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 unfortunate 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 t
he 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 bergere 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 the 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.
50
Bale helped himself to some soup. For the love of Mike, it was good! He hadn’t eaten anything at all in twelve hours. He could feel the richness of the broth replenishing his powers – rekindling his depleted energy.
He drank some wine, too and ate a little bread. But the bread proved stale and he was forced to dunk it in the soup to make it palatable. Well. You couldn’t have everything.
‘Are you getting tired, my dear?’ He glanced across at the girl.
She was standing on a three-legged stool in the centre of the room, a breadsack over her head and with her neck infibulated through a noose which Bale had constructed from a cowhide lariat. The stool was just wide enough to give her a fair base on which to stand, but the blow to her head had obviously weakened her and from time to time she swayed awkwardly against the rope, which, within reason, acted as a support for her neck.
‘Why are you doing this? I have nothing you want. I know nothing you want to know.’
Earlier, Bale had thrown open the salon shutters and the front door of the Maset to the night. He had also surrounded the stool with candles and oil lamps, so that the girl stood as if floodlit – visible for fifty metres in any direction except to the north.
Now he reclined as if on a divan, the saucepan of soup on his lap, the outlines of his body lost in the darkness outside the pool of candlelight, well out of any sight-lines afforded by the opened windows and front door. At his right side lay the Redhawk, its butt conveniently angled towards his hand.
He had chosen the three-legged stool because one shot from the Redhawk would be enough to topple the girl into the air. All he had to do was to shatter a single leg of the stool. True, she would kick and jerk for a minute or two, as the fall would be nowhere near long enough to break her neck – but she would eventually asphyxiate, leaving Bale ample time to make his getaway by the rear window while Sabir and the gypsy were occupied with trying to save her life.
None of this would be necessary, of course, if Sabir would simply come to terms. And Bale hoped that the sight of the girl would concentrate his mind on just that necessity. A simple transfer of the prophecies would do the trick. Then Bale would leave. Sabir and the gypsy could have the wretched girl. They were welcome to her. Bale never reneged on a deal.
In the unlikely eventuality that they came after him, however, he would kill them – but he was as certain as he was of anything that Sabir would capitulate. What did he have to lose? Some cash and a little fleeting fame. And to gain? Everything.
51
‘Tell me again what time he left.’
Yola groaned. She had been standing on the stool for over an hour now and her blouse was drenched in sweat.
Her legs felt as if they were filled with crawling parasites that paraded up and down her thighs and calves, nibbling as they went. Her hands were tied behind her and thus her only means of controlling her ever-wider swings was by means of her chin. When she sensed that she was on the verge of swaying, she would clamp the rope tightly to her shoulder with the underside of her jaw, counting on the tension of the lariat to keep her upright.
For some time now she had been wondering whether it would be worth testing the eye-man – letting herself fall on purpose. He was obviously waiting for Sabir and Alexi. So if they weren’t there to see her strangle, would the eye-man scoop her up and save her? Untie her, while she recovered, before using her again? Relax his attention for a moment? It would be her only chance of escape. But it would be an awful risk to take.
Maybe he would just amuse himself by watching her die? Then he might tie her back-up – string her from the noose – and nobody, at a distance, would realise that she was already dead.
‘I asked you a question. At what time did Sabir leave?’
‘I don’t use a watch. I don’t know the time.’
‘How far off from dusk was it?’
Yola didn’t want to antagonise him. He had already struck her once, after pulling her from the window. She was scared of him. Scared of what he was capable of doing. Scared that he might remember what he had threatened to do to her the first time they had met and repeat the threat to amuse himself. She was certain that the information she was giving merely confirmed what he already knew. That there was nothing new about it – nothing that could in any way prejudice Alexi and Damo’s chances of survival. ‘About an hour. I sent him off to catch another horse. He would have ridden off looking for Alexi.’
‘And Alexi would come back here?’
‘Yes. Without a doubt.’
‘And Alexi knows his way about the marshes? Knows enough to find his way back here in the dark?’
‘Yes. He knows the marshes well.’
Bale nodded. That much had been obvious. That had made all the difference. If Alexi had been travelling blind, Bale would have caught him. If only he hadn’t known about the Bac – then this entire charade would have been unnecessary. Bale could have taken the prophecies back to Madame, his mother and been acclaimed as a hero. The Corpus Maleficus would have honoured him. He, personally, might have been placed in charge of protecting the next Antichrist. Or of eradicating the bloodline of the New Messiah before the event. Bale was good at such things. His mind functioned in a methodical way. Give him a goal and he would st
eadily and painstakingly work towards it – just as he had done with the prophecies, over the past few weeks.
The Nostradamus prophecies as-1 Page 26