended victim in the cloisters, they were forced to let him go. The Director gave Cale one week’s notice to leave on the entirely justifiable grounds that he posed a serious risk to everyone at the Priory.

‘To be honest,’ he said to Sister Wray, ‘I was a bit surprised she gave me as long as that. I should thank you, no?’

‘I thought it was only fair,’ she said. ‘Where will you go? Don’t tell me.’

He laughed at the change of direction. ‘Not sure. I could go north but I hear it’s grim up there. Besides, Bosco won’t leave me alone wherever I go. Probably Cadbury was right, I’m safer in Spanish Leeds than wandering about in the bundu.’

‘I don’t know what a bundu is but you’re not well enough to be on your own – or anything like it.’

‘Then it’s settled. Leeds it is.’

‘Can I ask you to promise me one thing?’

‘You can ask.’

‘Stay away from that Kitty the Hare person.’

‘Easier said than done. I need money and power and Kitty has both.’

‘IdrisPukke cares for you – stick with him.’

‘He doesn’t have money or power. And he has his own problems.’

There was a moment’s silence. Sister Wray went over to a cupboard in which there were many small drawers and opened two of them before placing two packets on the table, one sizeable, the other small.

‘This is Tipton’s Weed.’ She opened the packet and poured a tiny amount into the palm of her hand. ‘Use this much in a cup of boiling water, let it cool and drink it every day at the same time. You’ll be able to get it from any herbalist in Spanish Leeds but they will call it Singen’s Wort or Chase-Devil.’

‘What’s it for?’

‘It helps to chase away the devil. It will help you feel better – even things out. If you start to feel dizzy or sensitive to the light cut down the dose till it stops. It’s good for wounds as well.’

She tapped the other packet twice. ‘This is Phedra and Morphine. I’ve thought more than twice about giving you this.’ She opened the packet and tipped a tiny amount of green and white speckled powder onto the table then, picking up a small knife, separated enough to cover a fingernail. ‘Take this when you’re desperate. As desperate as you were the other night, not otherwise. It will give you strength for a few hours. But it builds up in the body so if you take it for more than a few weeks what you’ve suffered over the last few months will feel like a minor inconvenience. Do you understand?’

‘I’m not stupid.’

‘No. But the time is coming, I guess, when it may seem the lesser of two evils. Take it for more than three weeks in all – I mean twenty doses – and you’ll find out it probably isn’t.’

‘Take it all now,’ said Poll. ‘Put yourself and the rest of the world out of its misery.’

Telling Poll to keep quiet, Sister Wray took Cale through the boiling up of the Tipton’s and made him count out the Phedra and Morphine into twenty lots so he could see how little he could take. There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in.’ One of the Priory servants entered.

‘Please, Sister,’ said the girl, clearly excited. ‘A beautiful woman in a carriage is asking for Thomas Cale. She has soldiers and servants dressed a la mode and with white horses. The Director says he’s to come at once.’

‘Who do you …?’ But Sister Wray was already talking to Cale’s back.

12

It’s one of the greatest mistakes of the cultivated person to take it as given that because they have sophisticated minds they also have sophisticated emotions. But what kind of soul feels sophisticated hatred or sophisticated grief for, say, a murdered child? Is the broken heart of the educated and refined person different from that of the savage? Why not say that the enlightened and knowledgeable feel the pain of childbirth, or the kidney stone, in a different way to unpolished commoner or chav? Intelligence has many shades, but rage is the same colour everywhere. Humiliation tastes the same to everyone.

As for Cale’s heart, it was as much a sophisticated as a savage thing. No grand master in the game of chess possessed the subtle skills that Cale had at his command when reading a landscape – how to defend or to attack it, or to adjust that reading in a second because of a change in the wind or rain, how to finesse the known and unknown rules of a battle that can be altered by the gods at any time without consent or consultation. Life itself, in all its horror and incomprehensibility, plays out in even the simplest skirmish. Who was cooler or more intelligent than Cale in this most terrible of human trials? But this prodigy of the complexity of things rushed down the stairs, heart bursting with hope: She’s come back to throw herself on my forgiveness. Everything will be explained. I’ll turn her down and threaten her. I’ll treat her as if I can’t remember her. I’ll wring her neck. She deserves it. I’ll make her weep.

Then sanity of a kind returned: What if it’s not her? What if it’s someone else? Who else could it possibly be? She wants something. She won’t get it. And on it went, the madness breaking inside him as both his wild and intelligent hearts contended with each other for command. He stopped and found himself breathing hard. ‘Get some grasp,’ he said aloud. ‘Control yourself, take it easy. Simmer down and keep your head.’

He was sweating. Maybe, he thought, it was that tea she gave me. Don’t go in like this. Then the insanity returned. Perhaps she’ll leave if I come late. Perhaps she happened to be passing and she came in on a whim and she’s already regretting it. She might just leave, worrying about what I’ll do. And then the greater madman visited. She’s come to laugh at me, knowing she is safe now that I’m sick and weak.

But pride of a kind won out over even madness, fear and love. He went back to his room, washed quickly in the basin – he needed to – and changed his shirt. Slowly, because of the fear that he might again sweat too much, he made his way to the Director’s office. Another moment outside the door to gather himself. Then the firm knock. Then the entrance before the words ‘Come in’ were halfway out of the Director’s mouth. And there she was – Riba not Arbell. Break, fracture, split, fragment and smash. What did his poor heart not endure? It was all he could do to stop a cry of dreadful loss. He stood quite still, staring at her.

‘Would you mind terribly if I spoke to Thomas alone?’ she said to the Director. In other circumstances Cale would have been astonished, even if pleasantly, at the gracious tone of Riba’s request and the clear understanding by both women that it could not be confused for the kind of question to which the answer might be ‘No’. The tone of her voice was one of charming and implacable authority. The Director simpered in obedience to Riba, looked malignantly at Cale and left, closing the doors behind her. A silence followed, weighty with strange emotions, all of them horrible.

‘I can see you were expecting someone else,’ she said at last. ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s true that she was sorry to see him so disappointed and so ill, the circles around his eyes so dark – but it was also true that she was put out at being the cause of such terrible disappointment. It was not flattering, particularly when she had expected to surprise him with delight at her wonderful story of love and transformation. But in this legend of pain, misery, slaughter and madness it is as well to be reminded that everything is not for the worst in the worst of all possible worlds, a story where today is bad, tomorrow dreadful until at last the most appalling thing of all happens. There are happy endings, virtue is something rewarded, the kind and generous get what they deserve. This is how it was with Riba. She came into the story of poor, tormented, miserable Cale in the most revolting of ways: bound hand and foot and waiting to be eviscerated in order to satisfy the curiosity of Redeemer Picarbo concerning the bodily source of the monstrous impurity that possessed all women. Riba knew perfectly well, because Cale had constantly reminded her, that he was history’s most reluctant saviour and that if he’d had it to do again he would have left Picarbo to his repellent investigations. She didn’t really believe he’d have left her to die, at least she probably didn’t believe it. You never quite knew what he was capable of. After this narrowest of squeaks, her climb to prominence was remarkably easy. She was a beautiful girl, if unusually plump, but in Memphis beauty was commonplace. Helen of Troy had been born in Memphis and was generally considered to be rather plain compared to others. What brought Riba to the attention of a great many men in the city was that she was kind, good-natured and intelligent, but also that her body, sonsy to the point of fubsy, expressed in flesh the generosity and comfort of her heart. Servant to the hated Arbell (though not hated by Riba), she had been caught as much as her mistress in the fall of Memphis and the dreadful flight from the Redeemers, in which so many of the Materazzi who survived Silbury Hill died from hunger and disease. Though she was still Arbell’s servant when those that remained of the Materazzi stumbled into Spanish Leeds, it was inevitable that her easy charm and wit would bring her the attention of men of every kind and class. And, unlike the Materazziennes, she had the overwhelming advantage of liking men rather than despising them. Such choice she had! She was adored by coal-carriers, butchers, lawyers and doctors, as well as the aristocrats of Memphis and Spanish Leeds. Fortunately for her peace of mind, from among this array of possible futures (bigwig or nonentity?) she fell in love with Arthur Wittenberg, Ambassador to the Court of King Zog and only son of the President of the Hanse, the syndicate of all the wealthy countries of the Baltic Axis. His father opposed their marriage, understandably, until he met her and was so charmed he almost forgot himself and was on the verge of attempting to betray his son in the manner of a Greek tragedy before he pulled himself together and determined to behave. How would storytellers and makers of operas live if everyone was so restrained? At any rate, in a matter of a few months she rose from starving nobody to becoming a woman of vast wealth and enormous political influence.

Still, despite Cale’s shock she was sympathetic to his disappointment – if a little piqued concerning her hurt vanity – and slowly allowed him time to pull himself together by chatting away amusingly, and self-deprecatingly, about her rise to fortune. After an hour or so, Cale was himself again and able to hide his disappointment and his considerable shame over the depth of that disappointment. He was, in the end, pleased to see her, amused by her current good luck while also considering how it might be made use of. She chatted away about the past and had a fund of amusing stories to tell about the absurdity of life amongst the nobility.

‘Was Arbell at your wedding?’

‘She was, and very happy to be so.’

‘I’m sure she probably fitted you in before popping over to the pigman to help feed his porkers. I hear they’re very hard up, the Materazzi.’

‘Not quite so much any more. Conn has become a great darling of the King and he listens to no one else. There’s money about and a position discussed.’

‘What?’

‘The skinder is that he’ll be made second-in-command to General Musgrove to run the army of the entire Axis – if he can get them to agree to fight the Redeemers.’

‘Will they?’

‘Arthur says they’ll talk but do nothing until the Redeemers make a move, by which time it’ll be too late.’

‘Is Vipond employed?’

‘Yes, but not with any of the power he wants or needs. The Swiss have put him out to pasture, Arthur says, and IdrisPukke eats the grass with him.’

Cale looked at her, sizing up any change her good luck might have made in her sympathies towards him.

‘Do you trust your husband – his ability, I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then do him a good turn and introduce him properly to Vipond and IdrisPukke. He’ll see that they’ve been about their business and he needs them. They need his influence and money.’

‘He’s my husband. I can’t tell him what to do.’

Cale nodded and remained silent, allowing her to realize she had disappointed him, and deeply. As they walked through the gardens, avoiding the cloister, he chatted about the birds and the flowers and what it was like at night to look up at the milk-white road of stars that wheeled across the sky. There was a pause. He laughed. That was good, she thought, he’d let go of the business about Vipond and IdrisPukke.

‘It’s a funny old world,’ he said, casually.

‘Because?’

‘Well, I was thinking how very singular and spooky-like life is – that now you’re a beautiful lady with a great big nabob to look after you, when hardly any time ago you were lying on a wooden table bound and beaten and about to have your giblets spilt all over the shop. What if I’d kept on walking? I was a bad boy in those days – I might have. But I didn’t. I turned around and I …’

‘Very well. Enough. You’ve made your point.’

Cale shrugged. ‘I wasn’t making a point. I was just talking about old times.’

‘I’m well aware of how much I owe you, Cale.’

‘So am I.’

And with that they walked the remainder of the gardens in silence.

The next day he asked Riba to let him return with her to Spanish Leeds.

‘Is it safe?’ she asked.

‘For you?’

‘For you to go back. Are you well enough?’

‘No – I’m not well enough. But it’s not safe here or anywhere. I thought if I got far enough away he’d leave me alone but Bosco’s going to come for me whatever I do.’

Cale was wrong about this but his wrong conclusion was the only reasonable one.

‘You’re going to destroy the Redeemers?’

‘You make me sound mad when you put it like that. Give me another choice and I’ll take it.’

‘You must have travelling clothes and a nice hat.’

‘I’d like a nice hat.’ He thought for a minute. ‘Will I be allowed inside the carriage with you?’

‘You must be more agreeable if you’re going to do great things. Arthur has a lot to teach you. He knows you saved my life and is desperate to repay you. Don’t throw his goodwill away.’

He laughed. ‘Teach me how to behave on the journey. I’ll listen, I promise.’

‘You’d better – your fists can’t protect you now.’

He looked at her. Baleful would be the word.

‘Sorry,’ she said, and laughed. ‘My good luck has made me puffed up and snooty. That’s what Arthur says.’

‘When can we leave?’

‘Tomorrow morning. Early.’

‘How about tomorrow morning, late?’

But even late morning was bad for Cale. He made it glass-eyed into the coach but laid himself down on the padded seat and fell asleep for more than six hours.

Watching him from a distance was Kevin Meatyard, who had realized that the rumours of the deaths at the Priory must be true and that he was now unemployed as well as unprotected in a town where he was wanted, admittedly for a murder he had not committed. No one in Cyprus was to hear of him for many years, but when they did it was in the hope that he had forgotten all about them. But that’s another story.

The carriage carrying Cale and Riba stopped after four hours’ travel but he refused to be disturbed and Riba and her entourage ate well without him. He woke up slowly an hour after they restarted the journey but it was more like regaining consciousness than emerging from restful sleep. He did not, could not, open his eyes for a good twenty minutes. But there was something pleasurable to be heard: Riba singing and humming softly to herself a song that was the very latest thing in Spanish Leeds.

Please tell me the truth about love,

Is it really true what they sing?

Is it really true what they sing?

That love has no ending?

Come into the shade of my parasol,

Come under the cover of my umbrella,

I will always be true to you,

And you will love me, my love, for ever.

Oh tell me the truth about love,

Is it true or is it lies,

That first love never dies?

But please don’t tell me if it isn’t so,

Please don’t tell me if it isn’t so,

For I don’t want to know,

For I don’t want to know.

He sat up slowly and she stopped singing.

‘Are you sick?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you very sick?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was afraid to ask you, do you have any news of the girls?’

‘Girls?’

‘The girls I was with in the Sanctuary. Do you think Bosco has killed them already?’

‘Probably not.’

She was surprised at this and hopeful.

‘Why?’

‘He has no reason to kill them.’

‘He has no reason to keep them alive.’

‘No.’

‘I thought,’ she said, after a silence, ‘he might be keeping them to use against you.’

‘Not any more, obviously.’

‘Can I do anything to help them?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘You know you can’t help them so why keep asking if you can? Feeling guilty?’

‘For being alive and happy? Sometimes.’

‘But not all the time.’

She let out a sigh.

‘Not all the time. Not even most of the time.’

‘Just enough guilt to make you feel better about yourself and make it all right to enjoy your happiness. Go ahead. They can’t be happy, so be happy for them.’

‘It’s not up to you to tell me what to do. I’m a very important person and you have to do as I say.’

He laughed. ‘Yes. I’ve decided to do as I’m told from now on. A beautiful rich woman who owes me her life – I could take orders from someone like that.’

‘Well, you can’t kill everyone you don’t like any more. I meant it when I said you’ll have to learn to be agreeable.’

‘Agreeable?’ He said the word as if it were one he’d heard before but never expected to need in any practical way. It was good to see Riba again and it was a pleasure to see her so well accounted for. He didn’t know whether to say it but he said it anyway. ‘I found out what Picarbo wanted you for, what he was doing.’ He told her plainly and quickly.

‘Horrible,’ she said softly, ‘and mad.’

‘Bosco thought pretty much the same – that he was mad, I mean – that’s why he might keep the rest of them alive. Bosco disapproved.’

‘You don’t seem,’ she said, ‘to think of Bosco as badly as you used to.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. I understand him better and I’d like to understand him even more before I cut his head off.’

13

Far away from the Four Quarters, in the great, green, greasy jungles of Brazil, a storm of measureless power is approaching its height. Winds blow, rain lashes, there is lightning and thunder enough to crack open the world – and then it moves into decline by a fraction of a fraction of an infinitesimal not even a puff of air strong enough to blow a single speck of dust off a slippery slope. The great storm is beginning to disperse.

Redeemer General Gil, now with the honorary title of Defender of the Holy Glee, came into Pope Bosco’s war room and bowed slightly less humbly than was owed.

‘Anything?’

There was no doubt, despite the fact that they were supposed to be going about the business of bringing the world to an end, that this enquiry referred to Thomas Cale.

‘As I told Your Holiness yesterday, the last news was that he was in Leeds and probably suffering the effects of dysentery – ill at any rate. He’s left now but I’m not able as yet to say where.’

‘Have you put more people on it?’

‘As I said I would –’ he paused, ‘yesterday.’

‘Good people?’

‘The best.’ This was true enough as far as it went, which was not very far, given that the good people he had out looking for Cale were the Two Trevors. Gil had decided that the end of the world, a project in which he deeply believed, would take place a good deal sooner if it were preceded by Cale announcing it to God personally. Bosco’s obsessive belief that the death of the world could not come unless Cale administered it was a delusion in Gil’s estimation – a blasphemy he was careful to conceal. Cale was never the incarnation of God’s anger, he was just a delinquent boy. Once he was confirmed as dead Bosco would just have to get on with it.

‘I want to know immediately you hear anything.’

‘Of course, Your Holiness.’

It was a dismissal but Gil did not move. Throughout the conversation Bosco had not taken his eyes from the great map of the Axis powers laid out on one of the four massive tables in the room.

‘You aren’t worried he’ll give away your plan to attack the Axis through Arnhemland?’

‘Away from here, Cale is merely a thorn in his own side. He could shout it out in the middle of Kirkgate on market day and no one would listen – least of all Ikard or that buffoon Zog. Was there something else?’

‘Yes, Your Holiness. The end of the world. There are problems.’

Bosco laughed, delighted at this.

‘Did you expect to bring about the apocalypse without them?’

‘There are unanticipated problems.’ gil was finding it harder these days not to be irritated by his pontiff.

‘Yes?’

‘Moving the populations out of the territories we’ve annexed is diverting more supplies and materials than we can easily provide. There are too many people to move to the west and not enough food or transport to do the job without robbing the exact same stocks from our militants. We must slow down one or the other.’

‘I’ll think about it. What else?’

‘Brzca came to see me.’ Brzca was a man with a talent, a genius if you will, in the matter of killing in numbers. He was in charge of the practical problem of transporting captured people into the west and beginning the process of bringing an end to God’s greatest mistake. ‘He’s having problems with his executioners.’

‘He has complete freedom of access to any suitable person in the militant. I made it clear he has priority.’

‘I’ve done everything you asked,’ said an increasingly irritated Gil.

‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘Too many executioners are becoming sick – in the head, I mean.’

‘He knows the importance of this, why didn’t he say something before now?’

‘Mostly they only began their duties three months ago. It turns out that killing two thousand people a week begins to take a toll after a few months. Nearly half of his people are unable to continue. It’s not so hard to understand. I know it’s necessary but I wouldn’t want to do it. But there it is.’

Bosco said nothing for a while and then walked to the window. Finally, after some time, he turned back to Gil.

‘You know I am proud of them, my poor labourers. When I think of what we are obliged to do it makes me sick with dread. To endure what they must endure and remain a decent person – well, it’s clear what spiritual strength it requires. Is he still here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Send him to me. Together we will discover a way to help our people find the spiritual courage to continue.’

‘Your Holiness.’ Gil started to withdraw. Bosco called out after him.

‘I know Brzca of old: tell him not to kill those who’ve failed. We must make an allowance for human weakness.’

14

‘Name?’

Vague Henri looked at his interrogator with an expression of helpful bewilderment.

‘I’m sorry, they didn’t tell me your name.’

‘Not my name. Your name.’

A pause – for just as long as he thought he could get away with.

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, I see.’

‘So, what is it?’

Despite the difficulty of his situation, Vague Henri was enjoying appearing to be dim while really being a cheeky little sod, a dangerous line he had perfected over many years of tormenting Redeemers and the reason for the name Cale had given him five years ago. Now no one knew him as anything else.

‘Dominic Savio.’

‘Well, Mr Savio. You’ve committed a serious offence.’

‘What does offence mean?’

‘It means a crime.’

‘What does committed mean?’

‘It means “done”. It means you’ve done a crime.’

‘I’m a good boy.’

You’re also an idiot, thought the interrogator. He sat back. ‘I’m sure you are. But it’s a crime to cross the border without papers and it’s another crime to enter the country at any point unless that point is an official border crossing.’

‘I don’t have any papers.’

‘I know you don’t have any papers, that’s why you’re here.’

‘Where can I get the papers?’

‘Not the point. It’s a crime to try to come into the country without papers.’

‘I didn’t know about the papers.’

‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because then everyone would say they didn’t know about the law. They could say they didn’t know murder was against the law. Would you let someone go who’d committed murder if he said he didn’t know killing people was against the law?’

‘Soldiers kill people, that’s not against the law.’

‘That’s not murder.’

‘You said “killing people”.’

‘I meant murder.’

‘I understand.’

The interrogator was not sure how he had let the questioning of the boy slip in such a way. Once again he attempted to get control of the situation.

‘Why did you try to enter the country at an illegal place?’

‘I didn’t know it was illegal.’

‘All right. Why were you trying to get into the country?’

‘The Redeemers were trying to murder us. Sorry, to kill us.’

‘What do you mean?’

Vague Henri looked at him wide-eyed with alarm at the question.

‘I mean make us not live.’

‘I know what kill means. Why did you say murder and then change it to kill?’

‘You told me soldiers can’t do murder.’

‘I don’t think I did.’

Vague Henri looked at him. Blank.

‘Why were they trying to kill you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘They must have had a reason.’

‘No.’

‘Even Redeemers have to have a reason to kill someone.’

Vague Henri was tempted to say something sarcastic but had the sense to stop himself.

‘Perhaps they thought we were Antagonists.’

‘Are you?’

‘Is that a crime?’

‘No.’

‘I’m not an Antagonist.’

‘Then who are you?’

‘I’m from Memphis.’

‘At last.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Never mind.’

‘What did you do in Memphis?’

‘I worked in the kitchens at the Palazzo.’

‘Good job?’

‘No. I cleaned dishes.’

‘Parents?’

‘Don’t know. Dead, I think. Maybe they’re just going about like me.’

‘Going about?’

‘Going about from place to place looking for work. Staying away from Redeemers.’

‘But you didn’t – stay away from them, I mean.’

‘Will I go to prison?’

‘Not worried about your friends?’

‘They’re not my friends.’ This was true enough. ‘I was just travelling with them. Did some cooking. It seemed safer.’

‘Do you know who they are?’

‘Just people going about trying to find work and stay away from the Redeemers. You would if you were them – if you were me.’

The interrogator was silent for a moment.

‘No – in answer to your question. You won’t go to prison. We have a camp for crossovers, people like you, about thirty miles away in Koniz. You’ll have to live in a tent. But you’ll be fed. There are guards to keep you safe. There might be more questions.’

‘Will I be able to leave?’

‘No.’

‘So it is a prison?’

‘No, it’s a sort of holding place while we find out more about you. There are thousands doing what you’re doing. We can’t have them just wandering all over the country. We’d have Redeemer fifth columnists everywhere.’

Vague Henri appeared to consider this. ‘What’s a fifth columnist?’

‘A sort of spy. You understand now?’

‘Yes,’ said Vague Henri.

‘Fair enough, then. You go to the camp and you’ll be safe there. Then we’ll see. Things will probably settle down. Then you can go on your way.’

‘Is that what you think? That it will all settle down?’

The interrogator smiled. He wanted to reassure the boy. ‘Yes. That’s what I think.’ And on the balance of probabilities this was truly what he did believe. What was the point, after all, of the Redeemers fighting a war on so many fronts? There had been serious concessions to the annexation of Nassau and Rockall and plausible reassurance from the Pope as a result of them. It was difficult for a cautious and pessimistic person, which is what he considered himself to be, to see what the Redeemers could gain from a total war. There was nothing left to concede, everything had already been given away. Anything more would merely be unconditional surrender and not even the most recalcitrant and feeble would tolerate that. From now on the Redeemers would either be happy with the significant concessions offered them, and which had cost them nothing, or risk everything they had in a universal war, which might cost them everything. A war did not, on balance, seem plausible. He pushed a piece of paper across the table.

‘Sign this,’ he said softly.

‘What is it?’

‘Read it if you like.’

‘I can’t read,’ said Vague Henri.

‘It asks you whether or not you brought any meat or flowering vegetables into the country. And to give details, where applicable, of any misfeasance committed here or in another country. Misfeasance means bad things.’

‘Oh,’ said Vague Henri. ‘No bad things. Here or anywhere. I’m a good boy.’

The next day he was in a walking convoy on his way to the tent city the interrogator had told him about. He thought it was unlikely they’d actually get him there as there were around three hundred refugees, some of them women and children, and only fifteen guards. As it turned out, the camp at Koniz was on the way to Spanish Leeds so it made sense to let the border guards feed him and keep him safe as the interrogator had said they would. He’d probably skip out before they got there, or after if it seemed more sensible.

A prison with tents wasn’t going to be able to hold someone who’d got out of the Sanctuary – boastful thoughts he had to revise over the following days. The Swiss guards knew their job and so maybe the guards at Koniz would too. Still, things could be worse. He could be dead like most of the dozen Redeemers he and Kleist had taken over the border to kill Redeemer Santos Hall for murdering Kleist’s wife and baby in the wilderness on the way to Silesia.

Of the four kinds of military failure Vague Henri’s small expedition to kill Hall was the worst: disaster from the word go. Nothing went right: the rain started as they left and did not stop, the horses became sick and so did the men. They stumbled into three Redeemer patrols when a minute later or earlier they would have passed unobserved. Even before they arrived at Santos Hall’s camp in Moza they’d lost two men. When they arrived they just walked into the camp, well able to blend in with men they’d lived with most of their lives; unluckily one of the Purgators was immediately recognized by an oblate who was being sent back to Chartres with hideous foot rot. Again, a fraction earlier or later and everything might have been reclaimed from the previous week of disasters.

Having only passed through the first wall of defence they were able to fight their way out, but not without losing another four Purgators. In the dark of their escape he lost Kleist and had no idea whether he was alive or dead. And yet although it had failed miserably, and was a foolish idea in the first place, their attempt to kill Santos Hall had been well planned by two people who knew what they were doing. No one could have foreseen their dreadful bad luck nor its frequency. They had thrown a coin twelve times and twelve times it had come up tails. Vague Henri had plenty of time to consider what he’d done wrong in planning and executing the attack and was very willing to learn from his mistakes. But as far as he could see he hadn’t really made any, other than doing it in the first place.

In a few days his run of misfortune deserted him and a storm helped him slip away just before the column made it to Koniz. In a week he was back in Spanish Leeds having learnt an important lesson – although he wasn’t quite sure what it was. Never do anything, perhaps.

Within two days he was delighted and relieved by the arrival of Kleist, only for both of them to learn from Cadbury that Cale was back and being looked after in some luxury by Riba, now wife of the Hanseatic Ambassador to the Court of the King. Vague Henri was delighted by the return of Cale but put out by the news of Riba, having nursed something of a crush on her since he had shamefully spied on her washing naked in a pool in the Scablands after their escape from the Sanctuary. But both he and Kleist had more pressing problems. Cadbury had not turned up to tell them the local gossip but to summon them before Kitty the Hare, who knew very well what they’d been up to and was aggrieved at their stupidity.

‘If you have prayers, prepare to say them now,’ said Cadbury, ushering them to the door.

Cadbury’s light-hearted attempt at alarming the two boys seemed less amusing when he delivered them to Kitty’s house by the canal. Cadbury saw two men entering Kitty’s rooms. He didn’t recognize them, but he had spent too much time among the wicked not to recognize this quality when he saw it in someone. The way they held themselves, the way they moved and gazed at others betrayed their grudge against life. There were other explanations, of course: few people of an elevated moral stature came to do business with Kitty the Hare. Still, his nose for bad business was twitching. He sent one of Kitty’s servants to fetch Deidre. He turned to the two boys and gestured them over to the table by the wall.

‘Gentlemen, your material.’

He grimaced to signal that any claim not to know what he was talking about would be an insult to all three of them. They started to empty their various hidden pockets onto the table: a knife, a shiv, an awl, a hammer, another knife, a razor, a small pick, a wimble, a gouge and finally a pair of pliers.

There was a pause.

‘And the rest,’ said Cadbury.

Yet another knife, a bolt, a punch (large), an axe (small), a mace (surprisingly not small) and finally a needle of the kind use to repair thick sails.

‘What’s the matter – nobody like you?’

‘No,’ said Kleist.

‘But we don’t care,’ added Vague Henri.

Cadbury knew that there must be more, even though he was surprised how much there already was. But he had covered himself and he could not bring himself to send the two boys naked into the chamber. It was not often that Cadbury felt dread, except on his own behalf, but he was feeling it now. His bad conscience called out to him, angry and mocking. You’ve no right to be having a conscience now, you hypocrite, after all the evil you’ve had a finger in. Kitty’s door opened and his steward emerged.

‘They must come in now,’ he said. Cadbury nodded to the two boys who were alarmed now, Vague Henri more than Kleist. They were gestured through by the steward, who closed the door after them. Usually, thought Cadbury, he would have entered with them but not this time. The steward looked at Cadbury, obviously uneasy. What did that mean? ‘My master says you can leave now.’

The steward turned and walked away, his disquiet contained within the set of his shoulders and even the way he walked. To work for Kitty meant you had a considerable capacity for looking the other way when it came to evil-doing; but almost everyone has their standards, the line beyond which they will not go. Even in prison the murderer looks down on the common thief, the thief looks down on the rapist and all of them are disgusted by the nonce. It was all very well the steward hinting that something nasty was about to take place. But what could he do about it? Cadbury had been told to leave and so that’s what he did.

Walking out into daylight felt like emerging into the sun after a year in the dark. But the dread at what was going to happen came with him too, and could be seen so plainly that on meeting Deidre Plunkett hurrying towards him, even she could see that he was in a state of intense anxiety.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘I’m not well. We need to go home.’

‘I’ve just come from home.’

‘Then we’ll go back,’ he shouted, and pulled her to the other side of the street and away from Kitty the Hare’s house.

Once the door closed behind them it would have made no difference if Kleist and Vague Henri had been carrying all of the weapons Cadbury had removed and twice as many like them besides. It took a few seconds to become accustomed to the gloom after the door was shut but anyway there was nothing to be done about the pair of small overstrungs pointed at them by one of the men Cadbury had been so disturbed by. The other man was holding two broom-handle-sized sticks with loops on the end of the kind used to catch wild dogs.

‘Turn around.’

They did as they were told and with great deftness the loops were dropped over their necks and shoulders and pulled tight around their midriffs, binding their arms. It was not the first time that Kitty had admired the finesse of such large men. Neither of the boys said anything or tried to escape, something that also impressed Kitty.

‘We’re going to sit you down on these two stools,’ said one of the men. They pushed lightly on the wooden shafts holding the loops and eased the boys forward and onto the stools. Then they set the wooden shafts into two small slots in the floor. There was a loud CLICK! and the ends of the shafts were secured.

‘Tug away, if you like,’ mocked one of the men.

‘Mr Mach,’ cooed Kitty the Hare. ‘You’ll not behave rudely. These two boys are going to die here. Show them the respect due to that fact or be quiet.’

Vague Henri and Kleist had been used to threats all their lives and they had seen them being carried out with great, even if pious, cruelty. They knew this wasn’t a threat. This thing was going to happen. Behind them the two men got on with their preparations, Mach with his nose somewhat out of joint at being corrected. It took them little effort. From their inside pockets both took out a length of strong wire, wrapped at either end around wooden handles about four inches long.

‘Why?’ cried out Vague Henri. The two men, more out of a sense of ritual than need, tested the robustness of the wood and the wire by pulling them apart twice. Satisfied, they moved to loop the twine around the boys’ necks.

‘Wait,’ Kitty murmured. ‘Since you’ve asked, you must want to make this last longer than it needs. I’ll tell you. Your stupid actions against the Redeemers have upset the balance of my peace. I have gone to trouble and expense to ensure that nothing happens – that this war is as drawn out and delayed as it suits me and my business for it to be drawn out and delayed. You’ve tried to begin a war that I do not want begun. Once a war starts all sorts of unpleasant things happen which means I don’t get paid. But a war that might or might not happen is utter bliss – 50,000 dollars a week in supplies. That’s why the great door opens for you. I cannot say it will be painless but it will be quick if you give in to it.’

The two men stepped forward and circled the wire around their necks. ‘For God’s sake,’ whispered Kleist.

‘I know when they’ll come – the Redeemers!’ shouted Vague Henri. ‘I know to the day.’

‘Wait a little,’ said Kitty.

‘All right, I admit,’ Vague Henri was still able to lie well under dreadful circumstances, all his years of practice at deceiving the Redeemers coming to his aid, ‘not to the day, but to the week.’

A pause. Kitty seemed convinced by the admission; after all, who wouldn’t exaggerate under such conditions?

‘Go on.’

‘Before we tried to get into the camp I watched the place for nearly twenty hours. In that time, fifty carts arrived. Each cart carries half a ton, give or take. Thirty of the carts were just food. A commissariat tent takes five tons. There were over two hundred of them. That’s a thousand tons. The camp only has around two thousand men all told. That’s half a ton of food for every man.’

‘So the camp is a distribution point.’

‘No. Nothing beyond a couple of carts went out and none of them took food. Commissariat carts are different.’

‘Storage for the winter, then?’

‘You don’t build up stores before the summer. Most of it would rot in a tent. You don’t need a mass of stores to keep a camp in the summer. At this time of year you can live off the countryside – buying and commandeering.’

‘And so?’

‘They must be fuelling an attack. If they were staying where they were, they wouldn’t need a twentieth of such stores.’

‘Two thousand men aren’t going to advance on Switzerland.’

‘It would only take two weeks to bring in another forty thousand – but then they have to attack. No choice. Forty-odd thousand men eat at a rate of around thirty to fifty tons a day. They can’t stay in one place together in such numbers. Santos can’t bring them up in less than ten to fourteen days. And he can’t keep them there just eating up the stores. He’ll have to move in a week, two at the most.’

‘I’ve heard, you know, a great many plausible lies.’

‘They’re not lies.’

‘How do you know so much about bacon and flour?’

‘I’m not like Cale or Kleist. They were trained for the militant; I’m commissariat. Nobody fights without supplies – wood and water and meat and flour.’

Kitty considered, a hideous pondering for the boys.

‘I’ll send for someone who has competence in all this. If he finds out this is all buncombe – which I suspect … I suspect it is – you’ll wish you’d kept your mouth shut because by now you’d be dead and your suffering would be over.’

Ten minutes later, both of them shaking with terror, Vague Henri and Kleist were locked in a surprisingly comfortable room in the basement of the house.

‘Good lies,’ said Kleist, after a while. ‘Damned good lies.’

PART THREE

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each side should know that frequently uncertainty, compromise, and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Yet each tends to ascribe to the other a consistency, foresight, and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, over time, even two armed blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room

.

Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (1979)

15

‘So,’ said IdrisPukke, ‘you’re back.’

‘I am.’

‘And what did you learn while you were away?’

‘That I must avoid pain and get as much happiness as I can.’

IdrisPukke gasped with derision. ‘Ridiculous.’

‘So you say.’

‘I do indeed. Consider a healthy young person, every muscle and sinew strong and supple. Except for one thing – he has a toothache. Does he rejoice in his strength and take pleasure in the overwhelming multiform wonderfulness of his young body, even if only a tiny fraction of it is hurting? No, he does not. He thinks only of the dreadful pain in his tooth.’

‘All he needs to do is get his tooth pulled and then he’ll think he’s in heaven.’

‘You have fallen, rather too easily if I may say so, into my trap. Exactly. He feels absolutely the intense pleasure of the absence of suffering not the pleasure that all the other bits and pieces of his body give him.’

‘I’m sick to the back teeth of being miserable. I’ve had more than my portion. Look at me. You can’t say otherwise.’

‘Yes, I can. In this paradise that you’ve decided to believe in as your ultimate goal everything comes to you without much trouble and the turkeys fly around ready-roasted – but what would become of people even much less troublesome than you in such a happy place? Even the most pleasant-natured person would die of boredom or hang themselves or get into a fight and kill or be killed by someone who is even more driven to madness by the lack of struggle. Struggle has made us what we are and has suited us to the nature of things so that no other existence is possible. You might as well take a fish out of the sea and encourage it to fly.’

‘As usual you try to make out I’m saying something stupid so you can win the argument. I don’t expect a rose garden. God knows, just better than this – a bit less pain and a bit more beer and skittles.’

‘I understand you’ve had some hard rain in your life. All I can say is that you’re mistaken in thinking that more pleasure is the answer. The truth is, no matter what people think, pleasure has little hold over us. And if you disagree, consider the pleasure and pain of two animals, one being eaten by the other. The one doing the eating feels pleasure but that pleasure is soon forgotten as hunger, as it always does, returns. Consider in contrast the feelings of suffering of the animal being eaten – they are experiencing something of quite another order. Pain is not the opposite of pleasure – it is something altogether different.’

‘Have you been saving that up for my return?’

‘If you mean to ask me whether I just happened to have such thoughts as you just happened to say something more than usually stupid, of course not. I have thought very carefully about everything I have to say. Only inferior minds speak or write in order to discover what they think.’

Their pleasant argument was interrupted by the noisy arrival of Cadbury, quarrelling with the guard outside and demanding to see Cale. Once inside he was to the point.

‘Do you think they’re still alive?’

‘Possibly. Probably not.’

‘Why’s he doing this?’ said IdrisPukke.

‘Kitty doesn’t take to people acting against his interests, especially if he’s been paying them. He has a lot to lose if this war starts now. “Don’t touch me” is his motto and he’ll do what’s needed to make it stick.’

‘It’s not two weeks since he went to so much trouble to save my life – now this.’

‘Your value has fallen,’ replied Cadbury. ‘He was not impressed by the account given of your fight with the late Trevors.’

‘Your account, you mean,’ said IdrisPukke.

‘Kitty the Hare pays my wages. I don’t owe Thomas Cale anything.’

‘So why are you here?’ asked Cale.

‘A question I’ve yet to answer to my own satisfaction. It can’t be redemption. Who could make amends in the eyes of God by saving you?’

But Cale wasn’t listening.

‘If I need something to raise my price,’ he said at last, ‘what does Kitty want?’

‘Not money. He’s got money. Power – give him the power to protect what he already has.’

‘Meaning?’ said IdrisPukke.

‘What do you know that he doesn’t? Sorry – time I wasn’t here. Kitty’s going to want my head on a stick when he finds out what I’ve done.’

He was at the door and almost gone.

‘How do I get in?’ asked Cale.

Cadbury looked at him.

‘You don’t. You so much as knock on his front door too loudly and they’ll tab you in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

‘How many guards?’

‘Fifteen, give or take. But all the doors are iron plate – the wood on either side is just veneer. Every door would take a dozen men an hour to get through. But you won’t have an hour. He’s taken against those boys and he won’t give them up without a bung – and a bloody big one too.’

‘Thanks,’ said Cale. ‘I owe you.’

‘You already owe me and look where that’s got me.’

When Cadbury had gone, Cale sat down and looked at IdrisPukke for some time.

‘It wouldn’t matter,’ said IdrisPukke at last, ‘even if I did know something big enough, I couldn’t tell you if my life depended on it.’

‘I thought you cared for Henri.’

‘I care for Kleist as well, even if you don’t. I know what affection is. There are, I admit it, things I know. But I can’t put them in the hands of someone like Kitty, not if they were my own sons.’

‘That’s easy enough to say.’

‘I suppose it is. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.’

Within fifteen minutes Cale was in his new lodgings in the Embassy of the Hanse and putting the crush on Riba’s husband.

‘I don’t have time to be ladylike about this: I saved your wife at the pretty certain cost of my own life. Now it’s time to settle up.’

‘Have you discussed this with Riba?’

‘No, but I will, if you like.’

‘I’m not just Riba’s husband. The lives of many thousands – more – depend on me.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘I’ll come with you and we’ll try to get your friends out together. My life is not the issue here.’

Cale almost said something deeply offensive. ‘It wouldn’t matter if I had two hundred like you. I know force. Force isn’t going to do it. He wants what you know.’

‘I can’t.’ It was as agonized a refusal as Cale had ever heard. This was good.

‘You don’t have to.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You don’t have to tell him what you really know, you just have to tell him what you might know.’

‘I’m being obtuse, I realize. Could you plod a little more?’

Cale closed his eyes, his irritation plain.

‘You must have thought about all the different stuff you could do in the face of the threat from the Redeemers, right?’

‘Explored alternative responses?’

‘Yes. That. I don’t want to know what you’ve decided. Don’t tell me. I don’t care. I just want one of the choices you didn’t make, whatever it is, and all the detail written down.’

A long pause.

‘I can’t write anything down. If it got out the Hanse could be ruined.’

It was not easy for Cale to avoid picking up the handsome ornament on the table next to him and throwing it at the wall. His head hurt and he thought he was probably going to die in the next few hours.

‘Listen to me,’ he said, ‘Kitty the Hare could eat you up and spit you out and a dozen more like you. He’s not going to accept my word for anything. He knows I’m a lying little shit, all right?’

‘Putting a lie in writing is as bad as telling the truth. It will get out – and if it’s written down people will believe it. I can’t.’

Now Cale’s head was throbbing as if it were expanding and contracting by a couple of inches with each breath.

‘What if I promise I’ll see it’s destroyed?’

‘How can you be certain?’

‘I’m giving you the word of someone who prevented your wife from being paunched while she was still alive – you ungrateful fuck.’ He looked at Wittenberg and decided he had nothing to lose. ‘And I’d have to tell Riba that you refused to help the three people who saved her life – even when one of them promised to keep you out of it.’

‘A particularly ugly threat, if I may say so – but I suppose you’re desperate.’

‘I’m an ugly sort of person.’

‘At any rate you are a very violent one.’

‘Luckily for your wife.’

‘But you’re very sick. Your skill in moving armies isn’t of much use if you’ve left those armies behind. Ugly or violent, you’re now ordinary. I can’t help you in this, no matter what my personal obligations are. Leave my house by midday tomorrow, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Actually I do mind.’

‘Leave it anyway.’

Cale went to his room, took out one of the small packets of Phedra and Morphine, tapped the tiny amount of white powder onto the back of his hand, put one finger to his left nostril, bent down and took a huge snort. He called out in pain; it was as if a packet of pins and needles had exploded in his head. The sensation took a minute to fade and once he had wiped the tears from his eyes he began to feel better. Then very much better. Then better than he had ever felt: sharp, clear and strong. On his way out he passed Riba. ‘You’ve been talking to Arthur,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘He’s not as dumb as he looks.’

As he walked to Kitty’s house it was through a city and a world filled with confusion. It was either the eve of destruction or the crisis had passed. Some people were leaving, some people had decided to stay. Prices had been rising on fears of a war, but now they were falling on rumours of peace. Men of experience were selling off gold, men of experience were buying it back. Things might go this way or things might go that. The first casualty, the day after the declaration of war, is the memory of the confusion that preceded it. Nothing fades from the powers of recall like the recollection of uncertainty.

On his way from the Embassy of the Hanse, Cale stopped briefly at a depot used by the outdraggers – tinkers who hired out their handcarts for deliveries of just about anything, though mostly the meat and vegetables from the market across the square. He gave one of them, angry-looking but beefy, five dollars and the promise of another five if he’d head for the street where Kitty lived and watch for two or three people coming out who might need to be carried away. He’d need to be quick, no hanging about.

‘Sounds like there could be trouble,’ said the man. ‘Ten dollars and then another ten.’

‘What’s your name?’

The tinker was careful about the business of giving names, but there was serious money involved. ‘Michael Nevin.’

‘Do the job and there’ll be more.’

‘More money or more jobs?’

‘Both.’

Knocking softly on Kitty’s door, Cale was admitted, searched, relieved of his collection of devices and then taken in to see Kitty. He was seated behind a large desk, his face indistinct in the semi-darkness. Sitting against the shutters at the back of the room were the two men who had come so close to killing Kleist and Vague Henri a couple of hours earlier.

‘You’ve disimproved since we last met, Mr Cale. Sit down.’

Cale’s fear at having two such obvious evil-doers behind him was not in any way eased by the oddness of the fit of the chair. It was slightly too low, the arms slightly too high, the seat awkwardly sloped. And it was fastened to the floor.

‘I have to talk to you alone,’ said Cale.

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Are they still alive?’

‘I wouldn’t worry about them, sick little boy.’

‘I have to know if they’re dead or alive.’

‘They are in a waiting room. The question is whether or not you are going to wait with them.’

‘Me? How have I offended?’

‘You, sir, have not delivered on your undertakings for which you have been paid and cared for.’

‘I’ve been a bad servant, I admit. I’ve come to put that right.’

‘Well?’

‘I’ve two things to tell you. The first is to repay what I owe you. The second is a swap for my friends.’

‘And why shouldn’t I make you give me this second thing without the cost of looking weak?’

‘Because I have to prove it as well as tell you. And the proof isn’t here.’

‘We’ll see. Go on.’

‘They leave.’

‘We’ll see after you pay me what you owe.’

Cale tried to give the impression that he was considering this.

‘All right. You’ve a map of the four quarters?’

‘Yes.’

‘I need to show you.’

It took a few minutes for the two men to unroll the map and hang it from hooks high up on one of the walls. It was obvious to Cale that Kitty would have commissioned a survey of some kind but he was surprised at its size and detail, better than anything even the Redeemers had made and they were skilled cartographers.

‘You’re impressed,’ said Kitty.

‘Yes.’

One of the men handed him a pointer with little more substance to it than a stalk of wheat – no chance of using it as a weapon. Cale looked at Kitty, hooded and in the shadows, still as a stump. If there had been anyone to tell him fairy stories as a boy, Kitty would have been a sight to bring back the true fear of the child’s nightmare. Cale had no choice, so he got on with it.

‘This is what I think, based on what I know,’ Cale said. ‘Some of it’s guesswork. But it’s there or thereabouts.’

There was a high-pitched wheezing sound from Kitty, laughter perhaps, and the smell of something hot and damp momentarily carried in the still air.

‘Your scruples are noted.’

‘The Swiss mountains make an attack almost impossible from anywhere except the north. As far as the Swiss are concerned, the other countries in the Swiss Alliance exist to act as a series of three buffers against any attack from there. Farthest north is Gaul, protected by the Maginot Line and the Arnhemland desert. The Axis think the strength of the defences in the Maginot Line will protect them and that Arnhemland is too wide and waterless for an army of any real size to cross. They’re wrong. Bosco has been delaying so he can dig a network of wells and water stores across the desert.’

‘And you know this because …?’

‘Because I thought of it. The Gauls think that even if an army does come through the desert and hit their weaker defences, an army that’s spent six days in Arnhemland isn’t going to be in much of a shape to fight – even weak defences should be more than enough to stop them until they can bring in reinforcements.’

‘And they’re wrong because …?’

‘The Redeemers won’t take six days, they’ll take one day and two nights.’

‘Are they going to run all the way?’

‘They’ll come on horseback.’

‘I seem to remember you saying in one of your less than informative reports that the Redeemers had no cavalry to speak of and would take years to develop one.’

‘They’re not cavalry – just mounted infantry. It takes six weeks to learn to ride a horse, if that’s all you’re going to do.’

‘And if the Gaul cavalry catches them?’

‘Then they’ll get off and deal with them the way they dealt with the Materazzi at Silbury Hill. And they’ll be in a great deal better shape than the Redeemers were there. Half of them were fighting with paper shoved up their squeakers to stop them from crapping on their feet.’

‘Spare me the details.’

‘More battles are lost because of the squits than because of bad generals.’

‘What then?’

‘Speed – at first. They’ll take Gaul in six weeks.’

‘Optimistic, wouldn’t you say?’

‘No, I wouldn’t. If I say it can be done, then it can be done. The defence against the Redeemers is based on how quickly they moved in the past – how quickly all armies moved in the past. Everyone fights the war they’re used to.’

‘So the Redeemers will roll over Gaul, then Palestine, then Albion and Yugoslavia and all the rest until they’re at the gates of Zurich.’

‘It won’t be that easy.’

‘You surprise me.’

‘Always.’

Again the high-pitched, wheezing laugh. ‘What a conceited young man you are.’

‘I’m not conceited. I’m just honest about being so much better than other people.’

Kitty was silent for a moment. Another waft of the hot damp smell.

‘Well then,’ said Kitty. ‘Allowance must be made for your boastfulness, being a person so much above others. Go on.’

Cale turned back to the map and pointed to the river that cut Gaul in half on its way to the sea.

‘All the Redeemers need to do is make it quickly to the Mississippi. Then they’ll have a defensive line they can hold or retreat to if things go wrong, and for as long as they like.’

‘And from the Mississippi onwards …?’

‘War the usual way, probably – slow and nasty. But the Redeemers are good at that.’

‘And where are the Laconics in all of this?’

‘Paid to stay out of it if Bosco does what I said.’

‘And what if he doesn’t do what you said? Or the Laconics think once the Redeemers have taken the Swiss they’ll come for them next?’

‘Once they’ve taken the Swiss that’s exactly what Bosco will do.’

‘So why should they go along just because it’s convenient for your plan that they do so?’

‘Because that’s what they want to believe. This way they get money and a guarantee.’

‘Worthless.’

‘But they don’t know that. It doesn’t make sense to attack them after all. There’s no great strategic use for Laconia and there’s bugger all there. The cost of taking it doesn’t bear thinking about – even for the Redeemers.’

‘But Bosco will try.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. He just asked me to make it possible. Something to do with God, I imagine.’

‘So you don’t know everything.’

‘I know everything I know about.’

Cale needed to be honest with Kitty for the reason that his life and Vague Henri’s and Kleist’s depended on him being convincing. Nothing convinces like the truth. But Bosco’s plan to create a final solution to the problem of evil would have seemed impossible even to someone as vile as Kitty the Hare. Such a thing was outside the kingdom of even his appalling imagination because it had no purpose – there was no money or power to be had from such a vision.

‘What about the purpose of the Redeemer camp at Moza your friends so foolishly chose to attack?’

This was tricky. They must have told Kitty something useful or they’d be dead. But then maybe he hadn’t intended to kill but just to scare them. If Cale told Kitty something that conflicted with what they’d told him he’d know they’d been lying. And then there were other possibilities to the left, and the right, and to the left again, always intelligent guesses to be made and got completely wrong. Gambling that Vague Henri would have decided to tell something close to the truth, Cale committed himself.

‘The Redeemers will attack from the north through Arnhemland but they’ll want to squeeze from opposite ends and the only way to attack the Swiss from the south is up through the Mittelland, then through the Schallenberg Pass to Spanish Leeds.’

‘How many?’

‘Forty thousand, give or take. I’m not saying he won’t just stay where he is and seal the Swiss in and wait for the attack from the north to work its way down. But if he can draw the Swiss into an attack in the Mittelland it might be worth it. And if they don’t come out to fight he can seal off the Schallenberg then wait them out there.’

‘Why?’

‘Five thousand men in front of the Schallenberg could hold the Swiss in for ever. That’s nearly thirty-five thousand less than staying where he is.’

‘Why not go through and take the city?’

‘Because five thousand men can hold it from the other end just as well. But then it’s just a question of how long it takes the Redeemers to make it down from the north. See – everything depends on them getting across Arnhemland in a day and two nights. After that it’s just a matter of time.’

‘And have you told anyone else about this?’

‘Who I tell and what I tell them is my business.’

‘You’re very insolent for someone who’s come looking for charity.’

‘No, I haven’t told anyone.’

‘Why?’

‘What I know is all I’ve got. Besides, my reputation isn’t what it used to be. Who’s going to believe a sickly boy who used to be good at throwing his weight around?’

‘What about your Materazzi patrons?’

‘Everybody and his mother want them to drop dead, if at all possible.’

‘And yet Conn Materazzi is much slobbered over by the King.’

‘Conn won’t stomach me at any price.’

‘So I’ve heard. Is it true?’

‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘That you’re the father of the little boy?’

‘She sold me to the Redeemers.’

‘Not really an answer. But it doesn’t matter.’

‘What about my friends?’

‘You’ll have to do better.’

‘I can.’

‘Then do.’

‘Not with them here.’

‘Your reputation may have declined but I know you to be a person of violent talents who is not always wise in your use of them.’

‘I’m not the person I used to be.’

‘So you say.’

‘Cadbury told you what happened at the Priory – I couldn’t lift even a finger to save myself. Look at me.’

For some time Cale sat as Kitty considered his white skin and the black circles and the stoop of his shoulders and the weight loss.

‘I could get these gentlemen to chastise it out of you.’

‘You’re going to need more than what I tell you. You’re going to need proof. And I haven’t brought that with me. Let them go.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’ll still have me. Nobody knows who the two boys are. Killing them won’t send much of a message. But my death would send a signal. Not right?’

‘You’re offering to sacrifice yourself for your friends? I’d thought better of you.’

‘I intend to walk out of here. I’m just pointing out that you can afford to let them go if you’ve got me.’

Kitty considered but not for long.

‘Go and get them – both of you.’

They did as they were told, closing the heavy door quietly behind them.

‘You know where I’m living now.’

It was a statement. In reply, a long cooing hoot – Kitty was laughing.

‘Why would I care where you lay your hat?’

Cale stayed silent.

‘Yes, I know where you live.’

‘I’ve found out what the Hanse are going to do. Interested?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Kitty, casual. ‘You’ve proof?’

‘Yes.’

‘Show it me.’ The unpleasant laugh again. There was a knock at the door.

‘Come in.’

It opened. The two men who had left, and several others, entered holding Vague Henri and Kleist, their hands tied. But the restraint was more for form than otherwise. They were in a terrible state, Kleist in particular unrecognizable, his face bloody, both eyes bagged with pockets of blood, though one had split like a small gaping mouth and was pouring a delta of red down his right cheek. Vague Henri looked as if someone had wiped his face with some toxic plant – bloated and inflamed. His tongue slipped out of his mouth as if he were an old man gone in the head. Their left hands had been crushed and both of the boys shook uncontrollably.

Cale did not react at all. ‘Put them outside. Someone will collect them and when they’re safe they’ll bring proof of what I’m saying to you.’

‘Play the fraud with me and you’ll find that death has ten thousand doors and I’m there to show you through every one.’

‘Can we get on? I have a dinner to go to.’

A slight nod of the head and the two boys were pushed, stumbling, to the door.

‘Make them tell me what they see in the street.’

Two minutes later and one of Kitty’s guards returned. ‘Some outdragger with a handcart has come to collect them.’

‘While we wait for the letter I’ll tell you what’s to come. Once they shut the door.’ A moment, then Cale continued. ‘The Hanseatic League are going to declare their support for the Axis and promise to send ships and troops and money. The money will come but not the ships or the troops. They’ll make a show of assembling ships in Danzig and Lubeck but even if they put to sea they’ll be driven back by storms or plague or woodworm or an attack of barnacles for all I know. But they won’t come – at least not until they’re reasonably sure who’s going to win.’

‘And Wittenberg told you this over tea and cucumber sandwiches? I’d heard that he was a man of intelligence and discretion. Why would he say these things to someone like you?’

‘I used to like cucumber sandwiches – when I could get them.’

‘Answer me.’

‘I saved Wittenberg’s wife from some Redeemer nasty business. I own his happiness, if you like. But he didn’t tell me directly and I wouldn’t have believed him if he had.’

‘So she told you? That’s what you’re saying?’

‘No. I tried and I even twisted her arm, so to speak. But she’s a clever girl, Riba, and wasn’t having any of it. I stole his key and took the letter from his room.’

‘Sounds unlikely.’

‘It does, yes, but it’s true all the same. Wittenberg’s a clever man, subtle, like you say, in talks and discussions and that, but he’s above stealing in a personal way. I mean someone like him could let thousands die but couldn’t kill a man standing in front of them. It never crossed his mind I’d betray his wife’s generosity or his. I suppose he hasn’t had my disadvantages.’

‘What else do you know?’

‘What I told you. It’s a letter not a confession. You have to read a bit between the lines but not much. See for yourself when it comes.’

Even though Cale was lying he had more or less accurately set out the position of the Hanse, not so very surprising in that there were only a limited number of options available to them, given that they were a trading federation who used military power to protect their financial interests only when it was unavoidable. But it was about more than just money because they had already provided a great deal to the Axis and would provide more. Partly it was the open-ended financial risk of war: there was a limit to giving money, even if it was a great deal of money, but there was no limit to the treasure that a war could swallow up. And they were also mindful of the view that war was the father of everything – it produced changes even for the victorious that could have untold consequences. Far better to stay on the sidelines, making vague promises you had no intention of honouring, handing over cash and staying out of it as long as possible.

Sadly for Cale, this happy guesswork was of no practical value beyond being plausible – Kitty expected proof and there wasn’t any. And he expected it in the next few minutes.

16

Since he had come into Kitty’s room, hammers had been working in Cale’s brain to come up with an escape plan and decide what to do about Kitty the Hare. He had never seen Kitty do anything more than stand or sit. What was he? He had seen the peculiar paw-like right hand and since he had taken to wearing the peaked cap and the dirty looking brown linen veil there was only the cooingly precise voice to go by. What if he had teeth to tear you with, claws as sharp as razors to cut, arms so brutal they could rip your bone casings apart like Grendel, or worse, like Grendel’s mum? He was unknown until the moment he was attacked. Then there was the door and the men outside who could open it whenever they wanted to. Then there was getting away. Too many unknowns for someone who, even at sixteen (if that was Cale’s age), was no longer the man he used to be. His position was so evil that, even as he was pouring camel manure into Kitty’s ear and looking around the room for a means of blocking the door and finding something that might help in the infliction of the violence that was certainly coming, he was also cursing himself for failing to observe one of IdrisPukke’s mostly highly polished aphorisms: always resist your first impulses, they are often generous. After all, those two cretins had gone off on their demented frolic entirely of their own free will. Why should he die for their stupidity? But it was too late for that now.

It began. Cale ran to the large bookcase that stretched from floor to ceiling, packed with Kitty’s accounts. He jumped as high as he could and started heaving on it like a deranged monkey. Luckily it was freestanding and toppled easily and so quickly that he almost fell under it as it crashed to the floor in front of the door and blocked it from opening.

Kitty’s bodyguards started pushing against it with all their strength. Kitty stood up from behind his enormous desk and moved a few steps backward. Was he waiting in terror for his guards to break in or was he calmly preparing himself to tear Thomas Cale into small, meaty pieces? Cale had been beaten by Bosco into believing one thing above all others – once you decide to attack, commit without let or hindrance. Cale took four steps towards Kitty and jabbed the heel of his hand into his face. The scream Kitty let out as he fell shook even Cale. It wasn’t the scream of a man mutilated on the battlefield or a cornered animal, but more like a furious and frightened baby – high-pitched and harrowing. A spot of blood appeared on the linen mask as Kitty wailed and thrashed to get a grip on the polished floor, all the while the red stain spreading. Behind him, the bodyguards were charging the door so heavily that the great frame shook with each blow. Cale turned to the desk and heaved. It was so heavy it might have been screwed to the floor. But fear pumped him up enough to shift the desk an inch, then two, then again with greater and greater speed as his frantic roar of effort mixed with the heaving crashes of the door, until he hit the now shifting bookcase with the desk just as the bodyguards had stepped back for a final push. The collision of desk and bookcase slammed the door shut, taking the fingertips of two men’s hands with it.

His brain was buzzing with the screams inside the room, the cries of agony outside, and his lips throbbed with pins and needles as the power of the Phedra and Morphine began to lag. He stared at Kitty, still shrieking in the corner of the room. Outside the guards had gone silent, planning something.

It is a business full of difficulty, killing a living thing. Even with the means – the blunt object, the useful blade, the stillness induced by dread. Anything more awkward than the wringing of a chicken’s neck takes nerve and practice and familiarity. Cale considered the task ahead. Already his legs and his hands were shaking. Nothing in the room would help, it was more or less empty but for the bound red ledgers on the floor. And what was he dealing with? Kitty the Hare was frightened, to be sure, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Cale felt his artificial powder strength begin to drain away. Could he beat Kitty to death with his fists? And what was behind the veil?

The shoving on the other side of the door began again. He stepped forward and, bending down, grabbed Kitty and shifted him over. He fumbled for his neck and tried to hold it in the crook of his elbow. Kitty realized what he was going to do and began howling and screaming again, so high-pitched it hurt the ears, his feet scrabbling on the polished floor. Terror made him strong and he wrenched free and backed away, still screaming, to the far wall. Again the room-shaking battering from the guards crashing against the door. It was impossible to go on without seeing his face – Cale needed to see who or what was so vulnerable to being hurt. He tore off the peaked cap and bloody linen veil.

Disgust made him pull back, shocked at the ugliness of what he saw. The face and skull seemed to belong to two different creatures, one more deformed than the other. The right side of his head was distended along its entire length, as if the skin had been filled with stones. His right cheek was a mat of warty growths, his lips on one side swollen by three or four inches. But halfway along his mouth the lips narrowed and became quite normal, and with a recognizably human expression. On the left side of his head, above his ear, Kitty had grown the strands of hair more than twelve inches long and combed them over in an effort to hide a huge tumour. His left hand, too, was perfectly ordinary and rather delicate, his right was paw-like but huge, as if it had been cut and healed into three parts, each with the large and pointed nails from which Kitty got his name.

‘Pease! Pease!’ said Kitty. ‘Pease! Pease!’

But it was his eyes that got to Cale, deep brown and delicate as a girl’s, shining with fear and dread. Imagine what it is to beat a living thing to death with weakening hands and aching shoulders. The time it took, the crying out, the blood in Kitty’s throat choking him, the feet scrabbling on the floor. But the blows with his fist and elbow had to carry on no matter what. It must be done.

When it was over, Cale sat back on the floor. He did not feel horror and he did not feel pity. Kitty the Hare didn’t deserve to live; Kitty the Hare deserved to die. But then he, Thomas Cale, probably deserved to die as well for all the horrible things he’d done. But he wasn’t dead and Kitty was. For the moment at any rate.

During the killing of Kitty, the guards had been battering against the door. Now they’d stopped. Cale was soaked in sweat, now cooling, and not just from the effort of putting an end to Kitty. His lips were firing pins and needles ever faster, his head throbbing. ‘It’s midnight, Goldilocks,’ he said aloud, misremembering the story he’d heard Arbell telling her little nieces in Memphis.

He stood up and began opening the drawers in the great ebony desk. Nothing but papers, except for a brass paperweight and a bag of boiled sweets – humbugs. He ate a couple, splintering them in order to get the sugar into his body, then stepped next to the door and banged it three times with the paperweight. He thought he heard whispering.

‘Kitty the Hare. He’s dead,’ said Cale.

A silence, then, ‘Then you’re going to sing him to his rest, shit-bag.’

‘Why?’

‘Why the fuck do you think?’

‘Did you love Kitty? Was Kitty a father to you?’

‘Never you mind about what Kitty was. Prepare to not be.’

‘You want to kill the only friend you have in the world? Kitty’s dead and that means all his enemies, many and unkind, are going to disjoint his goods and services among them. Not including you – your share of the profits is going to be a six-foot by two-foot space in one of Kitty’s illegal rubbish tips in Oxyrinchus.’

Cale was sure he could hear muttering and arguing. This ought to be the easiest part. What he was telling them was true and it was obvious. The trouble was that riffraff had their loyalties and affections like everyone else. And they also were puffed up with the drama and action of the last fifteen minutes. There was going to be violent change one way or the other and Thomas Cale had caused it. If people could be trusted to act in their own best interests it would be a different world. He needed to let tempers cool.

‘Go and get Cadbury. Bring him here and then we’ll talk.’

Silence for a few moments.

‘Cadbury’s buggered off to Zurich.’

‘Anyway,’ shouted the man who’d taken the lead, ‘fuck Cadbury. You talk to us. Let us in.’

The request for Cadbury had backfired. What could he do, after all? He’d expected they’d have taken time to go and find him only to discover he was gone. Now all he’d done was annoyed whoever had taken control. He considered bluster. Dangerous. He chose bluster.

‘I’m Thomas Cale, I’ve just beaten Kitty the Hare to death with my bare hands. I killed Solomon Solomon in the Red Opera in two seconds and there are ten thousand Laconics rotting in the shadow of the Golan Heights, and I was the one who left them there.’ Though he felt dreadful and his situation was dire, declaring his glorious achievements aloud was exhilarating. It all was true, wasn’t it? he thought.

There was no reply.

‘Look. I’ve got nothing against any of you. You were doing what you were paid for. Kitty got his portion and that’s the way it is. You can either work for me, with all the money and whatever privileges Kitty gave you, and a bonus of two hundred dollars and no questions asked, or you can take your chances with General Butt-Naked and Lord Peanut Butter – I’m told that General Butt-Naked keeps his troops lively by stringing the intestines of those who disappoint him across the streets of the slums he controls.’

These lurid stories of Kitty’s rivals were, in fact, true. Even in Switzerland, a civilized place of trade with admirably clean streets where all was ordered, its people prosperous and law-abiding, there were parts of it that were the very bowels of darkness. A stone’s throw from generous streets and the generous souls who lived in them a savagery and a cruelty of a kind that was impossible to imagine except for the fact that it happened took place at all hours and within a short walk. Isn’t it the same with all cities everywhere, and in all times? The civilized and the inhumanly cruel are separated only by a short stroll.

After a few minutes’ more talking, Cale filibustering to draw out the time and let them calm down and see things as they were, he pushed back the desk just enough to give them purchase – no easy matter, his strength was fading in jabs and bursts. He went and sat down, casual, in Kitty’s chair and waited for his bodyguards to push back the heavy bookcase.

So they filed in, obviously wary but also subdued by the body in the middle of the floor. It was not death or blood that worried them – that was their calling, after all – but the sight of unstoppable power suddenly stopped. Kitty was myth – his reach ran everywhere. Now even in the gloom it wasn’t just that death had robbed him of power but that he was revealed as deformed, eaten and swollen by growths, distended and spoilt. What they had feared now revolted them and all the more intensely because of the intensity of that fear. Now their terror demeaned them.

‘I saw a sea-cow,’ said one, ‘dead in the water for a week who looked like that.’ He prodded him with his feet.

‘Leave him alone,’ said Cale.

‘You killed him,’ protested the man.

‘Leave him alone.’

‘Who are you to give us orders?’

That, thought Cale, is a good question.

‘Because I’m the one who knows what to do next.’

Some of the men in the room were stupid, others intelligent and ambitious, but Cale’s assertion threw them badly. It was not that Cale had the answer, because really he had no idea what to do next. His advantage over them lay in realizing that what to do next was the only thing that mattered.

‘How many of you can write?’

Three of the fifteen men slowly put up their hands.

‘Have any of you worked for General Butt-Naked?’

Two hands went up.

‘Peanut Butter?’

Three hands.

‘I want the three of you that can write to set down everything you know on paper. If the rest of you have anything to add then say so.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll be back in three hours. Lock the door behind me and don’t let anyone in or out. If the news of Kitty’s death gets around, you know what that means.’ Then he walked out, full of purpose and clarity. At any moment he expected to be stopped, to be asked the obvious two questions that he couldn’t answer. But no one said anything. He was out of the door and down the stairs to the most welcoming sound he had ever heard: the lock turning behind him.

Feeling sicker with every step, Cale had gone to IdrisPukke on his way to find Vague Henri and Kleist. The relief on IdrisPukke’s face was evident even to Cale, wretched and angry with him as he was; it was the look of a man who’d come to feel he’d done something dreadful but which had turned out all right in the end. Cale told him what had happened and asked him to come with him to see the boys and send someone for a doctor.

It was not easy to astonish IdrisPukke and for the first few minutes of the walk he was silent, then just as they were about to enter the digs, IdrisPukke took Cale’s arm and stopped him.

‘What was it like?’

‘It was a bad do. I can’t say it wasn’t. I don’t feel sorry for Kitty – he got what he deserved – but when I was walking to you after I got out I understood something about why he wanted to make the world afraid of him. What were his choices? Make his living in a freak show with the geek who eats frogs or the boneless wonder? Depend on the kindness of others? Don’t get me wrong, though – I wasn’t thinking that when I bashed his brains out.’

‘I feel I’ve let you down,’ said IdrisPukke. Cale said nothing at first, thinking about what he said. This had all been Vague Henri’s and Kleist’s fault. IdrisPukke had been pretty good to them all, ever since he’d met them, for no very good reason. Cale had asked him to cheat on his brother. But something had been pecking in his soul – even though he couldn’t see why, he agreed that IdrisPukke had in some way been disloyal to him.

‘No. No, you didn’t,’ he said. And they moved on.

Just from the brief glimpse he’d had of them in the house he knew the boys were in bad nick. Now he was able to look them over properly they looked even worse. Kleist was unable to speak his mouth was so swollen. The little fingers on both their left hands had been broken along with the thumbs. Cale told them Kitty was dead.

‘Was it slow?’ said Vague Henri.

‘As slow as you like.’

When the doctor arrived he cleaned them up carefully; it was painful stuff. Except for their faces and hands most of the damage was bruising. Kleist kept spitting blood and the doctor quietly worried to them that there might be a haemorrhage inside. ‘If he starts shitting blood, call me at once.’ Still not altogether down from the Phedra and Morphine, Cale could not help but admire that the stitching of Vague Henri’s face from the wound of the year before had held up nicely. But Kleist didn’t seem all there and kept drifting in and out.

‘Kitty,’ he mumbled.

‘Kitty’s dead.’

‘Kitty,’ he mumbled again, and kept on till he passed out completely.

The doctor put Vague Henri to sleep with a mixture of Valerian and Poppy Oil and Cale and IdrisPukke watched over them.

‘What will you do with them, Kitty’s people, now?’

Cale seemed surprised.

‘Nothing. Let them rot.’

‘There’s too much money and power at stake just to let it go.’

‘You have it then.’

‘I was hoping you’d say that.’

‘You don’t need my say-so.’

IdrisPukke detected the sourness. He did not blame him – he was ashamed of his refusal to help in the rescue of Vague Henri and Kleist but this was too important an opportunity to pass up. An empire of sorts was going begging.

‘I thought I’d send for Cadbury,’ IdrisPukke said. ‘He’ll know the SP on everything Kitty was up to.’

‘I think you’ll make a lovely couple,’ said Cale. And with that he went to sleep.

It did indeed turn out to be a great match, if not one made in heaven. Criminal scum are often sentimental about their mothers but, in general, this is the furthest extent of their loyalty. Outsiders almost by definition, they aren’t usually moved by the idea of innate rank, social order or hierarchy, except when it’s imposed by the continuous threat of violence. Where there are beggars there can never be a king resting easy with his crown.

IdrisPukke surrounded Kitty’s house to prevent the occupants from leaving. He didn’t want a fuss and told them he was waiting for Cadbury to arrive to sort everything out. He also promised to raise their bonus to five hundred dollars. The following morning Cadbury arrived, having been halted during his flight to Oxyrinchus, still amazed by the news of Kitty’s death. Though there was no general affection for Cadbury among those inside the house, he was at least familiar to them and had a reputation for being smart. By now they needed a saviour and the changeover from Kitty the Hare to IdrisPukke and Cadbury was so quick that in barely a week Kitty was already passing into the myth in which he most naturally belonged. From now on, stories would be told about him by mothers sweetly threatening their children to be good or Kitty the Hare would come for them. Then these same children in their later years would scare their younger siblings with blood-curdling accounts of the deformed Kitty wielding a chain and a saw over hapless maids doomed to being dismembered and eaten; and then, as the years passed, his reputation reached the Celts in the east, where they transformed him into a friendly old hare selling pegs and telling ghost stories for a penny a go.

17

As the swellings went down and the bruises came out in purples and browns, Vague Henri became almost ecstatically cheerful. Kleist not so – he seemed to have been struck hard by the events in Kitty’s house. He slept a lot and wouldn’t talk much when he was awake. They thought it best to leave him alone, that he’d come out of it in his own time. Once Vague Henri was up to walking he and Cale went for a stroll along the Promenade des Bastions and watched the girls in their spring dresses forgetting the dreadful rumours of war that were in the air, and the two boys forgot along with them. They bought chocolate cake bursting with cream and Cale tormented Vague Henri by breaking off pieces and almost feeding him but then putting the cake in his own mouth.

On the bandstand a dozen musicians played ‘I’ve Got a Luverly Bunch of Coconuts’, that spring’s most popular song. A group of girls of about the same age as the boys scolded Cale and took the cake away and began feeding the boy with the bandaged hands as if he was a baby. And he loved it.

‘What happened to your poor hands?’ said one of them, a wayward-looking redhead.

‘He fell off his horse,’ said Cale. ‘Drunk.’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Vague Henri. ‘I did it saving a small puppy from drowning.’

More giggles at this – a lovely sound, like running water.

For ten minutes he flirted with the girls, nibbling their fingers as they fed him so they told him off for biting, though not the girl with red hair who let him suck the thick white cream off her middle finger for much too long while her friends chattered like starlings and gasped delightedly at her shocking behaviour. Cale sat in the sun at the other end of the bench, looked at by two of the girls who wouldn’t have minded feeding him something more than cake if they’d only had the encouragement. Cale lapped it all up: the warm sun, the pretty girls and his friend’s pleasure. But it was as if it were a scene only to be observed, not in itself to do with him. He didn’t even notice the girls looking at him.

Eventually a responsible adult came and rounded the girls up and took them away.

‘We’re often here,’ they said. ‘Goodbye! Goodbye!’

‘Odd,’ said Vague Henri, ‘a couple of days ago it was the deep six and now it’s girls and cake.’

‘What’ll you remember best?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Pain and suffering or girls and cake? What’ll you remember best a year from now?’

‘What are you on about?’

‘IdrisPukke said pain was much more than pleasure – that you remembered it more. If you were a python eating a pig, it’d be a bit pleasurable for the python but mighty nasty for the pig. And that’s life, he said. So you should know, having had both in a week. Pain and suffering or girls and cake?’

‘Why just me?’ said Vague Henri. ‘Weren’t you shitting yourself before you killed Kitty?’

‘Me? Not me. I’m your swashbuckling hero-type person. I’m not afraid of anything.’

They both started giggling at this, not unlike the girls who’d been there a few minutes before and who knew nothing about pain and suffering – although, of course, you could never tell just by looking at someone.

‘Me? I’m for girls and cake,’ said Vague Henri. ‘You?’

‘Pain and suffering.’

They both started laughing again.

‘Sounds barn owl to me,’ said Vague Henri.

For the next few days they tried cheering up Kleist but he refused to be made any happier. Eventually Cale gave him tea from his daily supply of Chase-Devil given him by Sister Wray and hoped that would bring him round. It didn’t seem to do much other than make him feel sick.

A few days later Cale and Vague Henri went off to find the outdragger who’d picked up the pair from Kitty’s and taken them home.

‘My friend here wanted to thank you personally,’ said Cale when they tracked him down.

‘Thank you,’ said Vague Henri.

The man looked at him, not hostile but certainly not grateful.

Cale gave him the rest of the money he’d promised and another five dollars on top.

‘You’re welcome,’ said the outdragger to Vague Henri, clearly indifferent to what he thought one way or the other.

‘You probably saved our lives,’ said Vague Henri, awkward and irritated by the outdragger’s refusal to be grateful for his gratitude.

‘Fifteen dollars?’ said the outdragger. ‘Your lives aren’t worth much, are they?’

Vague Henri stared at him then gave him another ten dollars, all he had on him. He waited for some sign of appreciation but the outdragger made no acknowledgement beyond putting the money in a purse he took from his pocket. It was pulled tight by a cord from which hung a small iron gibbet dangling a tiny Hanged Redeemer. Antagonists of whatever kind did not approve of these holy gibbets. Everybody was suspicious of the Tinkers whose own version of the faith went back to before the great split.

‘Let me give you some advice,’ said Vague Henri, not at all awkward any more, ‘worth more than ten dollars. Put away the holy gibbet there and don’t bring it out until the conversion of the Masons.’ The Redeemers believed the Masons to be the most blasphemous of all religions and that their conversion would take place at the end of time.

Cale’s interest was elsewhere. ‘Tell me about your cart,’ he said, looking at the handcart Kleist and Vague Henri had been hauled away in.

For the first time since they’d arrived, Cale’s question seemed to inspire enthusiasm. The tinker was clearly proud of his barrow. The design, he said, was as old as the outdraggers themselves but he’d made many improvements over the years; and always, he pointed out resentfully, to the disapproval of other outdraggers.

‘They drop dead while they’re still young pushing the porky hulks of the Gorges that killed their fathers and their grandfathers before them. I made this cart from a pile of bamboo scaffolding I found in the dump. Got the idea for the springs from a bouncy horse I saw at a carnival. Cost me two dollars to get it made up.’ Cale and the outdragger talked about the cart and everything its lightness and mobility allowed him to do in the way of delivering heavier loads up steeper streets. Why? thought Vague Henri.

‘What a stink,’ said Vague Henri, as they walked away into the city.

‘You’ve got very swanky for someone whose idea of heaven used to be a nice juicy rat.’

‘What was that all about then, the cart?’

‘I’m interested in how things work. An ignorant man from ignorant people that outdragger – but clever. Interesting bloke.’

When they got back to their lodgings, an irritated IdrisPukke was waiting for them along with Cadbury and Deidre Plunkett who, with her scarlet lips and rouged cheeks, looked like nothing on God’s earth.

‘Punctuality is the politeness of kings,’ said IdrisPukke to Cale. ‘Let alone someone who was sold for sixpence.’

‘We were held up. Hello, Deidre. Are you well?’

‘Nothing shall be well with the wicked.’

There was a short silence.

‘Speaking of the wicked, Deidre,’ said Cadbury, ‘would you mind keeping an eye out for anyone behaving oddly?’ She left silently.

‘She’s lovely,’ said Vague Henri.

‘Hold your tongue, you little twerp,’ replied Cadbury. ‘We’ve come from Kitty the Hare’s office.’

Cale nodded.

‘IdrisPukke tells me you’re always complaining about your bad luck – but I have to say if you’d asked me what your chances were of getting out alive from your interview with Kitty I’d have said about as thin as a homeopathic soup made from the shadow of a pigeon that’d died of starvation.’

‘I don’t know what homeopathic means.’

‘In this instance, it means not worth the steam off a bucket of piss.’

‘I’ll try to remember – good word, homeopathic.’

‘I don’t have time for this,’ said IdrisPukke. ‘Whatever people thought of Kitty they underestimated him. His loan books are a maze with an exit in every treasury this side of the Great Wall of China. They didn’t know Kitty was behind them – I’ve counted more than twenty front men as it is. Most of them should have known better than to deal with someone like Kitty. My guess is that he was blackmailing them. But you never know with splendid financiers what they’ll do for even more money.’

‘I don’t complain about my bad luck,’ said Cale.

‘Yes, you do,’ replied IdrisPukke. ‘At any rate, a lot of people owe Kitty a lot of money. Now, thanks to you, we’ve inherited their obligations to pay up.’

‘What if they don’t want to? Kitty’s dead, after all.’

‘But, as Cadbury has pointed out, exacting payment from Kitty’s debtors is very much his line of work.’

‘What’s my share?’

‘We thought a tenth,’ said Cadbury.

‘He kills Kitty and you get nine-tenths? Seems the wrong way round to me,’ said Vague Henri.

‘You know a lot do you, you ungrateful young pup, about running a criminal enterprise? You’re both, I’m sure, deeply knowledgeable about trading in options and futures in the collateralization of debt and what to do when an entire country threatens to default.’

‘No,’ said Vague Henri.

‘Then shut up.’ IdrisPukke turned to Cale. ‘Do you think I’d steal from you or do you a bad turn?’

‘No.’

‘So we’re agreed. Ten per cent. You’ll be very rich if Cadbury is telling the truth, or half the truth.’

‘Now you’ve hurt my feelings,’ said Cadbury.

‘You know those boys Kitty had in Memphis? Did he bring them here?’

‘Nothing to do with me, that stuff.’

‘It is now. I want you to find them and let them go. Give them fifty dollars each.’

‘Fifty dollars for a rent boy?’

Cadbury could see immediately that Cale was not in the mood to be disagreed with. ‘All right, I’ll see to it but it’ll come out of your share.’ But he couldn’t leave it. ‘You can’t do anything for them. Not now. This is what they’re used to. They’ll spend the money and end up with Peanut Butter or Butt-Naked. They’ll be worse off than they were with Kitty. Either leave them as they are or take care of them.’

‘Do I look like somebody’s mother? The four of us did all right. Riba’s practically the Queen of the Russians. And now the three of us are rich. Give them the money and let them go. Then it’s up to them.’

On his way home, Cadbury thought about what Cale wanted. What he said about Riba was true enough. Cadbury had seen her looking gorgeous at some social thrash Kitty had sent him to, to have a word with some Fauntleroy or other who was late with his payments and who had important information Kitty wanted, much more important than the piffling three thousand that was owed. He’d seen Riba at high table. She was something to look at in her red gown, hair piled up like a loaf. But as to Cale and the others being all right, you just had to look at the state of them.

18

Vague Henri and Cale had made one further condition, of a kind: Cadbury had to kill the two men who had beaten the boys so badly. Cadbury was going to do this anyway because he’d been told they were looking for a chance to take over Kitty’s operation themselves, but it wouldn’t do any harm to let Cale think he’d conceded something.

‘It’ll have to be quick,’ he told the three boys. ‘I only torture people when I really need to know something: if you want them to suffer you must do it yourself.’

Quick would be all right, they said.

That night the two men were tied up and when they demanded to know what would happen to them Cadbury said, ‘You must die and not live.’ The next day, along with Kitty the Hare, their bodies were taken to be buried in the rubbish tips at Oxyrinchus.

Meanwhile, in the civilized places a few hundred yards away, Vipond was in the ascendant. Now that he was in possession of Kitty’s red books, and the money secrets inside them, the doors that were once closed to him were now opening.

Conn Materazzi, whose cold disdain for the King made him ever more agreeable in his admirer’s adoring eyes, was now in command of ten thousand household Switzers, soldiers of considerable skill and reputation. He was opposed in his rise by the Swiss chancellor, Bose Ikard, but not because of his youth and inexperience. In fact, such things were last of all on his mind: the alternative to Conn could only be drawn from the Swiss aristocracy, who may have been older but were generally not very bright and had considerably less military training than the young man. What alarmed Ikard was the influence this gave to Vipond and his no less dangerous half-brother. He feared any power moving into their hands because all that concerned them was what was good for the self-serving war-mongering Materazzi and not what was good for anyone else. Vipond would have understood his fears but would have pointed out that for the foreseeable future their mutual interests lay in opposing the Redeemers. But Ikard feared war more than anything while Vipond thought it was inevitable.

In fact Bose Ikard and Vipond, and even IdrisPukke, were not so different, in that they were experienced enough to be suspicious of decisive action in war or anything else. Life had taught them to spin everything out until the last minute, then appear to agree to some major concession and then, when all seemed to be decided, find some way to spin things out again.

‘The trouble with decisive agreement, just as with decisive battles,’ lectured Vipond to Cale, ‘is that they decide things and logic dictates that there must be an extremely good chance of them being decided against you. When anyone talks to me about a decisive battle I’m inclined to have him locked up. They’re an easy solution and easy solutions are usually wrong. Assassinations, for example, never change history – not really.’

‘The Two Trevors tried to assassinate me at the Priory. It would have changed things if they had,’ said Cale.

‘You must take a more nuanced view. What would it have changed?’

‘Well, Kitty the Hare would still be alive and you wouldn’t have his money and his secrets.’

‘I don’t consider Kitty’s death to have been an assassination – by which I mean the pursuit of impersonal political ends by an act of personal violence. Kitty’s death was just common murder. If you want to make something of yourself you must stop slaughtering people, or at least stop slaughtering them for purely private reasons.’

Cale was always reluctant not to have the last word with anyone, even Vipond – but his head ached and he was tired.

‘Leave the boy alone, he’s not well,’ said IdrisPukke.

‘What do you mean? The boy knows I’m only giving him the benefit of my experience.’ He smiled at Cale. ‘Pearls beyond price.’ Cale smiled back despite himself.

‘I wanted to talk to you about a difficult matter: Conn Materazzi won’t have you on his staff.’

A puzzled silence from Cale. ‘Never crossed my mind he would.’

‘His dislike of you is quite understandable,’ said Vipond. ‘Nearly everyone takes exception to you.’

‘He dislikes me even more since he was in my debt,’ said Cale, referring to his long regretted rescue of Conn from the crushed and gasping piles of the dead at Silbury Hill.

‘He’s grown up a good deal since then. Transformed, I’d say. But he won’t be doing with you at any price. We need you to be advising him and very badly. But he’s adamant against even my considerable temper when I don’t get my own way on something so important. Why?’

‘No idea. Ask him.’

‘I have.’

Cale sat in silence.

‘Moving on,’ continued Vipond, after a moment. ‘On balance, we’ve decided not to tell anyone about the likelihood of the Redeemers beginning their attack through the Arnhemland desert.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘I believe you. But the problem is that if we warn the Axis and they do something about it by reinforcing the border next to the Maginot Line the Redeemers will have to re-think everything. If I understand you correctly,’ he did, this was merely flattery, ‘the Redeemers’ entire strategy for the war depends on a swift breakthrough there.’

‘So?’

‘If that entry is blocked, they’ll have to think again.’

‘Yes’

‘Would you say a long delay?’

‘Probably.’

‘Perhaps another year if they must miss the summer and autumn. They won’t attack in the winter.’

‘They probably won’t.’

‘If you say so. But you agree that blocking Arnhemland now will probably delay the war for a year?’

‘Probably.’

‘Well, we can’t afford that. By we I mean the Materazzi and you.’

‘Because?’

‘Bose Ikard is pouring plausible but false hope into the ear of the King. He’s saying that the Axis in general and the Swiss in particular are sealed up tight against Bosco, that either the mountains or the Maginot Line will keep him out. He’s telling him the lands the Redeemers have already taken may be considerable but that things are not as alarming as they appear. The territories they have conquered have nothing much in the way of resources worth having and so the trouble of occupying them with Redeemer forces will consume more Redeemer blood and treasure than they can possibly gain from occupying them.’

‘He has a point,’ said Cale.

‘Indeed he does – but our point is different. If we are to believe you, then Bosco will come because he must, now or later. But if it’s later then we will lose all credibility. It will appear that Ikard is correct – the Redeemers have taken land that’s more trouble than it’s worth and are barred by axis defences from taking any more. Bosco can’t go forward, he can only go back. If we warn them about the attack through Arnhemland it will stop Bosco and it will look as if Ikard is right and we are wrong. We’ll decline into a kind of nothing.’

‘So you’re going to let the Redeemers in.’

‘Exactly. You disagree?’

‘It sounds a bit clever dick to me. But you might be right. I’ll have to think about it.’

‘If you have a better idea let me know.’

‘I will.’

But half an hour after he’d left, Cale was pretty sure Vipond was right. The question was what if the Redeemers weren’t held at the Mississippi? What if they crossed over and kept on coming? The mountains that protected them from anyone getting in would be the mountains that stopped anyone from getting out. The only exit was through the Schallenberg Pass and Bosco was ready to shut that tight as a cork in a bottle.

That evening Vipond and IdrisPukke were trying to browbeat Arbell Materazzi in the same course.

‘You must persuade him,’ said Vipond.

‘He won’t be told and that’s that. If I tried to persuade him I’d make him a good deal angrier at me than he is at you – and he’s pissed off with you, I can tell you.’

‘Don’t be so vulgar.’

‘Then don’t tell me to make an enemy out of my own husband.’

‘She has a point,’ said IdrisPukke. ‘We don’t want to send him where we can’t get him back.’

‘He’s not at your beck and call anyway,’ she said, angry now herself. ‘He’s not a pipe for you to play on.’

‘I stand corrected,’ said IdrisPukke, touchy himself.

‘Besides, you think Thomas Cale is your saviour and ours. Are you so sure?’

‘You did pretty well out of him, you ungrateful madam.’

‘If he hadn’t come to Memphis I’d never have needed rescuing. I’m not ungrateful.’

‘I’ve never understood the “not” in front of “ungrateful”,’ said IdrisPukke. ‘It doesn’t mean grateful, does it?’

‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’m a thankless bitch. But wherever he goes, everyone says it, a funeral follows. He was the cause of us losing everything. You think you’re clever enough to make use of him to destroy the people you hate – and he’ll do it. And he’ll take you with him. And my husband and my son.’ She stopped for a moment. The two men said nothing because there was no point. ‘You should have more trust in Conn. He can be a great man if you can make friends with him again.’

‘It doesn’t look like we have much choice,’ said Vipond the next day when they met up with Cale and Vague Henri to discuss what should be done next. ‘We must let the pig pass through the python.’

The two of them started sniggering at this like two naughty schoolboys at the back of the class. ‘Grow up!’ he said to them, but it only made them worse. When they eventually stopped, Cale told them what he thought.

‘I know everyone thinks I’m not good for anything but murder – but this is a wicked thing we’re doing here.’

‘So I’m told,’ said Vipond.

‘What if we’re wrong? What if someone finds out?’

‘You think you’re the only one with reservations? I have the reputation for being a wise man, despite the fact that I lost an entire empire while I was supposed to be its steward. But my experience is still worth something, I think. Great powers, and the men who rule them, are like blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in deadly peril from the other whom he assumes to have perfect vision. They ought to know that all the policies of great powers are made of uncertainty and confusion. Yet each power fears that the other has greater wisdom, clarity and foresight – although they never do. You and I and Bosco are three blind men and before we’re finished we’re probably going to do a great deal of damage to each other and to the room.’

Twelve days later the Redeemers raced across Arnhemland in less than thirty-six hours and destroyed the first army of the Axis in five days, the eighth army of the Axis in six days and the fourth army of the Axis in two days. The problem was that all the armies guarding Arnhemland and those backing it were increasingly poorly equipped in terms of experience and weaponry, all the best soldiers and equipment having been reserved for the expected line of attack on the impressively well-guarded Maginot Line. These were soldiers who would have had a good chance of either checking or at least slowing the advance of the lightly armed first attack by the Redeemers but having been cut off from all means of resupply were obliged to surrender without much more than a cross word. This all happened with such speed that Vipond had every reason to fear that he had indeed been too clever by half and that his decision to say nothing was not only wicked but foolish. Temporary rescue of a sort came from an unexpected source.

Artemisia Halicarnassus is already a name long forgotten – but of all great men of military genius never given the credit they deserved she was, perhaps, the greatest. Artemisia was no Amazon or Valkyrie – she was barely five foot tall and was so concerned with her appearance, with her banded painted toenails and elaborately curled hair, that one surly diplomat had described her as more pansy than feminine. In addition she spoke with a slight lisp, which many thought to be an affectation but was not. Along with her tendency to seem easily distracted (due to boredom at the dullness or stupidity of what she was listening to), and her habit of interjecting ideas that seemed merely to have drifted across her mind in the way soft clouds move with a light breeze, there was no one who could look past her appearance and manner to recognize her original and penetrating intelligence. As it happened, the collapse of the armies of the Flag, and the almost as quick defeat of the Regime of the 14th of August that lay in reserve behind, created an extraordinary and definitely once in a lifetime chance for Artemisia to show what she was made of.

Halicarnassus, which had its northern boundary formed by the Mississippi, was unusual in its geography in that, unlike the other countries that bordered that great river, Halicarnassus was a place of limestone gorges and awkward hills. Seeing the terrible collapse in front of her and realizing the vast numbers of retreating soldiers would be slaughtered as they were pinned up against the northern bank of such a difficult to cross river, she emerged from Halicarnassus with the small army left to her by her husband and, spreading her troops like a funnel, managed to guide large numbers of fleeing soldiers into the temporary safety of Halicarnassus. There she re-organized the terrified troops and arranged for as many as a hundred and fifty thousand to be evacuated across the Mississippi – a mile wide at that point. In the ten days that the rescue took she fought in Halicarnassus itself to slow down the advancing Redeemers. For three weeks Halicarnassus bulged alone into the Redeemer army as it reached the banks of the Mississippi and murdered the thousands of soldiers she had not been able to protect who were trapped by the river around Halicarnassus. Eventually Artemisia was forced to withdraw and cross the river herself. It is not recorded if she expected to be greeted by cheering crowds, the ringing of church bells and the holding of many banquets in her honour. If so, she was to be disappointed.

On her arrival in Spanish Leeds, having been more than anyone else responsible for stopping the Redeemers at the Mississippi, and therefore preventing them from swarming into Switzerland to begin the first stage of the end of the world, she was greeted with polite, if brief, applause and a place at the bottom of the table, like a wedding guest who’d been invited for form’s sake but no one wanted to talk to. She was being ignored not just because she was a woman, although it was partly that; even if Artemisia had been a man it would have been hard to place her in the scheme of things. No one whose judgement they especially trusted had actually seen her in action. Perhaps her successes were just good luck or exaggerated. History was full of striking successes by people who either never repeated that success or who spectacularly failed when they attempted to do so. There’s a reason why we feel that trust has to be earned – by and large it’s the product of repeated success. But Artemisia had emerged from nowhere and her manner would not necessarily have inspired confidence even in an open-minded person. She deserved that confidence but it was not impossible to understand why she didn’t have it. She had asked to be put in charge of the defence of the South Bank of the Mississippi but this had not been so much refused as simply referred to various war committees where her request would evaporate like a shallow puddle in Arnhemland. She could have returned to command her own small private army, but only on the banks opposite Halicarnassus where no one, certainly not Artemisia, thought the Redeemers would cross because there were so many better places to do so. So she decided to stay in Spanish Leeds and see what she could do to find a position where she could properly influence events.

Five days after arriving she was already in despair. Whenever she spoke at the interminable meetings to discuss the war her observations were followed by a short, slightly puzzled, silence and then the arguments continued as if she had never spoken. It was at a garden party on the sixth day that she first met Thomas Cale. She had been trying to insert herself in the discussion around various military advisors without success – once she offered an opinion it acted like soap on oil – the group quickly dispersed, leaving her holding a glass of wine and an amuse bouche of toasted bread and anchovies and feeling like an idiot. Eventually, in high frustration, she went up to a young man, not much more than a boy, who was leaning against a wall and eating a vol-au-vent with his right hand, while holding two others in his left.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Artemisia Halicarnassus.’

The boy looked her over while continuing to chew slowly like, she thought, an unusually intelligent goat.

‘Big name for such a little girl.’

‘Well,’ she replied, ‘after you tell me your name perhaps you can give me a list of your achievements.’

In most other circumstances this would have been successful at putting such an obvious nobody in his place. ‘I’m Thomas Cale,’ he said, and set out all his great deeds in a boastfully matter-of-fact way.

‘I’ve heard of you,’ she said.

‘Everyone’s heard of me.’

‘I’ve heard that you’re a well-poisoning yob who lets children and women starve and brings carnage and massacre wherever he goes.’

‘I’ve done my fair share of well-poisoning and murder. But I’m not all bad.’

He was used to hearing abuse like this, if not directly. What was strange about it this time was not just that it was said to his face, but that it was done in a slightly distracted manner, her blue eyes fluttering, and in a tone that if she were not accusing him of dreadful infamies would have been almost sickly sweet. She was looking at her fingernails as if they were an object of total fascination.

‘I’ve heard of you, too.’

She looked up at him, eyes fluttering, for all the world like some fabulous social butterfly about to receive yet another compliment about her refulgent beauty. She knew, of course, an insult was coming. Cale spun the moment out. ‘Not bad,’ he said at last. ‘If what I heard was true.’

‘It is true.’

She had not meant to show she cared for other people’s good opinion so much. And indeed she didn’t. At least not so much. But she did care for it. And she had been so cross about not being given her due that this surprising compliment caught her out.

‘Then tell me about it,’ said Cale.

Perhaps not even girls or cake can equal the pleasures offered by someone of the highest reputation informing you of your unique brilliance. Cale may have been a well-poisoning murderer but Artemisia found these unhappy qualities receding into the background as it became clear both that he knew what he was talking about and that he admired her enormously. It was not just his flattery that warmed her. His questions, scepticism and doubts, all of which she was able to answer, gave as much delight as having the sore muscles of her delicate neck and shoulders massaged by expert hands. She was, by this time, nearly thirty years old and while she had liked her late husband, who had adored her and indulged her in her peculiar interest, she had not loved him or any man. Men desired her not because she was beautiful in any conventional way, but because of the very quality of otherworldly distraction and a lack of interest in them that also perplexed them. In short, they found her excitingly enigmatic but what they failed to realize as they praised her mysteriousness was that she did not want to be mysterious. She wanted to be admired for her abilities, appreciated for her good judgement, cunning and brains. Cale, without showing any apparent interest in her as a woman, understood her brilliance and set it out to her in adorable detail, and for several hours.

By the end of the evening she was (how could she not be?) already half in love. Both were equally astonished that the other was not in some position of great importance, given how wonderful they were. Neither of them, perhaps for similar reasons, had any idea how galling and irritating it was to be around them. They could not easily grasp that no one, especially if they were untalented, wanted to have their lack of ability made plain. He arranged to meet her the next day at the wine garden in Roundhay Park, which delighted her, and said that he would bring a friend of his if he was well enough, which did not delight her quite so much. Then he was gone. His sudden departure made him seem mysterious to her and it also left her off-balance; he had seemed so fascinated by her but had then left suddenly and in an almost off-hand way. She was somewhat put out that this only made him seem more attractive. The truth was he’d left so suddenly because he felt as if he was going to throw up. Anxious to avoid the bad impression this might make he left abruptly and only made it to the street outside before he started retching.

‘Artemisia Whasername?’ said IdrisPukke, the next morning. ‘I wouldn’t have thought she was your type at all.’

‘Meaning?’

‘A bit winsome.’

‘Windsom?’

‘Affected.’

‘Affected?’

‘Making a show of being endearing and mysterious – all those fluttering eyelashes and staring into the distance.’

‘She wasn’t making a show – she was just bored. She’s a brilliant woman.’

‘You don’t think all that stuff about her is exaggerated?’

‘If I say it wasn’t exaggerated, then it wasn’t. I went through everything, tried to dismantle her head to foot, but she stood it up. As it happens, she’s a marvel.’

‘Well if the Great Bighead thinks so well of her we must take a look.’

‘Why?’

‘Someone with such a great ability but less full of herself than you could be very useful.’

‘IdrisPukke wants to meet you, and Vipond.’

Artemisia was excited by this and was not someone able to hide her enthusiasm – her eyes widened, her eyelashes, long as a spaniel’s, fluttered away as if signalling desperately to a distant shore. There was something about her; perhaps most importantly, she was not Thomas Cale. He was very sick of himself indeed. Being in the company of a sick person all the time was a strain even if you were the sick person: always feeling horrible, never wanting to go anywhere, always asleep or, when awake, wanting to go back to sleep. She liked him a great deal, which was a considerable help, as girls seemed mostly to be afraid of him or sometimes, more worryingly, they imagined that this enticingly bad reputation was a mask that could be removed by a sensitive woman to reveal the soulmate beneath. They didn’t appreciate that there are some souls, not necessarily the cruel or the bad, with which it might be better not to join.

Another thing that fascinated Cale about Artemisia was that for the first time he had met someone whose story was odder than his own. Artemisia had always been a puzzle because she was no tomboy. In fact, she had been considered the girliest of little girls – not at all like her older sister, who was notorious for her rough and noisy habits. Artemisia liked pink and feminine colours that made your eyes ache to look at them, wore so many frills and flounces that it could be hard to find the little girl hidden inside them and had a collection of red-lipped dress-me-up dolls that numbered in the hundreds. Courtiers began to notice that in the morning she would dress and undress the dolls, babbling away like the lunatic so many small children resemble, scolding her dolls for getting dirty or squabbling with each other or wearing the wrong gloves for a Tuesday – but in the afternoon she would arrange them in great effeminate phalanxes of pink and cerulean and work out the best way of slaughtering them. Soldiers in mulberry petticoats fought to the death with irregulars in lavender pastel bonnets and cavalry riding on cotton reels in bloomers coloured baby blue.

It was assumed that in time her taste for these mincingly effeminate soldiering games would fade but her interest in everything military seemed only to grow more intense the older she got. She had no interest in any form of personal violence at all. She did not want to practise with swords or knives or, God forbid, wrestle with boys like her older sister. She did not have to be ordered not to box (like her sister), any more than she had to be ordered not to fly. She was an excellent horsewoman but no one tried to prevent this because Halicarnassus was famous for its horses and riding was considered perfectly acceptable for girls.

‘You don’t know how to fight?’ Cale asked.

‘No. My arms are so weak I get out of breath lifting up a powder puff.’

‘I could teach you,’ he offered.

‘Only if you let me teach you how to wear a corset.’

‘Why would I want to do that?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Not exactly at all. I don’t want to be a girl.’

‘And I don’t want to be a soldier. I want to be a general. And that’s what I am. You can carry on cutting people’s heads off and spilling their insides on the ground in great piles of giblets the size of Mount Geneva. But you don’t have to – there are plenty of people who are good at that.’

He wondered if he should tell his new friend that, without a snort of a drug powerful enough to kill, his days as a scourge of the battlefield were long gone. But he thought better of it for now. How did he know she could be trusted? However, it had to be said that something in him longed to tell her the truth.

She finished her story. She had been married off at fourteen, protesting noisily at the age of the man, his obscurity, and that where the country was flat it was too flat and where it was mountainous it was hideously so. In addition it was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. It took nearly four years of petulance and general disagreeableness before she began to appreciate her good fortune. Daniel, fortieth Margrave of Halicarnassus, was an intelligent, wise and unconventional man, though it was an unconventionality he had carefully hidden lest it frighten his family and neighbours. In addition, he adored and was amused by Artemisia rather than irritated, which he had every right to be given how awkward and rude she was to him at first. While he didn’t always indulge her, he did encourage her in her peculiar interests, in part out of affection and to win her heart and in part out of curiosity to see where it would lead. He wasn’t interested in war but he recognized his small militia was almost completely useless and so there was no harm in letting her loose on them.

Artemisia won the support of the militia, and rid herself of the officers who out of natural self-interest opposed her, by dividing the soldiers in two and offering to fight three war games. Then she bet the officers three thousand dollars she would win all three. If they lost they were to resign. She had three thousand left in her dowry (Daniel had given it back to her on their wedding day) and she used a thousand of it to bribe the militia now under her command and who, until she paid them so much money, were not very happy about it either. She had two and a half thousand men, mostly farmers and their hired workers and an assortment of brewers, bakers and metal workers. She had three months.

At first the men worked hard because they were paid to – but only on results. Each week the men were paid more but only if they ran the length of this field faster, or carried a heavy weight for longer. But she also divided them up into groups with different fierce-sounding names and dressed them in waistcoats of different colours – though wisely not the baby blue or cerulean of her childhood dolls. Anyone who failed to improve was stripped of their waistcoat publicly and thrown out. But if they subsequently passed the test they’d failed, and bettered it, they’d be reinstated. She made mistakes – but money and an apology seemed to cure everything. When the three months were up, the games began. They were rough enough, though with padded sticks instead of swords and spears, and there were many injuries. She won all three easily because of her talent but also because her opponents were made up of intelligent officers who were complacent and complacent officers who were stupid. She retained some of the former and began a further series of rough games to correct her mistakes – which she knew were many. She ordered books by great authorities on the art of war from everywhere possible – and found most of them maddeningly vague when it came to what she wanted to know: the details of how something was actually done. One bombastic authority after another would tell of, say, the night march by General A that had daringly outflanked and surprised General B – but the details of how you moved a thousand men over rocky, lousy paths without lights and without the men breaking their legs or falling over the edge of a cliff – the things you actually needed to know – were nearly always absent. What was left were just stories for children and daydreamers.

‘I still don’t understand,’ Cale said, laughing, ‘how you got to be so good. I’ve been taught to do nothing else my whole life.’

‘Perhaps I’m more talented and clever than you.’

‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘I’ve never met anyone more talented than me.’

She burst out laughing.

‘I don’t know what’s so funny,’ he said, smiling.

‘You are. I’m not surprised nobody likes you.’

‘Some people like me. But not many, it’s true,’ he admitted. ‘So how did you do it?’

‘I played.’

‘All children do that. Even we used to play.’

‘I played a different way from everyone else.’

‘Now who’s boasting?’

‘I’m not boasting. It’s true.’

‘Go on then.’

‘I watched other children playing even when I was very small – all they ever did was make things come out the way they wanted them to. But things never do – I knew that even when I was five. So I took an old pack of my mother’s cards and I used to write things on them – your best general falls off his horse and breaks his neck, a spy steals your plan of attack, thunder makes your enemies’ horses stampede, you suddenly go blind.’

Cale laughed again. ‘I take it back. You are cleverer than me.’

‘It’s not a question of being clever. Nothing’s lost on me, that’s all. Just like everyone, I see what I want to see – only I know that’s what I’m like, so sometimes I can make myself see things as they are. Only sometimes, though. That would be really clever – seeing things as they are all the time.’

But she was wrong about that, as time would tell.

And so what happened was everything you would expect. He told her about the Sanctuary and his life there (not everything, of course, some things are better left unsaid) and she was close to tears hearing him talk about the things he experienced there, which was, of course, very satisfactory to Cale. They talked and walked and kissed – something that to her surprise he was puzzling good at. To the great scandal of her servants, she brought him to the small house she had rented not far from Boundary Park and – a little guiltily, though not too much – spent several hours making a shameless beast of herself with her young lover’s body. She was aware at some level that he was very much more familiar with how to touch her than his age and history would have suggested. Her suspicions were moved to the place where all uncomfortable suspicions go – to the back of her mind. There they joined all her other anxieties and shames, including the one which she was most guilty about, that she was deeply excited by Cale’s certainty that there would be no agreement that kept the Redeemers on the other side of the Mississippi in exchange for money and more concessions of territory. They were coming and nothing would stop them except force. The realization that she wanted a war appalled her because she knew perfectly well that it would bring terrible pain and suffering everywhere, especially to the people she had built her private army to protect. Although they turned out to be a tough collection, the farmers and carpenters who had made up her militia were interested in cows and barley not war. The thing which she was most talented at, most excited by, most passionate about was an exercise in blood and suffering, though it wasn’t this that drew her to fighting but the delight she felt in trying to control the uncontrollable. There are some men and at least one woman for whom life is meaningless unless the greatest prize of all, life itself, is at stake. What was the point of chess, she used to complain to her husband when he was alive? He used to spend hours playing and claimed that it was a game so full of traps and subtleties it mirrored the deepest and most complex levels of the human mind.

‘Bollocks!’ she had said to him. She had heard this expression just that Sunday on the training ground and was not completely aware of the strength of its vulgarity. Bollocks was not a word that a Margravine ought to use to a Margrave and certainly not about chess. Eye-widening, startled at her outburst, he pretended only polite uncertainty.

‘Your exquisite reasons, my dear?’

‘I don’t have any exquisite reasons. It’s just that chess has rules and life doesn’t have rules. You can’t burn your opponent’s bishop, you can’t stab him either, or pour a bucket of water over the board or play when you haven’t eaten for three days. However clever you have to be to play it, it’s just a stupid game. To fight a battle,’ she said, ‘needs a mind a hundred times better than any stupid game.’ She was so rude because she felt guilty about wanting to go to war.

Her husband had thought about this for a moment. ‘Let us hope, my dear, that at some time in the future you get your chance to butcher as many of our friends and neighbours as will satisfy your ambition.’

She didn’t talk to him for three days – but unusually he was not the one to give in.

It was a secret relief that, when the time came to play with real death and destruction, she had absolutely no choice but to do the one thing that in all the world she most wanted to. The extreme nature of the Redeemers cleared her conscience.

At the war conference in Spanish Leeds (Cale was as dismissive of it as he was desperate to be there), there emerged a sudden demand for decisive action from the King himself. It was intolerable, he said, that so much had been lost to the Redeemers and he would not endure it and neither would his people, and he sincerely believed his allies would take the same view.

He did not sincerely believe anything of the kind. It is a truth, declared Vipond later, that the sincerity of anything said aloud should be divided by the number of people listening to it. Like nearly all kings, in another world Zog would have been an inadequate cattle farmer, a better than average grower of turnips or a mediocre butcher. The same would be true for many of the great and the good who surrounded him. This is why the best picture of the world is as a lunatic asylum. ‘If you only knew,’ IdrisPukke was fond of saying to Cale, ‘with how much stupidity the world is run.’

The last we heard of the great storm above the forests of Brazil it had passed the height of its unimaginable power by merely a fraction. Now, months later, it has dispersed that power across five thousand miles in all directions to the north and south and east and west. Descending from the warm skies above the Aleatoire Bridge over the River Imprevu, a great tributary of the Mississippi, it approached a large buddleia, as purple as the hat of an Antagonist bishop, covered in butterflies feeding on its nectar. As it touched the bush the last breath of wind of the great Brazilian storm finally died – but not before it ever so slightly lifted the wings of one of the butterflies, causing it to take to the air. The movement of the long-tailed blue just caught the eye of a passing swallow who dipped and, in a fraction of a second, took it in its beak, startling the mass of other butterflies who took to the air in hundreds like a bursting cloud and frightened a passing horse pulling a wagon badly loaded with rocks for the repair of a wall. The horse reared, turning the cart on its side and pitching the rocks into the River Imprevu below.

Some agricultural language followed this accident, and a kick for the unfortunate horse, but only some rocks were lost and not worth the effort of getting them out. So the wheel was put back on the wagon, the horse given another kick, and that was that.

In the river below, the not especially large pile of stones caused the current to flow more quickly round its sides and pointed the faster stream directly at the roots of one of the oldest and largest oak trees on the banks of the great tributary.

At the same moment, Zog was proposing that an army of the best Swiss troops and those of its allies should be sent through the Schallenberg Pass to engage the Redeemer army on the plains of the Mittelland. ‘We can do nothing less. In putting this plan forward I rededicate myself to the service of this great country and this great alliance.’ The speaker thanked the King and tearfully stated, ‘You have become for us all, your Majesty, a kaleidoscope king of our kaleidoscope alliance.’ There was loud applause.

The speaker then threw the King’s plan open for discussion to the Axis members gathered – which is to say that he threw the King’s plan open to them for their agreement, a consent that had already been guaranteed by persuasion and threats from Bose Ikard, despite the fact that he was profoundly opposed to doing anything of the kind. Given that he had not persuaded the King against a fight he realized that he must make up for disagreeing with him by now being deeply enthusiastic in its favour. He had neglected, however, to talk to Artemisia, because he didn’t consider her important enough. She listened for twenty minutes to various speeches in response, all supporting the King and all pretty much the same. She tried catching the eye of the speaker of the meeting but he refused to recognize her. In the end she simply stood up, as one of the prearranged speeches of support ended, and started talking.

‘With all respect to His Majesty, while I understand his impatience to engage the Redeemers, what you suggest is too hazardous. The only force that stopped the Redeemers from walking into this room has not been any army but the existence of the Mississippi. But for a mile of water we would not be talking together now.’

This simple and straightforward truth was the cause of huge and vocal resentment: ‘Army’; ‘Noble traditions’; ‘Heroism’; ‘Brave lads’; ‘Our heroes’; ‘Courage’; ‘Second to none’.

‘I’m not questioning the courage of anyone,’ she shouted above the racket of objections. ‘But the Redeemers are stuck where they are in the north until early next year. They must build an uncountable number of boats and train enough shoremen to get them across the river. I can tell you because I know that it’s the work of years to know how to navigate the currents of the Mississippi. Now’s the time to reconstruct what’s left of the armies that made it across.’ A reminder here, a little too subtle, that so many were still alive because of her. ‘We must send the best of the troops we have north to retrain the troops that were rescued and use the greatest ally we have – the size and currents of the Mississippi.’

Enormous howls of protest went up at this and the speaker had to work himself up into a fury to bring the meeting to order.

‘We thank the Margravine of Halicarnassus for her forthright views but she understandably may not know that it is not done in this place to speak slightingly of the brave heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of others.’

‘Hear! Hear! Hear! Hear! Hear!’ And that was that.

‘If you will forgive me for being blunt, Margravine,’ said Ikard, half an hour later in his office, ‘but you have behaved like a complete twerp.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the term. Not a compliment, I s’pose.’

‘No, it’s not. Whatever the merits of your views – and I know there are others of reputation who agree with you – you made any chance of influencing matters impossible with your ridiculous defiance.’

She made a brief sound with her tongue against her front teeth.

‘Do I take it that signals disagreement?’ said Ikard.

‘You didn’t bother asking my opinion before, what possible reason could I have to believe you’d have listened if I’d kept my mouth shut?’

‘The King,’ lied the Chancellor, ‘has until now spoken of you with respect and admiration. Now you hang in his favour like an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard.’

‘So,’ she said, ‘I must be like Cassandra, doomed always to tell the truth but never to be believed.’

‘You flatter yourself, Margravine. I have always understood the story about Cassandra to demonstrate not that she was so wise but that she was so foolish: there’s no point in telling people the truth when there’s no chance of them hearing. You must wait until they’re ready. That’s the moral of the story. Take it from someone who knows. The course you suggested, whatever its merits militarily, is in every way socially and politically impossible. The army will not stand for such abuse, the aristocracy will not endure it, and the people whose sons and husbands died in their thousands will neither stand for it nor endure it. You may know something about war but you know nothing about politics. Something must be done.’

Then she was dismissed. It was ten minutes before she thought of a strong reply – although the young man she told about her dressing-down didn’t have to know that.

‘So what did you say?’ asked Cale.

‘I said, “Unfortunately for you, Chancellor, the facts don’t give a damn about politics.”’

He laughed. ‘A good shout, that.’ She was a little ashamed but not too much.

For Cale and Artemisia, waiting for the pig to pass through the python was in some ways a frustrating experience and in other ways delightful. Great events that they wanted to influence were taking place without them but they had endless hours for each other, and though there was more talking than the giving of pleasure, there was not very much more. If the Axis failed (and what was to stop them?) he could soon be on top of a bonfire big enough to be seen all the way to the moon. On the other hand, neither Vague Henri nor Kleist were well enough to make it out over the mountains. Besides, he was used to waiting for the unspeakably grim, used to it all his life; but the pleasure of being with the woman asleep next to him was a rare thing and he knew it. Now was the time for girls and cake.

There was one way in which he was involved in the new plan to attack the Redeemers. He was sworn to secrecy by Vipond, who risked a great deal by showing him a copy of the plans drawn up by Conn Materazzi for the advance through the Schallenberg and the attack on the Redeemers. It was a trust Cale immediately betrayed by discussing what he’d been shown in great detail with Artemisia.

Cale’s feelings on going through the plan were oddly mixed. It was not at all bad. In Conn’s position he would not have done much different. It turned out he wasn’t just an over-privileged, chinless wonder after all. Apparently he had expressed sympathy with Artemisia’s dismissal of the King’s idea (irritatingly showing even more good sense) but Cale realized Conn had no choice but to attack if he wanted to stay as Commander in Chief, and he’d made a pretty good fist of coming up with a decent plan. But it was still too risky.

‘The trouble with decisive battles,’ said IdrisPukke, not for the first time, ‘is that they decide things.’

‘If you get the chance,’ said Cale, ‘you might want to suggest he cuts out a couple of thousand extra men to stay in the Schallenberg, just in case it all goes a bit porcupine. If he loses that’s all there’ll be between the Redeemers and us and a lot of running about and screaming.’

Later, on his way back to Artemisia, he stopped to see Arbell’s brother, Simon. It was a visit he’d been avoiding, not for lack of affection – he’d rescued the boy from the isolation and contempt of being unable to hear or speak – but because he both feared and – horribly, hatefully – desperately desired to see his sister.

He spent several hours talking to Simon through his reluctant and disagreeable aide, Koolhaus. Koolhaus had been a low-ranking civil servant in rank-obsessed Memphis, not because he lacked ability, but because his father was a merdapis, an untouchable who carried away the excrement and urine from the palaces of the Materazzi. Koolhaus was two parts of resentment to three parts of intelligence. It was Koolhaus who, in a matter of days, had devised an expressive language out of the short list of signs given to him by Cale, which was based on the simple signing system the Redeemers used to direct an attack when silence was required. Cale and Vague Henri had developed it a little in order to make offensive remarks about the monks around them during the brain-destroyingly boring three hour high masses at the Sanctuary

‘I’d like to borrow Koolhaus for an hour or so a day.’

The attempt to bend Koolhaus out of shape by suggesting he was some sort of useful household item was deliberate. Annoying Koolhaus was something that had always delighted the three boys (‘If you were an egg, Koolhaus, would you rather be fried or boiled?’). They could have been friends and allies – and should have been – but they were not. That’s boys for you.

Simon could see that his interpreter was annoyed – it didn’t take much. Their master and servant relationship was awkward, the balance of power shifting between Simon’s dependency on him to make contact with the world – which he often resented – and Koolhaus’s entirely justified feeling that he was meant for greater things than being a talking puppet. An offer to pay Koolhaus more money usually mollified him, but only temporarily.

‘Tomorrow at six, then,’ said Cale, and made his way through the low-ceilinged corridors where he had so disgraced himself during his last uninvited visit. What hideously mixed feelings twisted in his soul; dread and hope, hope and dread. Then – and he might have made the same visit fifty times and they would have never met – she was in front of him, having decided to take her son to see Simon, who delighted in the baby because he could neither fear Simon nor pity him. Cale’s heart lurched in his chest as if it would tear itself from his body. For a moment they stared at each other – the boiling sea off Cape Wrath was nothing to it. Not love or hate but some braying mule of an emotion, ugly and raucously alive. The baby waved his hand about happily then suddenly slapped his mouth against his mother’s cheek and began making loud slurping noises.

‘Is that good for him?’ Cale said. ‘You might be catching.’

‘Have you come to threaten us again?’ She was also shocked at the change in him, gaunt where he was once muscular, with the dark circles around his eyes that no good night’s sleep would ever wipe away.

‘You remember every sin of mine that was just words and forget everything I did to keep you safe at any cost. You’re still alive because of me – now the dogs bark at me in the street because of you.’

Ah, self-pity and blame, a combination to win the heart of any woman. But he couldn’t help himself.

‘Abl blab abl baddle de dah,’ said the baby, nearly poking his mother in the eye.

‘Shshshsh.’ She settled him on her hip and started to swing from side to side.

‘If there was any good in you, you’d leave us alone now.’

‘He seems happy enough.’

‘That’s because he’s a baby and would play with a snake if I let him.’

‘Is that supposed to be me – that’s what I am to you?’

‘You’re frightening me – let me go.’

But he couldn’t. He could feel the pointlessness of talking to her but there was no way to stop. Part of him wanted to say he was sorry and part of him was furious with himself for feeling so. There was nothing to be sorry for – his soul demanded that she throw herself to the floor and, weeping, beg his completely undeserved forgiveness. But not even that would have been enough, she would have needed to spend the rest of her life on her knees to stop his heart from scalding him about what she’d done. But not even that.

‘The man you sold me to told me he’d already bought me once before – for sixpence.’

‘Then your price has risen, hasn’t it?’

Angry and guilty, and therefore angrier, it was unwise to say something like that to him. But like Cale she had a taste for the last word. As much as her presence was poison to him he couldn’t bear to see her go. But he couldn’t think of anything to say. She pushed past, the baby on the far side, away from him. Into his chest something seeped: oil of vitriol. Acid was kind next to it.

‘Yaaar! Blah baa! Pluh!’ shouted the baby.

19

History teaches us that there are approximately twice as many triumphant military exits from great cities as there are triumphant returns. The exodus from Spanish Leeds was greater than most in terms of trumpets, rows of well-drilled troops, cheering crowds and emotional young women shouting goodbyes to their heart-burstingly proud men. And then there were the horses – the power and glory, the head-brasses and the colours of blue and yellow and red – and the gorgeous men riding them. There were children present who would remember the splendour and the noise of steel on stone and the cheers until the day they died.

Twenty minutes outside the city, off came the armour and most of the horses were sent back to their stables. Not only did they consume fodder the way a bear eats buns, but Conn Materazzi would not be allowing the Redeemer archers to destroy a cavalry charge from three hundred yards away as they’d done at Silbury Hill. The cavalry were mostly useful for gathering information before a battle and running away afterwards if it all went wrong.

Even though Conn’s vanity and pride had largely given way to an impressively mature good judgement he still had a blind spot, understandably enough, when it came to Thomas Cale. Although Cale had no intention of fighting in a battle where he wasn’t in control, he was furious when he was told that he wouldn’t be allowed to bring the Purgators anywhere near the army. Even Artemisia, guilty by association, was refused a part on the grounds that her troops were irregular and not suited to a pitched battle. She would be allowed, however, to lead the sixty or so reconnaissance riders who had helped her slow the Redeemer movement through Halicarnassus. Artemisia had let Cale sulk for several days then suggested he come with her, pointing out that he wouldn’t be able to fight but he might be able to watch.

‘I’m not sure if I can,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I have the strength even for watching.’ He had not told her anything like the whole story of his illness but it was too obvious that something was seriously wrong with him not to give some explanation. He claimed he was suffering from bad-air disease caught in the Scablands. The symptoms were well known to be vague and recurring. Why shouldn’t she believe him?

‘Try it for a few days. You can always come back.’

Six days into the march to the border the news reached Conn that a Redeemer army of around thirty-five thousand was heading to the Mittelland in two parts of twenty-five and ten thousand respectively, the latter coming through the Vaud, probably in an attempt to take Conn’s army from behind. Unfortunately, but not unusually, some of this information was wrong.

The Redeemer army under Santos Hall had, on balance, decided to move forward only to take the high ground outside the village of Bex and again on balance to divide the army so that they could move more quickly to do so. Shifting thirty-five thousand men with all their carts and baggage could easily lead to a queue two miles wide and twenty miles back. The speed needed to reach the best ground outside Bex was the priority here. But by the time the Redeemers arrived a delighted Conn was solidly placed in front of Bex, protected on his left by the River Gar and to the right by a dense wood, full of lacerating briars thick as fingers and wince-sharp thorns known as dog’s teeth. This gave Conn a space about a mile wide into which to fit thirty-two thousand men. Just before nightfall, the Redeemers started to set up in a position they glumly realized was very much second best. Between the two armies was a slope, much shallower down the Redeemer front and much steeper up to the Swiss army. Conn had won the first battle: he had control of the steeper slope and he had archers almost as good as the Redeemers, and more of them. The battle tomorrow would start with a forty-minute exchange between the two. In that time more tens of thousands of arrows would be exchanged, arriving at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, fired into packed ranks. One of the sides would not be able to endure such a killing squall and would be forced to attack. The side that did so would probably lose the battle, defence being far easier than attack. Odds against the Redeemers were much worse because they had to advance up a steep slope under fire and with fewer men when they got to the top because of the numbers of the dying and dead. More alarming than this was that the ten thousand troops Santos Hall had moved separately from his main army in order to outflank the Axis had got lost and were now blundering around the Swiss countryside.

During the night something changed that might make the situation better for the Redeemers or very much worse, although it was nothing either side could do anything about. It was a feature of the local climate that because of the effect of the nearby mountains the weather could change dramatically. The unusually hot sun that day emerged out of a clear sky, which at nightfall allowed the heat to escape upwards in minutes. In turn, cold air off the mountains began flowing into the valley so that the temperature dropped quickly to freezing in a few hours and a deep frost covered everything. By two o’clock in the morning the ground was like iron. But then the wind picked up. It blew over the battlefield first one way then the other, and then back again. Conn and Little Fauconberg, not much more than five foot two, stood in the freezing cold at the top of the hill outside Bex and looked over their own ineffective fires at the equally ineffective fires of the Redeemers, who didn’t even have the shelter of the wood to protect them from the cold wind.

‘Odd if the wind settles it,’ said Conn.

‘There’s nowt you could do about it. But it might drop altogether now or blow in their face and we’d be even better off.’

A horse intelligencer arrived and ran up to the two men, slipping on the icy ground and landing heavily on his poor arse. Embarrassed and in pain, he got to his feet. ‘We sighted the rest of the Redeemers at the far end of the Vaud, heading the wrong way. They’ve turned for us now but they won’t be here before mid-afternoon.’

‘Should we divide and go to meet them?’ said Fauconberg. ‘We don’t need to stop them, just slow them down. Three thousand could keep them away long past them being of any use here.’

Conn thought about it.

‘Is that Cale oik in camp?’ Fauconberg went on. ‘We could send him off to squeeze them at Bagpuize – they’ve got to come that way. His glorious death would be jolly useful all round.’

‘He’s not here. It’s a damn good idea, Fauconberg, but I’m going to stick. Triple the intelligencers – I want to know every mile they make towards us. We can send Vennegor or Waller if things go all right here.’

‘If the wind settles going down from us towards them, we’ll win.’

‘And what if it doesn’t?’ said Conn.

Conn was right to ask. By five in the morning the wind was driving constantly into their faces like a blast from a furnace for forging ice. All the advantages won by Conn’s speed and grasp were blown away in a cold wind from the worst cold snap in thirty years.

‘They won’t wait,’ said Little Fauconberg. ‘If the wind can change once it can change twice. They’ll take the advantage while they can. Bloody bollocks and damn our luck!’

There was nothing he could say to improve on Fauconberg’s assessment so Conn just ordered the massed ranks up into line. With the wind so bitter he ordered the men at the front to swap with the men behind, seven deep, every ten minutes. What may sound a tricky manoeuvre was easy enough: for all the romantic heroics of tall tales of warfare in the penny-dreadfuls of Geneva and Johannesburg and Spanish Leeds, the man never lived who could fight for ten or five or even two hours at a stretch. Men were in ranks so that they could replace the men in front not just if they died or were wounded, but mostly to give them a breather and to be given one in their turn. Depending on circumstances a man in pitched battle might fight for no more than ten minutes in every hour. Now, like the emperor penguins of the northern pole, they shuffled side to side into the numbing sleet.

Little Fauconberg was right. Santos Hall ordered his archers forward. So hard was the ground they could not grab even a pinch of earth to eat to make it clear to God that they were ready to be buried for his sake. This put many Redeemers into a state of hysteria, so terrified were they of dying in a state of sin yet hardly terrified at all of death itself. An exasperated Santos Hall had to send non-militant priests up and down the ranks issuing pardons, something that took ten minutes. A more practical matter of concern was that the earth was so hard they couldn’t stick their arrows into the ground for ease of use.

Once forgiveness for sins of omission had calmed them down, the Redeemer archers moved forward into position to shoot. As they did so they began to call out to their enemies.

‘Baaaa! Baaaa! Baaaa! Baaaa! The sleet wind blew the sound across the four hundred yards that separated them.

‘Isn’t that sheep?’ asked Little Fauconberg. ‘Why are they making the sound of sheep?’

‘Baaaa! Baaaa! Baaaa!’ The call came louder and softer with the rhythm of the wind.

‘They’re saying we’re lambs to the slaughter,’ said Conn.

‘Are they?’ said Fauconberg. ‘Hand out sprigs of mint to the men and when we come together we’ll shove it up their arse.’

‘Shouldn’t that be arses, Fauconberg?’ said one of the knights-in-arms standing just behind.

‘Shut your gob, Rutland, or I’ll use you to show the men how it’s done.’

Much laughter at this.

‘If you must shove something up my bottom,’ said Rutland, ‘I’d prefer a nice hot pepper. It might have a warming effect in this fucking wind.’

Then it began and in a few seconds the first stage of the battle was lost. The wind against them blew with so much power that the Swiss arrows lost fifty yards in range and those of their enemy gained the fifty they’d lost. They might just as well have used harsh words. It hardly mattered that the thick sleet blinded them and they kept losing sight of their opponents, now dim, now completely obscured by the driving mixture of snow and freezing rain, because everything they shot fell short. But the first volley from the Redeemers no longer fell from the sky but was driven by the wind with malice into knee and chest, mouth and nose at such speed not even the highest quality of steel could defend against a full strike. Rutland, pierced through the ear, no longer worried about the cold.

There were ten thousand Redeemer archers shooting, at a less than usual rate of about seven arrows in every minute because of the hard ground. The thirty-two thousand Swiss on the steeper hill were hit by nearly seventy thousand arrows every sixty seconds, each weighing a quarter of a pound and, with the wind behind each one, travelling nearly a hundred yards every second. There was nothing coming back at the Redeemers to frighten or harm them. After twenty minutes more than a million arrows landed on a space half a mile wide and ten yards deep. In all, one hundred and fifty-eight tons of malignant rain pissing it down on men, none of them with shields and more than half of them with no more armour than a heavy jacket with metal discs sown into it. To retreat out of range would have meant rout – an army cannot turn its back and live – and to stay was impossible, but to advance made for a probable defeat.

‘We’ve to attack!’ shouted Fauconberg over the hideous rattle of iron on steel. PINGAPINGAPINGAPINGAPINGAPINGAPINGAPING! The racket merging with screams of pain and the roaring shouts of the sergeants trying to stop their men from running away. Few die well or quickly on a battlefield.

Shocked and more astonished by the collapse of his clever and wonderfully executed plans, Conn looked at Fauconberg. ‘Yes, I agree.’ Despite himself, Fauconberg, fifty-five years old and bad-tempered, as dismissive as any thirty-year mercenary, was impressed by Conn: Not bad, sonny, in a shit-storm like this.

How many of us have a finest hour? The moment when everything you were made for, everything you have become, arrives; the great event that opens you up and calls out, ‘This is for you.’ With his carefully laid plans in wind-driven ruin, Conn Materazzi gathered himself up and caught fire. He bellowed the order to advance and its tone of power and conviction was picked up by each of the sergeants in their turn as it echoed down the line. The great army afflicted by the squall of sharps moved forward to come to grips. Four hundred yards will take an army moving with care to keep its shape more than three minutes – an age under the arrows pelting into feet and knees and mouths and throats. But now the murder of arrows had to end because the Swiss were closing. The Redeemer archers had to leave off and retreat behind the infantry standing still behind them and who would now have to bar the way of the advancing Swiss hand-to-hand. The arrows stopped falling like a sudden squall suddenly over. But the real wind grew more blustery as they advanced, the sleet more blinding. As both sides moved in the storm, the slack visibility and the confusion of movement of so many men so quickly meant that the left side of Conn’s attacking line and the right side of the Redeemers overlapped as they finally met. Seeing the problem, the centenars and sergeants on either side threw in reserves to seal up the edges and to prevent their opponents coming around the sides to take them from behind. But these uneven counter pushes began to skew the line of battle so that it slowly began to rotate against the clock.

At nearly six foot four, in armour that cost the price of the better kind of manor house, Conn was the man observed by all observers, Axis and Redeemer alike. He was the latter’s target, too. Redeemer marksmen, a couple hiding in the trees that defined one side of the battlefield, fired at him repeatedly – but even when they hit their man the fortune lavished on his suit of lights showed that in armour you get what you pay for. The arrows pinged harmlessly away as he moved across the back of the line, shouting and moving to the front. Like some towering elegant insect, silver and gold, he stabbed, crushed and punched his opponents, whose armour he seemed to open up as if it was made of tin. There were few swords here – Conn preferred the hideous poleaxe for fighting in this press, men trying to get at each other with hardly a couple of feet to either side.

The poleaxe was a thug’s weapon used by gentlemen. Not more than four foot long it was hammer, hatchet, club and spike. Of all the weapons of killing it was the most honest because anyone could tell what it was for just by looking at it. Poets might blather on about magic swords or holy spears but none of them had ever used a poleaxe to symbolize anything: it was made to crush and split and didn’t pretend otherwise.

For ten minutes at a time Conn punched the life out of everyone who came at him: brutality was never so graceful, splintering of bones never so deft, the bursting and crushing of flesh never so debonair; his reach the greater, his heart the stronger, muscle and sinew bound together in his ugly skill and beautiful violence.

A few hundred yards away, keeping shtum in the trees, Cale watched Conn fighting like an angel and envied him his strength. But he admired him too. He was quite something out there in the blood and chaos.

‘We have to go,’ whispered Artemisia, as loud as a whisper can go. She was standing at the foot of the tree with two of her hefty-looking soldiers. She had declined to climb up with Cale.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘Worried about your nails?’

‘The Swiss Pickers are coming to root out the archers. They won’t know who we are – it’s too dangerous. We’ve to go.’

He was down almost before she’d finished, breathing heavily and sweating not at all healthily. They moved off but not quickly; too much in the way of razor briars. Careful of the dog’s teeth thorns they pushed through into a clearing. Ten yards away, so did others. Four Redeemers, the marksmen the Pickers were looking for. No one did anything. No one moved. For years Bosco had set Cale tests in which he was faced with the completely unexpected with only a few seconds to solve the problem before the blow to the back of his head that followed if he failed. To make things worse, the punishment was not always immediate; sometimes the blow fell a few hours or a day or a week later. This was to teach him to assess things before he acted, no matter how immediate the danger. Four Redeemers against four of them. Artemisia would be no use – the two guards with her would be handy but not a match. And neither was he. Turn their backs and run? Not through the briars. Take the Redeemers on? Not a chance. Never expect rescue, Bosco used to say, because rescue never comes. But it came to Cale then, and by means of the greatest curse of his life. The four Redeemers knelt down; one of them – the leader apparently – burst into tears.

‘We were told,’ he said, beating his breast three times in terrible remorse, ‘that the Left Hand of God would be watching over us. But I did not believe. Forgive me.’

Fortunately Artemisia and her bodyguards did not need to be told to stay still. The four Redeemers looked at Cale fearfully and lovingly. He raised his hand and drew a circle in the air. It was the sign of the noose, a gesture only permitted to the Pope. And now, it seemed, also to the incarnation of the Wrath of God. It was as if he had opened a door into the next world and through it passed eternal grace into the hearts of the four men. Cale said nothing but waved them away with a kindly smile. Open-mouthed, struck by the love of God, the four Redeemers left.

When they’d gone he turned to Artemisia. ‘Perhaps, in future,’ he said, ‘you won’t answer back so often.’

‘They think you’re a God?’ said an astonished Artemisia.

‘That’d be blasphemy. They think I’m one of God’s feelings made flesh.’

‘Really?’

‘Disappointment. And anger, in case you were wondering.’

‘That’s two feelings.’

‘I thought you weren’t going to answer back.’

‘I don’t think you’re anything made flesh. I think you’re just a horrible little boy.’

‘A horrible little boy who just saved your life.’

‘What’s he angry about, your God?’

‘He’s not my God. He’s angry and disappointed because he sent mankind his only son and they hanged him.’

‘You can see his point, I suppose.’

On the battlefield the next crisis was approaching, but this time for the Redeemers. Between Conn’s blistering violence driving the Swiss and their allies forward as he moved up and down the line and Fauconberg, some fifty yards behind, disposing and allocating, assigning and putting things right, the Redeemer line began to buckle and also to twist ever more quickly against the clock so that now the front moved slantwise across the field. But though they came close they did not break. Not yet, at any rate, but without the ten thousand Redeemers who had failed to turn up, it was only a question of time. What had become of the missing Redeemers? They were still lost. Not by much, a couple of miles, but the battlefield was only the size of four of the larger fields the locals used for wheat. And the hideous wind that had worked so wonderfully to favour the Redeemers earlier now worked against them. The screams of orders and agony, of anger and effort, made for a hefty din. Only a couple of miles away, the arriving Redeemers would normally have followed the sound and that was what they did. But the wind had thrown the noise to the east and following the sound took them away from and not towards the fight. Now the line of battle had been turned so that the Redeemers were being pushed back towards the woods, where the thickly planted trees and the razor briars formed a barrier through which only the first few hundred men would be able to escape. For the rest it might as well have been a wall of brick.

But battles breathe out as well as in. In its sixth hour something in the Swiss began to fade, something in the Redeemers to emerge. In the continuous circulation of fighting men, no one should fight for more than half an hour. But change destroys the rhythm of the side that’s fighting well, brings, perhaps, new impetus to the soldiers doing badly. Conn had fought too long; at Fauconberg’s insistence he needed a longer rest, a drink and something to eat. Conn removed his helmet and, so that he could drink, the metal gorge that protected his throat. Three of his friends around him, Cosmo Materazzi, Otis Manfredi and Valentine Sforza, did the same. The legend afterwards was that the Redeemer marksmen in the trees had waited for this chance for hours. But legends are often wrong, or only partly right. There was nothing aimed at Conn by cunning assassins, it was just bad luck, a gust of a few haphazard arrows, not even ten. But three of them took Cosmo in the face, one hit Otis in the neck and another struck Valentine in the back of the head. Friends of a lifetime were gone inside a minute.

Where Conn had shone before, he now burned. Rage stoked his talent and focused it to break, blow, smash and maim so that everywhere he went the Redeemer line fell back and sent the message of strain like weakening magic along the line, which now lost its rhythm for a second time and began to fail again, shifting back towards the woods and murderous defeat.

Then, desperate and panic-stricken, the ten thousand missing Redeemers, under the command of Holy Gaffer Jude Stylites, stumbled upon the fight that was almost lost and found themselves as if by means of the most cunning intelligence not just on the battlefield but at exactly the right place at exactly the right time to save the day. What Stylites had been sensibly trying to do was to approach the Redeemers who’d been fighting all day long from the rear, at a point where his men could be used as replacements for the exhausted men in the front line. Instead, their run of accidents and the anti-clockwise turn of the battle line brought them into the side of the Swiss line, forcing it to bend into an L-shape to prevent being taken from behind. Now the pressure was on the Swiss and slowly the Redeemers began to push back from the line of trees and the certainty of defeat.

Then, late in the afternoon, after whatever it is that controls a battlefield moved first with one side and then the other, the Swiss line broke – a man slipped, perhaps, and took down his neighbour as he fell and he in turn hampered another. Perhaps a Redeemer, with one late surge of strength, pushed into this gap and others, seeing the space opening, followed – and so from one slip a battle was lost, a war, a country, the lives of millions. Or perhaps it was that the confused arrival of the Redeemers’ reserve was just too much for the tired Swiss and that from the moment they stumbled into the exact weak point of the Axis the matter was decided.

Whatever the cause, in minutes the Axis line crumbled and the few who ran became the many – and seeing them run, the many became the mass. Like a great building whose foundations had slowly been demolished underground, the collapse was great and sudden. Face to face, armour to armour, side by side, it’s not easy to kill an enemy. Perhaps only three or four thousand died in the seven hours of battle that preceded the collapse. Now was when the slaughter began.

20

The Swiss and their allies had only two lines of escape: up the slope to the side from where they’d attacked or back and down a muddy slope into a meadow contained in the meander of a river not much more than ten foot wide, but moving fast for being swollen by mountain rain. This glorified stream might just as well have been the Mississippi. Men in armour jumped into its waters and were dragged under by the weight. The exhausted ordinary soldiers in padded jackets struggled across the stream getting in each other’s way. Slipping and falling, they found the water soaked into the hand-painted mix of cotton and metal discs, which then pulled them under too. Meanwhile, the Redeemers were following at their heels, slicing and cutting and killing. Men they’d fought all day and could not harm were now easier to kill than herds in a knacker’s yard. From the top of the forty-foot slope the Redeemer archers formed a line and now, invulnerable, loosed ten a minute into the thousands packed in a space no bigger than a paddock, trapped not just against the almost impossible-to-cross stream but against each other as more and more panicked and terrified running men added to the crushing press.

Those who’d seen what was happening and looked for escape elsewhere did no better. Most ran further along the river, heading for the bridge at Glane, but were easily caught by the mounted infantry of the Redeemers. Seeing they weren’t going to make the crossing, many tried to swim for it. But here the swollen stream was even deeper and they drowned again in their thousands. Realizing there was no escape across the river, those who turned back were slaughtered on the banks. Perhaps a thousand made it to the bridge and safely across. They would have died once the Redeemers made it over the bridge but they were stopped. Someone with foresight set the bridge alight as soon as they saw the Redeemers coming. It was a cold decision because a thousand men were still trying to cross when it began to burn. Fire in front and Redeemers behind, the terrified men had no choice but to try, and fail, to swim across this deepest part of the river. It was claimed that some survived because the numbers of the drowned packed into the river were so great they were able to walk across the bodies to escape.

Thousands more had run away along the uplands to the rear of the position where they had begun the day, discarding armour as they went. The mounted Redeemers followed them – they were as vulnerable as little boys. Now the sky had cleared and the brightest of moons began to rise and take away what help the dark could bring. When the sun came up at six the dead lay everywhere, for ten miles from the battle and for six miles wide. More than a hundred of the great and the good were captured but not for ransom or as useful hostages. Santos Hall established first who they were and what degree of power they held and then executed them. For the second time in little more than a year the Redeemers had destroyed a ruling class inside a single day – and also finished most of what they’d started in the destruction of the Materazzi at Silbury Hill. But Conn lived, even if Fauconberg had needed to practically drag him onto a horse to make his getaway. ‘There’s nothing you can do except survive,’ the old man had shouted at him. ‘Living is the best revenge.’

Mostly heroes die, mostly heroes fail. The darkest hour is not before dawn and nor does every cloud have a silver lining. Life is not a lottery: in a lottery, finally, there is a winner. But it is also the case that no news is ever as good or as bad as it first seems. In this instance, the hideous defeat at Bex did have a silver lining and more than that. What kind of disaster it was – and for those involved it was certainly that – depended very much on who you were. For Artemisia Halicarnassus and Thomas Cale it worked out very well. Within sixteen hours it became clear there were only some two thousand survivors from the Swiss and their allies, half of whom had made it over the Glane bridge before it was set alight. But the survivors were very far from safe – mostly unarmed and unarmoured, they were still a long way from the protection of the Schallenberg Pass some eighty miles away. The burnt bridge had slowed their pursuers but not stopped them. In a matter of hours the Redeemers were over the stream and intent on finishing what they’d started.

But it was precisely on this kind of rearguard action that Artemisia had cut her teeth. Adding to her own guerrilla militia of three hundred with a small number of escapees still able to fight – less than two hundred – she divided her forces with Cale, who made it clear he expected not to take orders but to do as he saw fit; she made it equally clear that he would not.

‘Do as I say or you can bugger off back to Leeds. I know what I’m doing and these are my men.’

Cale thought about this.

‘There’s no need,’ he said at last, ‘to use such bad language.’

The ground between Bex and the Schallenberg Pass was always rising and the roads passed through any number of woods and over small hills. From these positions, always retreating slowly and avoiding a direct fight, Artemisia plagued the Redeemers as they began to catch the exhausted and often wounded Swiss with volleys of arrows and individual snipers in an endless hit and run. While sacrifice and martyrdom were enthusiastically pursued by the Redeemers in general, even they had a limited taste for being struck by someone they couldn’t even see in pursuit of the scraggy remnants of a defeated army. They backed off and contented themselves with murdering the occasional straggler. In short order they lost their enthusiasm even for this when Artemisia started setting traps for them using carefully placed men pretending to be wounded in places where the Redeemers could be easily ambushed. Over the following two days, nearly fifteen hundred men made it back to the Schallenberg Pass and safety. Among them were Conn Materazzi and Little Fauconberg.

21

The aftermath of any disaster usually demands two things: first, the person responsible for the disaster must be named, shamed and punished in the most elaborate manner possible; second, though less important, it was highly desirable to find someone who demonstrated, through their personal courage, intelligence and skill, that the dreadful disaster could and should have been averted. In the case of the disaster at Bex, that there wasn’t anyone to blame or anyone particularly to praise was neither here nor there. Already, by virtue of his great experience of triumph and disaster, Little Fauconberg was alert to the likelihood of retribution and some three days after the miserable remnants of the Swiss army returned to Spanish Leeds, Fauconberg realized the way things were going and sent a message to Conn Materazzi that he might do well to make himself scarce. He took his own advice and by nightfall was well on his way towards a little-known pass over the mountains that he had marked out for this purpose as soon as he was appointed second-in-command.