The Left Hand of God

4

Cale woke early. This had been his habit for as long as he could remember. It gave him an entire hour to be on his own, as far as anyone could be alone with five hundred sleeping boys in the same room. But in the dark before dawn no one talked to him, watched him, told him what to do, threatened him or looked for an excuse to beat or even kill him. And even if he was hungry, he was at least warm under his blanket. And then, of course, he remembered the food. His pockets were full of it. It was reckless to reach for the cassock hanging by his bed, but he was driven by something irresistible, not just hunger, because he lived with that constantly, but delight, the thought, the unbearable pleasure of eating something that tasted so wonderful. Taking his time, he reached into his pocket and took the first thing he found there, a kind of plain biscuit with a custard layer, and shoved it in his mouth.

At first he thought he would go wild with delight, the flavors of sugar and butter exploding not only in his mouth but in his brain, indeed, in his very soul. He chewed on and swallowed, pleasure beyond words.

And then, of course, he felt sick. He was no more used to food like this than an elephant is to flying through the air. Like a man dying of thirst or from lack of food, he needed to be fed stingy drops and morsels or his body would rebel and die of the very thing it so desperately needed. Cale lay there for half an hour and tried very hard not to vomit.

As he began to recover he could hear the sound of one of the Redeemers walking his rounds before wake-up. The hard soles of his shoes clacked on the stone floor as he circled the sleeping boys. This went on for ten minutes. Then suddenly a quickening of pace and loud claps. GET UP! GET UP!

Cale, still queasy, eased himself upright and began to pull on his cassock, careful not to let anything spill from his overfull pockets as the five hundred groaned and staggered their way to their feet.

A few minutes later they marched through the rain to assemble in the great stone Basilica of Eternal Mercy, where they spent the next two hours muttering prayers in response to the ten Redeemers holding Mass, using words that had long ago become empty from repetition. Cale didn’t mind this; he had learned as a small boy to sleep with his eyes open and mutter along with the rest, only a small part of his mind keeping wary, alert for Redeemers on the lookout for slackers.

Then it was breakfast, more gray porridge and dead men’s feet, a kind of cake made from many kinds of animal and vegetable fat, usually rancid, and numerous varieties of seed. It was revolting but highly nutritious. It was only because of this disgusting mixture that the boys survived at all. The Redeemers wished them to have as little pleasure in life as possible, but their plans for the future, for the great war against the Antagonists, meant that the boys had to be strong. Those who lived, of course.

It was not until eight o’clock as they queued for practice on the Field of Our Redeemer’s Absolute Forgiveness, that the three were able to talk again.

“I feel sick,” said Kleist.

“Me too,” whispered Vague Henri.

“Nearly threw up,” admitted Cale.

“We’re going to have to hide it.”

“Or throw it away.”

“You’ll get used to it,” said Cale. “Anyway, I’ll have yours if you don’t want it.”

“I have to fold the vestments after practice,” said Vague Henri.

“Give me the food and I’ll hide it in there.”

“Talking. You boys. Talking.” In his usual, almost miraculous, way Redeemer Malik had appeared behind them. It was unwise to be doing anything wrong when Malik was around, because of his strange ability to creep up on people. His unannounced taking over of the training session from Redeemer Fitzsimmons, known universally as Fitz the Shits because of the dysentery that had plagued him since his time in the Fen campaigns, was just bad luck. “I want two hundred,” said Malik, fetching Kleist a hefty clip round the back of his head. He made the entire line, not just the three of them, get down on their knuckles and start to do their allotted press-ups. “Not you, Cale,” said Malik. “Balance on your hands.” Cale moved easily into a handstand and started to push up and down, up and down. With the exception of Kleist, the faces of the others in the line were already frowning under the strain, but Cale kept moving up and down as if he might never stop, his eyes blank, a thousand miles away. Kleist merely looked bored, though completely at ease, while moving twice as fast as the others. When the last of them had finished, exhausted and in pain, Malik made Cale do twenty more for showing bodily pride. “I told you to balance on your hands, not do press-ups as well. The pride of a boy is a tasty snack for the devil.” This was a moral lesson lost on the acolytes in front of him, who stared at him blankly: the experience of a light but refreshing meal between other meals, tasty or otherwise, was something they had never imagined, let alone experienced.

When the bell went to signal the end of practice, five hundred boys walked as slowly as they dared back to the basilica for morning prayers. As they passed by the alley leading into the back of the great building, the three boys slipped away. They gave all the food in their pockets to Vague Henri, and then Kleist and Cale rejoined the long queue that jammed the square in front of the basilica.

Meanwhile, Vague Henri shoved the latch on the sacristy door with his shoulders, his hands being full of bread, meat and cake. He pushed it open and listened out for Redeemers. He moved into the dark brown of the dressing place, ready to back out if he saw anything. It seemed to be empty. Now he rushed over to one of the cupboards, but he had to dump some of the food onto the floor in order to open it. A bit of dirt, he reflected, never harmed anyone. With the door open, he reached inside the cupboard and lifted a plank of wood from the floor. Underneath was a large space in which Vague Henri kept his belongings-all of them forbidden. The acolytes were not permitted to own anything, in case it made them, as Redeemer Pig put it, “lust after the material things of this world.” (Pig, it should be added, was not his real name, which was Redeemer Glebe.)

It was Glebe’s voice that now rang out behind him.

“Who’s that?”

Three-quarters hidden by the cupboard door, Vague Henri shoveled the food in his arms and the chicken legs and cake from the floor into the cupboard and, standing up, shut the door.

“I beg your pardon, Redeemer?”

“Oh, it’s you,” said Glebe. “What are you doing?”

“What am I doing, Redeemer?”

“Yes,” said Glebe irritably.

“I… uh… well.” Vague Henri looked round as if for inspiration. He seemed to find it somewhere up in the roof.

“I was… putting away the long habiliment left by Redeemer Bent.” Redeemer Bent was certainly mad, but his reputation for forgetfulness was largely due to the fact that whenever they got the chance the acolytes blamed him for everything that was misplaced or was questionable about whatever they were doing. If ever they were caught doing something or being somewhere that they shouldn’t, the acolytes’ first line of defense was that they were there at the command of Redeemer Bent, whose poor short-term memory could be relied upon not to contradict them.

“Bring me my habiliments.”

Vague Henri looked at Glebe as if he had never heard of such things.

“Well? What?” said Glebe.

“Habiliments?” asked Vague Henri. As Glebe was about to step forward and give him a clout, Vague Henri said brightly, “Of course, Redeemer.” He turned and walked over to another of the cupboards and flung it open as if with huge enthusiasm.

“Black or white, Redeemer?”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“The matter, Redeemer?”

“Yes, you idiot. Why would I wear black habiliments on a weekday during the month of the dead?”

“On a weekday?” said Vague Henri as if astonished by such a notion. “Of course not, Redeemer. You’ll need a thrannock, though.”

“What are you talking about?” Glebe’s querulous tone was also uncertain. There were hundreds of ceremonial robes and ornaments, many having fallen into disuse over the thousand years since the founding of the Sanctuary. He had, it was clear, never heard of the thrannock, but that didn’t mean such a thing did not exist.

Vague Henri went over to a drawer and pulled it open, watched by Redeemer Glebe. He searched for a moment and then pulled out a necklace made of tiny beads, on the end of which was a small square made out of sacking. “It’s to be worn on Martyr Fulton’s day.”

“I’ve never worn anything like that before,” said Glebe, still uncertain. He walked over to the Ecclesiasticum and opened it at that day’s date. It was, indeed, Martyr Fulton’s day, but then there were so many martyrs and not enough days-as a result, some of the minor ones were celebrated only every twenty years or so. Glebe sniffed irritably.

“Get a move on, we’re late.”

With due solemnity, Vague Henri placed the thrannock around Glebe’s neck and helped him into the long, white, elaborately decorated habiliment. This done, he followed Glebe out into the basilica proper for morning prayers, and spent the next half an hour pleasurably reliving the episode with the thrannock, something that did not exist outside Vague Henri’s imagination. He had no idea what the square of sack on the end of the beaded string was for, but there were numerous such unknown bits and bobs in the sacristy whose religious significance had been long forgotten. Nevertheless, he had, and not for the first time, taken an enormous risk just for the pleasure of making a fool out of a Redeemer. If he were ever found out, they would have the hide off his back. And this was no figure of speech.

His nickname, given to him by Cale, had caught on, but only the two of them realized what it truly meant. No one except Cale realized that Henri’s elusive way of answering or repeating any question he was asked was not due to his inability to understand what was said to him, or to give clear replies, but merely a way of defying the Redeemers by pushing his response to them to the very limit of their not very great tolerance. It was because Cale had come to see what Henri was up to and admire its spectacular recklessness that he had broken one of his most important rules: make no friends, allow no one to make friends with you.

At that moment Cale was making his way into a spare pew in Basilica Number Four, looking forward to catching up on his sleep during the Prayers of Abasement. He had perfected the art of dozing while lambasting himself for his sins, sins of turpitude, of delectatio morosa, sins of gaudium, of desiderium, sins of desire efficacious and inefficacious. In unison the five hundred children in Basilica Four vowed never to commit transgressions that would have been impossible for them even if they had known what they were: five-year-olds swore solemnly never to covet their neighbor’s wife, nine-year-olds vowed that under no circumstances would they carve graven images and fourteen-year-olds promised not to worship these images even if they did carve them. All of this under pain of God punishing their children even to the third or fourth generation. After a satisfying forty-five-minute doze, the Mass ended and Cale filed out silently with the others and made his way back to the far end of the training field.

The field was never empty during the day now. The huge increase in the number of acolytes under instruction in the last five years had meant that almost everything now was done in shifts: training, eating, washing, worship. For those thought to be falling behind, training took place even at night, when it was particularly hated because of the terrible cold, the wind off the Scablands like a knife even in summer. It was no secret that this increase in acolytes was to provide more troops for the war against the Antagonists. Cale knew that many of those who left the Sanctuary were not going permanently to the Eastern Front but were being held most of the time in reserve and rotated for six months to either front, with up to a year or longer back in reserve in between. He knew this because Bosco had told him.

“You may ask two questions,” said Bosco after he had informed him about this strange deployment. Cale had considered for a moment.

“The time they spend in reserve, Lord-do you plan to increase it and keep on increasing it?”

“Yes,” said Bosco. “Second question.”

“I don’t need a second question,” replied Cale.

“Really? You’d better be right, then, hadn’t you?”

“I heard Redeemer Compton say to you that there was stalemate at the fronts.”

“Yes, I could see you earwigging at the time.”

“And yet you both talked around it as if it wasn’t a problem.”

“Go on.”

“You’ve trained a girt number of priests militant in the last five years-too many. You’re trying to give them a go at the fighting, but you don’t want the Antagonists to know that you’ve been building up your forces. That’s why the time in reserve has been increasing. We’re always being told that there are Antagonist traitors everywhere at the fronts. Is that true?”

“Ah.” Bosco smiled, not a pleasant sight. “A second question while all the time boasting that you needed only one. Your vanity will destroy you, boy, and I don’t mean that for the good of your soul. I have…” He stopped, and it was as if he were uncertain what to say next, something that Cale had never seen before. It was disturbing. “I have expectations of you. Demands will be made. It would be much better if you were thrown off the walls of this place with a millstone round your neck than if you failed to meet those demands and those expectations. And it is your pride that most worries me. Every other Redeemer from here to eternity will tell you that pride is the cause of all the other twenty-eight deadly sins, but I have bigger fish to fry than your soul. It distorts your judgment and makes you put yourself in situations that you could have avoided. I gave you two questions, and for no reason but vain superbia you wanted to best me and risked a punishment for failing that you need not have risked. It makes you weak in such a way that I wonder whether you have deserved my protection all these years.” He stared at Cale, and Cale stared at the floor, all the while hating and sneering at the idea of Bosco protecting him. Strange and perilous thoughts went through his mind as he waited.

“The answer to your second question is that there are Antagonist spies and intelligencers at the fronts, but only a few. Enough, however.”

Cale kept his eyes on the floor. Pretend not to resist. Minimize the punishment. Yet all the while the raging resentment that Bosco was right and that he might have avoided what was coming.

“You are building up reserves for a great attack on both fronts, and yet you must keep numbers there at more or less the same level or they’ll see what’s coming. You want the reserves to get experience, but there are now too many-so they have to spend more time away from the front. And yet you need many more soldiers to finish off the Antagonists, but they must be battle-hardened and there aren’t enough battles. You’re in a bind, Lord.”

“Your solution?”

“I’ll need time, Redeemer. There may not be a solution that isn’t another problem.”

Bosco laughed.

“Let me tell you, boy, the solution to every problem is always another problem.”

Then, without warning, Bosco lashed out at Cale. Cale blocked it as easily as if it were aimed by an old man. They looked at each other.

“Put your hand down.”

Cale did as he was told.

“I will hit you again in a moment,” said Bosco softly, “and when I do you will not move your hands and you will not move your head. You will let me strike you. You will allow it. You will consent.”

Cale waited. Bosco this time made a clear show of his preparations for the blow. Then he hit out again. Cale flinched, but the blow did not land. Bosco’s hand stopped a fraction from Cale’s face. “Don’t you move, boy.” Bosco drew his hand back and again lashed out. Yet again Cale flinched. “DON’T YOU MOVE!” screamed Bosco, his face red with rage except for two very small white spots in the center of his cheeks that grew whiter as the skin on his face went ever darker. Then another blow, but this one landed as Cale stood still as stone. Then another and another. Then a blow so hard it dropped a stunned Cale to the floor. “Get up,” so softly that he was barely audible. Cale got to his feet, shaking as if from intense cold. Then the blow. He fell again, stood up; another blow, and then he got to his feet again. Bosco changed hands. With his weaker left it took five more blows before Cale fell to the floor again. Bosco stared down at him as he started to get to his feet. Both of them were shaking now. “Stay where you are.” Bosco was almost whispering. “If you get up, I won’t answer for what will happen. I’m going.” He seemed almost bewildered, exhausted by the dreadful intensity of his anger. “Wait for five minutes and then leave.” Then Bosco went to the door and was gone.

For a full minute Cale did not move. Then he was sick. It took another minute of rest and then three more to clean up the mess. Then, slowly, shaking as if he might never reach it, he got out into the corridor and, supporting himself by feeling his way along the wall, made his way out into one of the blind alleys off a courtyard and sat down.

“KEEP YOUR WAIST STRAIGHT! NO! NO! NO!” Cale snapped back from what had become almost a trance. The noises and sights of the training field had vanished as he’d gone missing in his memories of the past. It was something that was happening to him more often, but it was not a good idea to become so distracted in a place like the Sanctuary. You paid attention here or pretty quickly something unpleasant happened. All around him the sights and sounds of training were vivid now. A line of twenty acolytes, soon to leave, were practicing an attack in formation. Redeemer Gil, known as Gil the Gorilla because of his ugliness and terrible strength, was complaining routinely about the sloppiness of his trainees: “Have the gates of death been shown to you, Gavin?” he said wearily. “They will be if you keep exposing your left side like that.” The acolytes in the line smiled at Gavin’s discomfort. For all his physical power and brute ugliness, Redeemer Gil was as close to being a decent man as a Redeemer ever got. Except for Redeemer Navratil, and he was a peculiar case. “Night training for you,” Gil said to the hapless Gavin. The boy next to him laughed. “And you can join him, Gregor. And you, Holdaway.”

Just beyond the line a small boy, no more than seven years old, was hanging by his arms from a wooden frame about seven feet off the ground. A belt of heavy weights in canvas was strapped around his shins and he was grimacing, tears of pain rolling down his contorted face. The Under Redeemer beneath him kept insisting that unless he raised his weighted feet to make a perfect L-shape every time, none of his efforts would count. “Crying won’t do any good; only doing it right will do any good.” As the child struggled to do as he was told, Cale noticed the extreme definition of the six muscles of his stomach as he strained, bulging and powerful as those of a grown man. “Four!” counted the Under Redeemer.

Cale walked on past boys of five, some laughing like little boys anywhere, and eighteen-year-olds who looked like middle-aged men. There were groups of eighty or so practicing pushing each other back and forth, shouting in a rhythm as if they were one giant grunting against another; an additional rank of five hundred or so marched in formation without a sound, turning as one to the signaling of flags: left then right, then stopping dead, then retreating, then stopping again and moving forward. By now Cale was about fifty yards from the great wall around the Sanctuary, at the edge of the archery range where Kleist was giving lip to a squad of ten acolytes easily four years older than himself. He was abusing them for their uselessness, their ugliness, their lack of skill, the poor quality of their teeth and the fact that their eyes were too close together. He stopped only when he saw Cale.

“You’re late,” he said. “Lucky for you that Primo is sick or he’d have your hide.”

“You could always try, if you like.”

“Me? I couldn’t care if you were here or not. Your loss.”

Cale’s faint shrug in response indicated a reluctant acknowledgment that this was probably true. Kleist was stripped to the waist, revealing a remarkable, if odd, body shape. He seemed to be all back and shoulders, as if the upper body of an adult male had been inserted between the legs and head of a fourteen-year-old. His right arm and shoulder in particular were so much more knotted with muscle than his left side that he looked almost deformed.

“Right,” said Kleist, “let’s have a look at what’s wrong.” He was clearly enjoying the chance to demonstrate his sense of superiority and very keen that Cale should know he was enjoying it too.

Cale raised the longbow Kleist had handed him, pulled back the drawstring to his cheek, aimed, held for a second, and then loosed the arrow to its target eighty yards away. He groaned even as it left the bow. The arrow arced toward the target, the size and shape of a man’s body, and missed by several feet.

“Shit!”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Kleist, “I haven’t seen anything like that since… well, I can’t remember. You used to be adequate-where on earth did you pick up a set of shanks like that from?”

“Just tell me what I need to do to put them right.”

“Oh, that’s easy enough. You’re plucking the bowstring when you should just be letting it go-like this.” He twanged at the string of his own bow to show what Cale was doing wrong and then showed him, with enormous pleasure, how it should be done. “You’re also opening your mouth when you shoot and dropping the elbow of your string arm before you let loose.” Cale started to protest. “And,” interrupted Kleist, “you’re letting your string hand creep forward at the same time.”

“All right, I get the point. Just talk me through it. I’ve just got into some bad habits, that’s all.”

Kleist drew in his breath through his teeth as melodramatically as possible.

“I’m not sure, myself, if it’s as simple as a few bad habits. I think you’re probably a choker.” He pointed to his head with a finger. “I think you’ve lost it up here, mate. Now that I think about it, yours is the worst case of the yips I’ve ever seen.”

“You just made that up.”

“You’ve got the yips all right, the staggers, the twitches. No known cure. All that mouth gaping and elbow dropping-just an exterior mark of the state of your soul. The real problem’s in your spirit.” Kleist put an arrow in his bow, drew back the string, and let it loose in one elegant movement. It arced beautifully and landed with a satisfying thwack in the chest of the target. “You see, perfect-an outward sign of inward grace.”

By now Cale was laughing. He turned back to the quiver of arrows lying on the bench behind him, but as he did so he saw Bosco walking through the middle of the field and approach Redeemer Gil, who immediately gestured an acolyte forward. Cale heard a soft “Zut!” behind him and turned his head to see Kleist furtively aiming his bow at the distant Bosco and making the sound of an arrow on its way.

“Go on. I dare you.”

Kleist laughed and turned back to his pupils sitting and talking some distance away. One of them, Donovan, had as usual taken advantage of any pause to begin sermonizing on the evils of the Antagonists. “They don’t believe in a purgatory where you can burn away your sins and then go to heaven. They believe in justification by faith.” There was a gasp of disbelief from some of the acolytes who were listening. “They claim that each one of us is saved or damned by the unalterable choice of the Redeemer and there is nothing you can do about it. And they take the tunes from drinking songs and use them for their hymns. The Hanged Redeemer that they believe in never existed, and so they will die in their sins because they have a horror of confession, and so will depart this life with all their transgressions printed on their souls and be damned.”

“Shut your gob, Donovan,” said Kleist, “and get back to work.”

Once the acolyte had left with his message for Cale, Bosco waved Redeemer Gil to one side so they could not be heard.

“There are rumors that the Antagonists are talking to the Laconic mercenaries.”

“Are they solid?”

“They’re solid by the standard of rumors.”

“Then we should be worried.” A thought struck Gil. “They’ll need ten thousand or more to break us. How will they pay?”

“The Antagonists have found silver mines at Laurium. Not a rumor.”

“Then God help us. Even we have no more than a few thousand troops… three, maybe… capable of going up against Laconic hired men. Their reputation isn’t exaggerated.”

“God helps those who help themselves. If we cannot deal with men who fight only for money and not the glory of God, then we deserve to fail. It’s a test and to be expected.” He smiled. “In spite of dungeon, fire and sword-isn’t that right, Redeemer?”

“Well, My Lord Militant, if it is a test, it’s one I don’t know how to pass, and if I don’t-pardon the sin of pride-there’s no other Redeemer who does.”

“Are you quite sure? About the sin of pride, I mean.”

“What are you saying? It’s not necessary to be obscure with me. I deserve better at your hands.”

“Of course. My apologies for my own presumption.” He beat himself gently on the chest three times. “Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. I have been expecting this, or something like it, for some time. I have always felt that our faith would be tested and tested harshly. The Redeemer was sent to save us and mankind replied to that divine gift by hanging my love from a gibbet.” His eyes began to mist over as he stared into the distance as if at something he had witnessed himself, though a millennium had passed since the Redeemer’s execution. He sighed deeply again as if at a terrible and recent grief and then looked directly at Gil. “I can’t say more.” He touched his arm lightly and with true affection. “Except that if this report is true, then I haven’t been idle in my search for an end to the apostasy of the Antagonists and to putting right the awful crime of doing murder to the only messenger of God.” He smiled at Gil. “There is a new tactic.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Not a military tactic-a new way of seeing things. We should no longer think just of the problem of the Antagonists-but of an ultimate solution to the problem of human evil itself.”

He urged Gil closer and lowered his voice still further.

“For too long we have been ready to think only about the Antagonist heresy and our war with them-what they do, what they don’t do. We have forgotten that they’re of secondary importance to our purpose to allow no god but the One True God and no faith but the One True Faith. We’ve allowed ourselves to become stuck in this war as if it were an end in itself-we have let it become one squabble in a world filled with squabbles.”

“Forgive me, Lord, but the Eastern Front covers a thousand miles and the dead can be numbered in hundreds of thousands-that’s not a squabble.”

“We are not the Materazzi or the Janes, interested in war only for gain or power. But that’s all we have become. One power amongst many in the war of all against all because, like them, we desire victory but fear defeat.”

“It’s sensible to be leery of defeat.”

“We are the representatives of God on earth through His Redeemer. There is a single purpose to our existence and we’ve forgotten it because we’re afraid. So things must change: better to fall once than be forever falling. Either we believe that we have God on our side or we do not. If that’s what we truly believe rather than what we affect to believe, then it follows that we must pursue absolute victory or none at all.”

“If you say so, Lord.”

Bosco laughed, a sweet sound, genuinely amused.

“I do say so, friend.”

Both Cale and Kleist were aware of the acolyte as he walked up to them, pleased at the chance to deliver what he clearly felt was unpleasant news. As he started to speak, Kleist interrupted.

“What do you want, Salk? I’m busy.”

This put Salk off the slow malice with which he’d intended to spin out his news.

“Tough titty, Kleist. It’s got nothing to do with you. Redeemer Bosco wants to see Cale in his rooms after night prayers.”

“Fine,” said Kleist, as if this were utterly routine. “Now piss off.”

Taken off guard both by the hostile lack of curiosity and by the fact that Cale was staring at him oddly, Salk spat on the ground to show his own indifference and walked away. Cale and Kleist looked at each other. Because Cale was Bosco’s zealot, calls for him to go and see the Lord Militant, something that would have terrified any other boy, were not uncommon. What was unusual, and therefore disturbing given the events of the day before, was that Cale had been called to his private rooms and not until late evening. This had never happened before.

“What if he knows?” said Kleist.

“Then we’d be in the House of Special Purpose already.”

“It’d be just like Bosco to make us think that.”

“I suppose. But there’s nothing we can do about it now.” Cale drew back the bow, held for a second and then loosed the arrow. It arced toward the target and missed by a good twelve inches.

The three had already agreed to escape dinner. Normally to be anywhere but where you were supposed to be was dangerous, but it was unheard of for an acolyte to be absent from a mealtime because they were always hungry, however repellent the food. As a result, the Redeemers were at their least vigilant at the evening meal, something that made it easier for Cale and Kleist to hide behind Basilica Number Four and wait for Vague Henri to bring them their food from the sacristy. They ate the food more slowly this time, and not much of it, but ten minutes later they were all sick.

Half an hour later Cale was waiting in the dark corridor outside the Lord Militant’s rooms. An hour later he was still there. Then the cast-iron door opened and the tall figure of Bosco stood watching him.

“Come in.”

Cale followed him into rooms only slightly less gloomy than the corridor. If he had expected to see anything of the private man after all these years, Cale would have been disappointed. There were doors leading off the room he entered, but they were shut and all there was to see was a study and with little in it. Bosco sat down behind his desk and examined a piece of paper in front of him. Cale stood and waited, knowing that it might be a requisition for the withdrawal of a dozen blue sacks or his own death warrant.

After a few minutes Bosco spoke, but without looking up and in a tone of mild inquiry.

“Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“No, Lord,” replied Cale.

Still Bosco did not look up.

“If you lie to me, there’s nothing I can do to save you.” He looked Cale straight in the eyes, his gaze infinitely cold and infinitely black. It was death itself looking at him. “So, I ask you again. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

Holding his gaze, Cale replied. “No, Lord.”

The Lord Militant did not look away, and Cale felt his will begin to dissolve as if some acid were being poured over his very soul. A horrible desire to confess began to grow in his throat. It was dread, the knowledge that had been with him since he was a small boy, that the Redeemer in front of him was capable of anything, that pain and suffering were the constant companions of this man, that anything that lived grew quiet in his presence.

Bosco looked back at the paper in front of him and signed his name. Then he folded the paper and sealed it with red wax. He handed it to Cale.

“Take this to the Lord of Discipline.”

A cold wind swept through Cale.

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

“It’s dark. The dorm will be locked in a few minutes.”

“Never mind about that. It’s been seen to.”

Without looking up, Redeemer Bosco began writing again.

Cale did not move. The Redeemer looked up again.

Instinct fought instinct in Cale. If he confessed, the Redeemer might help. He was his zealot after all. He might save him. But other creatures in Cale’s soul were screaming at him, “Never confess! Never admit guilt! Never! Always deny everything. Always.”

Cale turned and walked to the door, fighting his urge to run. Once outside he closed the iron door and stared back into the room as if it were as transparent as glass, eyes filled with hatred and loathing.

He walked to the nearest adjoining corridor and stopped under the dim light from a candle set into the wall. He knew that it was a deliberate test by Bosco, that he was offering him the chance to open the letter, an offense that would lead to his immediate execution. If Bosco knew about yesterday, it was possible this was an instruction to the Lord of Discipline to have him killed-it would be Bosco’s way to arrange for Cale to deliver his own death warrant. But it might be nothing, just another of the endless attempts by the Lord Militant to test him whenever he could.

He took a deep breath and tried to see things as they were, uncolored by fear. It was, of course, obvious: there might be nothing deadly in this letter, although its consequences were bound to be unpleasant and painful-but to open it would mean certain death. With that, he started walking toward the office of the Lord of Discipline, though all the time there were hammers beating in his brain about what he would do if the worse came to the worst.

Within ten minutes, having once become briefly lost in the warren of corridors, he approached the Chamber of Salvation. For a moment in the deep gloom he stood in front of the great door, heart beating with fear and anger. Then he noticed it was unlocked and very slightly ajar.

Cale paused for a moment, thinking about what to do. He looked at the document he was holding and then pushed the door open enough so that he could see inside. At the far side of the room he could see the Lord of Discipline bent over something and singing to himself.

Faith of our fathers, living still

In spite of dungeons, fire, and sword

Da dum de dum de dum de dum dum

Da dum de dum de dum de dum

Faith of our fathers, dum de dum

We will be true to thee till death.

Then he stopped singing and humming, needing to concentrate particularly hard on something. That part of the room was as well lit as anything could be by candlelight, and it seemed as if the Lord of Discipline was enclosing the light in a kind of dome of warm brightness bounded by the shape of his body. As Cale’s eyes adjusted, he could see that the Lord was leaning over a wooden table about six feet by two and there was something lying on it, though the end of it was wrapped in cloth. Then the humming started again, and the Lord of Discipline turned aside and dropped something small and hard onto an iron plate. Picking up a pair of scissors next to it, he turned back to his work.

How sweet would be their children’s fate,

If they, like them, could die for thee!

Da dum de dum de dum de dum de dum

Da dum de dum de dum de dum

Cale moved the door farther ajar. Over in the darkest part of the room he could see another table, also with something lying on it, but this time obscured by the gloom. Then the Lord of Discipline stood upright again and walked over to a low cupboard on his right and began rooting about in a drawer. Cale just stared, unable to grasp what was on the table even though he could now see quite clearly what the Lord had been doing. On the table was a body on which the Lord of Discipline was performing a dissection. The chest had been cut open with great skill and down all the way to the lower stomach. Each section of skin and muscle had been carefully, precisely, cut back and held away from the incision with some sort of weight. What had so shocked Cale, apart from the sight of a body displayed in this way, what had made it so difficult to take, despite the fact that he had seen many dead bodies before, was that this was a girl. And she was not dead. Her left hand hanging over the side of the table twitched every few seconds as the Lord of Discipline kept rooting in the drawer, still humming to himself.

Cale felt as if spiders were crawling along the skin of his back. And then he heard a groan. The light no longer held in by the Lord of Discipline, he could now see what was on the other table. It was another girl, tied and gagged, trying to call out. And he knew her. She was the more striking of the two girls who had been dressed in white and laughing with delight at the center of the celebrations the day before.

The Lord of Discipline stopped humming, stood up straight and looked over at the girl.

“Be quiet, you,” he said, almost gently.

Then he bent back down, started singing again and continued searching.

Cale had seen many dreadful things in his short life, terrible acts of cruelty, and had endured suffering almost beyond description. But for that moment he was stunned by what he was seeing and could not make sense of the dissected girl, her hand moving now less and less. And then, very slowly, Cale moved back out of the room, into the corridor and began to walk away as silently as he had come.