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

by Paul Hoffman

  Against the weariness of being sick was the pleasure of working on the tactics of the New Model Army. The training was going better than Cale had imagined. Protected by the wagons, and using weapons based on tools they were used to working with for hours every day of their lives, the confidence of the peasant soldiers soared. The most effective of these hillbilly weapons was the threshers’ flail – a pole of four or five feet long linked by a chain to another pole of eighteen inches or so. These men were used to using them for ten hours a day after harvest and the swinging heads generated such a powerful force they could badly injure a knight in full armour let alone the less protected Redeemer men at arms. But above everything they worked on finding out every weakness of the war wagons. Vague Henri had the Purgator archers shooting in massed ranks at the wagon forts to work out how to protect the occupants and came up with bamboo-covered walkways and small shelters into which anyone caught in the open during such an attack could run to protect themselves. It wouldn’t take the Redeemers long to try to use something like fire arrows to set the wagons alight so he had the Swiss soldiers – who would be mostly used for attacks outside the fort and so were not being used for much during attacks – train in teams to put out fires before they took hold, mostly using buckets filled with earth and using water only if they must. They objected to this with puzzling intensity. They were soldiers and gentlemen – it was demeaning digging dirt and so the peasants should do it. All their resentments at the bewildering changes they had been forced to endure came out in this single issue of putting out fires. Out of nothing, Vague Henri found he had a mutiny on his hands. Cale was always mocking him by saying what a nice boy he was. Up to a point this was true, but because they were used to Cale as contrast there was a general misunderstanding about Vague Henri and what he was capable of. He seemed very normal in a way that Cale was clearly not, but he had experienced the same corrosive brutality and deadliness of the Redeemer life. It was a part of him too. Realizing he was on the edge of something disastrous his first instinct was to deal with the problem the Redeemer way: kill a couple of the noisier protestors and leave them to rot where everyone could see their mistake. Whether he would have been ready to do this and sleep well afterwards was fortunately not put to the test. There was something of good nature but also something of calculation that made him look for another way first.

  Vague Henri, Cale and Kleist had talked at great length over how real they should make the practice fighting. The Redeemers took the motto ‘Train hard, fight easy’ to extremes. Mock Redeemer battles weren’t always easy to distinguish from the real thing other than that in the former they allowed the survivors to live. All three feared the result of pushing the practice battles too hard would be to create more problems than they solved and for the same reason as for the summary execution: the souls of the Swiss, peasant or gentleman, weren’t accustomed by long habit to brutality. But the Swiss soldiers had to be taught respect one way or another. ‘Right,’ said Vague Henri to his gentlemen soldiers. ‘You think you’re so much better than they are. Prove it.’ He followed this by going to the peasants in the New Model Army and telling them that there were doubts in Spanish Leeds they’d be up to the task of a real battle – they were, after all, peasants and would be bound to run when the going got tough. He’d avoided saying that this was the view of the Swiss soldiers because soon they were going to have to fight together. It was enough: they were incensed. But there was more at stake than just repeating the battle and the lesson of Silver Field: both sides had to be defeated this time.

  Three days later, with Cale – a fascinated spectator – they watched the gloves-off attack by Swiss men at arms and mounted knights on the country bumpkins. It was nasty stuff, but the Swiss, for all their skill and determination, were at a huge disadvantage because they took ten times as many blows for each one they could land. After a bloody hour they withdrew and Vague Henri showed his final and very convincing hand. He pulled up four hundred fire-archers and got them pouring in three or four a minute each for ten minutes. By the end the peasants were driven out as the thirty wagons burnt like the seventh circle of hell.

  It was a brutal and expensive point but it was well made – both sides realized they would live or die together.

  ‘I’ve been to see IdrisPukke about this, twice, but he keeps pissing in my ear,’ said Fanshawe. ‘I want them rounded up and sent back.’

  ‘For what reason?’ said an exhausted Cale, not much in the mood for anything except sleep.

  ‘As if you care about reasons.’

  ‘I do now – so what are they?’

  ‘These two hundred and fifty Helots belong to the state.’

  ‘That would be the state that’s signed a treaty with the Redeemers.’

  ‘We’re helping you in practice, aren’t we?’

  ‘I don’t think we should go down the road of your good intentions. We can if you like.’

  ‘The Helots threaten our existence as much as the Redeemers threaten yours. There are four times as many of them in Laconia as there are of us. They’re here to learn from you how they can kill the state that owns them. If you don’t want to be seen to be working against us let me deal with them.’

  ‘Let’s get this straight. I’m the one who deals with things here. You go anywhere near them and I’ll have you swinging off the nearest maypole upside down and with your nose in my pocket.’

  There was a silence – not very pleasant.

  ‘Then we’ll leave.’

  Another silence.

  ‘I’m not sending two hundred and fifty men back to be executed,’ said Cale.

  ‘What do you care?’

  ‘Never mind what I care about. I’m not doing it.’ Fanshawe, nevertheless, could see a concession was coming. ‘I’ll move them on.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I’ll have them escorted over the mountains by some unpleasant people I know and told to get lost.’

  ‘And if they refuse?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Can I trust you on this?’

  ‘I don’t give a sack of rancid badger giblets for your trust one way or the other. I want you to stay and I promise I’ll get rid of them. Take it or leave it. That’s all there is.’

  It made sense to Fanshawe that his instructors were much more valuable than a couple of hundred untrained peasants so he decided to give way – though as ungraciously as possible in order to leave Cale with the impression he was deeply unhappy with the outcome. He wasn’t particularly.

  The next day Cale woke up from a sixteen-hour sleep still tired, and to find IdrisPukke had arrived for a short meeting.

  ‘You should have told me about Fanshawe kicking off over the Helots,’ said Cale.

  ‘Not in my opinion,’ said IdrisPukke. ‘You made it clear that we, by which I mean me, were supposed to bring you solutions and not problems. You should have refused to see him. In fact, you should refuse to see anyone – cultivate your mystery. The more you talk to people the more human you’ll seem to them and so the more comprehensible and therefore weaker. You’re not the incarnation of the Wrath of God, you’re a very sick boy.’

  ‘Don’t bother polishing it, will you?’

  ‘If I must – you’re a very remarkable, very sick boy.’

  ‘I think we should give the Helots some help.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If we beat the Redeemers, it’ll come at a price. We’ll be the weaker. There’s every chance the Laconics will take advantage. So, if they’ve got to deal with slaves, newly trained slaves, there’s less chance the Laconics will be making a nuisance of themselves with us.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You haven’t fallen for one of those generous impulses that affect you from time to time?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You sympathize with them – you identify with them as people struggling to be free of an ugly oppressor.’

  ‘Would that be so ba
d?’

  ‘That’s three questions in answer to my three questions: rude but revealing.’

  ‘I hate to be rude.’

  ‘You’re walking a thin line, boy, we all are – you can’t afford to take on a cause you don’t have the power to support.’

  ‘I’m not. But I don’t see why we can’t send the Helots to the east to train with the Purgators there.’

  ‘I agree.’

  A pause.

  ‘So you’ll send them?’

  ‘I already have.’

  ‘Great minds think alike.’

  ‘If it pleases you to think so.’

  Cale rang a small silver bell to signal he wanted his tea. He felt absurdly self-important doing something so precious but it saved the effort of going to the door and shouting. Tea arrived immediately as the butler had merely been waiting for the bell. IdrisPukke looked on with anticipation at the assortment of sandwiches laid before him, crusts removed and cut into dainty triangles: cheese, egg, and horsemeat with cucumber. There were pastries from Patisserie Valerie in Mott Street: cream selva and wild strawberry millefeuille and almond frangipane with its intoxicating whiff of sweet cyanide.

  ‘Finding things to spend your money on?’ said IdrisPukke.

  Cale smiled. ‘Eat thou and drink; tomorrow thou shalt die,’ he said – a line spoken to him three times a day before meals at the Sanctuary.

  ‘No arguing with that,’ said IdrisPukke, taking a large bite out of a veal pie with a boiled egg in the middle. ‘Koolhaus came to see me looking for a job.’

  ‘He’s already got a job,’ said Cale.

  ‘He’s an able young man – very. We know him and he knows us. It’s a waste. He can make himself useful.’

  ‘I’m not going to leave Simon deaf and dumb again. Offer him more money.’

  ‘He’s ambitious. We could lose him and it would be best to keep someone who knows a great many of our secrets inside the fold. He could be a great nuisance, too.’

  Cale munched absentmindedly on a red velvet cupcake.

  ‘All right. Put him to work with Kleist or Vague Henri for a month. See how it goes. If he’s got the right stuff send him to keep an eye on things in West Thirteen. But he takes Simon with him.’

  ‘Arbell will try to stop him.’

  ‘If Simon lets her then he’s out. Send Koolhaus on his own.’

  They sat in pleasant silence for a few minutes enjoying their tea.

  ‘You should go and see Riba,’ said IdrisPukke at last.

  ‘Because?’

  ‘We need to make more use of her.’

  ‘I tried that already. She’s learnt gratitude from her old mistress.’

  To his great irritation, IdrisPukke laughed.

  ‘You’ve got a very elevated expectation of other people’s capacity for gratitude.’

  ‘Not any more, I haven’t.’

  ‘I disagree; you asked her to betray her husband – and a brand new husband at that. You didn’t even give her time to become disillusioned with him.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you think it’s funny. I stopped that ungrateful cow from being disembowelled while she was still alive by that mad bastard Picarbo.’

  IdrisPukke kept on eating a cake during this rant and when he’d finished eating put down his plate and said, ‘You know I’d forgotten what a drip you can be.’ Cale was startled but not by the refusal to grant that his resentment was entirely justified. ‘You think you’re so much above everyone else – don’t deny it.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ said Cale.

  ‘Then why are you so surprised that other people don’t live up to your standards? You can’t have it both ways, sonny. You need to make your mind up. Or in future stick to performing your magnanimous acts of self-sacrifice for the benefit of the heroic and exceptionally virtuous.’

  IdrisPukke poured Cale a cup of tea and tinkled the bell. It was a mocking present from Cadbury for Vague Henri, bought when he discovered he ordered high tea every afternoon.

  ‘You rang, sir,’ said the butler.

  ‘More tea, Lascelles,’ said IdrisPukke.

  ‘Very well, sir,’ said Lascelles and left.

  ‘You claim you expect nothing of others yet you clearly expect some of them to give up everything. Why?’

  ‘Only people I risked my life to save.’

  ‘There’s a difference between what people ought to do and what they’re capable of doing. You’ve never had a wife or a father to split your loyalties. I’m sure it cost her a great deal to turn you down which is why you should show some backbone and make use of her guilt. She’ll want to help you prove she’s not thankless.’

  ‘They should have trusted me.’

  ‘No doubt. But they were afraid.’

  ‘I know what it means to be afraid.’

  ‘Do you, now? You see I’m not sure that’s true – or not true enough.’

  Lascelles came back with the tea and after that IdrisPukke changed the subject.

  29

  ‘You’re still angry with me,’ said Riba, more statement than question.

  ‘No. I’ve had plenty of time to cool down. I realized I asked too much from you.’

  She was not convinced by his claim of forgiveness but it was equally necessary for her to act as if she were. Guilt and policy demanded it – her husband wanted to establish good relations with the newly powerful Cale.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘As you can see,’ said Cale, smiling.

  She said later to her husband, ‘He was pale the way yellow-green is pale.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Very well.’ There was a pause as she struggled to decide whether to tell him. But she wanted to – and desperately.

  ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You’re supposed to say: “How wonderful, my dear, I’m so very happy for you.”’

  ‘I am … I am happy for you.’ He laughed. ‘The thing is I can’t believe, not really, that a small person can grow inside another person. It doesn’t seem possible – that it could really happen.’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Riba, laughing herself. ‘When one of the maids let me see her tummy when she was seven months I screamed when I saw the baby turn over and her stomach bulging – it was like watching a cat in a bag.’ They both smiled at each other – affection, calculation and resentment layered one on top of the other. ‘Now you have to ask me when I’m due.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘When am I going to have it?’

  ‘When are you going to have it?’

  ‘Six months.’ Another pause. ‘Now you ask if I want a boy or a girl.’

  ‘I don’t really care.’

  She laughed again – but nothing, of course, could be the same.

  ‘I want your husband’s help.’

  ‘Then I’ll arrange for him to come and see you.’

  ‘I’m not being insulting, but I want actual help not what the Hanse have been offering up to now.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘You tell me. Better than that – show me.’

  ‘I’m just his wife. I can’t speak for him, let alone the Hanse.’

  ‘No, but you can speak to him. You can persuade him not to beat around the bund with me. There’s no time. I mean it. If he stays on the sidelines and I win I won’t forget – by which I mean I’ll close down the Hanse from here to the life to come.’

  ‘What if you don’t win?’

  ‘Then he’s got nothing to worry about, has he?’

  She was uncertain about what to say. ‘It’s not just a question of what he believes or wants. The Hanseatic League don’t have much experience of the Redeemers. They think their reputation is just scaremongering. That’s what they want to believe. You mustn’t say I told you this but they won’t send troops, not at any price. There’s nothing he can do about that – and if you ask for them the Hanse will keep you waiting for an answer for months.’

&
nbsp; ‘What can I ask for?’

  ‘Money, perhaps.’

  ‘I don’t need money – I need administrators, people who know how to order and supply, warehousing, delivery – all the stuff the Hanse knows how to do. I don’t need money, five hundred good people will do.’ It was a figure plucked from the air. ‘With so few it doesn’t have to be official. The Hanse don’t have to be seen in it. But I want them and I want them now.’ He looked at her, and smiled. ‘I lied about the money. I want the money as well.’

  As Riba got into her cab to leave she was watched from two storeys above by Vague Henri. He was remembering the time he hid behind a small hillock in the scrublands and watched her bathing naked in a pool, all gorgeously chubby curves but muscularly plump and wetly soft, and he was recalling the tingling in his chest as she unmindfully parted the folds between her legs. But that was another world.

  Two minutes later, Vague Henri joined Cale for what was left of afternoon tea.

  ‘How was it?’ he asked.

  ‘Nobody loves us,’ said Cale.

  ‘We don’t care,’ replied Vague Henri.

  That night Cale held Artemisia in his arms for the last time. If their nakedness and embrace implied warmth there was a great cold distance between them for all the touching of their skin. Cale, inexperienced in the reasons why she never closed her eyes any more when he kissed her face, was unsure what he felt or what to do about it: he’d never liked someone and then stopped liking them before. How could something so close as being inside someone – how strange it was, how strange – turn into such a vast distance so quickly?

  ‘I want to cross the river,’ she said.

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘That’s what people say when they’re about to say no – to their children, I mean.’

  He pulled away from her and sat up, looking for his cigars. He only had half of one left. He lit up.

  ‘Must you smoke?’

  ‘Worried for my health?’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  He didn’t reply but he did carry on smoking.

  ‘I want to go.’ Still he didn’t say anything. ‘I’m going to go.’ He turned to look at her. ‘I’m going to go, no matter what you say.’