The Last Four Things tlhogt-2

by Hoffman, Paul

  This was the famous First Defenestration of the Holy Peculiar. The second is another story.

  What a day!

  Momentous, spiteful, terrible, tragic, cruel – no word or list could capture its horrors and its brutal drama of lives lost and empires won. There were, perhaps, fewer than fifteen hundred Redeemers that required executing but it had to be done quickly and this was awkward even for a man as experienced as Brzica and as reluctantly determined as Gil. High-quality executioners are as rare as high-quality cooks or armourers or stonemasons – and mass executions were, in fact, extremely rare. After all, except to demoralize one’s opponents, as in the massacre at Mount Nugent that sent such a clear message to the Materazzi or the peculiar circumstances of the death of Bosco’s so carefully chosen Redeemers in the House of Special Purpose what was the need? The real point of an execution was either to dispose of an individual permanently in private or to do so extravagantly in public to make an example of them. If the former then you could take your time; if the latter, it was necessary to produce something spectacular and highly individual. Killing fifteen hundred men not weakened by hunger and months of darkness and cold was a difficult matter. He did not have the assistants for this number of killings because normally he didn’t need them. So this was a damned difficult job for Brzica and Gil.

  ‘You ever cut the throat of a pig?’ said the former to the latter.

  ‘No.’

  ‘When I was a boy on my father’s farm,’ Brzica pointed out gloomily to Gil, ‘he used to reckon it took two years to train someone to slaughter a pig. It’s a lot harder to kill a man.’

  ‘I’ve brought you experienced men. They know why this is necessary.’

  Brzica grunted with the impatience of a man who was used to having his great talents diminished.

  ‘It ain’t nothing like ... nothing like killing a man in battle or running away from battle – it has its own rhymes and reasons, its own knacks and techniques. Few’re cut out to kill in cold blood constantly – and specially not kill their own kind. But I don’t suppose you believe me.’

  ‘You’re more convincing than you give yourself credit for, Redeemer,’ replied Gil. ‘But I’m sure with your guidance we’ll manage.’

  ‘Are you now?’

  Manage they did, grim though it was. First Gil reassured the prisoners, collected in half a dozen halls of up to three hundred – that they had nothing to fear unless they were guilty of involvement in that day’s Antagonist uprising of fifth columnists. It was regretfully necessary to question them all to find the few believed to be involved. But it was, as they would themselves understand, necessary for them to be questioned before the overwhelming majority could be released. They would also, he was sure, understand that they would need to be bound hand and foot but that it would be done with respect due to the great number of the innocent among them. He asked for their co-operation at a time of great crisis for the faith. To demonstrate his sincerity Gil allowed himself to have his hands tied loosely behind his back and – again loosely – from ankle to ankle. He then shuffled meekly out of the room. Reassured the arrested Redeemers allowed themselves to be bound and led out in groups of ten. The first groups were led into the nearest courtyard where Brzica and his four assistants forced them to their knees and cut their throats as a demonstration for Gil’s watching chosen men.

  Initially Brzica’s baleful predictions proved accurate and only the fact that Gil had so skilfully prepared the victims and the fact of their being carefully bound prevented a fiasco as the inexperienced executioners found that cutting a throat fatally required more accuracy and precision than they were used to displaying on the battlefield. Brzica saved the day with a simple improvisation – he used a piece of charcoal to mark a line along the throats of the victims just before they were led out so that the increasingly nervous and jumpy executioners had something to follow. It remained an ugly business even for men very used to ugliness. But, as Brzica quoted, smug as well as grim, after it was over (and who would know better than him?): even the most dreadful martyrdom must run its course.

  By evening the plot, like some brutal harvest, was gathered in and for all the errors and stupidities Bosco’s great gamble was closing in his favour; even this calm madman was astonished that it was done. But there was a twist of sorts to come. With the city secure, many more successes than failures, a few escapes and some regrettable errors of identity, the news of Cale’s great victory was released to a fearful and mystified population wound up to breaking point by the dreadful events of the day. News of victory gave wings to the claims that Antagonists, deep sleepers in the city’s life, had risen up and been defeated at a terrible cost in famous men and Holy Fathers of the church. It all made sense and any other explanations would have been far less plausible: a coup? A revolution? Here in Chartres? There were, besides, few left willing to contradict it. In less than thirty-six hours the Redeemers had themselves been redeemed and in Bosco’s mind the world had turned towards its greatest and most final purge.

  In the late evening Pope Bento had retired to sleep knowing as much of the real nature of the day’s events as the nuns in the doorless convents of the outskirts of the city. Bosco finally had the chance to pause and eat in the palace itself, joined by Gil. Both were exhausted, worn out in ways neither of them would have thought possible, and neither spoke much.

  ‘You’ve done a man’s job,’ said Bosco at last. ‘And God’s great work, too.’

  ‘And might do more,’ replied Gil, but very softly as if he hardly had the strength to speak.

  ‘And how’s that?’

  Gil looked at him as if he had some enormity on his mind that might be better left unsaid.

  ‘I want to speak freely.’

  ‘You can always speak freely to me. Now more than ever.’

  ‘I want to speak of something that can’t be spoken about.’

  ‘It must be infandous indeed if you need to beat about the bush so much.’

  ‘Very well. I’ve done horrible things in your service. Today I’ve walked knee-deep in the blood of good men. I’ll sleep differently now for as long as I breathe.’

  ‘No one would deny that you have risked your soul in our business.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. My soul. But having risked it to the door of hell itself I do not want to have taken such a dreadful chance and let it be for nothing.’

  ‘I’ve taken the same risk.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You are, if you dare, able to be the voice of God on earth. Whatever you loose on earth would be loosed in heaven. Yet his current proxy sleeps a dozen rooms from here, babbling into his pillow and dreaming of rainbows and warm milk.’

  ‘What of it? He is the Pontiff.’

  ‘This feeble-minded creature is in the palm of your hand. Let me close it for you.’

  Who knows what thoughts hammered away in Bosco’s extraordinary mind, the delicate and the gross together mixed. He did not say anything for some time.

  ‘You should have just done it,’ he said to Gil at last, ‘and said nothing. I am sorry that you blabbed and gave away an act that being done unasked I should have found it afterwards well done. I must sleep.’

  He left the room closing the door softly behind him. Gil helped himself to a large glass of sweet sherry.

  ‘And found myself no doubt,’ he said loudly to no one, ‘rewarded with a command in the forefront of the hottest battle like Uriah the Hittite.’ He took a deep swig of the hideous wine and sang softly.

  ‘Everyone knows it, even a dunce,

  Opportunity knocks once.’

  But, as we all know, there is never an end to garboils.

  22

  At the Golan Heights the victorious Redeemers celebrated even more grimly than was their custom. It had been hard, shoving, hacking, killing work and they were exhausted. Tired as he was, Cale could not sleep and he called a pair of guards to bring a captive he had noticed being brought int
o the camp, the jovial scout he had met out on the plains three weeks, but what felt like a thousand years, before. He left his hands tied in front of him and his feet tied to the chair then told the guards to leave completely – he didn’t want any earwigging to what he was about to say.

  ‘What about loosening my hands?’ said Fanshawe. ‘It’s not very relaxing talking to someone with your hands tied.’

  ‘I don’t care whether you’re relaxed or not. I want to make an indent with you.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘A deal – an agreement.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘We have five hundred prisoners. Their outlook is gloomy. I want to let you take two hundred and fifty out of here and try to escape and make your way home.’

  ‘Sounds like a trap.’

  ‘I suppose so. It isn’t.’

  ‘Why should I trust you?’

  ‘What you can trust, Fanshawe, is that by midday tomorrow there’ll be two types of Laconic prisoners: the dead ones and the ones going to die.’

  He let Fanshawe consider this.

  ‘Some people would say it’s as well to die facing up to it as it is acting the goat in some game.’

  ‘It’s not a game.’

  ‘How do I know that?’

  ‘Do I seem playful to you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I have my reasons you don’t need to know anything about. How long will it take to get to the border?’

  ‘Four days, unopposed.’

  ‘You won’t be opposed because I’ll be following you – a few miles behind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There you go again.’

  ‘You have to admit it sounds pretty fishy.’

  ‘It sounds pretty fishy.’

  Fanshawe sat back and sighed.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’ For the first time in their conversation Cale was on the back foot.

  ‘They won’t leave half their number behind.’

  ‘Let me persuade you to change your mind. You will be executed tomorrow and I can’t stop it. You should already be dead.’

  ‘Me?’ said Fanshawe, smiling. ‘I was convinced when you mentioned the word execution. But the other Laconics won’t see it like that. It’s not in their nature – and if I try to persuade them to betray each other I won’t be making it as far as tomorrow. You don’t have something to drink, do you?’

  Cale poured a mug of water and held it to Fanshawe’s lips. ‘Another would be luverly.’ Again Cale did as asked.

  ‘How do I know I can trust you to keep going and not to try to make a fight of it once you’re free of the camp?’

  ‘We haven’t been paid to take on a guerrilla war,’ said Fanshawe. ‘As long as we can leave honourably, which is to say not one half leaving the other half in the lurch, we’re duty-bound to return home as quickly as possible. We are possessions of the state, and very expensive ones.’

  He said nothing for a moment.

  ‘How many of us died today?’

  Cale considered lying.

  ‘Eight thousand. Roughly.’

  This seemed to shock even Fanshawe. He went pale and did not speak for a while.

  ‘I’ll be straight with you.’

  Cale laughed.

  ‘No, I will.’

  ‘We cannot replace so many in twenty years. We need this five hundred, every one of them, back home. There won’t be any revenge attacks.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less what you do once you’re over the border and arrange to bring me and up to two hundred of my men with you. That’s what we’re agreeing. I release all of the prisoners. You make sure we get safely across the border.’

  ‘If my hands were free I’d shake on it.’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘I agree,’ lied Fanshawe.

  ‘I agree,’ lied Cale, in return. They discussed the details and within an hour Fanshawe was back with the other Laconics.

  Cale went through the deal with Vague Henri and left him to stand down the Purgators guarding the Laconics, tied hand and foot in a small stockade built for no more than fifty captives – prisoners not normally being a problem for the Redeemers. The Purgators were replaced with an assortment of cooks, clerks and other highly unsuitable persons and the same was done with the soldiers guarding the horses the Laconics would need to make their escape; Cale announced a celebration to be held as far from the stockade as was feasible and supplied it with enough sweet sherry as could be got.

  The escape itself was as undramatic as could be hoped except for the poor cooks and bottle-washers about whose fate no more sadly needs to be said. Vague Henri met Fanshawe as he came over the wall of the stockade with the five hundred-odd Laconics he had released from the ropes that bound them using the knife Cale had given him. As silently as an exaltation of swans they made their way to the hapless guardians of the horses and in ten minutes were leading their stolen mounts away from the Redeemer camp and on their way towards the Golan Heights and through the site of their recent so disastrous defeat.

  By virtue of a deliberate failure to make it clear who was responsible for taking over the following watch of the stockade and the horses, it was daylight before the escape was discovered. On being informed, Cale pretended to threaten every kind of death and torture for those responsible before ordering instant preparations for pursuit of the Laconics by the Purgators, led by himself swearing to undo this blot on his reputation personally. If there were awkward questions to be asked no one asked them and by nine o’clock Cale, Vague Henri and some two hundred or so Purgators were off in pursuit weighed down with what might in other circumstances be considered a suspiciously excessive quantity of supplies for a chase of this kind.

  Gil or Bosco would also have asked why Cale was taking along Hooke, someone who could be of no possible value in such circumstances. Just before he left, a message arrived from Bosco congratulating him on his victory, setting out briefly the events in Chartres and ordering him to return immediately if the victory permitted. He handed the letter to Vague Henri.

  ‘Odd. I wonder what’s going on.’

  ‘Let’s hope we never get the chance to find out.’

  ‘Will you reply?’

  ‘Best.’

  Instructing the messenger not to leave until the following day, Cale wrote a quick response lying, as was his usual habit, with as much of the truth as possible – that a number of Laconics had escaped and he feared that they might meet up with those who had fled the battle and possibly make a counter-attack. With this in mind he had ordered trenches dug for a major defence and decided to pursue the escaped either to destroy them or at least be sure that they were returning to the border and not planning further attacks on Chartres. With luck it would be several days before Bosco worked out what was happening and he, Vague Henri and Hooke would be well clear. There remained two problems: the danger of pursuing twice their number of troops and ones with a powerful reason to turn on them if they learned the truth; and what he would say to the Purgators once they realized they had, instead of being welcomed back into the fold of the Redeemers, become outcasts again?

  On the second night of the chase Cale had demanded that Fanshawe light a small beacon so that he could check on his position without coming too close by daylight, something which would involve some tricky explanations to the Purgators if he did not attack. He sent Vague Henri ahead to spot the fire and on his return was surprised to discover that Fanshawe had done as he agreed.

  ‘I didn’t think he’d stick to his bargain.’

  ‘He did and he didn’t. The beacon wasn’t in their camp – it was just two Laconics on their own.’

  ‘He could be miles away.’

  ‘Could be, but isn’t. I arrived as they were changing guards and followed the watchmen. Fanshawe and the rest of them are about four miles away.’

  ‘Murderous arse-bandits who keep their word. Odd bunch.’

  ‘When are you going to tell the Purgators?’

&nb
sp; ‘Tomorrow. If they don’t kill us we’ll have the whole day.’

  ‘Rather you than me.’

  ‘Now I think about it, you’d better keep your distance. See how it goes. Badly and you can take off – have the ’scope.’

  ‘That’s very generous.’

  ‘I’m a generous person.’

  They both laughed but Vague Henri didn’t say yes or no.

  The next morning after most of the Purgators had eaten a breakfast of porridge mixed with dried fruit, pot-walloped by Cale as an alternative to the dead men’s feet that some of the Purgators still preferred, he called them together. Ten minutes earlier he had watched as Vague Henri had ridden out of camp both nodding goodbye to each other as he did so. Just as he leapt up onto a rock to talk to the Purgators Vague Henri came wandering back into camp and dismounted. With another nod Cale simply stared at him for a few moments. But now he had other things on his mind. He began to regret not just legging it with Vague Henri during the night. On the other hand, the chances of two people making it across such heavily guarded borders didn’t look any better. Was this the least worst of two bad choices?

  ‘You, my Lord Redeemers, know me as well as I know every one of you. On all occasions,’ he lied, ‘I have told you everything it was possible to tell you straight and plain.’ There was a general murmur of agreement that this indeed was true.

  ‘Two days ago I lied to you.’

  Another murmur. ‘Pretty good,’ thought Vague Henri from his perch at the back and with the safety catch of his crossbow loose and lying out of sight behind him on the grass.

  ‘But it was a lie I made only to save your lives.’ He waved the paper not unlike the one he had received from Bosco in the air. ‘This is a letter, more poisonous than a toad, from Bosco – a man I trusted more than my life itself and on whose word I risked your lives and lost so many who were dear to us, men who had suffered next to you in war and in the House of Special Purpose. This letter attempts to draw us together in a plot against the Pontiff that we love, to kill those dear to him and turn the One True Faith into who knows what toxic lies Bosco is ashamed even in the presence of these other treacheries to write.’