Within hours the survivors were beginning to stream back into the Golan and rumour began to spread like butter on miraculous bread: news of the promised end, that Jews had been swarming to Chartres to convert, that the four dwarf horsemen of the Apocalypse had ridden through the streets of Ware, on Gravelly Hill a red dragon appeared standing over a woman clothed in the sun, and at Whitstable a beast from the land forced the people in the town to worship a beast from the sea. In New Brighton an angel appeared carrying the Wrath of God in a bowl. Once these reports became common knowledge, out of the horror of this hideous defeat came a strange exuberance. The story swept the Golan that an acolyte, a boy, had defeated a hundred soldiers of the enemy with the jaw bone of an ass and had rescued Redeemer Van Owen from the Antagonist traitors who had betrayed his army to their enemies.
While this last rumour was not entirely untrue, neither was it entirely accidental. Bosco’s fellow travellers in the Golan, along with those who knew and who believed, found that their garbled version of the numbers and events on Pillock Hill had fallen on desperately willing ears. Events at last conspired with them. The Laconics, instead of advancing either to try and take the Heights or even go around and take the entrenched Redeemer line from the rear, to the astonishment of all stayed exactly where they were. Within hours every Redeemer on the Golan knew beyond certainty that the Laconics had halted because the vision of the Hanged Redeemer and his manifested Wrath had stilled them with the fear of God.
It was neither midges nor God that caused the Laconics to pull back into the camp they had already occupied for a week before the fight but a terrible nagging and habitual fear. It has been wisely said that if you put all your eggs in one basket you’ll end up spending all your time watching the basket. It’s an even more worrying prospect if the eggs in that one basket are unusually rare. This was the heart of the problem for the Laconics. Their capacity to work together like dancers in the chaos and horror of the battlefield was created out of a lifetime of brutal care and violent solicitude. Each one of them cost a fortune in time and money and the treasure needed to buy that time was earned by slaves. These slaves were not brought from the four quarters of the earth, their families and all their other ties destroyed in the process, but by the bondage of entire peoples living with them cheek by jowl – the slaves many, the Laconics few. There was barely a Laconic warrior who was afraid of death but not one who wasn’t fearful of the men and women that he owned. At the Battle of Eight Martyrs the Laconics killed fourteen Redeemers for every one of them that died. And yet they were traumatized by this loss. The effort that had gone into the grave with those eleven hundred men was such that they could never entirely be replaced even within a generation, the Laconics being so few and their training so long and hard.
In the light of such a successful catastrophe the Ephors of Laconia must have their say on what to do and this was why they stopped, when had they advanced around the Golan Heights and taken the Redeemer trenches from the rear this great war might have counted its end in months or even weeks.
The Ephors ordered their troops before the Golan to dig themselves in and then made an offer to their Helot slaves: if they would pick among themselves three thousand of their strongest, most courageous and their brightest men then all who fought with the Laconics in the Golan would be freed on their return, and given two hundred dollars and a strip of land. The Helots seized upon this unprecedented chance of freedom and prosperity and three thousand of their finest turned up at the appointed time and place unarmed and were immediately massacred by the Laconics where they stood. And so reassured that they had both terrorized the Helots that remained and killed the strongest who had the will to free themselves, the Ephors took the additional money offered by the Antagonists and decided to advance once more. But planning and delivering a massacre takes time, as did extorting more money from the Antagonists, and it was nearly three weeks before the Laconic army was on the move again and during that time Bosco had excelled himself.
Within less than two days he had news of the defeat and in another two he’d taken advantage of the paralysis that had descended on the Holy See and was in Chartres insisting he be allowed an audience with the Pope, all the while having sent go-betweens to his secret fraternity of believers, and his most persuasive envoys to fellow travellers who, though in a panic and a funk, also watched to see what in this calamity they might profitably do.
However desperate the need for salvation from the Laconics it did not follow that everyone was equally willing to believe in Cale. Bosco’s enemies were in something of a bind. On the one hand they were as appalled by the defeat to the Laconics as any Redeemer would be and equally horrified by its likely consequences. And just because they were treacherous, scheming and self-interested did not mean they lacked genuine religious zeal. What if he was indeed the Grimperson, long if vaguely promised in a roundabout and ambiguous fashion? Some doubted if the Grimperson was a prophecy at all but was a mistranslation of the original and badly damaged text and could have meant not a deadly destroyer of the Redeemers’ enemies who might, or might not, bring about the end of all things, but a kind of holy cake of seventy raisins and nuts that would be provided by the Lord to bring an end to hunger should famine ever last longer than a year. The debate as to whether the prophecy concerned a dark destroyer or a substantial cake was largely unimportant considering that the Redeemer faith unquestionably faced annihilation.
At first Bosco’s astonishing request that Cale be put in charge of the Eighth Army of the Wras was rejected out of hand. A more cautious and plausible decision was made by the Pope in a brief moment of clarity to order Redeemer General Princeps, conqueror of the Materazzi and already in Chartres, to take command. However, at Bosco’s instruction Princeps claimed to be at death’s door with a fish bone stuck in his throat. He wrote a letter, not for the first time, making it clear he had only followed Cale’s plan in his victory over the Materazzi and called for the Pontiff in all humility to confirm the young man at the head of the Eighth Army. To convince unbelievers in his illness, of whom they were many, Princeps asked for the prayer for the dying to be said for him by the Pope himself. This was a blasphemy he had been unwilling to undertake other than at Bosco’s insistence on the grounds that unrequested their enemies would be certain to smell a rat.
It would be hard to exaggerate the blow this struck to Gant and Parsi. They regarded Princeps as if not their last hope then certainly their best.
‘We must act at once or we will be lost. Give it to the boy,’ moaned Parsi.
‘I’ll be damned if I’ll expose the faith to such a reckless act. If he’s a messenger from God I’ll want a bloody sight better sign than a magical fog or the word of that bastard Bosco.’ But among the faithful, desperate for a saviour, there was too much fervour for either of them to do nothing.
‘Well then,’ said Gant at last, ‘let the dog see the rabbit.’
Within an hour a Pontifical messenger and eight armed guards arrived at Bosco’s quarters and demanded that Cale come at once to an audience. Bosco, alarmed at the suddenness of this, attempted to go with him but was ordered with some obvious fear on the part of the messenger to stay where he was. ‘I have received orders directly, Redeemer,’ he apologized. ‘You are not to come.’
And so unable to brief Cale on what to say and do, or not to say and do, he was obliged to watch him head off for what he knew would be some sort of trap.
Cale was brought to an antechamber and told to wait in the hope that he would have enough time to work himself up into a panic before the audience. At the far end of the room lit by candles and hazed with smoke from four incense burners was a statue of the first of all the Redeemer martyrs, St Joseph, being stoned to death. It was an event notable for one other incident: it was perhaps the last time someone tried to intervene out of compassion on a Redeemer’s side. As the men of the town had gathered to take part in St Joseph’s execution for dishonouring their ow
n One True Faith, a wandering, though much respected, preacher tried to prevent the killing by calling out, ‘Anyone of you who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.’ Unfortunately for the compassionate preacher and even more unfortunately for St Joseph, one man, unabashed, rushed over to him carrying a large rock over his head and cried out confidently, ‘I’m without sin!’ and brought the rock crashing down on the shin of the Redeemer breaking his leg with a hideous crack!
The statue was of the moment when the sinless executioner had raised another large rock above his head and was about to cast it down on the agonized St Joseph. Cale was used to seeing gesso-painted wooden statues of terrible martyrdoms – flatly painted in simple colours, crude or merely competent carvings produced by the thousand for the benefit of the faithful in every Redeemer church. The statues of Chartres, and there were many of them, were like nothing he had ever seen. They were more real than the real itself, the carving not just beautifully done but full of life. The carved hands of the executioner were not just beautifully carved but beautifully observed: they were the hands of a working man. There were small cuts healed and almost healed on nearly every finger. There was dirt under every fingernail but one. The expression on his face was more than just a snarl of malice; it also caught the delight in cruelty, the pleasure, and beneath the animated face a bass note of despair. The teeth made of the finest ivory had been carefully discoloured, two were chipped, one seemed to be dead. As for St Joseph he would have drawn pity from the hardest heart: his left leg had not just been broken by the first stone but smashed, the bone protruding from his shin, jagged, bloody, agonizing – the glistening marrow leaking from the break was made of glass. His mouth was open in a cry of pain – no holy resignation to his fate but fear and anguish expressed in every line and fold. His hand was raised to stop the second blow, the arm thin, an old man’s arm with liver spots, it seemed impossibly to shake with pain and fear. But Cale’s eye was drawn back to the man who stood over him, his face punchy with hate, his eyes so filled with furious anger that only another’s death could answer it.
Cale’s own heart was filled with loathing for the man who’d made this extraordinary thing and tried to make him feel compassion for a fanatic at the point of death. He was interrupted by a cough from the doorway at the far side of the room. He walked over to the Redeemer waiting for him with the usual mixture of the numb and the restless he nearly always felt before a fight.
And then he was in the room with the Pontiff of all the Redeemers. It was taking-away-of-the-breath splendid with its floor-to-roof stained windows and extraordinary statues of religious scenes as wonderful and hideous as the one in the anteroom.
Fifty yards away was the Pontiff on his throne, vestments of gold, the face of God on earth, powerful, austere, remote and wise, his hair grey beneath the gold cap he always wore. Watching Cale from either side of the throne were eighty Redeemers dressed in the holyday cassock varieties of the Sodalities and brought here today to terrify Bosco’s presumptuous acolyte. From behind the throne a choir began to sing, a great and terrible rolling basso profundo so deep it seemed to resonate in Cale’s guts, exactly what Gant had hoped. Looking all of his fifteen years he walked the fifty yards towards the barrier rope of blue before the throne. When he arrived, and it was a room big enough to arrive in, the Redeemer at his side touched his arm as if to prevent him leaping over the thickly corded barrier.
The great choir reached its nerve-shredding climax and there was a moment as the final note seemed to fill the air with something celestial, huge, capable of wiping away all sense of self and anything but the will for God. There was a long pause as the Pontiff, lion-headed, strong, God-appointed, looked at the boy in front of him exposing his soul to the wisdom of the rock of God.
‘In whose name do you came to trouble the anointed of the …’
‘You’re not him,’ said Cale, matter of fact. There was a gasp and the majestic face of the man on the throne dwindled in stature as if the air had been let out of a Memphis child’s balloon.
‘What do you mean by …’
‘You’re not him.’
‘Who is then?’ The voice of the man was now very far from that of holy majesty – it was querulous, miffed, clearly annoyed at having been rumbled with such ease.
Cale stared insolently into the eyes of the counterfeit Pontiff and without looking raised his right hand to point at a frail old man standing about midway in one of the lines of forty Redeemers leading to the throne. There was another ripple of astonishment, very satisfying indeed to Cale. Slowly, portentously, he turned to face in the direction of the man he was pointing at. He bowed his head, the Redeemer at his side gestured him forward and he walked up to the real Pontiff almost to touching point. The Holy Father looked at him and smiled absently, holding out his hand to be kissed.
‘Have you come far?’
17
Cale had rarely seen Bosco in a good humour but back in his company after the audience his old master was positively gleeful.
‘Hah! How did you guess that pompous fool Waller was a fake? I’ll bet he looked the part.’
‘It was his shoes,’ said Cale, a little bemused by Bosco’s extreme joviality and admiration. There was a moment as Bosco considered what he meant and then it clicked. His face lit up with even greater delight.
‘Wonderful! Wonderful!’
‘What do you mean?’ said Vague Henri from the other side of the room.
It was not easy for Cale to reply because he was not used to referring to the Redeemer in front of him when talking to Vague Henri as anything but ‘that shit-bag Bosco’.
‘For some reason, years ago when I was small, I remember – I remember the Redeemer here telling me about the Pope’s shoes, that they were specially made for him in red silk and no one but the Vicar of the Hanged Redeemer could wear shoes of that colour or of silk. I don’t know why I remembered that but when I got into the chapel I could see them right off. Everyone else’s shoes were black leather. They might just as well have hung a sign around his neck.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Bosco cheerfully. ‘I never saw the hand of God so clear in anything. You were inspired.’
As it happens it is to be doubted whether this peculiar charade made much or any difference to Cale being appointed to lead the Eighth Army. Already there were preachers at the street corners in Chartres hailing Cale as the incarnation of the Wrath of God and only some of them were obedient subordinates of Bosco. If ever a group of men were readier and riper for a saviour than at that moment history does not record it.
Reports of the Laconics’ inexplicable failure to advance either on or around the Golan had already reached Chartres but the about-to-be head of the Redeemer Eighth Army was not thinking about tardy mercenaries or startling plans of attack. He was, soft-hearted dog, weeping for his lost love. These were not, however, as the conventions of popular romances require, tears of loss and regret, though in the great commingled salmagundi of his feelings for Arbell Swan-Neck they were certainly present. These were mostly tears of anger and humiliation, particularly humiliation, and centred on a particular occasion that he hated to think about but was drawn back to in the bitter sleepless night like a poking tongue to a decaying tooth.
It had been the happiest night of his life. To be sure the competition for this honour was not great but, unlike the popular romances already mentioned, real life has no consideration for the careful working up of a final climax that must be, after suitable loss and suffering, the high point of the story and come striding confidently at the end. How many men and women, how many children even, have only slowly realized that the high point of their lives is far behind? A melancholy thought whose only comfort is that you never know – things may look up, something may happen to save the day, the beautiful stranger, the successful child, the sudden recognition, the chance meeting, the happy return, all these are possible. The great and lasting comfort is that you never kno
w. Cale, however, was not that night much in the mood for the consolations of philosophy. He was back in Arbell’s bed remembering what seemed to him like centuries ago. She was asleep and lying next to him, breathing gently and making the occasional delightful sound. For some reason that night he could not sleep, with easier times the talent for dropping in and out of sleep at will had deserted him. There were several candles burning at the other end of the room and in the dim warm light he got up and went to get himself a drink. As he did so, leaning his back against the wall, he looked at her sleeping face. He hated the sleeping face of men, the noise they made, the smell, the everything about them as they dreamt around him in the shed. The candlelight did her face no harm – the slightly too large nose that any smaller would have made her beauty shallow as a doll, the lips much thicker than they should have been but just exactly right on her. How could he possibly be here? How could it have happened? A sudden rush of joy beat in his chest, a sense of the wonderful, of all the possibilities of life. Slowly, carefully, he walked over to the bed and gently eased away the sheet that covered her. Naked she lay asleep in front of him, the long slim body with the little tummy, a touch of baby fat, the small breasts (how could anything be so beautiful?), the long legs, the slightly stubby toes. He looked her up and down, amazed and then almost reluctant, the dark and hidden hair between her legs, the catching of his breath. How could heaven itself be better than this astonishment of softly folded skin?