In Bale’s view - imbrued from countless hours of history lessons learned at the feet and at the behest, of Monsieur and Madame, his parents - Marburg and de Beniols had been falsely labelled as sadistic and vainglorious persecutors of the innocent when they had simply been carrying out the orders of the Mother Church; Vlad ‘the Impaler’ had been incorrectly accused of turning torture into an art, whilst he had, in reality, been defending - in whatever way was deemed expedient at the time - his beloved Wallachia against the horrors of Ottoman expansion; the Marquis de Sade had been unfairly charged by his detractors with libertinism and the fomentation of sexual anarchy, whereas, in the view of the Corpus, he had simply been promulgating an advanced philosophy of extreme freedom and tolerance designed to liberate the world from moral tyranny; the composer Prince Carlo Gesualdo had been wrongly castigated as a wife- and child-killer by his no doubt prejudiced accusers, merely as a result of defending the sanctity of his marital home against unwanted interference; history had tarred Tsar Ivan Grozny with the brush of ‘filicidal tyrant’ and ‘The Terrible’, whereas, to many of his countrymen and in the view of the Corpus, he had been the saviour of Slavonic Russia; Niccolò Machiavelli had been described by his critics as a teleological absolutist and a perpetrator of the politics of fear, labels designed to detract from the fact that he was also a brilliant diplomat, a poet, a playwright and an inspirational political philosopher; the entire Borgia family had been branded as both criminally corrupt and morally insane, whereas, in the Corpus’s view, they had (bar a few trifling infelicities) been enlightened popes, mighty lawmakers and inspired art lovers, deeply concerned with the supranational promulgation of the glories of the Italian High Renaissance; Count Alessandro di Cagliostro had been called both a charlatan and a Master forger - in fact he was an alchemist and a Kabbalist of the highest order, desperate to illuminate the as yet largely unplumbed depths of the occult; naturopath healer and visionary mystic Gregor Rasputin had been described by his critics as a lubriciously prepotent ‘mad monk’ who was single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the entrenched and moribund Russian monarchy - but who, Bale felt, could blame him? - who, in retrospect, would dare to cast the first stone?; Le Maréchal Gilles de Rais had been called a paedophile, a cannibal and a torturer of children, but he had also been an early supporter of Joan of Arc, a brilliant soldier and an enlightened theatrical promoter whose hobbies, in certain specific and unimportant spheres, might occasionally have got the better of him - but did that discount his greater acts? The larger lived life? No. Of course not - and neither should it; Giacomo Casanova was considered by posterity to be both spiritually and ethically degraded, whereas he had, in reality, been an advanced liberal thinker, an inspired historian and a diarist of genius; and Countess Erzsébet Báthory, judged a vampirical mass murderess by her peers, had in fact been an educated, multilingual woman who had not only defended her husband’s castle during the Long War of 1593-1606, but had also frequently intervened on behalf of destitute women who had been captured and raped by the Turks - the fact that she had later exsanguinated certain of the more severely traumatised of her charges had been deemed by the Corpus (although largely with tongue firmly thrust into cheek) to be empirically necessary for the furtherance and secure propagation of the now all-consuming twenty-first century science of cosmetic enhancement. All had been ‘people of the fly’, inducted by their parents, grandparents, teachers or advisers, into the secret hermetic cabal of the Corpus - a cabal designed to protect and insulate the world from its own misguided instincts. As Monsieur, his father, had put it: ‘In a world of black and white, the Devil rules. Paint the world grey - muddy the boundaries of accepted morality - and the Devil loses his finger-hold.’
Later, what Monsieur, had called the ‘natural’ adepts had come along - those with an innately destructive gene, but who would not necessarily have recognised that what they were doing was in any way a part of a larger or more significant whole. Men and women like Catherine de Medici, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon Bonaparte, Queen Ranavalona, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin Dada and Pol Pot. Each, in their turn, had been a diminisher of the status quo. A challenger of moral precepts. A shaker of the tree of civilisation. Natural adepts of the Corpus, fulfilling its aims despite - or perhaps even because of - their own self-styled agendas.
Such tyrants drew acolytes to them like a bug-zapper draws flies. They acted as recruiting grounds for the weak, the halt and the morally insane - just the category of people the Corpus needed in order to fulfil its aims. And the greatest and most successful of these - thus far at least - had been the first two Antichrists predicted in Revelations: Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. Unlike their predecessors, both men had acted globally and not merely nationally. They had functioned as catalysts for a greater evil - one designed to placate the Devil and keep him from permanently investing the earth with his incubi and succubae.
Bale knew instinctively that the Third Antichrist spoken of in Revelations - the ‘One Still To Come’ - would easily outdo both his predecessors in the grandeur of his achievements. For chaos, the Corpus believed, was in everyone’s best interests - because it forced people to conspire against it. To act communally and with dynamic creativity. All the greatest inventions - all civilisation’s mightiest leaps - had occurred during periods of fl ux. The earth needed the Dionysian and must cold-shoulder the Apollonian. The alternative led only to damnation - and to the turning away of God.
What was it that John the Divine had written in his Book of Apocalyptic Revelation, following his exile to the island of Patmos, courtesy of the Emperor Nero?
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan and bound him a thousand years. And cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season…And
when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison; And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
AND AFTER THAT HE MUST BE LOOSED A LITTLE SEASON…
It was unfo
rtunate that the numerological sum of Achor Bale’s name added up to the Kabbalistic number two. This gave him a steady, even disposition, but also guaranteed that he would always remain subordinate and over-sensitive - a perpetual henchman, rather than a leader. Some fools even called it a malevolent, evil number, falling within the negative female spectrum and rendering its adherents prey to doubts and vacillations and uncertainties of focus.
Unless, of course, their characters were infused and strengthened by strong direction and a fundamental core belief from a suitably early age.
Bale felt that he owed this all-redeeming, positive aspect of his nature to Monsieur, his father’s, influence. If Bale could not be an instigator, then he would be a follower. A loyal follower. A crucial cog in the outplaying of the infernal machine.
Now that he had forced the girl’s name from that fool Gavril, Bale decided that it might be amusing to try the Kabbalistic test on her - and also on the gypsy, Alexi Dufontaine. It would help him to deal with them. It would give him insights into their character that he would not otherwise have access to.
He conducted the calculations swiftly in his head. Both came out as eights. Usually an auspicious number and linked in some ways to his own. But when holders of the number persisted in following courses of action simply out of stubbornness or mere pig-headedness, the number turned negative, dooming its possessor. This, Bale decided, must be the case with the gypsies.
What was Sabir’s number? Now that would be interesting. Bale thought it through. A.D.A.M.S.A.B.I.R. What did that give in terms of Kabbalistic numerology? 1,4,1,4,3,1,2,1,2. Making 19. Add 1 and 9, making 10. That’s 1 + 0. Meaning Sabir was a number one. Powerful. Ambitious. Dominant. An easy friend-maker and an influencer of people. A ‘righteous man’ personality. Someone, in other words, who cannot admit that they are ever in the wrong. An Alpha male.
Bale smiled. He would enjoy tormenting and killing Sabir. It would come as such a shock to the man.
For Sabir had drained his good luck to the lees and it was time to make an end of the matter.
48
When Sabir heard the shuffle of Alexi’s horse, he refused, at first, to believe his ears. It was a stray from the neighbouring domaine. Or an escaped Camarguais bull, out looking for a mate.
He drew in for protection behind a clump of acacia trees, trusting that the outline of the branches would muddy his silhouette in the rapidly encroaching dusk. Carefully, painstakingly, he took the knife out of his pocket and extended the blade. Despite all his best efforts, it made a definite snick when opened.
‘Who’s there?’
Sabir hadn’t realised that he had been holding his breath. He exhaled in one grateful, exultant whoosh. ‘Alexi? It’s me. Damo. Thank God you’re all right.’
Alexi swayed in the saddle. ‘I thought you were the eye-man. When I heard that click, I thought I was done for. I thought you were going to shoot me.’
Sabir scrambled up the bank. He clung on to Alexi’s stirrup ‘So you have it? You have the prophecies?’
‘I think so. Yes.’
‘You think so?’
‘I’ve buried them. The eye-man…’ Alexi tilted forwards and began to slide down the side of the gelding’s neck.
Sabir had been so wound up with his own excitement about the prophecies that it had not occurred to him to check on Alexi’s physical condition. He caught Alexi under both arms and eased him off the gelding. ‘What’s the matter? Are you injured?’
Alexi curled up into a ball on the ground. ‘I fell. Hard.
On to a barrier. Then some concrete. Escaping from the eye-man. It’s been getting worse. The last half-hour. I don’t think I will be able to make it back to the house.’
‘Where is he? Where is the eye-man?’
‘I don’t know. I lost him. But he killed Gavril. Smashed in his head with a stone and made it look like an accident. I put everything back in place to incriminate him. Took Gavril’s horse. My own horse was killed. Now you have to go back to the house. The eye-man might know about the Maset.’
‘How could he know about the Maset? It’s impossible.’
‘No. Not impossible. He might have got it from Gavril. That fool followed us. The eye-man caught up with him. But I told you this already. I’m too tired to repeat myself. Listen to me, Damo. Leave me here. Take the horse. Go back to the Maset. Get Yola. Only then come back. Tomorrow, when I am better, I will show you where the prophecies are.’
‘The prophecies. You’ve seen them?’
‘Go, Damo. Take the horse. Fetch Yola. The prophecies don’t matter anymore. You understand? It is only writing. Not worth a single life.’
49
Bale located the defective shutter - the defective shutter that was always to be found in old houses if you had the patience to look for it. He levered the shutter gently open. Then he inserted his knife into the warped sash of the window frame and seesawed it from side to side. The window opened with a noise like the riffling of a deck of cards.
Bale paused, listening. The house was as silent as the grave. Bale allowed his eyes to focus in the gloom. When he could see again, he checked out the room. The place stank of dried rodent corpses and the accumulated dust of years of benign neglect.
He moved to the hallway and then down towards the kitchen. It had been there that he had seen the oil lamps and the candles burning. Strange that there were no voices. In Bale’s experience, people nearly always talked in abandoned houses - it was a means of keeping the ghouls at bay. Of pricking the silence.
He reached the kitchen door and glanced inside. Nothing. He twitched one nostril. Soup. He could smell soup. So the girl was here, at the very least. Was she outside, perhaps, using nature’s closet? In which case he had been very lucky indeed not to run into her and risk losing her in the dark.
Or perhaps she had heard him? Warned Sabir? And they were lying in wait for him somewhere in the house. Bale smiled. That would make things a little more amusing. Give things a little more edge.
‘Your soup’s boiling over.’ His voice echoed through the house as through a cathedral.
Had there been a rustling in the far corner of the salon? Over there behind the bergère sofa? Where the tired old curtains hung down? Bale picked up one of a pair of bronze knickknacks and lobbed it at the front door. The clatter it made seemed obscenely loud in the sound-dampened room.
A figure darted from behind the sofa and began levering wildly at the shutters. Bale picked up the second bronze statuette and flung it at the figure. There was a cry and the figure fell.
Bale stayed where he was - listening - breathing only through his mouth. Had anyone else made a sound? Or had there only ever been that single person in t
he house? The girl - he sensed now that it had been the girl.
He walked back into the kitchen and fetched the oil lamp. Holding it out ahead of him, he walked over to the main shuttered window. The girl was curled up on the floor. Had he killed her? That would be inconvenient. He had certainly thrown the bronze statuette as hard as he had been able. But it might have been Sabir. He couldn’t afford to take any chances at this late stage in the game.
As he reached down for her, the girl slithered away from his grasp and ran wildly down the corridor.
Had she heard him breaking in? Was she heading for the back window? Bale ran in the opposite direction to the one she had taken. He threw himself through the front door and then curved left around the house.
He slowed down as he approached the window. Yes. There was her foot. Now she was pulling herself through.
Bale lifted her bodily out of the window and dropped her on the ground. He cuffed her once around the head and she lay still. Bale straightened up and listened. Nothing. No other sound. She had been the only one in the house.
Reaching down, he felt through her clothes and up between her legs for a knife or other concealed weapon. When he was sure that she was unarmed, he lifted her up like a sack of grain, draped her around his shoulders and headed back towards the salon.
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THE NOSTRADAMUS PROPHECIES Page 30