The Left Hand of God

by Paul Hoffman

  Cale had a servant show him to his room, which wasn’t much better than the one he’d had at the Brainery. Then he was taken to Simon’s rooms, where Vague Henri was waiting to take him through the basic signs of the Redeemers’ silent language. This at least gave the despondent Koolhaus something to take his mind off his disappointment. His reputation as someone with a natural talent for languages was deserved, and he quickly decided there wasn’t much to this sign language business. In two hours he had all the signs written down. Slowly he became intrigued. Inventing, rather than learning, a new language might be interesting. No news is as good or as bad as it first seems. At any rate there was nothing to do but get on with it, even if he did lament the fact that all he had to work with was a half-wit.

  During the next few days Koolhaus began to revise this opinion. Simon had been more or less left to his own devices throughout his life and was wholly undisciplined, never having been brought under control by any system of education or good behavior. Two things made it possible for Koolhaus to teach him: Simon’s fear and worship of Cale and his own desperate desire to learn to communicate with others now that he had experienced this wonderful pleasure, even if only at the simple level afforded by the limited silent language of the Redeemers. This combination made Simon a more promising pupil than he at first appeared, and they made swift progress, albeit interrupted at least twice a day by tantrums brought about by Simon’s frustration at not being able to understand what Koolhaus was doing. The first time Simon had one of these outbursts, an alarmed Koolhaus sent for Cale, who shut Simon up by threatening to give him a good thrashing unless he behaved himself. Simon, who, after the stitching incident, believed Cale capable of anything, did as he was told. Cale made a performance out of handing over his authority to Koolhaus to deliver horrible but unspecified punishments, and that was that. Koolhaus got on with his teaching, and Simon, who beyond anything wanted to please Cale, got on with learning. Koolhaus was not under any circumstances to tell anyone what he was doing, and his presence was explained away by letting it be known that he was Simon’s temporary bodyguard.

  Though unaware of Cale’s bigger ambitions for her brother, Arbell Swan-Neck was well aware of what else he was doing for him. There were no games in the Sanctuary—play was an occasion of sin. The nearest thing to it was a training exercise in which two sides, separated only by a line neither side was allowed to cross, attempted to hit members of the other side with a leather bag on a string. If this seems harmless enough, you should know that the leather bag was filled with large stones. Serious injury was common; death was rare but not unknown. Realizing the three of them were getting flabby from the easy life of Memphis, Cale revived the game but with sand instead of rocks. Though it was still intended only as a training exercise, they were amazed to discover that without the threat of constant serious injury they were laughing and enjoying themselves. Lacking a player, they let Simon join in. He was awkward and without the grace of other Materazzi, but full of energy and so much enthusiasm that he was constantly hurting himself. He never seemed to mind this. They made so much noise, laughing and jeering at each other’s failure and incompetence, that Arbell could not fail to hear them. Often she would stand watching at the window high over the garden as her brother laughed and played and belonged for the first time in his life.

  This too sank deeper into her heart—along, of course, with the strange power and strength of Cale, his muscle and his sweat as he ran and threw and chased and laughed.

  Later, after he had been outside her room for an hour or so, she had Riba call him in. While she carefully prepared herself in her bedroom to appear casually beautiful, Cale waited in the main chamber. As this was his first opportunity to look around on his own, he began a systematic check of everything, from what books were on the tables to the tapestries and the large painting of a couple that dominated the room. He was inspecting this closely when Arbell entered behind him and said, “That’s my great-grandfather and his second wife. They caused a great scandal by actually being in love with each other.” He was about to ask why she had a portrait of these two on the wall when she changed the subject.

  “I wanted,” she said, softly and shyly, “to thank you for all you’ve done for Simon.” Cale did not reply, because he didn’t know how and because this was the first time the object of his confused adoration had spoken to him in such a kindly way since he had first seen her and been struck down by love. “I saw you playing your game today is what I mean. He’s so happy to have people to . . .” She was going to say “play with” but realized that this alternately brutal and kind young man might take this the wrong way. “Be friendly to him. I’m very grateful.”

  Cale liked the sound of this very much.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “He picks things up quickly, once you can explain what’s going on. We’ll toughen him up.” As soon as he said it, he realized that it was not quite the thing to say. “I mean we’ll teach him how to look after himself.”

  “You won’t teach him anything too dangerous?” she said.

  “I won’t teach him to kill anyone, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, crestfallen at having offended him. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  But Cale was not as touchy around her as he used to be. He realized there had been a considerable warming toward him.

  “No, you weren’t rude. I’m sorry for always being so quick to take offense. IdrisPukke told me to remember I’m just a hooligan and to be more careful around people who were properly brought up.”

  “He didn’t,” she said, laughing.

  “He certainly did. He doesn’t have much respect for my sensitive side.”

  “Do you have one?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think it would be a good thing?”

  “I think it would be a wonderful thing.”

  “Then I’ll try—though I don’t know how. Perhaps you could tell me when I’m behaving like a hooligan and tell me off.”

  “I’d be too frightened,” she said, her eyelids fluttering slowly up and down.

  He laughed. “I know everyone thinks I’m no more good-natured than a polecat, but I draw the line at killing someone just for telling me off about being a thug.”

  “You’re much more than that.” Her eyes still fluttered.

  “But still a thug, all the same.”

  “Now you’re being oversensitive again.”

  “You see. You’ve told me off and I haven’t killed anyone—and I’ll keep trying to do better.”

  She smiled and he laughed, and yet another step was taken deeper into the chambers of her baffled heart.

  Kleist was teaching Simon and Koolhaus how to fletch an arrow with goose feathers. This was Simon’s third failed effort, and he was so furious he broke the arrow and threw the two pieces across the room. Kleist looked at him calmly and signaled to Koolhaus to translate.

  “Do that again, Simon, and you’ll get my boot up your shiv.”

  “Shiv?” asked Koolhaus, wanting to show his distaste for such coarseness.

  “You’re so clever, work it out for yourself.”

  “Guess what I’ve found in the cellar under here?” said Vague Henri, coming into the room as if someone had given him jam on his bread as well as butter.

  “How, in God’s name,” said Kleist not looking up from the table, “am I supposed to guess what you’ve found in the cellar?”

  Vague Henri refused to allow his excitement to be diminished. “Come and look.” His joy was so obvious that now Kleist was curious. Henri led them down to the floor under the palazzo and along an increasingly dark corridor to a small door that he opened with difficulty. Once in, a high-up casement window gave them all the light they needed.

  “I was talking to one of the old soldiers, who was telling me all his war stories—interesting stuff, as it happens—and he mentioned that about five years ago he’d been on a scouting duty in the Scablands looking for Gurriers and they came
across a Redeemer juggernaut that’d got separated from the main wagon train. There were only a couple of Redeemers standing about, so they told them to get lost and confiscated the juggernaut.” He went over to a tarpaulin and swept it to one side. Underneath was a huge collection of relics: holy gibbets of various sizes in wood and metal, statues of the Hanged Redeemer’s Holy Sister, the blackened toes and fingers of various martyrs preserved in small, elaborately decorated containers—one even had a nose in it, at least that was what Vague Henri thought it was; after seven hundred years it was hard to tell. There was Saint Stephen of Hungary’s right forearm and also a perfectly preserved heart.

  Koolhaus looked at Vague Henri. “What is all this? I don’t understand.”

  Vague Henri held up a small bottle three-quarters filled and read the label: “This is ‘Oil of sanctity that dripped from the coffin of Saint Walburga.’ ”

  Kleist had lost patience and the pile of relics had stirred up bad memories. “Tell me you didn’t bring us down here for this.”

  “No.” He walked over to a smaller tarp and this time whisked it away like the climax to the magician’s reveal they had seen in the palazzo upstairs the week before.

  Kleist laughed. “Well, now at least there’s some point to you.”

  Lying on the ground was an assortment of light and heavy crossbows. Vague Henri picked up one of them with a rack-and-pinion winding system. “Look, an arbalest. I bet you’d get something special from this. And this . . .” He picked up a small crossbow with what looked like a box on top. “I think this is a repeater. I’ve heard about them but never seen one.”

  “It looks like a kid’s toy.”

  “We’ll see once I can get some bolts made. None of them have got any bolts. The Materazzi probably left them behind—didn’t know what they were.”

  Simon made a few finger passes at Koolhaus.

  “He’s worried about what you said about Henri.”

  Kleist looked puzzled. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “About there not being a point to him. He wants you to apologize or you’ll feel his boot up your shiv.”

  It was easy for Simon not to understand the way the boys spoke to each other. Before he met them, he was used only to outright insult or outright toadying. Kleist looked at Simon. Koolhaus’s fingers raced as he spoke.

  “Vague Henri is what the Materazzi call . . .” He lost the word and began searching. “A cecchino . . . a hit man. The crossbow is all he ever uses.”

  It was two hours later before Cale turned up in the guardroom, and the news of the crossbows immediately put him in a bad mood.

  “Did you tell Simon and Koolhaus to keep it callow?”

  “Why would we need to do that?” said Kleist.

  “Because,” replied Cale, now really irritable, “I can’t see any good reasons for anyone knowing Henri is a sniper.”

  “And the bad reason?”

  “What they don’t know can’t hurt us. The less they know about us the better.”

  “That’s rich coming from someone who made such an exhibition of themselves in the summer garden,” said Kleist.

  “Look, Cale,” said Henri, “how could I have got the bows out or done anything with them without someone finding out? I’ll need to get bolts made and I need to practice.”

  By then it was too late in any case. Two days later the three of them were summoned to see Captain Albin. He seemed amused as much as anything.

  “You don’t seem like the murderous type, Henri.”

  “I’m not a murderer, I’m just a sniper.”

  “Jonathan Koolhaus said you were a cecchino.”

  “You don’t want to listen to Koolhaus.”

  “So you’re a sniper who doesn’t kill people. What’s the point of you, then?”

  Vague Henri, aggrieved, refused to rise to the bait, but the upshot of it all was that Albin demanded a demonstration.

  “I’ve heard about this contraption. I’d like to see one at work.”

  “It’s not one contraption; there are six of them.”

  “Very well, six. Will the Field of Dreams be all right?”

  “How long is it?”

  “Three hundred yards or so.”

  “No.”

  “Then what do you need?”

  “About six hundred.”

  Albin laughed. “You’re telling me you can hit something at six hundred yards with these things.”

  “Only with one of them.”

  Albin looked doubtful. “I suppose we could close off the western edge of the Royal Park. Five days, then?”

  “I’ll need eight. I’ve got to get some bolts made and all the bows need to be restrung.”

  “Very well.” He looked at Kleist. “Koolhaus tells me you’re an archer.”

  “He’s got a big gob, that Koolhaus.”

  “Not withstanding the size of his gob, is it true?”

  “Better than you’ve ever seen.”

  “Then we’ll have a demo from you as well. How about you, Cale, do you have any more party tricks you’ve been keeping under your top hat?”

  Eight days later a small gathering of Materazzi generals, the Marshal, who had invited himself, and Vipond met behind large canvas screens usually used for herding deer past society women who wanted to do a little hunting. Albin, as relentlessly cautious as Cale, had decided it might be better to keep the demonstration quiet. He could not have said why, but the three boys were always hiding something and therefore unpredictable. And there was something about the boy Cale that always promised havoc. Best to be on the safe side of sorry.

  Within five minutes of the start of the demonstration, Albin realized that he had made a dreadful mistake. It is not easy to accept, not deep in the deepest recesses of the soul, that by reason of birth other people less able, hardworking, intelligent and willing to learn, should always have the first opportunity to stick their snouts in what the poet Demidov calls “the great pig trough of life.” Having had so much to do with Vipond—a hardworking man of intelligence and with outstanding ability—the sense of childish justice still hidden in Albin’s soul had willingly overlooked the fact that aristocratic Vipond could easily have been chancellor had he been a complete dunce. The generals waiting for the demonstration to begin were no more or less able as generals than any other group selected by virtue of their relatives. Bakers, brewers, stonemasons in Memphis, all observed the rights of birth as rigidly as any Materazzi duchess. You are an idiot, thought Albin to himself, and deserve this humiliation. It was not merely that these three were children—if pretty odd, as children go—but that they weren’t even common. It was possible to respect a stonemason, an armorer; even to be rude to a servant was regarded as vulgar by most Materazzi. But these boys were without identity, part of nothing, migrants, and, most important, one of them had gone too far. It was not that the generals would have condoned the matter of bullying by the Mond and Solomon Solomon—widely acknowledged to be a boor—it was that putting it right was a matter for the Materazzi themselves. Such things as injustice to members of the underclass were to be settled quietly, but if they were not settled, then they were not settled. It was not for the offended against in such circumstances to take matters into their own hands and in such an effective and humiliating manner. That Cale should have resolved his own grievances was a painful threat. And perhaps they’re right, thought Albin.

  First up was Kleist. Twelve wooden soldiers, usually used for sword practice, had been set up three hundred yards away. The Materazzi were familiar with bows but used them primarily for hunting: they were elegantly and beautifully made composites imported at great expense. Kleist’s bow was the nearest thing to a broomstick they had ever seen. It seemed impossible to bend such an ugly-looking item. He placed the bottom of the bow on the ground, bracing it with the instep of his left foot. Holding the bowstring just under the loop, he started to bend the bow. Thicker than a fat man’s thumb, it slowly curved to his great strength and then he delicately
lifted the loop into the notch. Turning to the semicircle of arrows stuck into the ground behind him, he pulled one, notched it onto the bowstring, drew it back to his cheek, aimed and fired. All this was done in one flowing movement, one arrow loosed every five seconds. There were eleven identical thwacks as the arrows hit—and one silent miss. One of Albin’s men ran from behind a protective wall of wooden beams and confirmed the score by waving two flags: eleven of twelve. The Marshal applauded enthusiastically; his generals followed his guidance, not enthusiastically.

  “Oh, well done!” said the Doge. Miffed at the lack of response from the generals, Kleist gave a resentful nod in acknowledgment and stepped away for Vague Henri to show what he could do.

  “There are three basic types of crossbow,” he began brightly, convinced that his audience would share his enthusiasm. He held up the lightest of two resting in their cradles in front of him. “This is the one-foot crossbow—we call it that because you put one foot in here.” He put his right foot in the stirrup at the top of the crossbow, hooked the string with a claw attached to a belt around his waist and pushed down with his foot and straightened his back at the same time, letting the trigger mechanism grab the string and hold it in place.

  “Now,” said Vague Henri, cheerfulness diminishing as he became aware of the disapproving looks of the generals. “I put the bolt in place, then . . .” He turned, took aim and fired. He grunted with relief at the thwack!—loud even from three hundred yards away—as the bolt hit its mark. “Oh, good shot!” said the Doge. The generals stared at Vague Henri not just unimpressed but sullen and disdainful. Having expected the power and accuracy of his shot to impress, he instantly lost confidence and started to become hesitant. He turned to the next crossbow, much bigger but with much the same design. “This is the two-foot crossbow—called that because you put . . . um . . . two feet in the stirrup . . . and . . . uh . . . not just one. This means,” he added lamely, “it . . . um . . . gives you even more power.” He repeated his previous moves and loosed the bolt into the second target, but this time it hit with such force it split the head of the wooden soldier in two.