The Beating of His Wings

by Paul Hoffman

  ‘Wait a moment, Sergeant.’ He turned back to IdrisPukke. ‘You’re an educated man – know what it means?’

  ‘It’s not familiar, no.’

  ‘It means “In the smallest way” – it means they’ll burn him on a pile of sticks not big enough to boil a can of water. I’ve never seen it myself. Bosco told me about it. He said it took twelve hours. So no, I can’t stop.’

  ‘You don’t know for certain that’s what he’ll do.’

  ‘I don’t know for certain that Bosco knows something I don’t. Nobody knows anything.’

  ‘If Vague Henri were here with us, you’d stop.’

  ‘But he isn’t.’

  ‘You know that if we don’t take the Sanctuary before winter then they’ll have reinforcements before we can come back. There are members of the Axis already at each other’s throats. The Swiss want your head to bounce down the street. God knows what will happen if you fail here.’

  ‘Who says I’ll fail?’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘I said I don’t know what’s going on.’

  ‘Then wait.’

  ‘And if I do? Suppose now is the right time. Suppose if I wait I’ve given them the chance to … I don’t know what … something I haven’t thought of. What if Bosco’s ill and this is my best chance? Nobody knows anything.’

  ‘You know what you’d do if Henri was here and not there.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you were going to tell people not to argue with me?’

  ‘I didn’t think I was included.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong.’ He called to the sergeant, ‘Give Mr Hooke the signal to load.’

  With a few shouts it began.

  38

  ‘I want a favour,’ said Cale.

  Fanshawe brought up the five hundred Laconics Cale had asked for and was told they’d be sent in immediately after the first wave of the New Model Army. Not many were expected to survive.

  ‘A favour? Of course. Probably.’

  ‘I want a hundred of your men to relieve Vague Henri as soon as it’s clear what’s going on.’

  ‘That’s a big favour – it’s a hefty risk.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fanshawe looked down at the map of the Sanctuary and its inner buildings.

  ‘It’s a bit of a maze there, old boy. Getting lost would be easy and costly. But if you were there to take them in and guide them …’

  Cale was fairly sure that Fanshawe had been thinking hard about what he was going to do about him. He didn’t need to think very carefully about the chances of either him or Vague Henri emerging alive from the fog of battle.

  ‘Unfortunately I’m needed here – but I’ve arranged for three of my Penitents who know the ghetto better than I do to take you to it.’

  Fanshawe considered declining, not that he’d expected Cale to be stupid enough to agree, but it would look bad to refuse. If there were to be any questions about who was responsible for Cale’s tragic death at some time during the next twenty-four hours it would do no harm to have demonstrated to the New Model Army that the Laconics had been right behind their leader in a risky enterprise to save his closest friend.

  Fanshawe went off to make the arrangements and Cale, collecting IdrisPukke on the way, went back to the summit of the Little Brother and a small tower that had been erected on top to give him as clear a view as was possible. Then it began. The ropes holding up the front of the tunnel were lowered slowly and it transformed into a massive ridge to cover the thirty-foot gap to the top of the Sanctuary walls.

  Still there was nothing. There was a pause of a minute or so, a series of indistinguishable shouts and then the hand pumps, manned by twenty soldiers to build the pressure, were primed to bursting for two minutes. More shouts. A pause. Then the pumps were let loose by Hooke and the liquid in the containers burst out of a set of eight barrels like the spray from the world’s greatest fountain. Hooke lit the eight torches underneath and there was an explosive roar like the crack of doom and the spray ignited in a vast arc of flames, covering the walls in front and a hundred yards to either side. For twenty seconds this hideous device deafened everyone behind it – then Hooke, frightened it would explode, turned it off. For a minute longer the liquid burned like the lake of fire at the centre of hell and then, almost as if it had been blown out, it vanished. There was no delay – the New Model Army, lower legs protected against the heat – were through the tunnel and onto the bridge as quickly as they could to take advantage of the devastation before the Redeemers could respond.

  ‘YOU’LL BE FINE! IT’S ALL GRAVY FROM HERE!’

  ‘GET YOUR EYES ON! GET YOUR EYES ON!’

  ‘VALLON TO THE EDGE! VALLON … YESSSS! TO THE EDGE, YOU SHITHEAD!’

  ‘OVER THERE! OVER THERE! LOOK WHERE YOU’RE FUCKING STEPPING!’

  ‘MURDER HOLE! MURDER HOLE!’

  ‘HERE, BUDDY! HERE!’

  But there were no bodies horribly burned. There were no survivors of the fire ready to beat them back. The shouts stopped. Then there was nothing but a terrible noiseless solitude on every side. This only raised the horrible tension, the soldier’s terrible fear of the unexpected worst: when and in what way would the blow come? They moved on packed together against the hideous fight to come. ‘SLOWLY! SLOWLY! EYES ON! WATCH FOR IT! WATCH FOR IT!’

  Adding to their fear was the black smoke from the Greek fire, which covered everything in front of them in a thick smog. As they moved forward, every ordinary thing assumed the shadowy obscurity of some hideous threat, only to be revealed as a pile of barrels or a holy statue offering blessings to the saved. So a halt was called. Two thousand men, shoulder to shoulder, even the Laconics waiting behind them spooked and shaken at the terrible uncertainty of something hideous to come.

  Very slowly – it was an almost windless day – the smoke began to patch and smudge, each clearing spot seeming to reveal a menace that never came. Then a small gust and then a harder one whirled and revolved the smoke into beautiful spins and rolls. The wind blew through clearly and what they saw was the defining vision of the lives most of them expected to lose that day. Everywhere, from every post, every batten in every one of the roofed walkways, from wooden frames driven into the courtyards in their hundreds, everywhere they looked were thousands of Redeemers hanging by the neck.

  39

  The New Model Army was well used to slaughter by now and the Laconics were, of course, a society given up entirely to its requirements. But this was not death as they knew it and so, despite the fact that what they were seeing meant that they would survive the day and that this multitude of hanged men were their most bitter enemies, a mood of creepy uneasiness settled on them all as they moved slowly through the Sanctuary. Each new prospect, each square, each courtyard, each covered pathway, each prayer garden contained only row after row of the hanging dead. The only sound was of creaking ropes, the only thing moving the slight drift and swing of bodies stirred by the light winds.

  Slowly they moved inside the buildings of the Sanctuary; they could not do otherwise. In every corridor, at intervals three foot broad and long, Redeemers hung by their necks from the roof into which single hooks had been set in concrete. In every room. In every office. Every alcove. Every chapel. In the six great churches there must have been a thousand each on a dozen different levels, as silent as the decorations suspended from the tree of mortality on the Day of the Dead. The order came to halt and the Laconics and their Penitent guide headed into the recesses of the Sanctuary, hampered at every step by the bodies they set swinging back and forth as they made their way to the ghetto and Vague Henri.

  Against the strongest advice to stay out of the Sanctuary until it had been thoroughly searched (‘It’s obvious, sir, they’ll hide and wait for you to come.’) Cale arrived, wide-eyed with bleak astonishment. They were right but he could not bear to wait and, closely surrounded by Penitents (what were they thinking?), he moved into the old spaces now bizarrel
y transformed into a priestly abattoir. How oddly his soul reacted to being back again. It was not like returning to a former home because he realized that something about what Sister Wray had said was right: he had been here in the past, he was here now, he would always be here.

  The Penitents kept him in an ambulacrum where they’d cleared a space of hanged Redeemers and where he was out of everyone’s line of sight. Within a few minutes they brought him a boy that one of the New Model Army had found hiding in a box.

  ‘He means a confessional, sir,’ said a Penitent.

  ‘What are you?’ asked Cale.

  ‘An acolyte, sir.’

  ‘So was I. You’re all right, don’t worry. No one’s going to hurt you. What happened here?’

  It was understandably garbled stuff but simple enough. Bosco had addressed five hundred of his closest followers and announced that, because of Thomas Cale’s treachery, he had decided to remove the faithful from the earth and never to think of mankind again. As a reward for their fidelity they were to be permitted to join God in eternal bliss by the same means as the Redeemer himself.

  ‘All of them went along with this?’

  ‘Not all, sir. But the Pope created a group of counsellors to assist all those who needed spiritual support.’

  ‘But not you.’

  ‘I was afraid.’

  ‘You’ll be safe now.’ Cale turned to one of the staff sergeants of the New Model Army. ‘Get him away from here. Get him some new clothes and get my cook to feed him. Make sure he’s safe. Why, for God’s sake, isn’t there any news about Henri?’ He sent two more of his Penitents. Five minutes later, when he had decided to go himself, dangerous as it was, Fanshawe turned up looking uneasy.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Cale.

  ‘I’ve had some news back but it’s the usual mess of stuff.’

  ‘But you’ve heard something?’

  ‘You know as well as I do the first news is always horse-shit.’

  ‘I understand. What is it? Tell me what you’ve heard.’

  ‘Have it your own way. The news is that your friend is dead. I spoke to someone who said they saw him.’

  ‘Did they know him? How well?’

  ‘He’d seen him around and about. Who hasn’t? The place is an inferno apparently – you know what it’s like: nothing makes any sense at first. He’s probably heard the same thing about you.’

  Cale called out to his Penitents and was heading to the ghetto when, from an entrance blowing light grey smoke into the courtyard, a figure walked out. Even though the smoke obscured him and his face was black, the way he moved gave him away immediately. Then Vague Henri recognized Cale – and also that he was staring at him in a peculiar way.

  ‘What?’ he said, defensive.

  Cale looked him over for a while.

  ‘There was a rumour you were dead.’

  Taken aback by this, Henri gave the impression he was considering how reliable it was.

  ‘No,’ he said, at last.

  Cale kept looking at him.

  ‘What happened?’

  Vague Henri smiled.

  ‘Nothing much. We got in real neat. We only took out half a dozen on the way to the girls. Now I can see why.’

  ‘They didn’t attack?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about the fires?’

  ‘We scared the shit out of the nuns. One of them spilt a pan of hot fat – the place went up like a hay-rack – spread under the floorboards and everything. That’s why the fires kept breaking out all over. Got a bit scary.’

  ‘Are the girls all right?’

  ‘Fine. All of them.’ He laughed. ‘Bosco put them on half an acolyte’s rations – thin as a hair now.’

  ‘A hare?’

  ‘Yeah – on your head.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you meant, you know, a rabbit kind of hare. Doesn’t make sense, a rabbit, does it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wonder why he didn’t kill them?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Vague Henri, ‘there’s good in everyone.’

  They both smiled. Cale nodded at the bodies hanging all around the courtyard.

  ‘What do you make of this?’

  ‘I don’t make anything of it,’ he said, suddenly angry. ‘Fucking good fucking riddance.’ Then he laughed; humour certainly but horror also. ‘Didn’t see it coming, though.’

  ‘Bosco told them this was how they’d get to heaven.’

  Vague Henri nodded.

  ‘Find him yet?’ Cale asked.

  ‘No. Want to?’

  ‘One way or the other. He’ll be in his room, maybe.’

  ‘Not,’ said Vague Henri ‘a good idea to go wandering around without being firm-handed.’

  ‘I’m impatient. Really, I can’t wait.’

  Windsor, the cancer-infected Laconic tasked with killing Thomas Cale that day, was feeling particularly unwell. He was not long for the world one way or the other. He’d seen Cale talking to Vague Henri and tried to get to a high vantage point where he could get a decent shot. He put on a cassock he’d stripped off one of the Redeemers. He’d hoped for a good deal more confusion and days of fighting to give him an opportunity but now everything was static and soldiers were milling about in their thousands, gloomy and depressed by the hanging dead; having been wound up so tight and then it all being over there was nowhere for their horrible mix of feelings to go but inside.

  Unfamiliar with the Sanctuary and its twists, Windsor got lost on his way to a walled ledge he’d spotted, and by the time he arrived it was only to see Cale and Vague Henri leaving the square on a reconnoitre which could only be considered seriously ill-advised. Though, of course, if they’d done the wise thing and stayed where they were, Cale would have had only a few seconds to live.

  Windsor got rid of the cassock – there were plenty spare where that came from – and headed off in pursuit of the two boys, though not with any great optimism that he’d find them in the vast confusion of the place. On the other hand, there were now Laconics wandering all over the Sanctuary so there would be no problem stalking them. He paused only to vomit, something he now did three times a day.

  It was no easy progress for Cale and Vague Henri – although the floors were clear, everything above two feet was packed with hanging priests and their headway was slow and singular as they pushed their way through the packed mass of dangling bodies. Just as he expected, Windsor was quickly lost, but while staring out of a window he noticed that though he couldn’t see the two boys themselves they gave away their trail by the movement of bodies swinging back and forth in their wake. He decided that it would be quicker, even with brief stops to check their progress, to crawl under the priests rather than push through them. The thought had also occurred to Cale and Vague Henri but not only did they find the idea of crawling under their former masters objectionable, the truth was that they were enjoying themselves. The general soldiers might have been cowed by the Redeemers’ grim willingness to embrace death in such a terrible and determined fashion but Cale and Vague Henri were made of sterner stuff – this hideous end struck them as entirely deserved and better than anything they could have thought up for themselves. It was no exaggeration to say that once they’d got over the initial shock they were thrilled by what had happened, an ecstasy of satisfaction that all their pain had been in some measure reimbursed. These deaths were very sweet to both of them, a sweetness that required to be made complete by a confrontation, dead or alive, with Bosco himself.

  At one point Windsor came within forty yards of them but the darkness and the maziness of the place defeated him again: he took a wrong turn and crawled off under the vault of pointy feet ever further into the inner snarl of the Sanctuary.

  As Cale and Vague Henri came to the end of the largest of the corridors they heard a sound. At first it was hard to make out, stopping and starting – it was a scratching sound and a scrabbling sound like a trapped animal, a small one, trying to escape. It was a desperate sound: scrat
ch and scrape, silence, scratch and scrape. In the increasing darkness and silence it tightened the skin on the back of their skulls. Scratch and scrape, silence, scratch and scrape. Then an odd scuffing fluttery sound. Slowly they moved to the end of the corridor, where it turned right and also opened up into a space the size of a large room. Twitchy, they lowered themselves to the ground and saw what was causing the sound: manic, sandalled feet, flapping and scrabbling at the floor and wretchedly trying to get contact with something solid to support the weight of its body. The knot must have slipped or the rope stretched. As the corner of the corridor turned there was enough space for them to sit back against the wall without the lines of turned down feet in their faces.

  ‘Getting too dark to see,’ said Vague Henri.

  Scrabble, scrabble, scrape.

  ‘It’s pretty close – just the other side of this latitude here.’

  Scrape, scrape, scrabble.

  ‘That sound – it’s giving me the shrinks.’

  ‘Then let’s get away from it.’

  Keeping close to the stone, they eased along the wall of the Latitude. Scrabble, scrape, scrabble, scrape. Then suddenly a wild and desperate scratching and rasps as the choking man, raging to breathe, lashed out for purchase on the floor.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ said Vague Henri and pushed through the hanging dead and grabbed the choking Redeemer by the waist to ease his weight and cut him down with his knife.

  The dying Redeemer, almost gone, took in a breath of air and regained consciousness – but only of a sort. An overseer of the hanging itself, he had been among the last to hang. The rope had seemed all right but it turned out to be inferior stuff and had stretched to allow the tips of his toes to take enough of his weight to keep him alive for hours. When Vague Henri took him by the waist he was able to breathe and started to wake up from the death nightmare he’d been trying to run away from: a devil was coming for him, bug-eyed and fat with gappy teeth, all pink and white with a slimy, drippy, red erection and laughing madly, like a pig might laugh.