‘Which is why I must become Pope so that what is true and what I believe become the same thing. Why are you so interested in the Purgators?’
5
Kleist was singing wildly, happily off-key.
‘The buzzing of the trees and the cigarette bees
The soda water fountains
Where the bluebell rings
And the lemonade sings
On the big rock candy mountain
In the big rock candy mountain
The priests all quack like ducks
There’s a five-cent whore at every door
At dinner there is always more
And never was heard a discouraging word
In the big rock candy mountain.’
He reached down, casual like, to check the knife sheathed in a pocket of the horse’s saddle and went on bawling not with much respect for tunefulness.
‘There’s a lake of stew and whisky too
You can paddle all around it in a big canoe
In the big rock -‘
Then he was off, pulling the knife with him and running for a patch of blackberry briars. He leapt into the middle, his speed and weight carrying him, thorns scraping his skin red as he went. But the tangle of shoots was thicker than he’d realized and the older suckers in the middle were tough and thick-barbed and his headlong flight was painfully brought to a halt.
Powerful hands grabbed him by the heels and dragged him backwards out of the briars. They had to tug hard and it gave Kleist a couple of seconds to decide. He dropped the knife in the briars and then he was free and being dragged into the open.
Other hands grabbed his wrists as he kicked and wriggled. Once he was held fast he knew there was no point and stopped struggling.
One man stood in front of him, his precise features hidden by the sun in Kleist’s eyes.
‘We’re going to search you, so don’t move. Any weapons?’
‘No.’
Two hands, swiftly and cleanly, skilfully frisked him.
‘Good. If you had lied to us it would have been the last thing you ever did. Get him up.’
Kleist was pulled roughly into a sitting position and all five men, knives and short swords pulled, let him go in disciplined order. These people knew what they were doing.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Thomas Cale.’
‘What are you up to out here on your own?’
‘I was heading for Post Moresby.’ A hefty blow landed on the side of his head.
‘Say “Lord Dunbar” when you speak to Lord Dunbar.’
‘All right. How was I supposed to know?’
Another blow to teach him not to be lippy.
‘What would you do there?’ said Lord Dunbar.
Kleist looked at him – he was scruffy, dirty and badly dressed in an ugly-looking tartan. He didn’t look like any lord Kleist had ever seen.
‘I want to get on a boat and get as far away from here as I can.’
‘Why?’
‘The Redeemers killed my family in the massacre on Mount Nugent. When they took Memphis I knew it was time to go away where I’d never see one of them ever again.’ This was half true as far as it went.
‘Where did you get the horse?’
‘It’s mine.’
Another blow to the head.
‘I found it. I think it was a stray from the battle at Silbury Hill.’
‘I heard about that.’
‘Perhaps the Redeemers would pay cash for him,’ said Handsome Johnny.
‘Perhaps they’ll string you up when you try,’ said Kleist, getting another clip on the ear.
‘Lord Dunbar!’
‘Lord Dunbar, all right.’
‘Handsome Johnny,’ said Dunbar. ‘Search his horse.’ Dunbar squatted down beside him.
‘What are these Redeemers after?’
‘I don’t know. All I know is they’re a bunch of murdering bastards, Lord Dunbar, and the best thing to do is get away from them.’
‘The Materazzi haven’t been able to catch us in twenty years,’ said Lord Dunbar. ‘It doesn’t much matter to us who’s trying to hunt us down.’
Handsome Johnny came back and laid an armful of Kleist’s possessions on the ground. There was a good haul. Kleist had made sure that however basic the purpose of anything he took from Memphis, it was all of the highest quality: the swords of Portuguese steel, inlaid with ivory at the handle, a blanket of cashmere wool, and so on, then the money – eighty dollars in a silk purse. This cheered the five men considerably. For all Dunbar’s boasting the pickings were pretty scant if their clothes and ragged state were anything to go by.
‘All right,’ said Kleist. ‘You’ve got everything I own. It’s a pretty good drag. Just let me go.’
Another blow.
‘Lord Dunbar.’
‘We should shallow the cheeky little sod.’
Kleist didn’t like the sound of that.
‘Let me take him back there,’ said Handsome Johnny. ‘I’ll save any trouble.’
Lord Dunbar glared at him.
‘I know what beastliness you want to do before that, Handsome Johnny,’ he shouted. He looked back at Kleist. ‘Get up.’ Kleist got to his feet. ‘Give us your jacket.’ Kleist took off his short coat, one he’d stolen off a hook in Vipond’s attendance room, soft leather and simply but beautifully cut.
‘You’ve been lying to me and I like that in a man,’ said Dunbar, admiring the jacket and mourning the fact that it was too small. ‘But you’re right about fair dos.’ He pointed to a roughish path. ‘That’ll take you in the general direction out of the woods. After that you’re on your own. Now bugger off!’
Kleist didn’t need to be told twice. He passed by Handsome Johnny, who watched him go with resentful lasciviousness and vanished into the woods with nothing but half the clothes he’d been wearing five minutes before.
*
‘You can’t replace three hundred men carefully chosen for their great qualities and bound to you with hoops of steel with those degenerates in the House of Special Purpose.’
‘How else are we going to replace them? Do we have ten years?’
Bosco was not so green that he was unaware this was the first time Cale had spoken of them both in this way, and that he was being charmed. Still, that he was making an effort to be deceptive was encouraging.
‘No, we don’t.’
‘Are there any records?’
‘Oh, each Redeemer has a tally codex. Everything about him is recorded there.’
‘Do you have one?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’d like to read it.’
‘This idea won’t work.’
‘It might not work. They’re standing on the edge of death followed by eternal hell where devils every day will disembowel them with a spade or swallow them alive and shit them out for all eternity. Save them from a fate like that – those are the hoops of steel that’ll bind them to me.’
‘These are deviants. The very boilings of moth and rust.’
‘If they don’t come up to snuff, I’ll return them for execution. These are trained men abandoned by everyone. At least give me their tallies.’ Cale smiled, the first time in a long time. ‘I don’t even believe you disagree.’
‘Very well. We’ll both read the tallies. Then we’ll see.’
‘Tell me about Guido Hooke.’
There was a knock at the door which opened immediately followed by a Redeemer who nodded obsequiously to Bosco and dumped a large file in a box, marked ‘INTRO’. He nodded again and left.
‘Hooke,’ said Bosco, ‘is a nuisance to me and of no real concern to you.’
‘I want to know about him.’
‘Why?’
‘A hunch. Besides, I thought I was to know everything.’
‘Everything? You see that file Notil just bought in. That’s just a day’s paperwork – a slack day. Stick to what you’re good at.’
‘Tell me.’
&nbs
p; ‘Very well. Hooke is a know-all who thinks he can understand the world by the book of arithmetic. He is a great inventor of engines. He is brilliant in the way of the best of such people but he has struck his gonk once too often into things that he had much better not have done. I’ve left him alone because I admire his mind, and for ten years. But his declarations about the moon contradicted the Pope, I warned him to leave and suggested the Hanse might be willing to employ him. While I was in Memphis he went to Fray Bentos to take ship but was caught by Gant’s men in a hoteli waiting to embark.’
‘Why didn’t they take him to Stuttgart?’
‘Because in Stuttgart he wouldn’t be my responsibility. Now I must either make an Act of Faith of him or be seen to defy the ruling of the Pope.’
‘But you said the Pope was wrong.’
‘You are being deliberately slow.’
‘What kind of engines?’
‘Blasphemous engines.’
‘Why?’
‘A machine for flying – if God had meant us to fly he would have given us wings. A wagon cased in iron – if God had meant us to have armour we would have been born with scales. And for all I know, or care, a machine for extracting sunlight from cucumbers. Most of the drawings he’s made are fantasies. His idea for a hopiocopter that flies is twaddle. It doesn’t look as if it could move along the ground, let alone fly through the air. But I have made use of his water gate in the east canal.’
‘If God had intended there to be water gates wouldn’t he have made water flow upwards?’ Bosco would not rise to the bait.
‘If you want to know about him read his tally. He’s a dead man, whether you do or don’t.’
Kleist had been forced to hang around until the next day before Lord Dunbar and his men left and he could collect the knife he’d dropped in the bramble bush. He thought carefully about what to do next. He was not interested in revenge, not being the indulgent type – it was dangerous and Kleist did not believe in risk. On the other hand he was in the middle of some bumhole wilderness with no horse, no chattels, no money and few clothes. All in all he decided he had to follow them but he wondered repeatedly over the next three days if he hadn’t made a mistake. He was cold and hungry. He was used to that, but though the surroundings were green enough he came across no standing water. Weakness from lack of water could take you quickly and once he lost touch with Dunbar he was finished. He had one break: he found some bamboo – spindly but good enough. Probably. He cut himself a section five feet long and a dozen thin poles and hurried to catch up. Following for the rest of the day he found a small puddle of green and brown water and decided to risk it. He’d tasted worse but not often. Dunbar and his men stopped an hour before darkness and Kleist had to work quickly in the fading light. The bamboo was still green, which made it easy to cut it into thin lashings to twist and use for a bow string. Then he split the bamboo down the middle into three staves, each one shorter than the last. By the time it was dark he’d bound one stave on the other with the lashings like the leaf spring of a cart. He slept little and badly when he did. The next day he began work as soon as it was light, following as they moved off, and finished the bow as they stopped for a couple of hours at midday. He would have liked to recurve the ends for more power but there wasn’t time – it was a complicated process. The sun came out and tormented him with thirst but while it desiccated him it did the same to the bow, drying it fully and binding everything archer-tight. There was flint enough lying around and it took only ten minutes to make an arrowhead.
A maggoty crow provided the feathers for the fletch, but crow feathers were hard to work and he’d wasted most of the best getting the technique right. Binding them accurately with the bamboo and twine was a bastard. Still, while Redeemer Master Arrowsmith Hart would have given him a good hiding for the results, they weren’t too bad all considered. Good enough as long as he could get in close to cause some serious evil. He was exhausted, thirsty, hungry and in a foul temper. A few quick practice shots out of sight eased his weariness with a mixture of satisfaction at his skill and a douse of malice. But he’d let them get too far away and thinking he’d lost them almost walked into the camp they’d hidden in a thickish cloud of trees. In the light that remained he only had the time to crawl around half of the campsite and see what was what. By then he had placed four of them but not the fifth. Sunset meant that the hoped-for attack would have to be delayed. He would have preferred to wait out the night where he was so as not to risk a re-approaching in the morning. But the failure to spot the fifth man meant he thought it better to withdraw a few hundred yards. Tricky either way and a bloody nuisance.
Nine hours later and with a splitting headache he was back and watching. Still only four men but the one missing yesterday was back and Lord Dunbar was gone. Frustration and excitement and fear made the hammering in Kleist’s brain seem like it would break his skull but he daren’t do a thing until all five were together. And then, around eight, Dunbar crawled out of what looked like a large bush at the edge of the camp. In a few seconds he was urinating at the edge of the camp and shouting orders for them to strike it. Arrow into bow, string pulled, the huge power of his right arm and shoulder and back tensed and a deep breath and then loose. A scream from Dunbar as the arrow took him in the left hip. Three-second pause – the other four stared. ‘What?’ called one.
Another arrow hit Handsome Johnny in the mouth and he fell back waving his arms. A third raced off, slipping and sliding in terror to the cover of the trees. An arrow, pulled badly, hit him in the foot and he hopped the last few yards, shouting in pain, and vanished into the trees. Another unscathed raced out of the camp in the other direction. The fifth man in the almost centre of the camp did not move. Kleist took aim, the bow creaking with the bend and let loose into the middle of his chest. A dreadful gasp of anguish. He bowed another arrow and drew it back, carefully and quickly making his way into the camp, moving the point back and forth over the points of threat. Handsome Johnny wasn’t going to be any trouble. The man kneeling with his head bowed was still groaning but there was now a strange whistling sound alternating with each indrawn breath. No one could fake that noise. He wasn’t going to be any trouble either. He just wished the sound would stop. Dunbar, lying on his side, was a dreadful white colour, lips bloodless.
‘I should,’ said Dunbar, softly, ‘have killed you when I had the chance.’
‘You should have left me alone when you had the chance.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Any weapons?’
‘Why should I tell you?’
‘Fair enough.’ Nervous, Kleist kept watching the trees. This was too risky.
‘This could take hours. Finish me.’
‘So I should, but it’s easier said than done.’
‘Why? You did for those two without much problem.’
‘Yeah, but I was angry then.’
‘When all’s said, I let you go. Finish it.’
‘Your men will be back. Let them do it.’
‘Not for hours. Maybe not at all.’
‘Well I don’t want to, see.’
‘You’d best be ...’
There was a loud ‘THWACK!’ as Kleist loosed the bow almost point blank into Dunbar’s chest. His eyes widened and he breathed out for what seemed like minutes but was only a few seconds. Fortunately for both of them that was that.
Behind him the man on his knees still groaned and whistled. Kleist dropped to his knees and heaved. But there was nothing in his stomach to come out. It was not easy to keep on retching and keep an eye on the trees. He dropped the bow – he needed his hands free to search his new possessions and claim his old. He stood up slowly and screamed.
Standing five yards away was a girl. She looked at him wide-eyed and then threw herself into his arms and burst into tears.
‘Thank you! Thank you!’ she sobbed, hugging him as if he were a lost parent, her hands clutching him with desperate relief and gratitude. She kissed him full on the lips, then
pushed herself into his chest, her hands squeezing his upper back as if she would never let him go. ‘You were so brave, so brave.’ She stepped back to examine him, eyes brimming with admiration.
It would not have taken a talented student of human nature to have read Kleist’s not only astonished look but also the deep shiftiness of his expression as she looked adoringly at him. He watched the understanding that he had not arrived to rescue her move over her face like a fast sunrise. The admiration washed out and her eyes began to become wet with tears. It was not often that Kleist felt mean-spirited.
She stepped back rather more than the emotion of her discovery warranted and produced the knife she had lifted from Kleist’s belt while she was so gratefully hugging him.
The look of astonishment and anger on Kleist’s face was so comic in its effect, the girl burst into laughter.
His face went red with anger, which only made her laugh harder. Then he stepped forward, knocked the knife out of her hand and punched her in the face. She went down like a sack of coal and fetched her head a nasty blow. He picked up the knife, keeping his eyes on her, then gave a quick scan of the trees. Things were getting out of control. Her expression now was one of shock and pain at her bloody nose. She sat up.
‘Laughing on the other side of your face now.’
She said nothing as he backed away and started examining the bundles around the camp for his own stuff and anything else portable. The man on his knees was still moaning and his punctured lung still whistling.
The girl started crying again. Kleist carried on searching. In what must have been Lord Dunbar’s pack he found his money. Otherwise the pickings were scant. Their lives as robbers can’t have been up to much. And they only had three horses, including the one they stole from Kleist. The girl’s crying became louder and more uncontrollable. Along with the groan and whistle of the kneeling man it was getting on Kleist’s nerves. But more than that.
The tears of a woman are an alcahest to the soul of man, Redeemer Fraser had once said to him. A tearful bitch can dissolve all a man’s good judgement in its liquid gerrymandering.
The Last Four Things tlhogt-2 Page 6