The Beating of his Wings (Left Hand of God Trilogy 3)

by Paul Hoffman

  Now Cadbury opened his new copy and began reading, but though it was pleasurable to read again the familiar words (‘Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remember’d’), Deidre’s silent presence put him off.

  ‘Are you much for books at all?’ he asked.

  ‘Of making many books, there is no end,’ she replied. ‘And much study is a weariness of the flesh.’

  Was there a smile there? he thought. There was definitely a smile.

  ‘You don’t think that knowledge is a good thing, then?’ Cadbury’s tetchy sarcasm was not at all in doubt.

  ‘He that increases knowledge,’ she said, ‘increases sorrow.’

  This actually did annoy him. Cadbury was an educated man and took his own learning, and the learning of others, seriously.

  ‘So you don’t take the view that the unexamined life isn’t worth living?’ More sarcasm.

  She did not say anything for a moment, as if allowing his outburst to land in the dry air of the room, dusty with motes in the shafts of sunlight coming through the small windows.

  ‘For him that is joined to the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion.’

  To Cadbury this seemed like a threat, the more threatening because delivered even more flatly than usual.

  Was her sister the dead lion? Was he the living dog?

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘some new clothes will cheer you up.’

  She smiled, a rare event.

  ‘There’s nothing new under the sun.’

  Twenty minutes later the bumpkin returned with the dressmaker, weighed down with holdalls. Cadbury had explained that he wanted Deidre to put on a dress and a wig – her hair was cut almost to the skull – and go to look for the Two Trevors. He couldn’t imagine they would recognize her; once the dressmaker was finished, neither did Cadbury. The dress and the false hair did not transform her into a beauty. If anything she looked even stranger than before – like a doll, an automaton that he’d seen demonstrated at Old King Cole’s Palace in Boston. Once the powder and lip rouge had been painted on, Deidre looked very strange indeed, as if someone had described a woman to a sculptor blind from birth, who’d then had a stab at making one that had turned out impressive in its way, given his limitations, but still not entirely convincing. Still, it would certainly do the trick. No one was going to recognize her.

  By now it was dark. He paid off the dressmaker and the bumpkin, gestured Deidre over to the largest window and raised up the lantern so she could see herself reflected in the glass. He thought her expression softened for a moment as she swayed back and forth and then he saw an expression of pure delight.

  ‘Who is this?’ she said. ‘Who comes out of the desert like a pillar of smoke scented with myrrh and frankincense?’ And then she laughed.

  ‘I’ve never heard you laugh before,’ said Cadbury, mystified.

  ‘There is a time to laugh,’ said Deidre, as she swayed back and forth admiring herself in the window, ‘and a time to weep.’

  Having taken Cadbury’s instructions as to what she should and should not do (‘Don’t be seen by the Two Trevors and don’t kill anyone’), she was gone for nearly two hours, during which Cadbury had plenty of time to consider what his grandmother had meant when she repeatedly told him that worrying is the Devil’s favourite pastime.

  If he’d known the truth about Deidre he would have been less worried for his own sake but even more concerned for the successful accomplishment of their business. Deidre Plunkett, if not an imbecile, was certainly at the high end of simple-minded. Her mother, a devout member of the Plain People, who feared her daughter’s oddness more than her lack of understanding, read out loud to Deidre daily from the Holy Book in the hope that its wisdom would drive away her strangeness. In this she failed, not least because of the influence of her equally odd but much more quick-witted sister, the late Jennifer. Devoted to Deidre, Jennifer showed her greater powers of intellect by devising games for her sister, the least appalling of which involved torturing small animals to obtain a confession, putting them on trial on trumped up charges and then inventing hideously complicated executions. Though Deidre’s powers of understanding were weak she was naturally cunning when it came to killing in the way a wolf is cunning. No wolf can speak or count but a mathematician who speaks a dozen languages would be unlikely to last an hour with a single wolf in a dark wood on a cold mountain. And she was not so simple that, by keeping her mouth shut and adopting the enigmatic nearly-smile her sister had taught her, she hadn’t gained a reputation for shrewdness and acumen, one which seemed ably supported by her talent for murder.

  Anyone who tried to strike up a conversation with Deidre soon felt awkward under an empty gaze that, paradoxically, seemed to suggest profound and dismissive guile. Her terse replies, terse because she rarely understood what was being said to her, seemed to imply she regarded anyone speaking to her as a wordy fool. The enigmatic, often vaguely menacing, quotations from the bible of the Plain People were triggered by the words of whoever was talking to her. In this way her replies always seemed relevant if mockingly at odds. In other circumstances a savvy operator like Daniel Cadbury would have seen through her, but fear (not guilt, mind, because Jennifer had tried to murder him first and had unquestionably got what was coming to her) and worry that she knew everything and was biding her time blinded him to the truth, one of these truths being that Deidre had taken a liking to him. The fact that she fancied him was what made her, in fact, more talkative than usual – the only way she had of flirting with him was by waiting until a word triggered off something she recognized from the Holy Book. Unfortunately much of the Holy Book consisted of rather brilliant threats of one kind or another against unbelievers, hence Cadbury’s feeling that there was something menacing about her way of talking to him.

  Deidre had been gone nearly an hour and a half when he could endure no more. He decided to risk the clear chance of walking into the Trevors and find out what was going on.

  She may have been disguised but she was easy to spot, so odd was her appearance and manner. It was just as well Cadbury found her when he did because she’d come to the attention of a trio of what passed for dandies in that part of the world: top hats, red braces and pointed slippers. The four of them, Deidre with her blonde wig, mad eyes and painted cheeks, looked like the bad dream of an unhappy child.

  ‘Any more like you at home, gorgeous?’ mocked the gurrier, who clearly regarded himself as the Mr Big. Deidre stared at him then let out a kind of strangulated whine, her best attempt at playing the reluctant coquette.

  ‘How about a blow dry in the entry?’ said one of the others. Deidre did not know what either a blow dry or an entry was but she knew violence when she heard it. The third top-hatted gurrier grabbed her by the arm. ‘Kissy-kissy!’ he said, laughing.

  Cadbury was about to step in when a man in his fifties called out nervously to the gurriers, ‘Leave her alone.’ All three turned to Deidre’s saviour.

  ‘Why don’t you come and make us, fatso?’

  Already pale, the man turned paler and didn’t move. Cadbury decided to pretend to be a relieved lover finding his lost sweetheart (‘There you are, my dear. I’ve been looking for you for half an hour!’). But he was too late. The gurrier’s grip on Deidre’s arm tightened as he turned away from her. Her left hand was already in her pocket and pulling out a short knife with a wide blade. With all her skinny strength she punched it into his back between the sixth and seventh ribs, tearing her right arm free as he fell, crying out. The leader jerked away and turned so that the blow aimed at his back struck him in the stomach, followed by a strike to the heart. The third gurrier tried to speak, holding his hands out to protect his chest and stomach. ‘I …’ But he never finished what he had to say. Deidre’s knife took him through the eye. She looked around the crowd to check if anyone else was coming for her. But the crowd was still and soundless, unable to make sense of the painted doll of a woman, the savage emptiness of her eyes and the blood
on the ground.

  Cadbury walked towards her in the silence, broken as he approached her by the eyeless third man calling for his mum. ‘My dear,’ said Cadbury, ‘my dear,’ careful to bring her back from whatever ecstasy had taken hold of her. She blinked, recognizing him. Slowly he placed his open palm on her hand, careful not to hold or grip as he urged her away.

  Unsurprisingly no one followed, and turning and twisting in the pretty but narrow streets they were secure enough for the moment, the peaceful town’s watchmen not being used to more than an occasional late night drunken fight. The result of everything turning to vinegar in such a fashion was at least clarity: get out, keep going. But waiting in Spanish Leeds for Cadbury was an expectant Kitty the Hare, and explaining to him how this fiasco had taken place along with the probability of Cale being lost to the Two Trevors didn’t bear much thinking about. Cadbury needed to show that he’d made a serious attempt to do something to recover the situation. There could be no greater contrast than between Bosco and Kitty the Hare, except that they both thought that Thomas Cale was a talisman for the future. (‘The spirit of the age, my dear Cadbury, possesses some people and the thing to do when you find one is to ride on their tails until they burn themselves out.’)

  Reaching a small trough set into the wall of a church Cadbury told Deidre to wash off the make-up while he tried to work out what to do. The problem was one of time: it was like deciding when to leave the flats of an estuary as the tide turned – keeping just a few seconds ahead made the difference between strolling up on the foreshore in good time or being drowned.

  He looked at Deidre. All the water had done was smear the rouge and black kohl and powder all over her face. She was a vision of something out of the eighth circle of hell.

  ‘Did you see anything of them – the Two Trevors?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And that lout of theirs?’

  ‘No.’

  He was trying to work out how to get to Cale at this time of night – presumably they wouldn’t just let you walk into a madhouse unannounced – but he was also considering where to hide Deidre. If the Two Trevors hadn’t murdered Cale when they had such an easy chance that morning they were hardly likely to try to get up to anything tonight. So he didn’t need Deidre with him, but finding somewhere to hide her where they could cut loose as soon as he’d finished warning Cale – he didn’t have time for that. And then the answer became clear: who looked more like a madwoman than Deidre?

  Quick now, the tide is coming. Pulling Deidre behind him he made for the Priory, its tall clock tower dominating the edge of the town. In less than five minutes he was knocking on the heavy front door.

  10

  A small door within the Priory’s main gate opened up.

  ‘We’re closed. Come back tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry I’m late,’ Cadbury said. ‘But it was … the wheel on the carriage broke … it was all arranged. She’s very ill.’

  The gatekeeper opened a flap on the lamp he was holding and pointed it at Deidre who had her head bowed low. A shake on her sleeve from Cadbury made her look up. Familiar with the harrowing of the face that lunacy caused, still the man gasped at her staring eyes, black smears and mouth that looked as if it had melted too close to the fire.

  ‘Please,’ said Cadbury, and pressed a five-dollar piece into the man’s hand. ‘For pity’s sake.’

  Compassion and greed melted the keeper’s heart. There was, after all, not so much to be wary of. This was a place people tried to break out of, not to break into. And the girl certainly looked like she needed to be locked up.

  He let them in through the small door.

  ‘Have you got your letter?’

  ‘I’m afraid I left it in my travel bag. That’s why we don’t have any cases. The driver will bring them in the morning.’ It sounded horribly unconvincing.

  But the gatekeeper seemed to have given up on questions. Except for one: ‘Who was the letter from?’

  ‘Ah … my memory … oh … Doctor … ah … Mr …’

  ‘Mr Butler? Because he’s still in his office over there. Lights still on.’

  ‘Yes,’ said a grateful Cadbury. ‘It was Mr Butler.’

  ‘Is she safe?’ the gatekeeper said quietly.

  ‘Safe?’

  ‘Do you need a guardian?’

  ‘Oh no. She’s very tender-hearted. Just … not right.’

  ‘Busy night tonight.’

  ‘Really?’ said Cadbury, not interested in anyone’s night but his own.

  ‘You’re the second unexpected arrival in the last ten minutes.’ Cadbury felt his ears begin to burn. ‘Two gentlemen from Spanish Leeds with a royal warrant.’ He looked up, having found the key to unlock the second gate allowing them into the Priory itself. ‘Sent them to Mr Butler, too – there’s nothing in the logbook, of course. The paperwork in this place couldn’t be any more bloody useless if the patients were in charge.’

  The gatekeeper let them through and pointed over to the other side of the quadrangle and the one window still lit.

  ‘That’s Mr Butler’s office.’

  Once they were through and the second gate locked behind them Cadbury stopped to think what to do next.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Deidre. It was rare for Deidre to begin a conversation but she had an animal talent for dangerous action and felt instinctively at ease now where normally she was on the edge of understanding what people were saying to her.

  ‘The Two Trevors are here looking to kill Thomas Cale.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ he said, looking over at Butler’s window. ‘The man in that room could tell us but he’s dead.’

  ‘Then call out to Thomas Cale.’

  ‘What?’ He was still so surprised by her manner that he had trouble picking up on her line of thought.

  ‘Go up that,’ she said, pointing at the bell tower. ‘Ring it. Call out a warning.’

  He had begun to suspect there was something witless about Deidre. But, predator-sharp, she’d seen the situation instantly and she was right. Wandering around a place with perhaps three hundred rooms, armed warders and unlit quadrangles was a sure way to get killed, especially with the Two Trevors waiting in the dark like a pair of ill-disposed spiders.

  ‘You hide down here,’ he said. She didn’t reply and, assuming her consent, he moved quickly through the shadowed side of the quad and into the unlocked bell tower. She waited to be sure he was out of sight and then, keeping to the shadows, made her way to the centre of the Priory.

  Cadbury climbed the stairs, feeling his chest begin to rasp and worrying that in order to warn Cale he had to give away his own position, a position with only one exit. He was going to have to leave very quickly down two hundred steps in the dark. Once he was at the top he took two full minutes to recover for his escape. He pulled the bell rope four times. The deafening ring would get the attention of everyone within a mile. He let the ringing die away, took a deep breath and bellowed. ‘Thomas Cale! Thomas Cale! Two men are here to murder you!’ He rang the bell once more. ‘Thomas Cale! Two men are here to murder you!’

  With that he went back down the stairs, hoping that the Two Trevors had more to worry about than him. If Cale really was the virtuoso roughneck he was cracked up to be then they were now in trouble. If that didn’t satisfy Kitty the Hare that he’d done his best, then Kitty could get stuffed. He’d collect Loopy-lou Plunkett and worry about what to do with her later.

  Coming to the last few steps of the tower he stopped, took out a long knife and a short one, his preferred combination when fighting two people, and burst into the quad as if he’d been blasted by Hooke’s gunpowder. He was across the quad and into the safety of the shadows in a few seconds, desperately trying to control the wheezing he was suffering from his exertions as it treacherously called, or so it sounded to his ears, a deafening appeal to the two vengeful Trevors to find him and cut his throat. But they did not come and soon he was breathin
g almost silently. Slowly he began to feel his way to the point where he’d left Deidre. But Deidre was gone.

  By now the quad was filling up with the curious mad, the wealthier and non-violent mad, at any rate, those who had access to the bulk of the Priory, all wanting to break their routine by coming out of their rooms to find out what all the fuss was about. Added to their number were alarmed doctors and nurses trying to usher them back to safety. Some of the more highly strung got the wrong end of the stick: ‘Help!’ they cried. ‘They’re coming to get me. Murderers! Assassins! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! Help the poor struggler! Help the poor struggler!’

  The fuss certainly helped Cadbury to move more safely within the crowd in the hope of finding Deidre and getting out without, he hoped, having to deal with either of the Two Trevors.

  Before all of this, Cale had been sitting in the Priory cloisters with Sister Wray, discussing the existence of God – it was on Cale’s insistence, a challenge to her born out of his bad mood at failing to make it to the top of the hill.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, ‘be taking your ill-temper out on me – but in case something else inside you is listening I’ll tell you about God. When I was upon the hill today, looking out over the sea and sky and the mountains, I could feel him everywhere. Don’t ask me why, I just could. And don’t worry, I know just as well as you do that much of life is hard and cruel.’ She turned her head and he had the strongest sense she was smiling. ‘Well, not perhaps quite as well as you. But hard and cruel as it is I still feel his presence. I still find the world beautiful.’ She laughed, such a pleasant sound.