Admirers of the Laconic spirit and way of life (or Laconiaphiloidiods in the ancient Attic tongue) would regard the doggerel above as nothing more than street-urchin slander. But with the exception of the lines about coffins – which seems to be an entirely childish invention – the accusations in the song have strong backing from those less smitten than the Laconiaphiloidiods with this most strange of all societies. The Laconics, whose country resembled a barracks more than a nation, regarded themselves ‘the most free of all the peoples of the earth’ because they were dominated by no one and produced nothing of any kind whatsoever. They were a state where there was only one skill with which they were solely preoccupied: warfare. Healthy boys born into the Laconic peoples belonged to the state and at the age of five were taken away from their families – if such a thing could be really said to exist – and trained to do one thing, ‘kill or die’, until they reached the age of sixty something; it must be said, they rarely did. If they were not born healthy they were, as the gutter song rightly claimed, thrown into a chasm know as the Deposits. If the Laconics had written poetry, which they didn’t, little of it would have been about the pleasures or pains of old age. They paid for this single-minded pursuit of violence in two ways. At any one time up to a third of their number, which never exceeded more than thirteen thousand, were engaged in mercenary activities for which they were famously well paid. The bulk of the Laconic state was financed by the existence of the Helots. The term ‘slave’ is insufficient to describe the subjugation and bondage of these miserable peoples, which is what they were. Unlike the slaves in the Materazzi Empire and elsewhere, the Helots were not a mix of races captured here and there and sold on from owner to owner. They were conquered nations, subordinated in their entirety and who now farmed what had once been their own land and made goods for trade that were owned entirely by the Laconic state. The Laconics brought their children up in barracks to fear nothing but one thing and that was their Helots. Vastly outnumbered by these state serfs who surrounded them in huge numbers, their continued subjugation of the slaves slowly became as one thing with their obsession with war. The Helots made the Laconics’ single aim in life possible but were also the greatest threat to that life. Suppression of the Helots who had once been the means to wage war endlessly had now become the reason why it was now indispensable they do so. The vicious dog with razor teeth became obsessed with biting its own tail.
The Laconics were ruled by five Ephors elected from the small number who survived past their sixtieth birthday. The song’s reference to their alleged boniness is not borne out by any known historical fact. It is often said by those who detested the Laconics, and there were many, that the famous Laconic humour was humour at the expense of others, especially the physically disabled, whom they despised. This was not always true if the famous story about the Ephor Aristades is true. Once every five years all Laconic males were permitted to vote for the execution of any Ephor who had generally displeased them by his foolishness or pride, or indeed for whatever reason, the sentence only to be carried out if the votes against exceeded one thousand. Knowing that the number of votes for his death was rapidly approaching that number, the Ephor Aristades was asked by an illiterate citizen from the sticks, who had never clapped eyes on him, to write the name, if he would be so kind, of ‘that bastard Aristades’ on a clay tablet used for voting. It was considered greatly to his credit as a wit that he cheerfully obliged. He is said to have survived by only two votes. There was little else to laugh about for a child born into the Laconian state. The joke in Memphis was that the children thrown into the Deposits were the lucky ones. Once assigned to a barracks the food was as bad as that given to Redeemer acolytes but there was much less of it. This meanness was intended to make them ingenious in having to steal in order to stay alive. If caught they were severely punished, not for immorality but for showing a lack of skill in the execution of their larceny. There is a story that a ten-year-old having stolen a pet fox belonging to the Ephor Chalon with the intention of eating it found himself called into a parade before he could wring its neck and hide it. It is claimed that rather than reveal its presence and demonstrate his failure amongst his fellows, he allowed the fox to eat his entrails and dropped down dead without uttering a sound. Those who found this tale completely implausible before they encountered the Laconics were never quite as sure once they had done so.
The infamous black soup mentioned in the song was made of pig’s blood and vinegar. A Duena diplomat, a hired negotiator in the way that mercenaries are hired soldiers, having once tasted this concoction said to the Laconics who had given it to him that it was so revolting it explained why they were so willing to die. As such wits are prone to do, he repeated much the same joke about the Materazzi and their infamously difficult-to-please wives. The difference between the Materazzi and the Laconians was that the latter thought the joke extremely funny. Another oddity about this black soup, and a revealing one, is that while its taste can hardly have been better than the rancid fat and nuts of dead men’s feet – Cale, Kleist and Vague Henri never thought of this revolting slab with anything other than a shudder – it was well known that the Laconics regarded black soup as wonderfully toothsome and that even exiles pined for it in their absence as for nothing else.
If their sense of humour softens your opinion of the Laconics and you find it preferable to the fanaticism and cruelty of the Redeemers, or the arrogance and snobbery of the Materrazi, we now come to the darkest and most revolting of all the practices conceived by perhaps the strangest people in the history of all the world. Whereas all right-thinking people regard sexual intercourse between adult males and young boys as a crime calling out to the heavens for vengeance and punish those who commit such actions by death (the more horrible the better), in Laconia this perversion was not only tolerated but legally enforced. The older man who did not choose a twelve-year-old to use in this way would be heavily fined for failing to set a good example in manly virtue.
How such a disgusting, peculiar hurdy-gurdy came about I cannot say. They are also reported to have had an unusually high valuation of mothers, allowing these to express insulting opinions to every rank of man and even permitting them to inherit property – a custom, which it is said, gives much offence to their neighbours and for which they are much more often criticized than for the disgusting practice of compulsory pederasty.
All of this information had been given to Cale by Bosco in an embargoed testament which he had been told to keep strictly to himself. But one section of the document clearly included long before most of the other information in the testament particularly caught Cale’s attention, and was one he wanted to discuss with Vague Henri. It concerned the claim made by an exiled Laconian soldier who was reliably questioned in the document itself about the existence of the Krypteia – a small and particularly secret service made up of what he called ‘anti-soldiers’. Selected from the most ruthless and cruel young Laconians, they were encouraged to develop qualities of originality and independence of thought and actions otherwise discouraged in those who were expected to fight in massed ranks without thought of personal survival.
‘I wonder,’ said Cale to Vague Henri, ‘if that’s where Bosco got the idea for me?’
‘And I wonder,’ said Vague Henri to Cale, ‘if your head gets any bigger whether or not you’ll be able to fit through the door. Besides even if you’re right – just be grateful it was the only idea he took from them.’
Cale’s face wrinkled with pruny disgust. ‘Good God,’ he said.
16
‘I want to talk to the Maid of Blackbird Leys.’ This was a demand from Cale that expected a refusal and it was a reminder to Bosco that the destructive soul of his God made flesh was also an adolescent. There was satisfaction to be had from refusing to conform to Cale’s expectations.
‘Of course.’
There was a gratifying silence in response.
‘Now.’
‘As you wish.’ Bosco reached over to a
pile of a dozen parchments already imprinted with his seal and began writing.
‘I want to see her on my own.’
‘I have no desire to see the Maid of Blackbird Leys again I can assure you.’ More satisfaction.
Bosco made it clear that it would take at least an hour and a half to be cleared through the four levels of security that protected the ten occupants of the inner cells of the House of Special Purpose. He had to wait for fifty minutes at the last level because a messenger had to be sent back to Bosco to return with a letter of confirmation to confirm the letter Cale had brought with him. Forty of those fifty minutes were taken up by Bosco’s third pleasure of the evening as he let the messenger hang about outside his office.
Eventually the messenger returned and the keyholder let Cale first through one great door and then through to the Maid’s cell.
She had been lying down but sat up straight as the cell door opened, afraid as she had every right to be at such an unusual event.
‘Go away,’ Cale said. The keyholder tried to argue. ‘I won’t tell you a second time.’
‘I’ll have to lock you in.’
‘When I call you back.’ Cale paused to make his meaning clear. ‘Don’t.’
The keyholder knew exactly what this apparently mysterious warning meant because keeping Cale waiting when he called to be let out was exactly what he was intending to do.
In a terrible suppressed temper the keyholder locked the door and Cale put the candle he was holding on the table, no chair, that was the only other item of furniture in the cell. The girl, scrawny from dreadful food and too little of it, stared at him with huge brown eyes. They seemed bigger than they probably were because her hair had been shaved off – party because of lice, partly because of malice.
‘I’ve just come to talk to you. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Not from me.’
‘From someone else?’
‘You’re in the House of Special Purpose in the Sanctuary – of course from someone else.’
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Thomas Cale.’
‘I’ve never heard of you.’
‘I can see that you have.’
‘Unless you’re the Thomas Cale sent by God to kill all his enemies.’ Cale did not say anything. ‘God,’ she said, a rebuke, ‘is a mother to his children.’
‘I never had a mother,’ replied Cale. ‘Is that a good thing?’
‘Homo hominis lupus. Is that what you are, Thomas, a wolf to man?’
‘It would be fair to say,’ he replied thoughtfully, ‘that I’ve done my share of wolfy things. But just because rumours have reached you about me even in here doesn’t mean they’re true. You should hear what they say about you.’
‘What do you want?’ she said.
This was a good question because he was not sure. Certainly he was curious about how a woman had managed to anger the Redeemers in so many different ways. But the truth was he had asked Bosco for this visit more to annoy him than to satisfy his own curiosity. He had expected him to say no.
From his pockets – he could now have as many pockets as he liked – he began producing food: a pastie, half a small loaf of bread divided in two for convenience, a large slice of cheese, an apple and some gurr cake, and a bottle of milk. Her eyes, which already seemed to fill her tiny face, grew even wider.
‘I hope it’s not too rich.’
‘Rich?’
‘For your stomach.’
‘I’m not some bog trotter who never had a pie before or lived on rutabagas all my life. I’m a Reeve’s daughter. I can read. I know Latin.’
‘Is that what it was? Isn’t that the sin of pride?’
‘Being able to read?’
‘I meant looking down on the poor – it’s not their fault they never had a pie or some gurr cakes. I never had them much myself until recent times. That’s why I’m taking offence.’
By now he was smiling and she took her rebuke well.
‘May I?’ she said looking with a great covetous yearning at the food.
‘Please.’ She began eating but her intention not to stuff herself was lost in the sheer wonder of the pastie.
‘The food is sickening enough outside this place – it must be beyond belief in this shithole.’
‘Mnugh bwaarh gnuff,’ she agreed and kept on eating. He watched with alarm as the cheese – at least a pound in weight – started to follow the pastie. With some difficulty he took what was left of the cheese out of her fingers and put it on the table. ‘You’ll be sick. Give it a chance to go down.’ He held her by the shoulders and pushed her down onto the bed, giving her a moment or two to recover the equanimity of a Reeve’s daughter – whatever a Reeve was. It was as if the very soul of the food, the milk, the cheese, the anticipation of the honey in the pastry, was breathing new life into her. He waited for almost a minute and it was as if she was a near-dead thing restored to life – she seemed to have grown, her eyes no longer straining against her skull. They began to fill with tears.
‘You’re not the angel of death, you’re the angel of life.’
He did not know what to say to this and so said nothing.
‘How can I help you?’ she asked for all the world like the Reeve’s daughter in her father’s parlour brought out to impress the visitors with her piety and learning.
‘I knew all about the placards you wrote and put on the church doors. That you got other people to do the same. I want to know why.’
She might have looked like a dead thing but she was not a fool.
‘Will they use this against me in court?’
‘You’ve had all the hearings you’re ever going to have.’ He felt sorry for the brutality of what he’d said but it was out before he could stop himself. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ she said, barely audible. ‘Do you know when they’ll kill me?’
This unnerved him. He felt shifty and responsible.
‘No. I don’t know. I don’t think it’ll be soon. From what I know they’ll take you to Chartres first.’
‘Then I’ll see the sky again?’
This unnerved him even more.
‘Yes. For sure. It’s a hundred miles.’
There was a long silence.
‘You want to know why?’ she said at last.
‘Yes.’ Though now he didn’t want to know anything more about her at all.
‘About two years ago I sneaked into the sacristy at the church when the priest was away. I’m a very Nosy Parker – everyone says so.’
He nodded in the gloom but he did not know what a Nosy Parker was. ‘In the reservatory which he was supposed to keep locked I found a strong box he was supposed to lock as well. Inside were the Hanged Redeemer’s four books of good news. These were the words of the Hanged Redeemer as he spoke them himself to his disciples. Have you read the good news?’
‘No’
‘Have you talked to anyone who has?’
He laughed at such a barmy idea. ‘Of course not. What was a parish priest doing with the four books of the Redeemer? Only the Cardinals are supposed to read them and then only once in case they defile them with human understanding. There aren’t more than fifty of them and I can’t see them sharing with a priest from the parish of Bumhole-in-the-Dale. No offence.’
She did seem, if not offended, then certainly startled.
‘It was a copy. I’m sure it was the parish priest’s handwriting – he wasn’t a proper scribe but his script was careful.’
‘So it was done from memory.’ It was clear what he thought of this and it wasn’t much.
‘Don’t you care what it said?’ she asked, clearly astonished.
‘No.’
She would not be put off.
‘It said that we should love our neighbour as we love ourselves, do to others as we would be done by, that if someone strikes us on the left cheek we should turn the right one.’
‘Arse or face?’
‘It’s true!’
‘How do you know?’
‘It was written in the book itself.’
‘In some nutter Redeemer’s handwriting. They burn a dozen a year in the courtyard two hundred yards from here – madmen who’ve had the word of God revealed to them in a vision. The only difference is that your mopus had the sense at least to try and keep his gibberish locked away.’
‘It was the truth. I know it.’
‘That’s what they all say – what else?’
‘Peace and good will to all men,’ she said.
Cale laughed as if this were the most delightfully funny thing he had ever heard. ‘Pull the other one,’ he said, ‘it’s got bells on. “Obey and suffer ... Give in and take your kicking”, that’s more the Redeemer style.’
She looked at him eyes as wide, thought Cale, as that weird creature in the zoo at Memphis, the one with the index finger half the size of its body.
‘Those who hurt children are to be punished. It will be better for them if they had a millstone tied around their neck and be cast into the sea.’
Oddly enough he did not seem to find this so amusing and said nothing for some time. She sat on the edge of the bed looking frail and scrawny and he thought about what was going to happen to her and he felt bad about laughing at the things that had brought her here to this dreadful place.
‘I’ll do what I can to get some food to you.’ It was all the comfort he could imagine. She looked at him and it made him feel horribly old and bad, very bad.
‘Can you help me to get away?’
‘No. I wish I could but I can’t.’
Once outside the House of Special Purpose it was to find that winter had arrived at last and in the great square of the Sanctuary the new-fallen snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even. The choughs coughed in the leafless trees as Cale crunched past and the nail-toothed hunting dogs barked at the cold as if it were a burglar or escapee. Nothing could give the drably monumental buildings of the Sanctuary charm, but covered in snow and lit by the only fitfully clouded moon it had that night a frigid beauty to it – as long as you didn’t have to live there.
The Last Four Things tlhogt-2 Page 17