The Last Four Things tlhogt-2

by Hoffman, Paul

  Kleist was in a dreadful moil himself, but knowing the Redeemers and their willingness to use lies against an enemy, he was still tormented by the hope that his wife and unborn were still alive. Now was not the time to give the Klephts hope. Only their belief that there was nothing left living for would do. He stopped them from rushing the Redeemers and persuaded them to wait till dawn and attack at his direction in such a way that they would exact the heaviest price. Meanwhile the taunts and gibes from the surrounding Redeemers in the dark were like a noble speech to honourable men as far as making the Klephts determined to die bringing as much mayhem with them as possible. Kleist knew the Klephts were lost but he had done his best and did not intend to lose himself along with them. He had done what he could but he had every intention of using the attack to push through on his own and find out whether or not his wife was indeed dead. It would not end for him here on this mountain in the back of beyond.

  Kleist gathered the ninety or so survivors and drew a map in the gravelly dust. Their situation was simple enough: they were trapped in a pass about a hundred yards wide with sheer sides and with the remaining Redeemers split equally between their front and rear.

  ‘We attack the Redeemers who’ve come up from the plain. Those are the ones we want, yes?’

  There were nods all round.

  ‘In my view we attack the line here in two wedges either side then try to break through and join up behind them. We’ll almost certainly fail to do even that but it will surprise them and you’ll kill more of them. If we can join up then we’ll have all the Redeemers in front of us. It’ll be a bloody sight harder for them if we can do that.’ His plan was probably hopeless – it certainly sounded pretty thin when he said it aloud – but with speed and surprise and the new desperation of the Klephts he might make the space to get away. He owed these people something but not his life – and they would have taken the same view about him. They wouldn’t have agonized about it either.

  ‘This is the best I can do,’ he thought. ‘Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. I can’t save them but I can save myself. That’s all there is.’

  He nearly broke as he went through the plan again but not quite – the still, small voice of survival screaming in his soul got him through.

  When he finished he divided the group into two with a few swaps for family reasons and placed himself on the right wing because he judged that group to have the better fighters.

  He did not want any shouting or noise of any kind to signal the attack and undermine the surprise so they led out a line of pack twine between the two groups. Kleist would give it a hefty pull when he thought it was just light enough for an attack. Kleist’s one concession to the finger-wag of his nobility was to tell them to head to a flagpost he’d place behind the Redeemers to show them where to regroup. He regretted making this promise as soon as he’d spoken but it meant he had a good reason to outstrip the others. Once he’d planted it they were on their own.

  It would have been too much to have expected the Redeemers to be unprepared but the circumstances were ideal for the Klephts given that revenge had made them careless of their own lives for once. They were quick and this was their ground. It was hard to judge what you could see and not see in the early light and the Klephts were nearly on top of the Redeemer lookouts before the shout of warning went up – each took a Klepht or two with them but the rest of the attackers did as they were told and silently rushed on to the camp itself already stirring but still surprised. Kleist, bamboo pole in hand, was already ahead and running into and through the camp and shouting ‘Retreat! Retreat!’ as if he were one of the Redeemers running away in panic. ‘Shut your mouth!’ shouted one centenar and pulled at his arm as he went past – but it never occurred to him that Kleist was anything but a scared young Redeemer. He pulled away and ran like hell. Just as he was about to clear the compound another Redeemer stepped in his way and knocked him over.

  ‘Show some -‘

  But what he was supposed to show was unspoken as Kleist stood up and knifed him in the chest in one movement, picked up his flag and was over the wall of rocks the Redeemers had raised to cover their rear, never expecting it would be used. It would make an excellent wall of defence for the Klephts. Kleist loosened the large red cloth of silk and stuck it into a crevice where anyone who made it through would see it easily. Then he hared off up the mountain, fast and agile as a goat and never looked back.

  A day later he was off the mountain. Another day after that he stood in front of the ten gallows of the Redeemers and the piles of ash and dry bones underneath them. He stood for a while then sat down with his head in his hands and cried. He was still there a day later when, in threes and fours, the twenty-one Klephts who had survived the fight in the mountains walked up and sat down next to him. Had he known the Klephts better he would have realized that it had never occurred to any of them that he would stay.

  They could not bury the women and children because the Redeemers were surely following. They left, promising to return, and went on as best they could.

  28

  Unusually for medicine men, who generally suspected each other of stealing their cures, Hooke and Bradmore got on like brothers, no doubt because the lines between their skills were so plain. It was clear that the wound must be correctly enlarged to make Hooke’s idea possible. He intended to build a set of hollow tongs in reverse and the width of the arrow. This would then be inserted into the wound and inside the hollow metal head of the arrow. Then by means of a screw the tip of the device already divided in two would slowly be forced apart inside the arrow shaft which it would grip tightly. The arrowhead could then be pulled out the way it had gone in. While Hooke went off to the foundry to make this subtle and tiny device, Bradmore set about enlarging the wound so that it could be introduced. First he made a set of probes from elder wood also the thickness of an arrow shaft, dried them and covered them in linen soaked in rose honey to prevent infection. The shortest probe first, he inserted them into Vague Henri’s wound and then progressively introduced longer probes until he was satisfied he had made a clear run to the bottom of the wound. This took three days and by the end of this hideously painful process, Hooke, through great trial and error, arrived with a device that he was satisfied would do the job. Coming to Vague Henri’s face he presented the mechanism at the same angle the arrowhead had first entered and, placing the tip of the mechanism in the centre of the wound, slowly pushed it the six inches inside necessary for the tip of the tongs to fit inside the socket of the arrowhead. They were obliged to move it about backwards and forwards a good deal. Then Hooke turned the screw at the top of the device hoping it would open at the far tip, grip the head and stay firm enough for them to extract it.

  They again began moving the device back and forth tugging firmly and, little by little, finally pulled the offending arrow out of Vague Henri’s face. Of the agony the poor boy endured it need only be said that the opium has not been grown that could dull the pain of that exercise.

  His suffering was not over anyway. The danger of such a wound was the terrible risk of infection, something concerning which Bradmore was a great genius. Once the arrowhead was out – and big enough it was once it was lying on a plate – Bradmore took a squirtillo and filled it with white wine and flushed it into the wound. Then he placed in new probes made of wads of flax soaked in finely sieved bread, turpentine and honey. He left this for a day and then replaced the flax wads with shorter wads and so on for another twenty days. Afterwards he covered the wound in a dark ointment called Unguetum Fuscum and concerning which he was very secretive. After this treatment had stopped hell no longer held quite the terror it used to have for Vague Henri.

  Bradmore had been appalled by the amount of opium Cale had been feeding Vague Henri and demanded he hand it over before he killed him, not least by causing him to explode – a terrible constipation having afflicted him as a result. He spent as much time as he could sitting with his friend, who was often in too much pain t
o reply or hallucinating even on the much more limited supply of opium Bradmore was prepared to give him. He instructed Cale to go into the market, almost as famous as that formerly of Memphis, and buy various types of food that he had never heard of and nearly all of which was extremely expensive.

  ‘You’ve bunged him up, you sort him out.’

  The trouble was that no one had any money – the question of Bradmore’s fee having been carefully avoided. Bradmore had assumed that the Materazzi had escaped with at least some of their renowned wealth. This was not the case, as Cale well knew, and what they did have was not going to be spent on ruinous medical fees for some boy. They had troubles enough of their own. Vipond agreed to create the impression to Bradmore that money was no object when it came to the treatment of Vague Henri but paying was going to be Cale’s problem. Cale’s one option was to sell a small ruby he had stolen from the diadem of a statue of the Redeemer’s Mother in the anteroom at Chartres. At least he hoped it was a ruby, or at least valuable.

  It was not his only financial problem. He had the Purgators as well as Vague Henri’s future to pay for. Part of him wished they just vanish but he knew this wasn’t going to happen. Not only were they devoted to him but he knew that having control of a hundred and sixty experienced fighting men would give him a good deal of heft in what was to come. But they had to be paid for and kept out of sight. If any of the Materazzi found out who they were there would be trouble.

  So the day after Bradmore’s removal of the arrow, Cale went off on his own to buy food to treat Vague Henri’s terrible constipation but also to see if he could get something for his ruby. While he was making his way among the numerous stalls and the incomprehensible cries of the sellers (‘Bompos! Bompos! Bompos! Tufradoluh! Chiliwillis luvilanascarleta! Mushrumps cheap enough, luvli, to cook for someone yu don even like!’), he noticed three shops together opposite a stall of carrots and parsnips and cauliflowers artfully composed in the shape of a face. In each shop was a woman at a table stitching clothes. He watched the first two for a couple of minutes but lingered at the last of the three, partly because the woman was much younger than the others but also because she was working at such an astonishing rate. He watched for several more minutes now, fascinated not so much by her speed as the almost magical skill with which she was stitching a collar to a jacket. He liked watching skilled people work. She looked up a couple of times at Cale – there was no glass in the window – and finally spoke.

  ‘Want a suit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then bugger off.’

  It was not his way these days to let anyone these days have the last word, even a girl in a shop, but he felt tired and ill. Coming down with something, he thought, best get on. He left and she did not look up from her work. After a ten-minute walk that would usually have taken five he made it to Wallbow Gardens. Unlike the usual commercial squares of Spanish Leeds there were half a dozen extravagantly liveried guards wandering about to warn off criminals from the twenty or so gold and jewellery shops that made up the square and which had now replaced Memphis as the centre of trade in the four quarters for dealings in precious metals.

  The first jeweller told him it was only semi-precious and worth about fifty dollars. This pleased Cale because it was clear the jeweller was lying and this must mean it was worth considerably more. When he told him he wanted it back the jeweller offered more but Cale thought it best to move on. The next claimed it was glass. The one after that again claimed it was only semi-precious and offered him a hundred and fifty dollars.

  Finally, and somewhat dispirited because he knew it was worth something but not how much, he went into Carcaterra’s House of Precious Metals. The man behind the counter was perhaps in his mid-thirties and probably a Jew thought Cale because the only people he had seen before wearing skull caps were Jews.

  ‘Can I help you,’ said the man, a little warily. Cale put the ruby or whatever it was down on the table. The man picked it up, interested, and held it over a candle, examining the light refracted through it with the quiet care of someone who knew what he was doing. After a minute he looked at Cale.

  ‘You don’t look well, young man. Would you care to sit down?’

  ‘I just want to know what it’s worth. I know already, mind, I just want to know whether or not you’re going to try and steal from me.’

  ‘I can try and steal from you just as easily if you’re sitting down as if you’re standing up.’

  As it happened Cale was feeling not just tired but exhausted. The black circles around his eyes were as bad as those belonging to the tragopan in the Memphis Zoo. There was a bench behind him and as he sat his legs almost gave way.

  ‘Would you care for a cup of tea?’

  ‘I want to know what it’s worth.’

  ‘I can tell you what it’s worth and give you a cup of tea.’

  Cale felt too shattered to be awkward. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘David!’ called out the jeweller. ‘Would you be kind enough to bring me a cup of tea – builder’s tea if you please.’

  There was a shout of acknowledgement and the jeweller went back to looking at the gemstone. Eventually David, Cale presumed, brought in a cup and saucer and was waved over to Cale by the jeweller. All three noticed that as he took it the cup and saucer began to jangle as if it was being held by an old man. David, puzzled, left them to it.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’ said the jeweller.

  ‘I know it’s worth a lot.’

  ‘That depends on your idea of worth, I suppose. It’s a type of gemstone called Red Beryl. It’s from the Beskidy Mountains and I know this not only because I am very well informed when it comes to gemstones but because that’s the only place they can be found. Do you agree?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do. And the thing is, the very interesting thing is, that time out of mind the Beskidy Mountains have been in control of the One True Faith of the Hanged Redeemer. Did you know that?’

  ‘I can honestly say that I didn’t.’

  ‘So this must either be very old – I’ve only seen two before today – or it’s been taken off the statue of the Mother of the Hanged Redeemer for whom this particular gem is, I understand, solely reserved.’

  ‘Sounds about right.’ Cale was too exhausted to try and invent anything and was impressed by the man’s knowledge and skill.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t deal in looted religious artefacts.’

  Cale finished his tea and, still jangling, put it down on the bench beside him.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know anyone who does?’

  ‘I’m not a fence, young man.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Cale stood up feeling not so much exhausted now as unutterably weary and walked over to the jeweller, who handed the gemstone back to him.

  ‘I didn’t steal it.’ He paused. ‘All right, I did steal it. But no one ever earnt something they stole more than me and Red Beryl here.’

  He walked over to the door. As he left the jeweller called out: ‘Try not to sell it for less than six hundred.’ And with that Cale shut the door behind him and was off into the square wondering if he had the energy to make it to his room.

  ‘You Cale?’ asked a pleasant voice.

  Cale ignored it and walked on not looking up.

  He tried to keep moving but the way was blocked by two hard-looking types he would have been wary of at the best of times. This was not the best of times.

  ‘And there are another three of us as well,’ said the pleasant voice.

  Cale looked at the man.

  ‘You’re the bloke from Silbury Hill.’

  ‘How gratifying you remember,’ said Cadbury.

  ‘Not dead then?’

  ‘Me? I was just passing by. IdrisPukke?’

  ‘Still alive.’

  ‘So it is true – only the good die young.’

  ‘And your owner – Hagfish Harry?’

  ‘It’s a coincidence – remarkable really – that you
should ask. Kitty the Hare would like a word.’

  ‘I have a butler now. He’ll give you an appointment.’

  ‘That’s enough cheek, now, sonny. My owner doesn’t like being kept waiting. Besides, you look as if you could do with a sit down. You’ve disimproved since we last met. If Kitty the Hare meant any harm to you we wouldn’t be talking now.’ Cadbury gestured the way and Cale went as gracefully as he knew how.

  Fortunately they didn’t have to go far. In a few turns they moved on to the rich houses of the canal district with their huge windows open to let the light in and along with it the envy of the passers-by. They stopped at one of the swankiest and were let in as if expected momentarily. Cadbury motioned him further into the house and into a large and airy room overlooking an elegant garden of box-tree mazes, espaliered fruit trees in vertical and horizontal cordons, cut knee and navel, nipple and nose.

  ‘Sit down before you fall down,’ said Cadbury pulling up a chair.