The Last Four Things tlhogt-2

by Hoffman, Paul

  It was with the spade the Predikant burst through the wall of Purgators, shouting for his flock to follow, lashing with skill and holy madness from side to side. He took the top off the head of one Redeemer as if it were a Memphis lady’s breakfast egg. A mercifully instant death, it appalled the Redeemers to either side, courage gone as their comrade fell. The next man took the shovel straight in the face from a ferocious jab – his teeth and jaw split, his tongue severed. The next blow took off an arm, the next a foot. Now the gap he needed was opened and he lashed around him like not a bull or bear but like a pastor ordered by God to clear the seventh circle of hell. Cale had backed away to the left. He could see when God and nature had conspired in holy violence and were with a man in such a way that he was like a hurricane.

  Roaring with rage and pride the Predikant lashed on – the Folk were pushing in behind him now, hearts the stronger, their courage increasing. The shovel bit like a dog, hands split, haunches cut open. Ribs were sliced and the lights and liver fell into the dust – not even animals could die so cruelly. And still he came on, Folk spreading behind him and still Cale kept back behind the frightened Purgators. Then was the moment when all things were open. Here where the road split, where two fates were calling, where Victory beckoned and Defeat nodded him over. Then the Predikant’s mistake: calling on God he caught Cale’s eye and vanity killed him – Cale’s vanity and his own as their eyes met briefly and the Predikant dismissed him as only a boy. Turning as a short spear whipped past him and into the heel of a fleeing Purgator. Cale pulled it out of the poor man’s foot as if it were a present. As the Predikant ripped open the stomach of a Purgator who had stayed to fight instead of run, Cale grasped the javelin and raised it over his shoulder, took two steps and threw. Nothing you’ve seen was ever so graceful, power and balance combined to perfection. No bite from a snake was struck with such instinct. The spear took the pastor just above the groin. Splitting his bladder and smashing his pelvis it emerged from his buttock. Crying with anguish he fell to the ground, the blood and the urine pouring into the sand, like wine and like water, the steam of it rising. Cale remembered it always. Now he was shouting and urging them forwards and two of the Folk who’d seen that their pastor had died at the hands of the boy who was roaring came for him, instantly pumped up with vengeance. But only one made it – the other was taken by Purgators, their courage returning. The second man struck – the blow would have cut Cale in half had it landed. But colder and colder Cale watched his opponent like a man who was playing at fighting with children – the blows were just clumsy, ungainly and awkward. But the arrows came close now – one nearly took him and broke his attention and the moment of focus fled for a moment. The clang and clatter, the yelping and shouting brought him to earth and the gracefulness left him. The man saw him waver and gaining in confidence moved to kick at him. The blow swept past Cale, who kicked at his standing foot, grabbed at his waist and then pulled him downwards onto the sand. How long was the second as Cale took his time and bending him backwards reached for his knife. They struggled so, quietly grunting and gasping, Cale shifting his weight to get better purchase. Then he collected his strength and wrenching his arm free he struck. The Folkhusband’s body was shaking as Cale got to his feet and looked to gather the danger. The Folk had lost heart with the death of their Predikant. The arrows from the hill began again as they fell back. The Purgators pushed ever forward. The lives of the Folk could be counted in minutes. As to the details of the slaughter that followed not even Predikant Viljoen had described the pains of hell in such a lively manner. Already the flies were laying their eggs in the mouths of the dead and the dying.

  So on a poxy hill, in a scuffle between fewer than two hundred men in a place that didn’t have a name until it became a byword for Redeemer failure, an entire world was changed in the time it takes to boil an egg.

  Things for the Folk went from worse to even worse. Cale wasn’t the only one to make a blunder at the Drift. The Folk Maister watching from the west could not himself see the attack led by Cale but he could see the beginning of the charge down the hill ordered by the centenar in support of it when it was almost over. The most recent information he had been given was that his men were gathering to take the hill and that success was certain. The Redeemers he could see piling over the crest and out of sight were, as far as he was concerned, engaging in a desperate and suicidal attempt to recover a position already lost. Anxious to take advantage of what he reasonably regarded as a terrible mistake, the Folk Maister ordered his troops to cross the river from in front of the hill and attack the Drift from inside the U. Once the centenar recalled his troops and Cale established a new defence lower down, the attacking Folk found that they were playing to another Redeemer strength. Flights of bolts and arrows from the hill they thought they’d won now took them from the rear and from high above where they could easily be picked out. The few who took refuge in the trenches along with the fake Redeemers did not survive for long. Fighting in trenches was the third Redeemer strength. The Folk were shown as much mercy as they were accustomed to offering themselves. None.

  With such heavy losses and shocked by the peculiar way in which the Redeemers had fought, the Folk withdrew and attempted to use the mortars on the shoulder of the tabletop mountain to cover their retreat. This was when the Redeemer snipers Cale had left on the tabletop itself finally came into play. From what was now complete safety, the archers picked off half the Folk artillerymen before they realized that they could neither defend themselves nor remove the mortars. Abandoning them they fled to join what remained of the escaping Folk.

  Cale had made every judgement that day correctly, except for the one that would have made his brilliance and courage completely unnecessary. It was a lesson of sorts but of what kind he was unsure – never make a mistake, perhaps. He walked up to the top of the hill, where Gil was waiting for him. Cheers and God bless yous came everywhere from men he despised but had now been forced to risk his life to save and who depended utterly on him, as, he now realized, he did on them.

  Gil bowed only slightly but in such a way Cale that could sense some even deeper change towards him.

  ‘You have won golden opinions. Men, even degenerate men, find it hard not to love someone who has saved them twice.’

  ‘Well, we were very nearly even.’ Cale got down into the trench and looked back down the hill. He’d chosen the site from horseback some seven feet off the ground and from where he had a clear sight down its entire length. But at ground level it was obvious that there was a bulge in the middle of the field of fire which meant that until you were twenty yards away there was easily enough cover to attack the trench, protected from bolt and arrow. He was amazed at his own stupidity. How was it possible, when he had been so right about everything else, to be so witless about this?

  ‘They deserve an apology,’ he said to Gil, and for all his loathing of the Purgators he meant it.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut!’ said Gil, firmly, and then, worried, added an apologetic ‘sir’.

  ‘They can see my mistake.’

  ‘They can see you set up the battlefield to keep them alive and you came to their rescue when things went bad. It’s been a long time since this lot were victorious in anything. They won. They’re yours. You made a mistake and you put it right. What else can a general do?’

  ‘I don’t remember you being so forgiving on the Martyr’s training field.’

  ‘Train hard, fight easy.’

  ‘So, all that was just for my benefit?’

  ‘You’re alive and you won so I’d say it was.’

  ‘I’ve sent out scouts to make sure the Folk don’t double back. You’ll need to talk to them.’

  ‘No. You talk.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  And so it was that ten minutes later Cale stood on a rock in the centre of the U and tried to keep the hatred and resentment of them out of his voice. But they didn’t need much. He had risked his life for them and they were back from the
dead.

  By now, Hooke had walked down from the rise and had listened to the celebrations of the Redeemers and the reluctance of the boy they were begging to adore, all of their longings invested in what to them was the blank slate of Thomas Cale. Finished and in a bad temper Cale told Hooke to inspect the mortars now being brought in from the mountain and give him a report within an hour. Hooke bobbed his head, mocking.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about having to be faithful to people you hate. There are many different kinds of loyalty, Mr Cale,’ he said. ‘There’s the loyalty, for example, that the pig farmer owes to the pig.’ And while Cale was silenced by that he turned off down the hill to inspect the waiting mortars.

  An hour later Hooke was giving his report. He was holding a large bolt about three feet long in his hand. Around the barrel of the bolt twelve smaller darts had been lashed carefully side by side.

  ‘The lashings are made of ordinary twine, woven with rubber. You know what rubber is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Condamine tried to demonstrate it to the Pope at Avignon but the Archbishop tried to arrest him for witchcraft because it repelled water unnaturally.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with the lashings?’

  ‘Nothing. But rubber also stretches.’ He pulled a length of the twine and it expanded, not by much but enough to make it clear that he was right.

  ‘When it’s fired from the mortar, a line of cat gut attached to the bolt with wax loosens the rubber twine and it unravels, from what I could see, in about five seconds. The twelve darts simply fall away and follow the main bolt to the earth. There’s more to it, I’d say, but that’s the basic principle.’

  ‘Can you copy it?’

  ‘I don’t see a problem.’

  ‘Then do it.’

  ‘Except one.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Not a question of engineering, a question of theology. The Pope does not care for rubber. There has been no infallible pontifical ban Urbe et Orbe concerning rubber as such but there is great suspicion concerning flexible substances as not being natural. The attempt to arrest Condamine means that in common ecclesiastical law the use of rubber may be prima facie evidence for the practice of witchcraft.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I am sure that the position is unclear and I am sure that I wouldn’t want to take the risk. You, however, are better placed. Perhaps Bosco will make some sort of temporary ruling. Although I believe he and Cardinal Parsi are opposed.’

  Cale sighed. ‘How do you know so much?’

  ‘How do you know so little?’

  ‘If you’re so well informed, Mr Hooke, how is it you needed me to get you out of prison?’

  ‘Touché, Mr Cale. Nevertheless there are more ways than one to skin a cat.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have been working on an engine close to my heart.’

  ‘I thought it was engines that got you put in the House of Special Purpose.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So if you’re prepared to risk blasphemy, what’s the problem about witchcraft?’

  ‘Because I am ready to die for this engine but I am not ready to die for rubber string. If I’m going to risk death I want something in return.’

  ‘Something in return? Bosco told me the prescribed punishment for building blasphemous engines was to have all your skin removed while you were still alive and then dip you in a barrel of vinegar.’

  ‘The mere adding of years to life is not living.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember that. But you remember this: I own your very teeth, Mr Hooke.’

  ‘I am not ungrateful.’

  ‘Does that mean you’re grateful?’

  ‘It’s human nature to work in your own interests, no matter how indebted you are to others.’

  ‘So what does this engine do?’

  ‘As such it can do nothing. It is an engine I am making in the pursuit of natural philosophy. I wish to uncover the nature of things. But before you berate me, this natural speculation has at least one practical use that spins from pure enquiry. Will you listen?’

  ‘Do you have friends, Mr Hooke?’

  ‘None that are powerful enough.’

  ‘If I think you’re trying to take me for a fool I will discard you.’

  ‘Fair enough, Mr Cale.’

  Cale smiled and gestured for him to sit down. He did so but also bent to draw a circle in the dust.

  ‘Imagine this circle only two hundred feet in diameter and consisting of a fully enclosed pipe made of hardened brass. It is my belief that all matter is comprised of a single particle, an atom as I have named it, from which all things – earth, air, fire and water – are composed and made different solely by the various ways that nature has combined these atoms. But it follows, if my idea is correct, that only great power can undo the work of nature. I must find a way to make the purest substance on earth and form two balls of that substance and drive them at each other from opposite ends of the circular pipe and with such energy that when they collide they will smash each other into the atoms that alone make up their fabric and the fabric of all things.’

  ‘How do you know atoms exist if you need this to prove it?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hooke. ‘You are not merely a general of precocious gifts. You are a most intelligent boy.’

  ‘That friend I told you about, he told me that when it comes to flattery you should lay it on with a trowel. Perhaps you know him?’

  ‘Just because it’s flattery doesn’t mean it is untrue, Mr Cale.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I have arrived at the existence of atoms by mathematical speculations.’ Cale looked at him. ‘I can see you are unimpressed. Nevertheless, I have faith and numbers in my favour. But even if I’m wrong it doesn’t matter. The problem I face and have yet to solve is how to bring the two balls of pure substance together with such force that they split the glue of nature. It was the search for a means to propel a heavy object at many times the speed of an arrow that brought me into the House of Special Purpose and so close to a squalid death from which, I freely admit, you alone saved me.’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘I had spent nearly two years experimenting on a written formula for an explosive powder from China. I had only a smidgen of the powder, nearly all of which I was forced to use to satisfy myself that it would work. But the formula was crude – the ingredients and a few clues as to the way they might be combined poor stuff. I tried and failed many times but in the few months before I was arrested I had some success. A powder that made great flashes and smoke and light but with little in the way of force. But it frightened my assistants. They blabbed into some big ears. The Redeemers came back and found the powder and, well, one or two other things not easy to explain to men of that sort.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘A cadaver. Nothing untoward – it was brought from the executioner. I considered dissecting the dead to be a grey area – religiously speaking.’

  ‘They didn’t?’

  ‘It turns out that in religious terms the notion of grey areas is something of a grey area.’

  ‘So what’s your point?’

  ‘If I can have your protection in the business of developing the Chinese powder and money too, our hands can wash each other.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘If I can fire two balls of a pure substance at one another I can also fire a ball of iron at a man. Think of what such an engine would do. A man carrying such a device, even if he could only use it once, must wound or kill an enemy – or more than one. Think of the terror. He could discard it and fight on like any normal soldier but having killed or wounded the equivalent number of his opponents in the first moments of battle.’

  ‘You’re nowhere near making such a thing.’

  ‘I could be. Give me the space and the means.’

  ‘And how would I know whether you were giving me the run-around?’

  ‘I know my obligation,’ Hooke replied, of
fended. ‘But you can see that to achieve my life’s work I must be able to fire a solid object from a metal tube. The search for knowledge and the discovery of a great weapon are virtually one and the same. War is the father of everything. Besides, if you become a great general my life is protected. Correct?’

  ‘As long as you don’t take me for an idiot. You might take advantage of my ignorance of these things once but I’ll catch you out if you try and play on me – then you’ll be bobbing up and down like an onion in a vinegar jar. Understand?’

  ‘Your threats are not necessary.’

  ‘I think they are. Did you watch me fighting on the hill today?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I didn’t have any strong feelings about these men one way or the other. What are the Folk to me? Yet they’re dead, all the same, gone as if they’d never existed. I’ll think about it. Now, I’m tired.’

  9

  By now Kleist had spent nearly a month living with the Klephts in the Quantocks. It had taken some time to persuade him that he would be safe there. Although he’d never heard of the Klephts or the Quantocks he had come across the bad-tempered and touchy tribesmen, the Musselmen, who inhabited the Quantocks’ lower foothills. He had seen them once in Memphis and had been told to stay away from them and particularly the few women they brought down to repair the carpets of the very rich and draw up designs for new ones. ‘Go near one of their women and they’ll kill you whatever the cost to them. And savages that they are they’ll kill the women, too, just in case.’

  Alarmingly, Daisy had agreed that this was true and even more generous than it should be.

  ‘Musselmen are fanatics, loopy, wicked and bad. They hate their women and treat them like dogs but their religion curses them because, for all their fear that they are liars and sluts, their God has ordained that the wives and daughters contain all the men’s honour in a bowl inside their livers and that once it’s defiled then the only way they can get it back is to kill the woman and start again. Can you believe it? Even if the woman has been raped they strangle the poor bitch. Disgusting.’