With the veldt sealed off to all intents and purposes, Bosco was able to bring Cale back to the Sanctuary to prepare him for show at the conference. Bosco knew it was a gamble. Cale could still barely be relied on, his motives being so crepuscular. Gil had, of course, been writing to Bosco every few days with news of failures and ultimate success and always, always, his thoughts about Thomas Cale’s state of mind and soul. Cale’s actions had been exemplary but what was going on inside his heart? The most pressing theological concern for Bosco was not the nature of the mixture of human and divine in the Hanged Redeemer but its nature in Thomas Cale – water and wine or unholy emulsion?
Bosco had been working the Office for the Propagation of the Faith like donkeys, spreading the word of Cale’s victories in the veldt to every corner of the Redeemerate and stressing his many qualities: his bravery, cunning, holiness, kindness, compassion for the poor; unofficial rumours of miracles were started, stories of Redeemer soldiers of dreadful piety meeting him and then having visions of St Redeemer Jerome, blood pouring from his severed hands, and of St Redeemer Finlay, who had been wrapped in a blanket steeped in pitch and then set fire to like a match.
Unaware of this consider Cale’s astonishment as, by way of a slower and more populous route ordered by Bosco, he made his journey back to the Sanctuary from the veldt. He found that even in the back of beyond there were people by the road bowing and calling to him for a blessing, some of whom had walked for days on the rumour of his passing by. In the towns and villages subject to the cruelty and destruction of punitive raids by the Folk, men and women wept with thankfulness and burst into hymnal songs of sacrifice and martyrdom.
‘Faith of our fathers, living still. In spite of dungeon, fire and sword!’
The hairs on his neck spiked unpleasantly to hear that particular hymn again.
Even in places far removed from the raids of the Folk, statues of the saints were paraded, holy gibbets that had not seen the light outside a church for a dozen generations were raised in the noonday sun. To Gil’s scandal and alarm the blind and scrofulous were dragged forward to touch the hem of Cale’s cassock or even the hair of his horse so that he might intercede with heaven for their sake.
By the time they were on the winding road up to the Sanctuary, Gil hardly knew what to think. Even the apparently affectless Cale looked as if something peculiar was going on in his brain, more than just his loathing of the sight of the Sanctuary walls.
Halfway up the massive rock on which the Sanctuary was built, their column was joined by the Officer of Mortification. It was his task, one he performed with enormous satisfaction, to remind a victorious returning Redeemer that all human achievement was utterly futile. All the way up the second half of the mountain and through the great gates and into the Courtyard of Repentance, the Officer of Mortification whispered in Cale’s ear: ‘Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return. Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return ...’ At the twentieth time of saying Cale turned his head towards him and whispered back: ‘Shut your gob.’
The Officer was so astonished at this he did indeed stay silent all the way until they were in the courtyard where the great phalanx of the six orders of the Knights of St Redeemer Barnabus waited for Cale’s return and the Officer felt safe enough to continue, this time shouting aloud for the benefit of the faithful.
‘Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.’ And then ‘STOP!’
Cale did so. ‘Turn to me.’ Again he did as he was asked. In his left hand the Officer of Mortification held a whitish linen bag. He reached inside and took a pinch of the contents, the mixed ashes of the twenty-four martyrs of the great burning at Aachen and raising them to Cale’s forehead drew the simplified shape of a gallows like an upside-down L.
‘Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell
The last four things on which we dwell
Mortification, death and sin
These are the clothes that we lie in.’
Cale looked around the great square for once ablaze with the High and Holyday colours of the Redeemers in the multilayered ordered blocks of the Sodalities to which each one of them belonged. There were the Bon Secours in vestments red and gold, Lazarites in white with their gurning Servitors, Knights of the Curia ululating the charm and beauty of the One True Faith, the Necrotic Asphyxiates with hempen ropes around their necks, rubbed raw. There were the Scarlatti in crimson bowler hats, the Quinzième in green and black braces, faces covered by a hood that towered to a point, hands rolling in perpetuity the fifteen beads of sorrow one by one. Opposite on their knees were Batteni with the cincture of abstinence around their waist, knotted with the seven nodes of denial of the flesh and wearing dried pigeon peas inside their socks. There were Fromondi with knittles singing a hallelujah from the throat, the Peccavi lamenting the loss of the many and the finding of the few. Then Bosco began to walk along their ranks with a reedy aspergill in hand, shaking over them the waters of affliction and the oils of grief. At every tenth Redeemer he stopped and offered them salt to represent the bitter taste of sin and they accepted the rebuke with tears. Then he placed a five-fold scapular around their necks, yoke of the Redeemer, burden of the Lord, while behind him a thurifer swung his thurible incensing the faithful in their penitential gorgeousness.
And then the singing began in earnest, the bass notes of the Alimenteri so deep the hearing of them seemed to begin somewhere in the stomach, shaking the bowels like some great underwater tow. Then softly the lighter tones of the cantabile that merged and clashed and merged again as if they were different songs. Then the high notes of the juveniles, pure as ice, freezing the hairs along Cale’s spine, the sound rising to heaven with a pitch so terrible it made him want to scream. Then it slowly began to end, first the high pitch of the young boys, then the middle tones and then the gradual diminishing of the bass rolling away like a storm passing out to sea.
It was beautiful beyond imagining. And yet he hated it.
When he had first come to the Sanctuary he had been uncomprehendingly impressed by the extraordinary sights and sounds of a major holyday – a vast but vague pageant of noise and colour to such a small boy. As he grew older the holydays began to clarify into the hideous boredom of the ceremonies and the power of the music. Those with a talent practised for hours every day out of hearing – Cale himself had been tested for the quality of his voice and dismissed with the observation that he sounded like a cat having its throat cut with a rusty saw. Unkind but not untrue. So four times a year he heard the choir and the orchestra perform and grew to love it and hate it in equal measure. How could the dead souls of the Redeemers produce anything to move him so?
Then the procession into the great basilica and the Mass for the Dead, not for the legions of those killed in the cause of the faith but for the souls of those unsaved who had died before hearing the word of the Hanged Redeemer. In sorrow and mourning all the statues of martyrs, the sister of the Hanged Redeemer and all the thousand holy gibbets in the Sanctuary, large and small, had been covered in purple silk and would remain so for another forty days until at the exact same second the pins that held them closed were pulled away and the purple cloth would shimmer to reveal the beautiful smiles, the tortured limbs, the wounds and weeping sores of holy suffering.
If the beauty of the Agnus Dei in the courtyard had shaken him, Cale had two hours of utter dreariness in the basilica to calm himself. Without the great music to endow them with its command the reds and blacks and golds of high hats and curiously shaped vestments, the burning incense and the waving hands in elaborate blessings were reassuringly dull and ridiculous, soothing to his fury at the insulting loveliness of the sound of the three great choirs of the Sanctuary. The stupidity and ugliness of the Prayer of Self-Loathing was especially dreary balm to his resentment:
‘Less than the dust beneath my feet
Less than the weed that grows beside my door
Less than the rust that st
ains the careless sword
Less than the need thou, Lord, has of me
Even less am I.’
So it was with a queasy mixture of anger at the beauty of the singing and the numbing boredom of the Mass for the Dead that Cale finally made it back to his set of rooms. What with the aching journey all he wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep, but Bosco wasn’t finished.
‘You’ve done well. But I need you to tell me: do the Purgators have it in them to succeed?’
‘I’m tired.’
‘Briefly. We can talk in detail later.’
‘Probably.’ He instantly regretted giving Bosco the satisfaction. ‘Possibly.’
‘Time is tight, Cale. We must win or die.’
‘Later.’
‘I had not intended to take Memphis. It’s only that I hold the old Marshall and most of his family that prevents their empire taking up arms against us.’ This was no longer true but Bosco thought it best not to unsettle Cale with the fact of their escape. Besides, his knowledge of what had happened subsequently was patchy. He did not know, for example, that old Materazzi was already dead from pneumonia. ‘We cannot take on the Materazzi Empire and the Antagonists.’
‘Shouldn’t you have thought of that?’
‘I thought of nothing else. Your escape made it impossible to do otherwise. Now if you hadn’t gone blundering into Picarbo’s room everything would have been different.’
‘You sent me in there.’
‘So I did. But you’re beginning yourself to realize that almost everything that happens for good or bad has its origin in a blunder.’
Cale laughed.
‘Yours?’
‘No.’
‘I want to sleep.’
‘Very well. But for the avoidance of doubt – you and I are bound together with unbreakable chains. There is nowhere you can go but by my side. As you’ve seen after your frolic in Memphis it’s in your nature to cause every man’s hand to turn against you except through this course now, here, with me. Tell me you understand this.’
Cale looked at him for some time and then nodded, as reluctant as you like. Bosco nodded back.
‘Sleep well. God bless.’
As soon as he had gone there was a knock on the door and Acolyte Model came in. Cale was surprised by how pleased he was to see him.
‘Sir.’
‘You look well.’ And he did. It was not just the extra food that Cale had demanded Model be given but the quality of it. His face had filled out – he was not fat or anything like it but he no longer had that gaunt expression attendant on eating barely enough and doing hours of heavy exercise. His skin glowed even, instead of being patchy and dull. A decent meal a couple of times a day was, as Cale had come to realize, one of the greatest gifts that life could offer. It would be smart to use this on the Purgators.
‘Are you well, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘We are all excited by your great success.’
‘We?’
‘The acolytes.’
Cale noticed that there was something awkward and hesitant now about him.
‘What is it?’
‘Sir?’
‘Spit it out.’
‘I’ve been sharing the food around with my oppos, sir.’
‘You’re in trouble?’
‘It’s not that. But one of them is on water duty in Clink Number Two.’ He looked even more hesitant. ‘One of the Antagonist spies there waiting the drop, he says he’s a friend of yours.’
Cale was as puzzled as he was shocked. No wonder Model was so uneasy. Passing around information of this kind was like holding poison and no chalice.
‘I don’t know anyone like that but I won’t say anything. Did he give a name?’
‘He wouldn’t say but he gave my oppo a message for you.’ He took a scrap of paper out of an illegal pocket and handed it to Cale. It was clumsily sealed with God knows what. He opened it. There were two words written on a scrap clearly torn from an old hymn book.
‘VAGUE HENRI’.
10
‘Has he been tortured?’
‘Apparently not,’ said Bosco.
‘Did you know he was here?’
‘You must be mistaking me for a middle-ranking official in the Carceral Pelago. Why would I know he was here?’
‘I want him released.’
It took Cale by surprise when Bosco replied calmly, ‘Very well.’ Bosco smiled. ‘You expected me to refuse?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? He clearly came here to be reunited with you. And we both know you have no intention of going anywhere.’
Realizing he was being mocked Cale changed the subject.
‘Why wasn’t he tortured?’
‘A good question if I may say so. An administrative error. There’s been an outbreak of jail fever in Clink Number Four so overcrowding in the rest. Pressure of numbers and work and a man guilty of Gomorrah was accidentally given the same number as your faithful friend.’
‘They seem to make a lot of mistakes in the prisons here.’
‘They do, though, don’t they? Perhaps it was God’s will.’
‘I’d like to see him now.’
‘I’ll send Redeemer Gil. He knows him. Will that satisfy you?’
It was not that Bosco expected thanks but it amused him to make Cale feel awkward. ‘You don’t mind,’ said Bosco, ‘if I ask how you knew he was here?’
Cale turned back to look at him.
‘No.’
‘Well?’
‘No. I don’t mind if you ask.’
‘How one gets used to change. Cheeking me would once have got you a thrashing.’
‘Yes?’
‘I mean nothing by it. Your acolyte seems very fond of you.’
‘I don’t have an acolyte.’
‘But you do. In all ways. I understand how things have changed between you and me but I wonder if you have. I fear that perhaps, not so deep down, you might still just be an angry little boy.’
‘I thought that’s all I was supposed to be?’
‘Righteous anger is something very different from bad temper. I just thought I might point that out. Vague Henri will be with you within the hour.’
‘I want to go into the convent.’
‘Very well.’
‘You’re being indulgent.’
‘That worries you?’
‘It’s meant to, isn’t it?’
‘Only because I take some pleasure in confounding your expectations of me. You don’t quite seem to have grasped, if I may say so, how things are.’
‘I can do what I want, is that it?’
‘You know very well what the answer to that is. But you’d do well to think more carefully about what’s permitted to you and what isn’t.’
‘I’m just a bad-tempered boy.’
‘For both our sakes I hope that’s not true. The keys to the convent will be brought to you. You may do as you wish there.’ As he placed his hand upon the door handle, Bosco turned back. It had always been a habit of Bosco’s, this – to leave what was really on his mind to the last moment as if it were an afterthought.
‘What do you know about the Laconics?’
‘Soldiers for hire. Expensive.’ He thought for a moment as if trying to remember. Only his years of deadpan insolence stopped him from smiling at this unexpected opportunity to mock his former master. ‘Chrononhotonthologos,’ he added thoughtfully. Bosco looked at him realizing he was being dared.
‘It is not a term I’m familiar with,’ he said, refusing to take the bait.
‘It means a swashbuckler, a desperado.’
‘Really. Anything else?’
‘No.’
‘There has been a rumour that the Antagonists have discovered a silver mine in Argentum. It’s no longer a rumour. Not quite as sure but probable is that they will use this find to pay for a large army of Laconics to fight against us.’
‘I thought they never fought for hire more than three hu
ndred at a time.’
‘And I thought you didn’t know anything about them.’ An impudent silence followed. ‘I’m going to send you a brief concerning them. As your life may depend on it I’m sure I don’t have to ask you to read it carefully.’ He’d had enough of Cale and left without saying anything more.
With Bosco gone Cale considered what he felt. Alarm and delight in equal measure. Delight at the shock of seeing Vague Henri, alarm at the depth of that delight. His anger at Arbell Materazzi had swamped the dreadful loneliness that her absence caused him. But it had also hidden the loss he felt for his friend. Until that moment he had believed that he could take or leave Vague Henri though he’d got used to having him around. Now he was alarmed at the realization at how much he’d missed him. The excitement at the idea of his return was unbearable. He was a soul made out of great dams connected by great canals and constructed with great locks. But there’s nothing built that doesn’t leach or seep.
The Last Four Things tlhogt-2 Page 14
