The Left Hand of God

32

Cale fell into a black sleep just as the sun was coming up and with the grim words of Vague Henri ringing in his ears. He woke up fifteen hours later with the church bells doing the same thing. But the sound wasn’t a melodious peal calling to the mostly halfhearted faithful of Memphis on a holy day but a wild and raucous clanging of alarm. Out of bed and through the door he rushed bare-legged along the corridors to Arbell’s apartments. Outside there were already ten Materazzi guards and another five coming from along the corridor from the other direction. He banged on the door.

“Who is it?”

“Cale. Open up.”

The door was unlocked, and a frightened Riba appeared with Arbell easing her aside and coming out.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” Cale gestured to the Materazzi guards and turned her back into the room.

“Five of you in here. Keep the curtains closed and stay out of sight. Keep them in the corner of the room away from the windows.”

She stepped into the corridor again. “I want to know what’s going on. What if it’s my father?”

“Get back inside,” shouted Cale to this perfectly reasonable fear. “And do as you’re bloody well told for once. And lock the door.”

Riba gently took the appalled aristocrat’s arm and led her back as the five guards, startled at hearing Arbell addressed in such a fashion, followed them inside. Cale nodded to the guard commander as the door lock clacked behind him. “I’ll send news as I get it. Someone give me a sword.” The guard commander signaled one of his men to hand over his weapon.

“How about some trousers as well?” he added, to much amusement from the other soldiers.

“When I come back,” said Cale, “you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face.” And with this sour reply he was off and running. He grabbed his clothes from his room and in less than thirty seconds was down two flights of stairs and out into the courtyard of the palazzo. Vague Henri and Kleist had already set guards around the walls and, armed with bow and the one-foot crossbow, were about to join them.

“Well?” said Kleist.

“Not much,” said Henri. “An attack somewhere past the fifth wall-men wearing what sound like cassocks. Could be wrong.”

“How in God’s name could Redeemers have come this close?”

The explanation was simple. Memphis was a trading city that had not been attacked in decades and was not likely to be. The vast array of goods bought and sold every day in the city needed to flow freely through six inner walls designed to do the exact opposite during a siege, the last of which had been raised fifty years ago. The inner walls had become a damned nuisance in times of peace and had been gradually penetrated by numerous exits and entrances, access tunnels for refuse and water and urine and excrement, so that their role as a barrier was much diminished. A sewerage superintendent had been blackmailed by Kitty the Hare-sins of the cities of the plain were almost as severely punished by the Materazzi as they were by the Redeemers-and it was he who had led the fifty or so Redeemers behind the fifth wall. Any link to Kitty the Hare, however, was not to be allowed. As the attack was launched against the palazzo, the superintendent of sewerage was lying upside down in a dustbin with his throat cut. It was in this way that Bosco’s attempt to provoke an attack from the Materazzi at the cost of a few undesirables and perverts led to a desperate fight right in the most guarded heart of Memphis. The attack behind the fifth wall had been a feint by ten of the Redeemers, but the remaining forty had made their way under the palazzo and up into the courtyard through a manhole cover. As they were emerging like a swarm of sewer beetles in their black cassocks, Cale was sending Vague Henri and Kleist onto the walls, bow-armed, and wondering what to do with the twelve Materazzi around him. It was then that, openmouthed, they all at once saw the forty Redeemers spreading like a stain toward them.

“A line! A line!” called Cale to his men, and then the Redeemers struck. There was a shout by Cale for Kleist, but as blow and counter-blow were struck, the fight was too close to risk a shot. But then a band of the Redeemers tried to spill around the line of Materazzi and head for the door of the palazzo. The sawfly zip and buzz of bolt and arrow struck as the Redeemers cleared the lines and Henri and Kleist could take clean shots. The scream of one of them, clawing at his chest as if a tiger wasp was trapped in his shirt, caught Cale’s attention, and he stepped back out of the line and ran toward the palazzo door, slashing one Redeemer through the tendon of his heel, the same to a second, but with the third ahead of him taking an arrow in the upper thigh. The man staggered backward, crying out as a thrust from Cale, mistimed, hit him in the mouth, severing his lower jaw and spine. Then Cale was through the crowd, had reached the front of the palazzo and turned to face the attacking Redeemers. Cowed by the bolts and arrows, the attack had already stalled as they sheltered behind a waist-high wall that led in a V-shape toward the palazzo. Cale stood in front of it, waiting for them to come to him. The Redeemers trying to get to him could now crouch against the dreadful rain coming from the walls, and on hands and knees they slowly made their way toward Cale. He reached into a six-foot pot that held an old olive tree that decorated the entrance, picked up the fist-sized pebbles artfully arranged inside and started throwing them. This was not a child throwing sticks: these stones cracked against teeth and hands and forced the Redeemers up and into the bolts and arrows from above. Desperate now, the unwounded five Redeemers rushed at Cale. He elbowed, kicked and bit, and as he fought, they fell, but even in the middle of the fight for life a part of him was thinking that there was something odd. The feeling grew stronger as he stood like some hero from a storybook, sending his opponents to their deaths as if they were nothing but tall grass and weeds-the punch, the block, the slash, the killing stroke, and then it was done. The Materazzi guards, reduced only by three, had pushed their opponents back-then the priests lost heart and tried to run, cut down either by the chasing Materazzi swords or Kleist and Henri as they turned from protecting Cale to picking off any Redeemer who looked as if he might make it to the manhole and escape.

Now for Cale the after-battle surge, the beating heart and rush of blood. The courtyard before him seemed to move, now closer now farther away: the dying look of horror on a Redeemer’s face, a Materazzi guard holding his stomach trying to keep his guts from falling on the floor; the almost whispered “Yes! Yes!” of another celebrating the fact of life, of winning, that he had come through without disgrace, and the young face of a Redeemer, his skin as pale as holy wax and knowing he was about to die as a Materazzi came to stand over him. And still for Cale the sense of something utterly wrong. He tried to call out for the Materazzi guard to stop the blow of grace, but all that emerged was an exhausted squeak that could not prevent the hideous cry and the foot shivering in the dirt.

“Are you all right, son?” said a guard. Cale gasped and breathed in deeply.

“Tell them to stop.” He pointed at the Materazzi going among the wounded and finishing them off. “I need to talk to them. Now!” The guard shouted and moved off to do as he was told. Cale sat on the low wall and stared at a moth settling on the edge of a black puddle of blood, testing it carefully and, finding it satisfactory, beginning to feed.

“What’s your problem?” said Kleist as he swaggered up to Cale. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“Something’s wrong.”

“You forgot to say thank you.”

Cale stared at him. “Go and see if there are any survivors.”

Kleist was about to ask him what his last slave died of, but there was something odder than usual about Cale and he thought better of it.

Vague Henri had already started checking the bodies, counting the bolts and hoping to God that his victims were dead. He noticed that Kleist was doing the same, although the Materazzi had quickly finished off anyone who was still moving.

“Cale! Come and see,” shouted Kleist as he turned over a body with one of his arrows in its back. Vague Henri watched as Cale approached but hung back, uneasy. “Look,” said Kleist. “It’s Westaby.” Cale stared at the dead face of an eighteen-year-old he had seen every day at the Sanctuary for as long as he could remember. “Here’s one of the Gaddis twins,” said Vague Henri. There was a short silence as he pulled a body next to it onto its front. “And his brother.” From the far end of the courtyard, near the manhole cover, there was a burst of shouting and four Materazzi started kicking and punching a Redeemer who’d been lying low. The three boys rushed over and started pulling them off, but the Materazzi kept trying to shove them aside until Cale pulled his sword and threatened them with vile dismemberments if they didn’t back off. Kleist and Vague Henri dragged the Redeemer away as the Materazzi looked on in a bad temper. The evil mood was broken by another Materazzi guard who walked up to the four holding a sword bent into an L-shape. “Would you look at this?” he kept saying. “Would you look at this?” Slowly Cale backed away and went over to Kleist and Henri, still keeping his eye on the four Materazzi.

Cale, Kleist and Vague Henri stood over the Redeemer lying unconscious with his back against the palazzo wall, his face swollen, lips fat, teeth missing.

“He looks familiar,” said Vague Henri.

“Yes,” said Cale. “It’s Tillmans, Navratil’s acolyte.”

“Redeemer Bumfeel?” said Kleist, looking down at the unconscious young man more closely. “Yeah, you’re right. It is Tillmans.” Kleist snapped his fingers in Tillmans’s face twice.

“Tillmans! Wake up!” He shook him by the shoulders and then Tillmans groaned. Slowly his eyes opened, but they were unfocused.

“They burned him.”

“They burned who?”

“Redeemer Navratil. They roasted him over a griddle for touching boys.”

“Sorry about that. He was decent enough, all said and done,” said Cale.

“As long as you kept your back to the wall,” said Kleist. “He gave me a pork chop once,” he added, a memorial as close to a eulogy as Kleist was ever likely to give a Redeemer.

“I couldn’t bear the screaming,” said Tillmans. “It took nearly an hour to finish him. Then they told me they’d do the same to me if I didn’t volunteer to come here.”

“Who was watching you on the way?”

“Redeemer Stape Roy and his cohort. They told us when we got to this place, there’d be God’s spies to fight with us, and if we did well, we’d get a fresh start. Don’t kill me, Boss!”

“We’re not going to hurt you. Just tell us what you know.”

“Nothing. I don’t know anything.”

“Who were the others?”

“I don’t know-just like me, not soldiers. I want…”

Tillmans’s eyes started to move oddly, one losing focus, the other looking over Cale’s shoulder as if he could see something in the distance. Again Kleist snapped his fingers, but this time there was no response, except that Tillmans’s gaze became more unfocused and his breathing more erratic. Then for a moment he seemed to come to-“What’s that?” Then his head fell to one side.

“He’s not going to last the night,” said Vague Henri. “Poor old Tillmans.”

“Yeah,” said Kleist. “And poor old Redeemer Bumfeel. What a way to go.”

He had been told to report at three to the chancellor’s office and keep his mouth shut. When he was finally shown in, Vipond barely looked at him.

“I have to admit that I had my doubts when you predicted the Redeemers would try an attack on Arbell in Memphis. I wondered if perhaps you weren’t making it up in order to give yourself and your friends something to do. My apologies.”

Cale was not used to anyone in authority admitting they were wrong-especially when they were right-and so he just looked shifty. Vipond handed Cale a printed leaflet-on it was a coarsely drawn picture of a woman with her breasts exposed and above this the headline: THE WHORE OF MEMPHIS. The leaflet went on to describe Arbell as a notorious defiler and shaved-headed whore who prostituted herself and all innocents in mass orgies of devil worship and sacrifice. She is a sin, declared the leaflet finally, crying out to heaven for vengeance!

There were hammers working in Cale’s brain trying to figure all this out.

“The attackers outside the walls left these pamphlets all along their trail of attack,” said Vipond. “There’ll be no keeping a lid on it this time. Arbell Materazzi is widely considered to be whiter than snow.”

While this was clearly no longer entirely true, the grotesque lies of the pamphlet were as deeply puzzling to Cale as to Vipond.

“Any idea what this is about?” asked Vipond.

“No.”

“I heard you interrogated a prisoner.”

“What there was left of him.”

“Did he have anything to say?”

“Only to tell us what was already pretty clear. This was never a serious attack. They weren’t even real soldiers. We knew about ten of them-field cooks, clerks, a few soldier types who slacked off once too often. That’s why it was so easy.”

“You’re not to repeat that anywhere else. The form all around is that the Materazzi have delivered a great victory against a cowardly attack by the pick of Redeemer assassins.”

“The pick of Redeemer pig-boys.”

“There is outrage at what has happened and great regard for our soldiers’ skill and heroism in repelling them. Nothing must be said to contradict that claim. You understand?”

“Bosco wants to provoke you into an attack on him.”

“Well, he’s succeeded.”

“Giving Bosco what he wants is a stupid idea. I’m not lying about this.”

“That makes a change. But I believe you.”

“Then you have to tell them that if they think taking on a real Redeemer army will be anything like this, then they’ve got another think coming.”

For the first time Vipond looked straight at the boy in front of him.

“My God, Cale, if you only knew with what little sense the world is run. There has been no disaster visited on mankind that was not warned of by someone-never, not in all the history of the world. And no one who ever gave such warnings and was proved right ever got any good out of it. The Materazzi will not be told by anyone in this matter, and certainly not by Thomas Cale. That’s how the world is, and there is nothing an insignificant nobody like you, or even a significant somebody like me, can do about it.”

“You’re not going to say anything to stop them?”

“No, I am not, and neither will you. Memphis is the heart of the greatest power on earth. Some very simple forces, Cale, hold that empire together: trade, greed and the general belief that the Materazzi are too powerful for it all to be worth the risk of defying us. Waiting behind the walls of Memphis while the Redeemers lay siege to us is not an option. Bosco can’t win, but we can lose. All it requires is for us to be seen to be hiding from him. We could wait out a siege in Memphis for a hundred years, but it wouldn’t be six months before revolts would have sprung up from here to the Republic of Pisspot-on-Sea. It’s war-so we’d just better get on with it.”

“I know how the Redeemers will fight.”

Vipond looked at him, exasperated. “So what do you expect? To be consulted? The generals who are planning the campaign have not only conquered half the known world, they either fought with or were trained by Solomon Solomon, even if most of them didn’t care for him much. But you-a boy… a nothing who fights like a starving dog. You can forget it.” He waved Cale away impatiently, adding so as to send him away with a flea in his ear, “You should have let Solomon Solomon live.”

“Would he have done the same for me?”

“Indeed he would not-so all the more reason to have exploited his weakness. If you had let him live, you could have won yourself golden opinions from the Materazzi and made him look like nothing. Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims-the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is that nobody really possesses the kind of power that you have for long. Those who have it on loan from Fate count on it too much and are themselves destroyed.”

“Did you make that up or was it someone else who never had to stand in front of a mob, barking to see them gutted for something to do of an afternoon?”

“Self-pity, is it? You need never have been there and you know it.”

Irritated, not least because he had no good answer, Cale turned to leave.

“By the way, the report on what happened last night will diminish significantly your contribution and that of your friends. You will not complain about this.”

“And why’s that?”

“After your performance at the Red Opera, you are much loathed. Think about what I’ve just told you and it will become clear enough. Even if it does not, you will say nothing about what happened yesterday.”

“I couldn’t care less what the Materazzi think one way or the other.”

“That’s your problem, isn’t it, that you don’t care what people think? But you should.”

Over the next week Materazzi from their estates came pouring into Memphis. It was barely possible to move for knights, their men-at-arms, their wives, their wives’ servants and the vast number of thieves, histers, tarts, gamblers, bagmen, hot prowlers, loan sharks and ordinary traders all after the opportunity to make the large amounts of money to be had from a war. But there was wheeling and dealing other than that concerning money. There were complicated matters of precedence to be settled among the Materazzi nobility. Where you were placed in the order of battle was a sign of where you stood in Materazzi society-a Materazzi battle plan was partly a military strategy and partly like the seating arrangement at a royal wedding. Opportunities to give and take offense were endless. So it was that, despite the pressing business of war, the Marshal spent most of his time throwing dinners and gatherings of one kind or another solely in order to smooth dangerously ruffled feathers by explaining that what looked like a slight was in reality an honor of the greatest significance.

It was at one of these banquets to which Cale had been invited (at Vipond’s request, as part of his attempt at rehabilitation) that events, yet again, took an unexpected turn. Despite the Marshal’s general desire not to have Simon in his presence, and particularly not in public, it was not always possible, particularly when Arbell had begged that Simon be invited.

Lord Vipond was a master of information, true and untrue. He had a considerable network of individuals at all levels of Memphis society, from lord to lowly bootblack. If he wished something to be widely known, or at least widely believed, these informers would be given a story, true or untrue, and then they would spread the word. Such a means of disseminating useful rumors and denying damaging ones has, of course, been used by every ruler from the Ozymandian King of Kings to the Mayor of Nothing-upon-Nowhere. The difference between Vipond and all these other practitioners of the black art of rumor was that Vipond knew that, for his informers to be believed when it really mattered, nearly everything they said had to be true. The result was that any lies that Vipond did want generally accepted were nearly always swallowed whole. He had used up some of his valuable capital on Cale because he was only too aware of the spirit of revenge that had been fired in those related or close to Solomon Solomon. His assassination was a near certainty. Vipond, despite what he had said to Cale, had it put about that Cale had fought bravely alongside the Materazzi in helping to save Arbell, and thus the immediate threat to Cale of poison or a knife in the back in a dark alley had been much, although not completely, diminished. Unusually, had Vipond been asked why he was spending so much time on someone of no significance, he would not have been able to say. But then there was no one to ask him.

Vipond and Marshal Materazzi had been meeting together for several hours in a frustrating attempt to create a battle plan that took into account all the complicated questions of status and power posed by putting the Materazzi into the field. The truth was that they were missing Solomon Solomon, whose heroic reputation as a soldier had made him invaluable as a man who could negotiate and deliver compromises between the various Materazzi factions struggling for precedence in the line of battle.

“You know, Vipond,” said the Marshal, miserably, “as much as I admire the subtleties of the way you deal with these matters, I have to say that, when all’s said and done, there are few problems in this world that can’t be solved by a large bribe or by shoving your enemy over a steep cliff on a dark night.”

“Meaning, my lord?”

“That boy, Cale. I’m not defending Solomon Solomon-you know I tried to stop it-but if the truth be known, I didn’t think the boy had a chance against him.”

“And if you had realized?”

“There’s no point in putting on that high-and-mighty tone; don’t tell me you always do the right thing rather than the wise thing. The point is we need Solomon Solomon; he could have smoothed things over and whipped these bastards into line. It’s simple-we need Solomon Solomon and we don’t need Cale.”

“Cale saved your daughter, my lord, and very nearly lost his own life in the process.”

“You see, there you go-of all people, you should know I can’t take things personally. I know what he did and I’m grateful. But only as a father. As a ruler, I’m pointing out that the state needs Solomon Solomon a lot more that it needs Cale. That’s just the obvious truth and there’s no point in you denying it.”

“So what do you regret, my lord? Not having him thrown over a cliff before the fight?”

“You think you can embarrass me into backing down? First of all, I would have given him a large bag of gold and told him to bugger off and never come back. Which, incidentally, is exactly what I intend to do when this war is over.”

“And what if he’d said no?”

“I’d have been pretty damn suspicious. Why is he hanging around here, anyway?”

“Because you gave him a good job in the middle of the most protected square mile in the entire world.”

“So it’s my fault? Well, if it is, I’m going to put it right. That boy is a menace. He’s a jinx like that fellow in the belly of the whale.”

“Jesus of Nazareth?”

“Yes, him. Once this business with the Redeemers is sorted, Cale is gone and that’s all there is to it.”

What also had the Marshal in such a foul temper was the prospect of having to sit with his son for an entire evening-the humiliation was almost more than he could endure.

As it turned out, the banquet went well. The nobles present seemed ready and even willing to set aside old resentments and squabbles and present a united front in the face of the threat from the Redeemers to Memphis in general and Arbell Swan-Neck in particular. Throughout the dinner she was so sweet and yet gently amusing and so astonishingly beautiful that she made the Redeemers’ grotesque portrait of her seem an increasingly powerful reason to put aside petty differences and face the threat that these religious fanatics posed to all of them.

Throughout the banquet she tried desperately not to look at Cale. So intensely did she love and desire him that she felt sure it would be obvious even to the most thick-skinned. Cale, for his part, was in a sulk because he interpreted this as her avoiding him. She was ashamed of him, he could see, embarrassed to be around him in public. The Marshal’s fears, on the other hand, that he would be mortified by Simon seemed to be groundless. True enough, the boy sat there inevitably saying nothing-but his habitual expression of alarm and terrified bewilderment had vanished. Indeed, his expression seemed entirely normal: now a look of interest, now one of amusement. The Marshal felt increasingly irritable as he had been unable to shake a tickly cough, probably caused by having to yap so much to his endless petitioners.

Another thing annoying the Marshal was the young man beside Simon. He did not recognize him and he said nothing all evening, but throughout dinner he endlessly twitched his right hand in a maddening series of small pointings, tiny jabs, endless circles and so on. In the end it started to get on the Marshal’s nerves so much that he was about to order his manservant, Pepys, to tell the young man either to stop or get out, when the young man with Simon stood up and waited for silence-an action so astonishing in such company that the buzz of laughter and conversation almost slowed to a halt.

“I am Jonathan Koolhaus,” announced Koolhaus, “language tutor to Lord Simon Materazzi. Lord Simon wishes to say something.” At this, the room went quiet, more out of astonishment than deference. Simon then stood up and began moving his right hand in exactly the same peculiar style as Koolhaus had been doing all evening. Koolhaus translated:

“Lord Simon Materazzi says, ‘I have been sitting opposite Provost Kevin Losells for the entire evening and during that time Provost Losells has on three occasions referred to me as a gibbering half-wit.’ ” Simon smiled, a broad and good-humored smile. “ ‘Well, Provost Losells, when it comes to being a gibbering half-wit, as the children say in the playground: it takes one to know one.’ ”

The burst of laughter that followed this was fueled as much by the sight of Losells’s bulging eyes and red face as it was by the joke. Simon’s right hand flicked busily back and forth.

“Lord Simon Materazzi says, ‘Kevin claims it is a great dishonor to him to be seated opposite me.’ ” Simon bowed mockingly to Kevin and Koolhaus did likewise. Simon’s right hand moved again. “ ‘I say to you, Provost Losells, that the dishonor is all mine.’ ”

With that, Simon sat down, smiling benevolently, and Koolhaus with him.

For a moment the table stared on in astonishment, though there was some laughing and clapping. And then, as if by some strange unspoken agreement, the guests all decided they would ignore what they had just seen and pretend it hadn’t happened. With that, the buzz of laughter and conversation reignited and everything went on, at least on the surface, just as before.

In due course the evening came to an end, the guests were ushered out into the night, and the Marshal, accompanied by Vipond, almost ran to his private chambers, where he had ordered his son and daughter to wait for him. He was barely through the door before he demanded, “What’s going on? What sort of a heartless trick is this?” He looked at his daughter.

“I don’t know anything about this. It’s as much a mystery to me as to you.”

During all this, an astonished Koolhaus was thrashing his fingers about to Simon as discreetly as possible.

“There, you-what are you doing?”

“It’s ah… It’s a finger-language, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s very simple, sir. Each gesture of my finger stands for a word or an action.” Koolhaus was so nervous and spoke so quickly that it was barely possible to understand him.

“Slow down!” shouted the Marshal. Koolhaus, trembling, repeated what he’d said. The Marshal stared, disbelieving, as his son signaled to Koolhaus.

“Lord Simon says… uh… you are not to be angry with me.”

“Then explain what this is.”

“It’s simple, sir. As I said, each sign stands for a word or an emotion.” Koolhaus touched himself on the chest with his thumb.

“I.”

Then he made a fist and rubbed it in a circular motion on his chest.

“Apologize.”

He raised his thumb out of the fist, pointed it forward and made a hammering motion.

“For making.”

He pointed to the Marshal.

“You.”

He snapped his wrist and fist back and forth.

“Angry.”

Then he repeated the gesture so quickly that it was barely possible to distinguish anything.

“I am sorry for making you angry.”

The Marshal looked at his son as if looking would reveal the truth. Disbelief and hope were both of them clear on his face. Then he took a deep breath and looked at Koolhaus.

“How can I know for sure if it’s my son speaking and not you?”

Koolhaus began to regain something of his usual balance.

“You never can, my lord. Just as no man can ever be sure that he alone is a thinking and feeling creature and everyone else a machine that only pretends to feel and think.”

“Oh my God,” said the Marshal. “A child of the Brainery if ever I heard one.”

“Indeed I am, sir. But for all that, what I say is true. You know that others feel and think as you do because over time your good judgment tells you the difference between the real and the not real. Just so you’ll see if you talk to your son through me that, while he is untrained and woefully ignorant, he has as keen a mind as you or I.”

It was hard not to be impressed by Koolhaus’s insulting sincerity.

“Very well,” said the Marshal. “Let Simon tell me how all this was arranged from the start to this evening. And don’t add anything or make him seem wiser than he is.”

So for the next fifteen minutes Simon had his first ever conversation with his father and the father with his son. From time to time the Marshal would ask questions, but mostly he listened. And by the time Simon had finished, tears were pouring down the Marshal’s face and that of his astonished sister.

He finally stood up and embraced his son. “I’m sorry, boy, so sorry.” Then he told one of his guards to fetch Cale. Koolhaus heard this command with decidedly mixed feelings. The explanation given by Simon had, in Koolhaus’s opinion, been unfairly biased in favor of Cale’s idea of teaching Simon a simple sign language and had insufficiently taken into account that Koolhaus had turned it from a crude and simple-minded series of gestures into a real and living language. Now it looked as if that yob Cale was going to steal all his thunder. Cale had, of course, been almost as taken aback by what had happened as the rest at the banquet, having had no idea of the advances Koolhaus and Simon had made, mainly because the former had sworn the latter to secrecy with the intention of pulling off a brilliant surprise and taking the credit.

Cale was expecting a bollocking and was somewhat confused at being hailed as a savior both by Arbell and the Marshal, guilty about his ungrateful but not necessarily misguided decision to get rid of Cale.

But Arbell too was feeling guilty. In the days after the terrible events at the Red Opera, she had spent lascivious nights with Cale, passionately devouring every inch of him, but days listening to her visitors discussing the horrors of Solomon Solomon’s death. As she had expressed only distaste for her mysterious bodyguard in the past, no one felt awkward about describing what had happened in all its unpleasant details. Some of this could be dismissed as gossip and bias in favor of one of their own, but when even the honest and good-natured Margaret Aubrey said, “I can’t think why I stayed. I felt so sorry for him at first. He seemed so small out there. But, Arbell, I never saw a colder or more brutal thing in all my life. He talked to him before he killed him. I could see him smiling. You wouldn’t treat swine like that, my father said.”

After hearing this, the feelings of the young princess were in a great moither. Certainly she was aggrieved at the insult to her lover, but had she not also seen that strange murderous blankness for herself? Who could blame her if a quietly suppressed shudder did not make its way into the deepest recesses of her heart, there to be locked away? But all these dreadful thoughts were banished by the discovery that Cale had as good as brought her brother back from the dead. She took his hand and kissed it with both passion and wonder-and thanked him for what he had done. Not even the fact that he offered the credit to Koolhaus made much difference. Koolhaus felt betrayed, conveniently forgetting that it had been Cale who had spotted the hidden intelligence of Simon Materazzi and who had seen the way to unlock it. Cale’s attempt to include him in the general mood of congratulation and indebtedness was just his way, Koolhaus began to think, of backing into the light and nudging him out of it. So on a day Cale finally won around two of his doubters, he balanced this by making another enemy.