by Paul Hoffman
“Indeed, if it wasn’t for the need to keep this business secret, you’d both have had a parade and a band and all the fixings.” Vipond smiled, this time mocking. “You’d have liked that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I would,” said IdrisPukke. “And why wouldn’t I? God knows it’s been a long time since anyone was pleased to see me.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Mine, dear brother,” laughed IdrisPukke. “All mine.”
“You should perhaps explain to the boy why his reception has been so muted.”
“To be honest, I don’t think he gives a damn. Saving Arbell Swan-Neck was just a means to an end for him. He thought it was in his interests to risk his life—and that was all. He’s never asked once about her. For all my misgivings, I praised his courage, and still he looked at me as if I were a fool. He wants money and a safe passage as far away from his old masters as the sea will carry him. This is not someone who cares for praise or blame. If he pleases or doesn’t please, it’s all the same to him.”
“Then,” said Lord Vipond, “he really is a most exceptional fellow.” He stood up. “At any rate, whether you’re right or not, the Marshal wishes to thank him personally tonight and, of course, Arbell Swan-Neck—though by the look on her face when he told her, she’d rather eat a weasel.”
23
For goodness’ sake!” said the Marshal to his daughter. “Cheer up.” “He frightens me,” said the deathly pale but beautiful young woman.
“Frightens you? He saved your life. What’s the matter with you?”
“I know he saved my life—but it was horrible.”
The Marshal gasped with irritation.
“I dare say it was horrible. Killing is a horrible thing. But he did what was necessary and he risked his own life—more than risked, given the odds—and you stand there whingeing about how terrible it was. What you need to do is think about how terrible things would have been if he hadn’t saved you.”
Arbell Swan-Neck, not used to being upbraided like this, looked even more miserable.
“I know he saved my life—but he still frightens me. You’ve never seen what he’s like. I have—twice. He’s not like anything I’ve ever seen—he’s not human.”
“Ridiculous—I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. By God, you’d better be polite to him or there’ll be trouble.”
Neither was Arbell used to being threatened, and she was about to abandon her role as fearful girl for something more spirited when the door of the small dining room opened and a servant’s announcement interrupted.
“Chancellor Vipond and guests, m’lud.”
“Welcome, welcome,” enthused the Marshal, attempting to dispel the coldness in the atmosphere with so much zeal that both Vipond and IdrisPukke were aware that there was some awkwardness in the room.
Cale was aware of nothing but the presence of Arbell Swan-Neck, who stood by the window looking beautiful and trying, unsuccessfully, not to shake. Cale, who had been in a state of longing and dread since he had learned that she was to be at the dinner, was also trying not to tremble.
“You must be Cale,” said the Marshal, warmly grasping his hand. “Thank you, thank you. What you’ve done can never be repaid.” He looked over at his daughter. “Arbell.” His tone was at once encouraging and threatening. Slowly the beautiful young girl, effortlessly graceful, tall and slender, walked over to Cale and held out her hand.
Cale took it as if he barely knew what to do with it. He did not notice that Arbell’s face (you would not have thought it possible) turned as pale as moonlight on snow.
“Thank you for everything you have done for me. I am very grateful.”
It struck IdrisPukke that he had heard more life and enthusiasm in the last words of a condemned man going to the gallows. The Marshal looked fiercely at his daughter—and yet he could see that she was deeply afraid of the boy in front of her. To his irritation at her lack of manners was also added a genuine puzzlement. However deep his gratitude, and it went very deep indeed because he adored his daughter, he was, in truth, somewhat disappointed by Cale. He had expected—well, he wasn’t sure what he had expected precisely—but someone, surely, given his fearsome reputation, with majestic presence, the charismatic power that any great man of violence always, in his experience, carried with him. But Cale looked like a young peasant, not bad-looking in an unrefined way, but as stupefied and stumped by the presence of royalty as peasants usually were. How such a creature could have battered the very best of the young Materazzi and killed so many men single-handed was utterly mysterious.
“Let’s eat. You must be very hungry. Come and sit by me,” he said, taking Cale by the shoulders.
He was no sooner seated with Arbell opposite, her eyes downcast at the plate in front of her, than he became aware of the massed ranks of cutlery in front of him, a platoon of forks of various sizes, a matching squad of knives, sharp and blunt. Most disconcerting of all was an object that looked like something used for a particularly painful act of torture—the removal of a nose, say, or a penis. It looked like a tong—but it crossed over and back on itself at the end in an utterly mysterious way.
He already felt bad enough—an incomprehensible mixture of adoration and hatred for the woman seated across from him, who had taken his hand with as much enthusiasm as if it had been a dead fish. The ungrateful gorgeous bitch. Now he was certain to look something that he could not endure: foolish. Terrible pain and even death itself seemed to hold no fear for Cale—who, after all, could wield these two more skilfully than Cale himself ?—but the prospect of feeling ridiculous made him almost weak with anxiety.
He nearly jumped as Stillnoch slid up behind him so silently that Cale was unaware of his presence—no mean feat—until a plate was put in front of him and the sympathetic Stillnoch whispered, “Snails!” into his ear.
Unaware of his heroic status in Stillnoch’s eyes, Cale thought that “Snails!” must be some sort of withering insult from a servant who resented his presence among the great and good. On the other hand, he thought, trying to calm down, perhaps it was a warning. But, if so, of what kind? He looked down at the plate and his confusion deepened. Lying in front of him were six objects that looked like tiny, coiled soldiers’ helmets with a horrible-looking flecked stickum oozing out of them. They certainly looked like something you needed to be warned against.
“Ah!” said IdrisPukke, sniffing the air like the worst actor in a pantomime. “Excellent. Snails in garlic butter!” Sitting next to Cale, he had noticed immediately the boy’s alarm at the vast array of cutlery in front of him and the look of horror at the six snails in their shells. Now that he had Cale’s attention, and, it must be said, the attention of the rest of the table, he raised the peculiar-looking tong instrument in his right hand and gave it a squeeze. The two spoonlike ends opened up, and he used them to cradle a snail shell. He loosened his squeeze on the handle and the spoons clamped shut, holding the shell firmly in their grasp. Taking up a small ivory-handled skewer, he poked inside the shell and adroitly, if theatrically so that Cale could see what he was doing, eased out what looked like (despite the garlic, parsley and butter in which it was smothered) a greeny gray piece of cartilage the size of an earlobe. Then he popped it into his mouth with another theatrical gasp of satisfaction.
Though at first bemused by this strange performance, the others around the table quickly realized what he was trying to do and studiously avoided looking at Cale as he stared down malevolently at his first course.
You might be surprised that a boy readily prepared to eat rat would turn his nose up at eating snail. But he had never seen a snail before, and who is to say that, all things being equal, you wouldn’t choose to eat a glossy, well-fed vigorous rat over a snail oozing its pockmarked sluggy way from under a rotting log.
Surreptitiously double-checking his fellow guests as they seized their helmeted dinner, Cale picked up the tongs, grabbed a shell and, using the skewer, picked out the gray, soft-bo
died moistness. He paused for a moment, studiously unwatched by the others, then put it in his mouth and began chewing with all the enthusiasm of a man eating one of his own testicles.
Fortunately the rest of the dinner was familiar enough, or at least looked like something he had eaten at IdrisPukke’s table. By keeping an eye on his mentor, Cale was able to use the remaining cutlery more or less correctly—although forks remained a clumsily handled mystery. The three men did all the talking, nothing businesslike: reminiscences, stories of this or that common past event, though nothing of the touchy history of IdrisPukke’s past indiscretions and expulsion.
Throughout dinner Arbell Swan-Neck did not once look up from her plate, though neither did she eat much. From time to time Cale shot her a look, and on each occasion she seemed more beautiful than the last—the long blond hair, the green and almond-shaped eyes and the lips! Red as a rosebud against her pale skin, a neck so long and slender that words and looks failed him. He turned back to his dinner, his soul ringing like a well-struck bell. But it was a bell that rang with more than joy and adoration—there was the sound there too of anger and resentment. She would not look at him because she did not want to be in his presence. She hated him and he (how could he not?) hated her in return.
As soon as the last dish was served—strawberries and cream—Arbell Swan-Neck stopped and said, “I’m sorry, I’m feeling unwell. May I leave?”
Her father looked at her, hiding his fury only for the sake of his guests. He merely nodded, hoping the irritable shake of his head made it clear: I’ll talk to you later.
She quickly glanced around at the others, though not Cale, and then she was gone. Cale sat and seethed. What mountainous seas of feeling—of love and bitterness and wrath—burst and dashed upon this young man’s rocky soul.
However, with the girl gone, there was no need to be careful about the matter of her kidnapping and its mysterious purpose. And it also became clear why there was a lack of crowds roaring their eternal gratitude for Cale’s amazing bravery in rescuing Arbell Materazzi. Hardly anyone knew. The Marshal apologized to Cale but explained that had the kidnapping become known, the demand for war would have been irresistible. He and Lord Vipond were in agreement that they must know as much as they could about the Redeemers’ unfathomable act before they took such a drastic step.
“We are blind,” said Vipond to Cale. “And in being so are apt to stumble into such a great enterprise. IdrisPukke tells me you have no idea why they would do something so provocative?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Why would I lie? It makes no more sense to me than it does to you. All the Redeemers ever talked about was the war against the Antagonists. And all they said even then was that the Antagonists worshipped the Anti-Redeemer and were heretics who should be wiped from the face of the earth.”
“And Memphis?”
“With disgust and hardly ever—it was a place of perversion and sin where anything at all could be bought and sold.”
“Harsh,” said IdrisPukke, “but you can see what they’re driving at.”
The Marshal and Vipond pointedly ignored him.
“So there’s nothing you can tell us?” asked the Doge.
Cale realized he was about to be dismissed and that this was his only chance to shape his future among the powerful.
“Only this. If they’ve decided to do something, the Redeemers will not stop. I don’t know why they want your daughter, but they’ll keep coming for her no matter what it costs them.”
At this the Marshal went pale. Cale kept his advantage.
“Your daughter, she’s a very . . .” He paused, as if searching for the right word. “Prestigious person.” He had liked the word when he heard it but had not quite got the hang of it. “I mean, everywhere in the empire they look on her—I’ve heard people say it—as its richest ornament. Everything that is to be admired about her is to be admired about the Materazzi. She stands for you, is that right?”
“What do you mean?” said the Marshal.
“If they wanted to send a message . . .” He let his voice trail.
“What kind of message?” asked the Marshal, more and more anxious.
“Kidnap Arbell Materazzi or kill her and show your subjects that the Redeemers can reach even the highest in the land.” He paused, again only for effect. “They’ll know that a second kidnapping will be impossible, probably, but in my opinion they won’t let this go. They always finish what they start. It’s as important for them to make that clear as letting you know they can reach anyone. They’re trying to tell you that they absolutely will not stop.”
By now the Marshal had gone white.
“She’ll be safe here. We’ll put a ring around her. No one will be able to enter.”
Cale tried to look more awkward than he felt.
“She was protected, I was told, by a guard of forty when she was taken from the castle at Lake Constanz. Were there any survivors?”
“No,” said the Marshal.
“And this time—it’s just my opinion, I can’t be sure—they’ll only come to kill. Will eighty men or a hundred and eighty be sure to stop them?”
“If history teaches us one thing, my lord,” said IdrisPukke, “it’s that if you’re prepared to sacrifice your own life, you can kill anyone.”
Vipond had not seen the Marshal so uneasy and alarmed at any time in his life.
“Can you stop them?” said the Marshal to Cale.
“Me?” Cale looked as if the idea had not occurred to him. He thought for a moment. “Better than anyone else, I’d say. And I have Vague Henri and Kleist.”
“Who?” said the Marshal.
“Cale’s friends,” observed Vipond, increasingly interested in what Cale was up to.
“They have your talents?” asked the Marshal.
“They have their own particular skills. Between us we can deal with anything the Redeemers send.”
“You’re very confident of your powers, Cale,” said Vipond. “Given you’ve spent the last ten minutes telling us how invulnerable the Redeemers are.”
Cale looked at him.
“I said their assassins were invulnerable to you.” He smiled. “I didn’t say they were invulnerable to me. I’m better than any soldier the Redeemers have ever produced. I’m not boasting; it’s just a fact. If you don’t believe me, sir,” he said, looking at the Marshal, “then ask your daughter and IdrisPukke. And if they’re not enough, then ask Conn Materazzi.”
“Hold your tongue, you young pup,” said Vipond, anger replacing his curiosity. “You never speak to Marshal Materazzi in such a manner.”
“I’ve had worse things said to me,” said the Marshal. “If you can keep my daughter safe, then I will make you rich and you can talk to me in private however you damn well please. But what you say had better be true.” He stood up. “By tomorrow afternoon I want a written plan for her protection in front of me. Yes?”
Cale nodded.
“For now every soldier in the city is on duty. Now, if you wouldn’t mind leaving us. You too, IdrisPukke.”
The two of them stood up, nodded and left.
“That was quite a performance,” said IdrisPukke as he shut the door. “Was any of it true?”
Cale laughed but did not reply.
Had he given IdrisPukke an answer, it would have been that very little of his dire warning was rooted in anything but his desire to force Arbell Swan-Neck to pay attention to him. He was furious at her ingratitude and more than ever in love with her. But she deserved to be punished for treating him in the way she did, and what could be better than to be able to decide when he wanted to see her and have endless opportunities to make her life a misery by his presence? Of course, the fact that his presence was so distasteful to her was a blow to the heart, but he was no less able to live with such painful contradictions than anyone else.
Anxiety for his daughter made the Marshal fear the worst, and he was an easy prey for Cale’s
ominous predictions. Vipond was no more convinced than IdrisPukke. On the other hand, he could see no harm in what Cale proposed. And the notion that the Redeemers might try to kill her was clearly not implausible. At any rate, it would allow the Marshal to think that something was being done while Vipond worked day and night to get to the root of the Redeemers’ intentions. He was sure that war of some kind was inevitable and was resigned to preparing for it, however surreptitiously. But for Vipond, to fight any war without knowing what precisely your enemy wanted was a disaster in the making. And so he was content for Cale to get up to whatever it was he was getting up to—though it was not difficult to see what it was. Cale clearly knew nothing of the motive behind the kidnapping, but having him as bodyguard to Arbell Materazzi would keep her safe. Vipond was, in his own less paternal way, as grateful to Cale for his rescue as her father: the political implications of having the most adored member of the royal family in the hands of such a murderous and brutal regime as that of the Redeemers did not bear thinking about. The news coming from the Eastern Front about the Redeemers’ bitter stalemate with the Antagonists was terrible, so terrible indeed that it was hard to believe—except that the pitifully small number of those who had escaped over the borders into Materazzi territory all gave an alarmingly consistent story, one that gave the horrible ring of truth to the accounts Vipond’s agents had been recording and sending him. If war was coming against the Redeemers, it promised to be like no other.
24
Tell me what you know about the Redeemer war against the Antagonists.”
Vipond was looking grimly at Cale across his vast desk. IdrisPukke was sitting over by the window as if he were more interested in what was going on in the garden below.
“They are the Anti-Redeemers,” said Cale. “They hate the Redeemer and all his believers and want to destroy him and make his goodness perish from the earth.”
“That’s what you believe?” said Vipond, surprised at Cale’s sudden movement from normal speech to a monotone rote.