Weaveworld

III

CHARISMA

imrod was waiting for him at the rendezvous they’d arranged two days before. It seemed to Jerichau his fervour had intensified in the intervening time.

‘It’s going to be the biggest meeting so far …’ he said. ‘Our numbers are growing all the time. The day’s at hand, Jerichau. Our people are ready and waiting.’

‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’

See it he did.

As evening fell Nimrod took him by an elaborate route to a vast ruin of a building, far from any sign of human habitation. The place had been a foundry in its prime; but its heroic scale had doomed it when times got leaner. Now its walls would supposedly see the kindling of another heat entirely.

As they drew closer, it became apparent that there were lights burning in the interior, but there was no sound or sign of the immense gathering Nimrod had promised. A few solitary figures lurked amongst the rubble of service buildings; otherwise the place seemed to be deserted.

Once through the door, however, Jerichau faced the first shock of a night that would bring many: the vast building was filled to capacity with hundreds of the Kind. He saw members of every Root, Babu and Ye-me, Lo and Aia; he saw old men and women, he saw babes in arms. Some he knew had been in the Weave at the beginning, and had apparently elected the previous summer to try their luck in the Kingdom; others he guessed were descendants of those who’d rejected the Weave at the outset; they had a look about them which marked them out as strangers to their homeland. Many of them stood quite separately from their fellow devotees, as if nervous of rejection.

It was disorienting to see physiognomies that carried the subtle signature of his fellow Seerkind primped and painted a la mode; Seerkind dressed in jeans and leather jackets, in print dresses and high heels. To judge by their condition many of them had survived well enough in the Kingdom; perhaps even prospered. Yet they were here. A whisper of liberation had found them in their hiding places amongst the Cuckoos, and they’d come, bringing their children and their prayers. Kind who could only know of the Fugue from rumour and hearsay, drawn by the hope of seeing a place their hearts had never forgotten.

Despite his initial cynicism, he could not help but be moved by this silent and expectant multitude.

‘I told you,’ Nimrod whispered, as he led Jerichau through the throng. ‘We’ll get as close as we can, eh?’

At the end of the vast hall a rostrum had been set up, littered with flowers. Lights hovered in the air, Babu raptures, throwing a flickering luminescence on the stage beneath.

‘He’ll come soon,’ said Nimrod.

Jerichau didn’t doubt it. Even now there was some movement at the far end of the hall; several figures, dressed in the same dark blue, were ordering the crowd a few yards back from the vicinity of the rostrum. The devotees obeyed the instruction without question.

‘Who are they?’ said Jerichau, nodding towards the uniformed figures.

‘The Prophet’s Elite,’ Nimrod returned. ‘They’re with him night and day. To keep him from harm.’

Jerichau had no time to ask any further questions. A door was opening in the bare brick wall at the back of the platform, a tremor of excitement passing through the hall. The congregation started to surge towards the platform. The swell of emotion was contagious; try as he might to keep his critical faculties sharp Jerichau found his heart pounding with excitement.

One of the Elite had appeared through the open door, carrying a plain wooden chair. This he set at the front of the platform. The crowd was pressing at Jerichau’s back; he was hemmed in to right and left. Every face but his was turned towards the stage. Some had tears on their cheeks: the tension of waiting had been too much. Others were speaking silent prayers.

And now, two more Elite stepped through the door, parting to reveal a figure in pale yellow, the sight of whom brought a tide of sound from the crowd. It was not the jubilant shout of welcome Jerichau had been anticipating, but an intensification of the murmur that had begun a while earlier; a soft, yearning sound which stirred the gut.

Above the platform, the floating flames became brighter. The murmur grew in depth and resonance. Jerichau had to make a fierce effort not to join in.

The lights had reached a white heat, but the Prophet did not step forward and bathe in this blaze of glory. He hung back at the edge of the pool, teasing the crowd, which begged him with their moans to show himself. Still he resisted, still they summoned him, their wordless prayers growing feverish.

Only after three or four minutes of this holding back did he consent to answer their appeal, and step into the light. He was a sizeable man – a fellow Babu, Jerichau guessed – but some infirmity slowed his footsteps. His features were benign, even slightly effeminate; his hair, fine as a baby’s, was a white mane.

Reaching the chair, he sat down – apparently with some pain – and surveyed the gathering. Little by little the murmuring grew softer. He did not speak, however, until it had ceased entirely. And when he did speak it was not with the voice Jerichau had expected from a Prophet: strident, possessed. It was a small, musical voice; its tone gentle, even hesitant.

‘My friends …’ he said. ‘We’re assembled here in the name of Capra

‘Capra …’ The name was whispered from wall to wall.

‘I’ve heard Capra’s words. They say the time is very, very close.’ He spoke, Jerichau thought, almost reluctantly, as though he were the vessel of this knowledge, but far from comfortable with it.

‘If there are many doubters amongst you –’ the Prophet said, ‘– prepare to shed your doubts.’

Nimrod cast Jerichau a glance as if to say: he means you.

‘We are greater by the day …’ the Prophet said. ‘Capra’s word is everywhere finding its way to the forgotten and the forgetful. It stirs the sleeping into wakefulness. It makes the dying dance.’ He spoke very quietly, letting the rhetoric substitute for volume. His congregation attended like children. ‘Very soon we’ll be home,’ he said. ‘We’ll be back amongst our loved ones, walking where our mothers and fathers walked. We won’t have to hide any longer. This Capra tells us. We will rise, my friends. Rise and be bright.’

There were barely stifled sobs from around the hall. He heard them, and hushed them with an indulgent smile.

‘No need to weep,’ he said, ‘I see an end to weeping. An end to waiting.’

‘Yes,’ said the crowd, as one. ‘Yes. Yes.’

Jerichau felt the swell of affirmation picking him up. He had no desire to resist. He was a part of these people wasn’t he? Their tragedy was his tragedy; and their longing his too.

‘Yes …’ he found himself saying, ‘yes … yes …’

At his side Nimrod said: ‘Now do you believe?’ then joined the chant himself.

The Prophet raised his gloved hands to subdue the voices. It took longer for the crowd to be hushed this time, but when the Prophet spoke again his voice was stronger, as though nourished by this display of fellow-feeling.

‘My friends. Capra loves peace as we all love it, but let us not deceive ourselves. We have enemies. Enemies amongst Humankind, and yes, amongst our own Kind too. There are many who have cheated us. Conspired with the Cuckoos to keep our lands in sleep. This Capra has seen, with his own eyes. Treachery and lies, my friends; everywhere.’ He bowed his head a moment, as if the effort of those words was close to defeating him. ‘What shall we do?’ he said, his voice despairing.

‘Lead us!’ somebody shouted.

The Prophet raised his head at this, his face troubled.

‘I can only show you the way,’ he protested.

But the cry had been taken up by others around the hall, and was growing.

‘Lead us!’ they called to him. ‘Lead us!’

Slowly, the Prophet got to his feet. Again, he raised his hands to silence the congregation, but this time they would not be subdued so readily.

‘Please –’ he said, obliged for the first time to raise his voice. ‘Please. Listen to me!’

‘We’ll follow you!’ Nimrod was shouting. ‘We’ll follow!’

Was it Jerichau’s imagination, or had the lights above the platform begun to burn with fresh brilliance, the Prophet’s hair a halo above his benevolent features? To judge by his expression the call to arms that rose from the floor distressed him; the vox populi wanted more than his vague promises.

‘Listen to me,’ he appealed. ‘If you want me to lead you –’

‘Yes!’ roared five hundred throats.

‘If that’s what you want I have to warn you, it will not be easy. We would have to put away tenderness. We would have to be hard as stone. Blood will flow.’

His warning didn’t chasten the crowd a jot. If anything it spurred their enthusiasm to new heights.

‘We must be cunning –’ said the Prophet, ‘– as those who’ve conspired against us have been cunning.’

The crowd was raising the roof now, Jerichau along with them.

‘The Fugue calls us home!’

‘Home! Home!’

‘And its voice will not be denied. We must march!’

The door at the back of the platform had been opened a little, presumably so that the Prophet’s entourage could hear the speech. Now a movement there caught Jerichau’s eye. There was somebody in the doorway, whose shadowy face he seemed to know –

‘We will go into the Fugue together,’ the Prophet was saying, his voice finally losing its frailty, its reluctance.

Jerichau looked past the speaker, trying to divide the watcher at the door from the darkness that concealed him.

‘We will take the Fugue back from our enemies in the name of Capra.’

The man Jerichau was watching moved a step, and for an instant a fugitive beam of light caught him. Jerichau’s stomach convulsed as he silently put a name to the face he saw. It bore a smile, but he knew there was no humour in it, for its owner knew no humour. Or love either; or mercy –

‘Shout, my Kind! Shout!

It was Hobart.

‘Make them hear us, in their sleep. Hear us and fear our judgment!’

There could be no doubt of it. The time Jerichau had spent in the Inspector’s company was burned into his memory forever. Hobart it was.

The voice of the Prophet was finding new strength with every syllable. Even his face seemed to have altered in some subtle fashion. Any sham of kindliness had been dropped; it was all righteous fury now.

‘Spread the word – ’ he was saying. ‘The exiles are returning!’

Jerichau watched the performance with fresh eyes, keeping up a pretence of enthusiasm, while questions fretted his thumping head.

Chief amongst them: who was this man, stirring the Kind with promises of Deliverance? A hermit, as Nimrod had described him, an innocent, being used by Hobart for his own ends? That was the best hope. The worst, that he and Hobart were in cahoots; a conspiracy of Kind and Humankind, created with what could only be one intention: possessing and perhaps destroying the Fugue.

The voices around him were deafening, but Jerichau was no longer buoyed up by this tide, he was drowning in it. They were fodder, these people; Hobart’s dupes. It made him sick to think of it.

‘Be ready.’ the Prophet was telling the assembly. ‘Be ready. The hour is near.’

With that promise, the lights above the platform went out. When they came on again, moments later, the voice of Capra had gone, leaving an empty chair and a congregation ready to follow him wherever he chose to lead them.

There were cries from around the hall for him to speak to them again, but the door at the back of the stage was closed and not reopened. Gradually, realizing they wouldn’t persuade their leader to appear again, the crowd began to disperse.

‘Didn’t I tell you?’ said Nimrod. He stank of sweat, as did they all. ‘Didn’t I say?’

‘Yes, you did.’

Nimrod seized hold of Jerichau’s arm.

‘Come with me now,’ he said, eyes gleaming. ‘We’ll go to the Prophet. We’ll tell him where the carpet is.’

‘Now?’

‘Why not? Why give our enemies any more time to prepare themselves?’

Jerichau had vaguely anticipated this exchange. He had his excuses prepared.

‘Suzanna must be persuaded of the wisdom of this,’ he said. ‘I can best do that. She trusts me.’

‘Then I’ll come with you.’

‘No. I’ll do it alone.’

Nimrod looked wary; perhaps even suspicious.

‘I watched over you once.’ Jerichau reminded him, ‘when you were a babe in arms.’ This was his ace card. ‘Remember that?’

Nimrod couldn’t keep a smile from his face. ‘Such times,’ he said.

‘You’re going to have to trust me the way you trusted me then,’ Jerichau said. He didn’t much like the deception, but this was no time for ethical niceties. ‘Let me go to Suzanna, and together we’ll bring the carpet here. Then we can all go to the Prophet; the three of us.’

‘Yes,’ said Nimrod. ‘I suppose there’s sense in that.’

They walked to the door together. The throng of devotees was already dispersing into the night. Jerichau made his farewells and his promises to Nimrod, and headed away. When he’d gained sufficient cover of distance and darkness, he made a long arc around the building, and headed back towards it.