The Left Hand of God

26

Over the next few weeks Cale experienced all the self-defeating pleasures of making life unpleasant for someone you adored but hated. If truth were told, which it was not, he was getting sick of them.

He had never faced squarely what it was he expected by becoming Arbell Swan-Neck’s bodyguard. His feelings about her-intense desire and intense resentment-would have been difficult for anyone to reconcile, let alone someone who was such a strange mixture of brutal experience and complete innocence. Perhaps charm might have done something to prevent her from cringing when he spoke to her-but where could charm come from in such a boy? Arbell’s physical loathing of his presence was, understandably, of great offense to him, but all he knew how to do in response was to become even more hostile toward her.

This strange atmosphere between Cale and her mistress was the source of great trouble to Riba. She liked Arbell Swan-Neck, even though she had more ambition than to be a ladies’ maid, no matter how illustrious the lady. Arbell was kind and thoughtful and, on discovering her maid’s intelligence, was very easy and open with her. Nevertheless, Riba was devoted to Cale to the point of worship. He had risked his life to save her from something terrible not usually to be remembered except in nightmares. She could not understand Arbell’s coldness toward him and was determined to put her mistress right.

The way she went about this might have seemed odd to an observer: she deliberately, pretending to have tripped, poured a hot cup of tea over Cale, having carefully ensured by adding cold water that it would not burn him too badly. But it was hot enough. With a cry of pain, Cale ripped off the cotton tunic he had been wearing.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Riba fussed, grasping a mug of cold water she had deliberately placed nearby and pouring that over him too. “Are you all right? I’m sorry.”

“What’s the matter with you?” he said, but not angrily. “First you try to scald me, then you try to drown me.”

“Oh,” gasped Riba. “I’m so sorry.” She continued to apologize, handing him a small towel and generally making a fuss of him.

“It’s all right. I’ll live,” he said, drying himself off. He nodded toward Arbell. “I’ll have to change. Please don’t leave your chambers until I come back.” And with that, he was gone. Now Riba turned to see if her ruse had worked-but as complicated ruses will, it had a complicated effect. What had drawn pity from Arbell, and of a kind she would never have imagined feeling for Cale, was that his back was covered in welts and scars. Barely an inch of his skin lacked the marks of his brutal past.

“You did that on purpose.”

“Yes,” said Riba.

“Why?”

“So that you can see all that he’s suffered. And so, with all due respect, that you will not be so unkind.”

“What do you mean?” said the astonished Arbell.

“May I speak frankly?”

“No, you may not!”

“I’ll do it anyway, having come so far.”

Arbell was not a pompous aristocrat by the standards of aristocrats, but no one, not just a servant, no one had ever spoken to her in such a manner except her father. Her astonishment made her speechless.

“You and I, mademoiselle,” said Riba quickly, “may not have much in common now, but I was once almost completely indulged in everything and expected only a life of giving and being given pleasure. Well, all that came to an end in an hour, and I learned how horrible life is and how cruel and unbelievable.”

She then told her wide-eyed mistress the details, sparing nothing of the fate of her friend and how Cale had risked everything, a death even more horrible, to save her.

“He always told me on the way through the Scablands that saving me was the stupidest and maddest thing he ever did.”

“Do you believe him?” and the question really was spoken with a gasp. Riba laughed.

“I’m not sure. I think sometimes he means it and sometimes he doesn’t. But I saw his back when we were washing in one of the water holes in the Scablands-God knows how he found it in that awful place. But Henri told me what they did to Cale. Ever since he was a little boy, this Redeemer Bosco singled him out for the slightest thing. He’d accuse him of anything, the more trivial the better he liked it-praying with his thumbs crossed, not putting a tail on the figure nine when he wrote it out. Then he’d drag him before the others and give him a ferocious beating-he’d punch him to the floor and give him a kicking. And then he turned him into a killer.”

By now Riba had worked herself up into a fury of resentment-and not just against the Redeemers. “So it seems to me that it’s surprising he’d bother to give you or me the steam off his piss-let alone risk his life to save us.”

Arbell Swan-Neck’s eyes, though it was hardly possible, widened even more at this startling figure of speech.

“So, mademoiselle, I think it’s high time you stopped looking down your beautiful nose at him and showed him the gratitude and the pity he deserves.”

By this time Riba had lost some of the purity of intention with which she had begun her rebuke and had begun enjoying her indignation and her mistress’s discomfort. But she was no fool and realized it was time to stop. There was a long silence and a number of blinks from Arbell as she tried not to cry. She looked around the room with misty eyes, then back at Riba, then around the room again. She gave a long sigh.

“I didn’t realize. Until now I never knew myself.”

With that there was a knock at the door and Cale came in. Despite the completely altered mood in the room, he picked up nothing of the change that had taken place since he left. That change, however, was greater than either Riba guessed or even the young woman who was feeling it realized. Arbell Swan-Neck, the beautiful and most desired of all the desired, was touched by pity when she saw the terrible scars on Cale’s back, but she was also touched by something less noble: a hunger as intense as it was unlooked for. Stripped to the waist, Cale was a complete contrast to the slender bodies of the Materazzi, strong and agile though they were. Cale’s was wide at the shoulder and unnaturally narrow at the waist. There was nothing elegant about him. He was all muscle and power, like a bull or an ox. It was not comely; no one would have made a sculpture of this mass of sinew and scars. But just the sight of him like this had made something in Arbell Materazzi miss a beat-and it wasn’t just her heart.