‘Conn Materazzi is a prospect, given time.’
‘Cale plotted our destruction and that of the Laconics. Not bad for a coal-carrying yob. If you think Conn Materazzi has that in him you must be the old fool that there’s no fool like.’
‘We only have his word for the defeat of the Laconics.’
‘We were there at Silbury to witness what Cale’s plans did to us.’
‘All excuses aside, that was as much luck as judgement.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘You can’t control him.’
‘No.’
‘He can’t control himself.’
‘He wouldn’t be the first. He’s young, he’ll get over it.’
‘You’re wrong about that. I heard him threaten her when he left Memphis and again tonight. He’ll never be free of her. People talk about children as if they’re in some way different from adults. But there isn’t any difference, not really. Just souls crazy for love. The lover and the killer are in him like linsey-woolsey – never to be singled out.’
‘Then get Arbell out of Spanish Leeds and Conn with her. Out of sight, out of mind. Then we use Cale to come up with a plan to deal with the Redeemers.’
‘Why should he help us?’
‘He hates Arbell because he loved her and saved her and still she gave him up to them.’
‘We all did that.’
‘Speak for yourself. And he didn’t worship the ground you walked on. It’s in his interests to strike a deal with us because there isn’t anywhere else he can go. With Cale directing a Swiss army there’s at least a chance for us and a chance for him. He’ll see that. Arbell or no Arbell, he’s always had survival on his mind.’
‘Isn’t he just a danger to everyone?’
‘Then we must help him focus his attention where he can do most damage.’
‘It’s not much of a plan.’
‘It is when you don’t have a better one.’
‘Did you know he’s been talking to Kitty the Hare?’
‘Yes.’
‘You liar!’ As if they were young boys again no offence was intended or taken.
‘Do you tell anyone else all your comings and goings?’ said IdrisPukke.
‘I’m renowned for my candid nature.’
‘Exactly so. If he’s going to save the rest of us from the Redeemers I hope to God he has his thumbs on as many scales as there are sea shells on the shore.’
‘Another threat to Arbell from the Redeemers would be useful – good excuse to encourage Arbell’s absence.’
‘Would Conn go with her?’
‘Too much to hope for. Besides, Zog won’t have a guttersnipe leading an army he’s paying for, whatever you think.’
‘Then he’s a fool.’
‘No one has ever argued otherwise.’
‘Can you control Conn?’
‘Yes,’ replied Vipond.
‘Enough to let himself become a front for someone who might be the father of his first child?’
‘Not an approach I was thinking of trying. Besides, we have an advantage.’
‘Which is?’
‘He doesn’t want to believe it. We must encourage that natural desire as much as possible.’
But their plan had an unforeseen flaw – though this was not in itself something that would have surprised either of them.
Part of Bose Ikard’s way of making the Materazzi feel unwelcome was to ensure the inadequacy of their accommodation. When it came to Arbell this involved a message delivered by putting her in rooms designed two hundred years earlier as living space for the then King’s new bride, the Infanta Pilar. The Infanta never grew above two and a half cubits (a cubit being the distance between the elbow and the fingers of an outstretched hand). Adored for her good nature, wit and generosity to the poor, she inspired numerous buildings in the resultant craze for all things Spanish that had given what was then mere Leeds its unusual additional name. Once a byword for all that was dismal (‘You look like Leeds’ was an ancient joke at the expense of the unhappy – and the expense of Leeds), the desire to please the tiny Infanta led to an explosion of exotic public and private houses in the Spanish style. The Infanta’s personal apartments were built by her doting husband to her scale rather than that of the giants who surrounded her. The result for Arbell was that while her apartments were certainly fit for a queen they were fit for a very small queen forty-two inches high. To the Infanta the ceiling was lofty, to Arbell there were many parts of her rooms where she had to bow her beautiful neck just ever-so-slightly.
It was the night after the dreadful banquet and Conn and Arbell were sitting down in her apartments. Given they were both tall this gave the proportions of the room a comic aspect as if they were sat in a place somewhere between a ship’s cabin and a large doll’s house.
Arbell was looking down at her breasts and stomach. ‘I feel,’ she said ruefully to Conn, ‘as if I’d swallowed the heads of three bald men. Big-headed bald men. God, how much longer?’
‘You look very beautiful.’
‘I made you say that.’
Conn smiled.
‘It’s true you did make me say it. But it’s true anyway.’
‘You lie so sweetly it’s almost a pleasure to be deceived by you.’
‘Have it your own way,’ he said, taking her hand.
‘Promise me you’ll stay away from Thomas Cale,’ she said.
‘I wondered how long before you brought him up.’
‘Now you know. Promise me.’
‘You forget that he saved my life. It’s not so easy to kill someone you owe so much to. He saved yours as well and that makes it harder still. So I promise – even if he was so rude to you.’
‘I’ll live. But I want to ask you something much harder.’
‘What?’
‘He is not so gracious. I want you to promise to walk away if he comes looking for you.’
‘And my pride?’
‘It’s nothing. It’ll pass. Pride is nothing.’
‘You say that because you’re a woman.’
‘And so I don’t have any pride?’
‘What makes you proud is different – so what’s possible or impossible is different.’
‘Will you take pride in giving Cale what he wants? He’s not stupid enough to provoke you when you’re in full armour. He knows that you’d have the advantage.’ Some flattery, probably true, was needed here. She had pushed him too far already.
‘And what am I supposed to do if he dares me?’
‘My God you sound like a schoolboy!’
‘If you choose not to understand.’ He was annoyed at being spoken to like this but allowances must be made for women and especially women in the late stages of pregnancy. ‘If I walk away from him then my reputation, the thing that I am, walks away from me at the same time. You tell me that you will continue to respect me – but will you?’
‘Of course I will.’
‘That’s what you say now. But I won’t have the respect of anyone else.’
She sighed and said nothing for a while.
‘I know what you are – you are courageous and skilful and daring.’ More necessary flattery – and also true. ‘But he’s not,’ she looked hard for the right word and failed, ‘he’s not normal. He doesn’t bring catastrophe, he is a catastrophe. His friend, Kleist – the one who never liked him – he said he had funerals in his brain. Well, it’s true.’
‘How is anyone to live without respect? What’s the point?’
She sighed again and moved her stiff neck from side to side and groaned. Look at yourself, she thought, as fat as gluttony. ‘When will it ever end?’ she said aloud and looked at her husband sideways. ‘You owe him your life.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then how can you honourably kill him? Let it be more widely known that he behaved bravely – more, praise his courage so that people will admire you more than they admire him. Make it clear that you are inevitably in his debt and everyone will pra
ise you for walking away if he provokes you. What courage! What true honour that Conn Materazzi could so easily fight and yet risks that honour in order to be honourable. It’s true after all, you said so yourself.’
‘Won’t that mean he gains a reputation ...’ He had to think about this: was it an honourable objection to make in the circumstances? ‘... a name for courage?’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ replied Arbell. ‘He’ll soon spoil the good opinion anyone has of him. He thinks it’s beneath him to be admired by people he despises – and he despises everyone.’
‘You’re very clever.’
‘Yes I am.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Now go away and let me sleep.’
He stood up and cracked his head on the ceiling.
‘Ow!’
She winced along with him but could see he was not hurt. She made to get up to kiss it better – no mean feat. ‘Stay where you are,’ he said.
She needed no encouragement. ‘I will if you don’t mind.’ He bent down and kissed her lightly on the mouth. Then with exaggerated comic carefulness he made his way to the door and was gone. She eased herself further back onto the sofa, twisting from side to side to stretch her aching back and decided to wait for another ten minutes before making the effort to go to bed. She closed her eyes, enjoying the peace and quiet.
And then from the shadows at the back of the room a low voice said softly:
‘I do haunt you still.’
Some say the world will end in ice. If so, it was something of that terminal cold that froze the hairs on the neck of the young mother-to-be. She moved quick as you like for all the aching back and enormous bulge and turned in horror as Cale emerged into the candlelight. ‘In case you were wondering,’ he said putting his finger precisely on the fear uppermost in her mind, ‘I heard everything you said. Not very nice.’
‘I’ll scream.’
‘I wouldn’t. Things would be grim for anyone who came through the door when you did.’
‘You expect me to die without a word?’
‘God no. I wouldn’t expect you to comb your own hair without complaining.’ This was not fair. She was by no means a trivial person. ‘Whine all you like, your majesty, but do it quietly.’
‘Are you going to kill me?’
‘I’m thinking of killing you.’
‘I know you believe I’ve offended you but how has my baby offended?’
‘That’s why I’m thinking about it.’
‘It’s yours.’
‘You would say that.’
‘It’s true.’
‘It’s true that I saved your life twice and you said you loved me more deeply than ...’ He smiled, not pleasantly. ‘... you know I can’t remember but I seem to recall it was a thing of great depth. Perhaps you can help me.’
‘It is true,’ she said, almost impossible to hear.
‘The rumour in the vegetable market is that you’re a slut – and betting is even as to who the father is: either the Memphis village idiot or the prole who carried the coals into your bedroom.’
‘You know that isn’t true.’
‘I don’t know. You sold me to men who for all you knew were going to take me to a place of execution, hang me and then cut me down alive, gut me ... while I watched ... fry those guts ... while I watched ... cut off my cock and balls ... while I watched. Well, you see. It looks bad.’
‘They promised me they wouldn’t hurt you.’
‘And what made you think a promise meant more to them than it meant to you. You were tired of me, and wanted to see the back of me, and didn’t care how.’
‘That’s not true.’ She was crying now but barely audibly.
‘It may not be the whole truth but it’s true enough. Anyway I’m sick of listening to you.’
‘They didn’t do any of those things to you. He promised to make you a great man. Aren’t you? Didn’t he keep his promise?’
This was too much. In a few strides he was over to her as she backed away to the wall holding her hands out in terror to protect her child. He reached behind her head and grabbed her golden pony tail and dragged her over to the sofa pushing her to her knees.
‘I’ll show you how he kept his promise, you lying bitch.’ He kept tight hold of her hair with one hand and pulled the lamp on the table next to the sofa so that it cast a better light. Then with his free hand he reached into a back pocket and took out the letter given to him by Bosco and over which he had squabbled with Vague Henri. He unfolded it on the sofa rug, violently pushing her head down so that her face was almost touching it.
‘Read!’ he said.
‘You’re hurting me.’
He twisted her hair sharply. She called out.
‘Scream quietly,’ he whispered. ‘Someone might be unlucky enough to hear. Now read who it’s from.’ Another encouraging tug.
‘From Redeemer General Archer, Commander Forces of the Veldt, to Redeemer General Bosco.’
‘You can skip the first five lines.’
Arbell continued with some difficulty – his grip was fierce and she was too close to the script.
‘Before he left Thomas Cale ordered us to sweep up every village on the Veldt within fifty miles of our camps and bring in all the women and children, their animals to be used to feed the three thousand souls we managed to intern. Some sort of rinderpest killed most of their cattle and reduced very much the milk of those that survived. Often lacking sufficient rations ourselves there were none to spare. Given their weakness many have succumbed to starvation, measles and the squits, in all about two and a half thousand. I was not informed until very late and when I inspected the camp I saw such wretchedness any heart would have rued the sight ...’
‘Don’t worry about the next bit,’ said Cale pointing further down the letter, ‘start again there.’
‘Out of every corner of the place they came creeping on their hands and knees because their legs could not bear them; they looked like the very anatomy of death and spoke whispers like ghosts crying out of their graves. It was told to me that they were happy to eat moss where they could and then finally in desperation to scrape the carcasses out of their graves also. I know you to be a person of clemency but though I describe pitiable things, and ones easier to read about than to witness, there is no hope that these Antagonists will amend and it is a dire necessity that they be cut off. This judgement of the heavens that makes us tremble touches us not with pity.’
‘That’s enough,’ he said letting her hair go and bouncing her head off the soft bolster of the sofa – not the cruellest violence he had offered the world it must be said.
Slowly she pulled herself up and eased into a sitting position.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said at last. ‘What has this got to do with me? Or even you? This dreadful thing wasn’t what you intended, was it?’
‘Haven’t you heard? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. My intention is to be left alone with a decent bed and some decent food to go with it. But what I do is just what you said. Catastrophe follows me everywhere. I sat in the shadows back there listening to your chinless wonder whining about his reputation -‘
‘He’s not chinless!’
‘Be quiet. My reputation is that I’m a bloody child who cares no more for the lives of people than he cares for the life of a dog. My reputation is that I consume everything I touch. You put me there back with them. The blood of everyone I’ve wasted since then is on your hands as well as mine.’
‘Why don’t you just stop killing people instead of blaming everyone else?’
She said this more violently than was perhaps wise given the circumstances. But she did not lack courage.
‘And tell me how am I supposed to do that? The Redeemers won’t stop, not for anything. They intend to wrap this world in a blanket, pour on the pitch, and then set fire to it like a match. There’s no stopping.’ He stood back glaring like the Troll of Gissinghurst. To be fair, she glared back giving as good as she got. ‘Now I’m going t
o leave by the door – not how I got in, just in case you were wondering. I want you to think about that in the nights to come. You’re not going to call anyone because I’ll kill them if you do and even if I’m caught I’ll be sure to mention to your chinless wonder of a husband that you claimed I was the father of his child.’
‘He won’t believe you.’
‘He will a little bit.’
And with that he walked to the door and was gone.
He moved quickly down the almost empty corridors – where the only guards were the young and inexperienced and easy to avoid – and considered his evening’s work with a peculiar satisfaction. He had made her feel worse and that was what mattered. Whether he was also truly heartbroken at the unintended consequences of his orders concerning the women and children of the veldt was hard to tell. As the Englishman used to say: the truth depends on where you start the story.
By the next day Cale was thinking better of his late-night visit. He had, all said and done, threatened a pregnant woman with violence and made himself look like the monster Arbell had claimed him to be as he stood listening in the shadows. And as for the child, she was certainly lying to save her skin. He could hardly bear to think about what it meant if not. So he didn’t.
Depressed and ashamed he had gone for a walk and stumbled by accident on the great park that spread eccentrically shaped as a salamander just north of the centre of the city. It was a warm day for the time of year, bright sunshine, and the park was full of people, flirting young men and women, children playing and shouting, older couples walking up and down the great promenades with their budding lime trees doing the passagiata for which Spanish Leeds had been famous for two hundred years – the seeing and being seen. Feeling oddly woollen-headed and with one ear blocked as if water from a bath had become stuck, he walked in the sunshine until he came to one edge of Salamander Park – a huge wall carved into the granite that topped the city. It had been cut flat and into it, and thickly carved were the great figures of the Antagonist Reformation who had taken refuge in Spanish Leeds during the initial persecution and before they had moved on to found the Antagonist city at Salt Lake. Here were thirty-foot-high reliefs of men who had fought against the Redeemers to the point of hideous death and yet he had never heard of them: Butzer, Hus and Philip Melanchthon, Menno Simons, Zwingli, Hutt and the unhappy-looking Mosarghu Brothers. Who were these giants in front of him and what in the name of God did they believe? It was almost impossible to grasp that the rejection of the Redeemers had such heft to it. Then he moved on across the park feeling ever more distant and removed from the flow of ordinary human happiness taking in the sun and each other as they would do a week today and all spring and summer long. And now he had to get away, out of the great ornate cast-iron gates of the north end of the park and round the side heading for his room. But he was so tired now, utterly weary, exhausted in a way that was completely new to him. He walked ever slower down the street as if each step was ageing him by a year, but it was so much worse than ordinary fatigue. He felt he had been on the move for a thousand years and nowhere to sit down, no rest, no peace, nothing but fighting and fear of the next blow. His heart was so heavy in his chest he felt it dragging him to a halt. How was it possible to feel like this and live? By now he was at the West Gate and he stopped and rested his head, pouring sweat against the sandstone.
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