by Paul Hoffman
“Oh,” said Riba.
The Honorable Edith Materazzi smiled.
“Oh, indeed. Is it not a great thing?”
“Yes, madam.”
“I know you will do well. And all I ask of you are two things, though. It will be hard for you to do one of them because I can see you are a good girl and honest.” She looked at Riba, who was already waiting for the catch in all this. “I’m asking you not to reveal to my daughter that you are coming to her through me.” She clasped Riba’s hand tightly as if she was desperately smothering an entirely natural protest. “I know this seems wrong and I understand, but it is only because she will refuse you otherwise. To do a great right it is sometimes necessary to do a little wrong. All I want from time to time is for you to come and tell me how she is, what she talks about, anything that worries her. Just the little things, the things that a daughter would tell a mother who loves her. Could you do that, Riba?”
Of course she could, and besides, what else was she to do? She entered into this contract with the Honorable Edith Materazzi, and if she did not entirely believe her, what difference did that make? There was no real choice for Riba, and they both knew it.
His Holiness the Redeemer Bosco sat on his balcony and looked down at the soldiers moving beneath him as far as the eye could see, filling the vastness of their Sanctuary. Men shouted, mules brayed, horses snorted and were sworn at by their handlers. The sights and sounds of so much preparation pleased him—the commencement, after all, of his life’s ambition. He took another sip of his soup, a favorite: chickens’ feet and a green vegetable known as asswipe in Memphis, where it was prized only for its usefulness and not its value as food.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
It was Redeemer Stape Roy.
“You wished to see me, Your Devoutness.”
“I want you to take twenty Redeemers and try to kill Arbell Materazzi.”
“But, Your Holiness, that’s impossible!” protested Stape Roy.
“I’m well aware of that. If it were possible, I wouldn’t be sending you.”
Irritated and afraid, Stape Roy nevertheless restrained an impulse to ask Bosco to say what he damn well meant.
“You are angry with me, Redeemer Stape Roy.”
“I serve at your pleasure, Your Devoutness.”
Bosco stood up and signaled to the Redeemer to come over to a table on which lay a map of the fortifications of Memphis.
“You were at the siege of Voorheis, weren’t you?”
“Yes, Your Devoutness.”
“How long did it take before it fell?”
“Nearly three years.”
Bosco gestured to the map of the Memphis fortifications.
“How long, as an experienced man, do you think it would take to raze Memphis?”
“Longer.”
“How much longer?”
“Very much longer.”
Bosco turned and looked at him.
“We could waste ourselves, great as we are, trying to take Memphis by force, which is why it will not happen. Have you heard the rumors about why we attempted to kidnap Arbell Materazzi?”
Redeemer Stape Roy looked uneasy.
“It is sinful to listen to gossip and even more sinful to pass it on, Your Devoutness.”
Bosco smiled.
“Of course, but in this instance I’m granting you a dispensation. The sin of spreading gossip is already forgiven you.”
“It was mostly said that she was a secret convert to the Antagonists and was spreading their word and that she was a witch and she held orgies and corrupted men in their thousands, and made captured Redeemers defile themselves by making them eat prawns under torture.”
Bosco nodded.
“A very formidable sinner, if true.”
“I only repeated the rumors, I didn’t say I believed them.”
“Good for you, Redeemer,” Bosco said and smiled. “The reason I had her kidnapped was because I wanted to force the Materazzi out from behind the walls of Memphis. To everyone in their empire she is a queen, idolized for her youth and beauty, a star in the firmament. Everywhere, even in the most flyblown collections of hovels in the empire, they talk about her exploits; no doubt many of them made up or exaggerated. She is adored, Redeemer, and not least by her father. When I heard that the abduction had failed, I was not, however, much concerned. Once it became known we had done something so heinous, my aim would have been fulfilled. The Materazzi would have come bounding out of Memphis full of piss and vinegar and ready to wipe us from the face of the earth.” Bosco sat down and regarded the tough-looking man in front of him. “That didn’t happen, of course, is what you’re thinking, and so I must be wrong. You are merely too polite or afraid to say so. But you would be wrong yourself, Redeemer. Marshal Materazzi, on the contrary, agrees with me. It turns out that even if he is a loving father, he is not a sentimental one. He has kept the abduction a secret, precisely because he knows he would not be able to resist the people’s desire for revenge. And this brings me to you, Redeemer. You have such a good relationship with that thing in . . .”
“Kitty Town, Your Holiness.”
“I want you to persuade him to help you launch an attack using such a number of soldiers—thirty, perhaps fifty—as you decide fit. You will inform these soldiers that the rumors already widespread among the Redeemers as to her foul and sinful apostasy are true, and that they will be accorded martyrdom should they die . . . which they will. You will ensure that the captains you choose will each carry a certificate of martyrdom explaining why they are doing the Lord’s work. With good fortune some of them will survive long enough for the Materazzi to torture the truth out of them. This time I do not want any possibility that our actions will be kept secret. Is that clear to you?”
“Yes, Your Devoutness,” answered a pale Redeemer Stape Roy.
“You’ve gone quite white, Redeemer. I should tell you that your own death is not required. Quite the contrary. You should also use soldiers who have been disgraced in some way. What I ask is an evil thing, but necessary.”
On his learning that the sacrifice of his own worthless life was not required, the color returned to Redeemer Stape Roy’s cheeks. “Kitty the Hare,” he said, “will want to know what he’s being made a part of. He’s not likely to think it’s in his interests to get mixed up with something as dubious as this.”
Bosco waved him away.
“Promise him anything you wish. Tell him that when we win we’ll make him the Satrap of Memphis.”
“He’s no fool, Your Holiness.”
Bosco sighed and thought for a moment.
“Take him the gold statue of the Lustful Venus of Strabo.”
Redeemer Stape Roy looked astonished.
“I thought it had been broken into ten pieces and thrown into the volcano at Delphi.”
“Just a rumor. Blasphemous and obscene though it is, the statue will stuff the ears of this creature of yours and make him deaf to any questions he asks himself, fool or no fool.”
26
Over the next few weeks Cale experienced all the self-defeating pleasures of making life unpleasant for someone you adored but hated. If truth were told, which it was not, he was getting sick of them.
He had never faced squarely what it was he expected by becoming Arbell Swan-Neck’s bodyguard. His feelings about her—intense desire and intense resentment—would have been difficult for anyone to reconcile, let alone someone who was such a strange mixture of brutal experience and complete innocence. Perhaps charm might have done something to prevent her from cringing when he spoke to her—but where could charm come from in such a boy? Arbell’s physical loathing of his presence was, understandably, of great offense to him, but all he knew how to do in response was to become even more hostile toward her.
This strange atmosphere between Cale and her mistress was the source of great trouble to Riba. She liked Arbell Swan-Neck, even though she had more ambition than t
o be a ladies’ maid, no matter how illustrious the lady. Arbell was kind and thoughtful and, on discovering her maid’s intelligence, was very easy and open with her. Nevertheless, Riba was devoted to Cale to the point of worship. He had risked his life to save her from something terrible not usually to be remembered except in nightmares. She could not understand Arbell’s coldness toward him and was determined to put her mistress right.
The way she went about this might have seemed odd to an observer: she deliberately, pretending to have tripped, poured a hot cup of tea over Cale, having carefully ensured by adding cold water that it would not burn him too badly. But it was hot enough. With a cry of pain, Cale ripped off the cotton tunic he had been wearing.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Riba fussed, grasping a mug of cold water she had deliberately placed nearby and pouring that over him too. “Are you all right? I’m sorry.”
“What’s the matter with you?” he said, but not angrily. “First you try to scald me, then you try to drown me.”
“Oh,” gasped Riba. “I’m so sorry.” She continued to apologize, handing him a small towel and generally making a fuss of him.
“It’s all right. I’ll live,” he said, drying himself off. He nodded toward Arbell. “I’ll have to change. Please don’t leave your chambers until I come back.” And with that, he was gone. Now Riba turned to see if her ruse had worked—but as complicated ruses will, it had a complicated effect. What had drawn pity from Arbell, and of a kind she would never have imagined feeling for Cale, was that his back was covered in welts and scars. Barely an inch of his skin lacked the marks of his brutal past.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Yes,” said Riba.
“Why?”
“So that you can see all that he’s suffered. And so, with all due respect, that you will not be so unkind.”
“What do you mean?” said the astonished Arbell.
“May I speak frankly?”
“No, you may not!”
“I’ll do it anyway, having come so far.”
Arbell was not a pompous aristocrat by the standards of aristocrats, but no one, not just a servant, no one had ever spoken to her in such a manner except her father. Her astonishment made her speechless.
“You and I, mademoiselle,” said Riba quickly, “may not have much in common now, but I was once almost completely indulged in everything and expected only a life of giving and being given pleasure. Well, all that came to an end in an hour, and I learned how horrible life is and how cruel and unbelievable.”
She then told her wide-eyed mistress the details, sparing nothing of the fate of her friend and how Cale had risked everything, a death even more horrible, to save her.
“He always told me on the way through the Scablands that saving me was the stupidest and maddest thing he ever did.”
“Do you believe him?” and the question really was spoken with a gasp. Riba laughed.
“I’m not sure. I think sometimes he means it and sometimes he doesn’t. But I saw his back when we were washing in one of the water holes in the Scablands—God knows how he found it in that awful place. But Henri told me what they did to Cale. Ever since he was a little boy, this Redeemer Bosco singled him out for the slightest thing. He’d accuse him of anything, the more trivial the better he liked it—praying with his thumbs crossed, not putting a tail on the figure nine when he wrote it out. Then he’d drag him before the others and give him a ferocious beating—he’d punch him to the floor and give him a kicking. And then he turned him into a killer.”
By now Riba had worked herself up into a fury of resentment—and not just against the Redeemers. “So it seems to me that it’s surprising he’d bother to give you or me the steam off his piss—let alone risk his life to save us.”
Arbell Swan-Neck’s eyes, though it was hardly possible, widened even more at this startling figure of speech.
“So, mademoiselle, I think it’s high time you stopped looking down your beautiful nose at him and showed him the gratitude and the pity he deserves.”
By this time Riba had lost some of the purity of intention with which she had begun her rebuke and had begun enjoying her indignation and her mistress’s discomfort. But she was no fool and realized it was time to stop. There was a long silence and a number of blinks from Arbell as she tried not to cry. She looked around the room with misty eyes, then back at Riba, then around the room again. She gave a long sigh.
“I didn’t realize. Until now I never knew myself.”
With that there was a knock at the door and Cale came in. Despite the completely altered mood in the room, he picked up nothing of the change that had taken place since he left. That change, however, was greater than either Riba guessed or even the young woman who was feeling it realized. Arbell Swan-Neck, the beautiful and most desired of all the desired, was touched by pity when she saw the terrible scars on Cale’s back, but she was also touched by something less noble: a hunger as intense as it was unlooked for. Stripped to the waist, Cale was a complete contrast to the slender bodies of the Materazzi, strong and agile though they were. Cale’s was wide at the shoulder and unnaturally narrow at the waist. There was nothing elegant about him. He was all muscle and power, like a bull or an ox. It was not comely; no one would have made a sculpture of this mass of sinew and scars. But just the sight of him like this had made something in Arbell Materazzi miss a beat—and it wasn’t just her heart.
27
Well, Redeemer,” cooed Kitty the Hare, the nails of his hand stroking the wood on the table on which stood the golden statue of the Lustful Venus of Strabo. The faint sound of his voice felt to Redeemer Stape Roy as if something worse than you could possibly imagine was just about to softly crawl its way inside his ear. “This is all very strange,” continued Kitty the Hare, staring at the statue. Or at least Redeemer Stape Roy thought he was staring—as always Kitty the Hare’s face was covered by his gray hood, something for which the Redeemer was very grateful.
“The statue is yours if you help us. What do our reasons matter?”
The vague scraping of the nails along the wood continued, and then the Redeemer almost jumped as the scraping stopped and the covered hand reached forward to the statue and the gray cloth slid away from Kitty the Hare’s hand—only it was not a hand. Think of something gray and furred, though lightly, a dog’s paw but longer, very much longer, and with mottled nails, and yet this would not be close enough. The nails, softly, like a mother’s stroking her baby’s face, gently caressed the statue for a few moments and then withdrew.
“A beautiful piece,” gurgled Kitty the Hare. “But I was told that it had been broken into ten pieces and thrown into the volcano at Delphi.”
“Obviously not.”
There was a long sigh that he could feel on his face, like the hot and wet bad breath of a large and unfriendly dog.
“You will not succeed,” cooed Kitty the Hare.
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“It is a matter of fact,” said Kitty the Hare sharply.
“This is our business.”
“You are trying to start a war and so it’s my business also.”
There was a long pause.
“As it happens,” continued Kitty the Hare, “I have no objections to a war. They’ve always done well by me in the past. You’d be amazed, my dear Redeemer, at just how much money can be made from supplying poor quality food and drink and pots and pans for even the teensiest war. I will want a guarantee, written, that should you win, none of my possessions will be damaged and I will be given a protected passage to anywhere I choose.”
“Agreed.”
Neither believed the other. Kitty the Hare was certainly happy to make money from a war, but his plans went a good deal deeper than that.
“It will take some time,” sighed Kitty the Hare, with another gush of hot, wet breath. “But I will have the plans ready within three weeks.”
“That’s too long.”
“Perhaps, bu
t that’s how long it will take. Good-bye.”
With that, Redeemer Stape Roy was led out of Kitty the Hare’s private rooms and into the courtyard, then out into the town itself. A crowd had gathered to watch two men no older than sixteen being hanged from a gallows. Around each of their terrified necks was a sign that read: RAPIST.
“What’s a rapist?” asked Redeemer Stape Roy of his guard, innocence and evil living quite contentedly together.
“Anyone who tries to get away without paying,” came the reply.
It was a reflective Cale who made his way toward Arbell Swan-Neck’s now carefully cordoned-off chambers. Despite his deep suspicion and resentment of her, even he had begun to detect a softening toward him. She no longer glared at him or flinched every time he came near her. At times he even asked himself if the look in her eyes (although he could not, of course, recognize it as pity and desire) might be of some significance. But he quickly dismissed such ideas because they made no sense. Still, something confusing was happening. Lost in these thoughts, he was barely aware of a group of boys about ten years old, at the edge of the practice field, looking shady and throwing stones at each other. As he came closer, he realized that one of them was much older, fourteen or so, as tall and slender and handsome as Materazzi boys were prone to be at that age. What was so odd was that the younger boys were throwing stones not at each other but at the older boy and that they were also shouting at him. “Pillock! Half-wit! Drooling gobshite! Flap-mouthed turd!” Then the stones. But despite his size, the bigger boy simply whirled around in fear and confusion as each stone struck him. Then one took him on the forehead and he collapsed in a heap. As the younger boys started to run forward to give him a kick, Cale arrived, clipped one of them round the ear, tripped up another and gave him a light kick as he lay on the ground. In a moment the gang were on the run, screaming insults as they went.
“If I see you little scum again,” Cale called out after them, “you’ll get the full benefit of my boot up your shiv!”
Cale bent down over the fallen boy.