by Paul Hoffman
Two days later Kleist and Daisy were lined up in their heavily guarded train, with Cale and Vague Henri there to see them off.
‘What’s to stop me lepping off with the money?’ said Kleist, hands shaking like an old man.
‘Because,’ said Cale, ‘you can trust us.’
‘Trust you?’ said Kleist, ‘Oh, right. Trust you.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Daisy. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Tell you later.’
‘I’ve written to Riba,’ said Vague Henri. ‘She’ll be all right.’
‘And if she isn’t?’
‘Mrs Kleist seems to have her head screwed on. You’ve got money – you’ll work something out.’
‘Thanks,’ said Kleist, and seemed to mean something particular by it, but Cale wasn’t sure what.
He shrugged, awkward.
Holding the little girl, Daisy kissed both of them on the cheek but said nothing. Then Cale and Vague Henri watched them leave, a strangely desolate experience for them both.
36
Over the next two weeks the man-made ridge from the Little Brother loomed towards the top of the Sanctuary walls while Vague Henri practised climbing in the dark with his hundred volunteers. One man died on the first night, screaming as he fell, a noisy accident that would have had the lot of them killed if it had been the real thing. A climb of this type would only be possible with the right kind of half-moon – if they could see too easily then they could be seen too easily. Luckily the right phase was expected at the same time as completion of the ramp. It was decided to climb in small groups of ten further around the side of the Sanctuary where the climbers would be mostly obscured from any watching guards. They’d collect on the mountain just below the walls and then move up as it became dark; one of Artemisia’s alpine climbers could take a line to the top and pull up a rope ladder designed by Hooke.
‘It’s the stupidest bloody thing I’ve ever seen,’ said Cale.
‘Mind your own beeswax,’ replied Vague Henri.
As the ramp came closer the builders became more vulnerable once again to the arrows, bolts, rocks and boulders thrown at them by the Redeemers – an assault as hideous as it was desperate. They slowed the progress but it was not enough, as the Redeemers must have known. Then, twenty feet from the walls, construction stopped. To complete it would have allowed the Redeemers to attack across it themselves. Hooke had provided a wooden bridge affair, covered in on the roof and at the sides and about forty feet long. When Cale decided to attack, the bridge would be pushed along the ramp to close the gap, like a plank going over a river. It was wide enough to take eight soldiers shoulder to shoulder. Hooke had also provided an unpleasant way of clearing away anyone in front of the bridge, a variation on Greek fire. He had built several great pumps to spray a large area in front of the emerging soldiers, which would cover every Redeemer within fifty yards in a liquid fire.
‘God forgive me,’ said Hooke.
‘Just remember they’d happily do the same to you – they would’ve done it already if I hadn’t saved your skin.’
‘That’s supposed to make me feel better, that I’m no worse than they are?’
‘Suit yourself. I don’t really care.’
The last few days before the attack over the ridge passed at a feverish speed, an unpleasant sensation for Cale and Vague Henri, as if they were rushing towards something out of their control. Now that it was coming, what they were doing seemed unbelievable to them. They were going back to the place they hated most in all the world and yet which had made them; and they were going to clean it out. Two days away and they were pin-eyed with agitation – but also self-possessed and still.
IdrisPukke, who had returned to witness the taking of the Sanctuary, was made uneasy by the two boys, though tense enough himself. ‘They were like the old adage,’ he said later to Vipond. ‘Those houses that are haunted are most still – till the devil be up.’
If there’d been any moisture in the air you would have said there was a storm coming. At night the grasshoppers stopped their usual throbbing racket. There seemed to be fewer sand-flies trying to get at the moisture in the soldiers’ mouths.
People with the luxury of living quiet lives look down on melodrama, on sensational action, on exaggerated events intended to appeal to coarser emotions than their own. The life they lead, they think, is real: the day-to-day ordinary is how things truly are. But it’s plain to anyone with any sense that for most of us, life, if it’s like anything at all, is like a pantomime where the blood and suffering is real, an opera where the singers sing out of tune, wailing about pain and love and death while the audience throw stones instead of rotten fruit. Delicacy and subtlety are the fantastical great escape.
It was late afternoon when Vague Henri came to see Cale before he started the climb up to the Sanctuary walls.
‘Can’t believe,’ he said, ‘I’m trying to break back into that shithole.’ Cale looked at him.
‘I wanted to run your funeral arrangements by you.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘I thought we’d wrap you up in a dog blanket and dump you out of the crapper in the West Wall. If I can get a band together we’ll play “I’ve Got a Luverly Bunch of Coconuts”. You’ll like that.’
‘You’re not,’ said Vague Henri, ‘a very nice person.’
‘I’m telling you not to go on with this bloody bollocking bollocks, aren’t I? Those girls are dead and if you go up there you’ll be as dead as them.’
‘I’m touched that you care.’
‘I don’t care. Don’t think it. I just feel sorry for you, that’s why I’ve put up with you all this time.’
‘If I don’t go I won’t be able to sleep at night. That’s the honest truth. I’m afraid not to go.’
‘You’ll get used to it. You can get used to anything. And there are worse things than not being able to sleep.’
‘Can’t stop now – it’d look bad.’
‘I’ll have you arrested.’ It wasn’t a threat but a plea.
‘No. Don’t do that. If I found out they were alive I’d hate you.’
‘Why?’
‘I just would.’ Vague Henri smiled. ‘Give us a kiss.’
‘No.’
‘Your hand then.’
‘What if it’s catching, what you’ve got?’
‘Not you. You’ll be all right.’
‘But you won’t.’ He was angry now that he could see persuasion wouldn’t work. ‘You’re still a Redeemer, that’s it.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, you’re not a fucking swine, not you, but you can’t wait to sacrifice yourself for something. It all went into your head, all that camel-shit about …’ He stopped, unable to find the words. ‘You’re just another martyr – and don’t worry I’ve got a martyr’s funeral ready for you – we’ll sing “Faith of Our Fathers” … We will be true to thee ’til death … Remember that bollocks? Do you want it before or after the coconut song?’
‘You have been practising that, haven’t you?’
‘Just go – I can’t be bothered with you any more.’
‘I’ll be all right. I can feel it.’
‘Yes? Fine. Go away.’
‘I think you’d come with me if you could.’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘You say it because you have to say it, being you.’
‘That isn’t it. All things being equal, and if it didn’t involve a terrible risk to my own life, then yes, I’d help you. I like to see good deeds done, I do, but your price is too high. I can see I’m a disappointment to you – but the honest truth is that I’d rather live than see justice done.’
Vague Henri shrugged and went off to climb back into the Sanctuary.
Cale had felt exhausted before Vague Henri came to say whatever it was he’d come to say. Now he felt as if he’d been wrung out. After he’d taken the Phedra and Morphine to deal with Kitty the Hare he took Sister Wray’s advice not to use it much
more seriously. He felt sometimes as if he was so weak that he might just stop breathing. When they were younger, Vague Henri had heard from one of the Redeemers that a sudden loud noise could kill a locust. They tried, dozens of times, but it never worked. Now he felt as if a sudden loud noise could see him off quite easily. All the more reason, then, to stay away from the Phedra and Morphine. But he knew he couldn’t get through the next twenty-four hours without it. Just once more, he thought. Wipe the Sanctuary clean and then off to the Hanse with all the swag and then it’s cucumber sandwiches and cake for ever and ever.
He had a couple of hours’ sleep, though his guard had to wake him, and then took exactly the dose of the drug that Sister Wray had instructed. By now he realized she hadn’t been exaggerating about its poisons building up – every week now, sometimes for half an hour at a time, he had the sense that someone was frying something in his head.
Half an hour later he was standing on top of the Little Brother as Hooke finished preparing his huge wooden tunnel for its final move onto the walls of the Sanctuary. The peak of the Little Brother had been built up by forty feet, so that the tunnel could be pushed downhill to the gap between the infill and the walls that the tunnel would bridge, allowing New Model Army troops to spread out quickly and in large numbers. There was no hiding the plan from the Redeemers so no guesswork was needed to see that they would do everything to stop the attack where it began. Establishing that bridgehead was going to be a murderous business. It was the attackers’ only weak point – something that wouldn’t be lost on Bosco.
The assault began as soon as it became light in order to give them all the daylight possible. Cale expected a disaster of some kind but, though there were a thousand decisions to be made, there were no earthquakes or sudden plagues, no mysterious parhelions to disturb the superstitious. There was only mounting dread at what was coming.
At just before five, Hooke came to tell him they were ready. Cale walked up the last few feet to the top of the Little Brother and looked across to the Sanctuary. His heart beat faster, his head felt as if it were bursting as he looked out over his former home, seeing the still shadowy places where he had spent so many thousands of days in fear and dread and misery. So much cold, so much hunger, so much loneliness. He stared for a long time. Such a shattering moment called for a great shout. But something caught his eye inside the Sanctuary, to the right. It was the quarter where the girls were kept. From its furthest edge a spidery line of smoke wafted gently into the air. He gave the slightest of nods to Hooke and it began.
‘Ready!’ called out one of the centenars.
‘Set!’
‘Go!’ A huge cry of HEAVE! went up. The enormous structure shook but didn’t move. HEAVE! Again it shook but again nothing. HEAVE! This time it shifted a few inches. HEAVE! Now a foot. HEAVE! Now two. Now properly onto the reinforced slope the tunnel went with the pull of the earth. But the worry was about stability not speed. Men rushed back and forth between the front and sides of the tunnel, calling to each other and to Hooke, looking for the rubble to give way and let the tunnel dig in or some other disaster they hadn’t thought of. A couple of times they had to stop and levers, thirty-foot long and by the dozen, were brought to lift the structure where it had cut into the still loose soil. But there was no attack from the walls. Cale would have been pouring everything he could onto the heads of the attackers. And all the time, one after the other, fires were started along the edges of the ghetto where the girls were kept.
‘Where are the Redeemers?’ asked Fanshawe as they headed into the hut where they kept the maps of the Sanctuary. Inside were half a dozen officers from the New Model Army and three Laconics, led by Ormsby-Gore. IdrisPukke was also there.
‘I don’t know, but they won’t be doing anything pleasant, I’m sure of that.’ He decided to change his plan. ‘I want five hundred of your men to go in right after the first rush.’
Fanshawe looked over at Ormsby-Gore. ‘All right with you?’
‘That isn’t what was agreed,’ said Ormsby-Gore.
In a formal sense there were no soldiers less cowardly than the Laconics. But in practical terms it was as if they were rather chinless. The problem was that it took so much effort and time and money to engineer one of these hideous killing machines, and there were so few of them, that though they were happy to die, they weren’t all that willing to fight. Each one of these monsters was as valuable as a rare vase.
Cale, made even more bad-tempered than usual by the drugs and what might be happening to Vague Henri, looked Ormsby-Gore directly in the eyes, not a wise thing to do under the best of circumstances. ‘There are no agreements here,’ said Cale. ‘You do as I say or else I’ll cut your bloody head off and kick it down the mountain.’
There are people you can say this kind of thing to and people you can’t. Laconics in general, and Ormsby-Gore in particular, belonged to the category of people you can’t. The last syllable of the last word was barely out of Cale’s mouth when Ormsby-Gore, exalted among an already exalted society of homicidal freaks of nature, pulled a knife and stabbed Cale in the heart.
37
Or would have done if it had been anyone other than Thomas Cale who was made wildly hyperactive by a drug that had a fair chance of killing him at some time in the next twenty-four hours. The speed and power of the blow was Ormsby-Gore’s undoing. Missing his chest by a fraction, Cale spun his attacker round, pulled him in close and had his own knife at his throat. The onlookers might have been astonished by the speed of what had just happened but what held them in absolute silence was the barking mad expression in the boy’s eyes.
Even IdrisPukke remained silent, fearing that any movement or sound would set Cale off. From outside there was silence for the first time in hours. How long a second is when life or death is in the room. Then came an enormous SNAP! from outside, followed by a crash and the cry of a furious engineer.
‘The fucking fuckers fucking fucked!’
No one in the tent said anything and no one moved. Except Cale. Unable to contain himself at the heart-rending exasperation of the engineer he started laughing – not the mad hysterical giggle of the frenzied lunatic but the ordinary laughter of someone struck by the absurdity of what was happening. Fanshawe took his chance.
‘I’m just going to take away Ormsby-Gore’s knife,’ he said softly, holding up both of his hands. ‘You understand that, my dear fellow, don’t you?’ Ormsby-Gore stared at Fanshawe in a manner that indicated he did not understand in any way whatsoever. The trouble with people who are not afraid of death, thought Fanshawe, is that they’re not afraid of death. So he must find something else.
‘The thing is, darling’ he said, ‘if you don’t drop the knife I will, with Thomas Cale’s permission, take out my own and then I’ll cut your bloody head off and kick it down the mountain myself.’
For Ormsby-Gore this was quite a different matter: to be executed on the field of battle for disobeying an order would mean unforgivable disgrace and unending infamy for him and his family. He dropped the knife almost as quickly as he’d drawn it.
‘May I?’ asked Fanshawe, taking both Ormsby-Gore’s hands in his own to reassure Cale that he had him under control. Cale let him go and Fanshawe eased Ormsby-Gore to a steady position, moved him outside and quietly had him arrested and taken away by four of his own men. He went back into the tent.
‘Might I suggest that he be dealt with in whatever way you choose after the Sanctuary has fallen? It would be a pity to distract the troops, don’t you think?’ Fanshawe didn’t like to think how the Laconic soldiers or the Ephors at home would react to the execution of Ormsby-Gore but he cheerfully expected that Cale would be dead before it became an issue.
Cale didn’t say anything, giving barely a nod to signal his agreement, then went outside to find out what had caused the snapping sound and the engineer’s lament. A large container full of gelatinous Greek fire had been brought up to be loaded into the tunnel for the final push to the Sanctuary
walls. It was volatile stuff and didn’t take to too much shaking about. Unfortunately it had fallen off a rail on the top of the embankment. They had tried to ease the container back onto the rail using an oak lever. The snap was the sound of the lever breaking. The container rolling down the hill and smashing against a pile of rocks was what occasioned the heartbroken oath from the engineer.
Hooke, now used to the difference between a battlefield and a chemical workshop, had already called up a replacement, which needed only a few minutes’ work before it was moving quickly towards the tunnel.
‘Are you well?’ said Idris Pukke, who had followed him out.
‘It won’t happen again,’ Cale replied. ‘Probably. You might want to let people know it might be best not to disagree with me for a few days.’
‘I’m not sure that will be necessary.’
It wasn’t clear Cale had heard.
‘I’ve missed something – I’ve missed something important.’
‘What do you mean?’ IdrisPukke was alarmed – like everyone else he saw the fall of the Sanctuary as inevitable however costly.
‘Why aren’t they attacking? They should be attacking now. Bosco knows something that I don’t.’
‘Then stop.’
‘No.’
‘Why?’ But it was a question to which IdrisPukke knew the answer. ‘You told Vague Henri not to go. I told him not to go myself, for what it’s worth.’
Cale looked at him. ‘If we don’t go soon they’ll take him prisoner. Do you know what they’ll do to him?’
‘I can guess.’
‘I’m sure you can. But I don’t have to because I’ve seen it. Except this will be worse. They’ll burn him. In minimus via.’