The Beating of His Wings

  ‘So why didn’t you give evidence against him?’

  ‘Because as it turned out it was easier said than done, all right?’

  ‘Let justice rule – even though the heavens fall.’ IdrisPukke was lightly mocking Artemisia’s idealism but Cale was now in a touchy mood and took it as some sort of criticism.

  ‘Stick it back in your cracker, granddad.’

  The dinner crumbled like one of IdrisPukke’s aphorisms and everyone went home in a bad mood. Outside the evening air was heavy and not so much lukewarm as tepid, vaguely unpleasant as if it was atomized with the dead souls of the sons and husbands of Spanish Leeds gathered to attend the execution of Conn Materazzi in two days. Cale and Vague Henri and Kleist, whose growing misery made the other two feel worse, got back to their elegant townhouse. They were still slightly intimidated by living there, as if expecting someone important to come and chase them out for living above their station. They were used to other people’s servants by now but not their own. It wasn’t that they minded someone cooking and cleaning for them, it was more that the power of servants to creep up on them at unexpected moments reminded them of the unprivacy of the Sanctuary, with its horror of doors and its punishments for being caught on your own. Servants seemed to think they could just appear like Redeemers. They took it badly when Cale insisted they knocked before entering, something they regarded as evidence that he was common. He also made a point of thanking them when they did something for him, a habit that also revealed him as common. The proper thing for any employer to do was to treat them as if they did not exist.

  Before they had rung the bell the door, unusually, was opened by Bechete, the over-valet.

  ‘You have company, sir,’ he said, as he gestured towards the chambre des visiteurs.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘They declined to give their names, sir and I would have refused them entry under normal circumstances. But I recognized them and I thought …’ He allowed his sentence to trail off meaningfully.

  ‘So who is it?’

  ‘The Duchess of Memphis, sir, and I believe the wife of the Hanse Ambassador.’

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ said Kleist as if he’d heard nothing.

  ‘Guess why she brought Riba?’ said Vague Henri. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘Yes. Arbell thinks I’ll come on my own. You go first and be cold with them. I’ll come in a bit. Leave the door open.’

  Vague Henri almost knocked – but stopped himself and opened the door a little too energetically to compensate. Both Arbell and Riba stood up, a little startled, and he noticed the disappointment on Arbell’s face. One up to Cale.

  ‘This is late to be calling, ladies. What do you want?’

  ‘Good manners, perhaps,’ said Riba. But Vague Henri was no pushover.

  ‘So it’s a social visit? I’m surprised because there’s been plenty of time to call on us before now. Obviously I was wrong to think you wanted something. I apologize.’

  ‘Don’t be like this, Henri. It’s not worthy of you.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘No. You’re the kindest of people.’ This time it was Arbell who spoke, but gently, not at all the proud Materazzienne.

  ‘Not so much any more. I had time to think while I was waiting to be beaten to death – about kindness, I mean. You’re a kind person, Riba, but you’d have let me die in Kitty the Hare’s basement. Cale, now, he’s not a kind person but he wouldn’t do that, let me die, I mean. So I’ve gone off kindness. What do you want?’

  Vague Henri sensed there was something strange about his own indignation, something that he couldn’t put his finger on until much later. He was enjoying it.

  Cale, carefully waiting the right time for a dramatic entrance, thought this was good enough.

  ‘Why don’t you tell him? I’d be interested to hear, too.’

  Seeing her shook him. She was beautiful, certainly, with that touching bloom that had made such an impression on him when they’d met in the corridor. But there are fish-in-the-sea numbers of beautiful women in the world, many of them with that same flush of youth and power – but something about her touched him, always had and always would, like a malign twin of the lost chord, whose discovery the late Montagnards believed would generate a great and infinite calm. He wanted to be loved by her and to wring her neck in equal measure.

  ‘We were all friends once,’ said Riba, then turned to Vague Henri. ‘Can we talk somewhere?’ she said to him, so sadly and sweetly that, soft and sentimental as he was, he felt ashamed by his outburst. Cale nodded at him and he showed her out, but not before Riba had taken Cale’s hand. ‘Please be kind,’ she said, and was gone.

  The two of them stared at each other for some time.

  ‘I suppose you …’

  ‘Help him,’ interrupted Arbell. ‘Please.’

  Agitated and trying to hide it, he went over to the elegant and uncomfortable chair and sat down.

  ‘How?’ he said. ‘And why?’

  ‘They think – the Swiss – that you’re their saviour.’

  ‘They wouldn’t be the first to get that wrong.’

  ‘They’ll listen to you.’

  ‘Not about this, they won’t. It was a disaster and someone has to pay.’

  ‘Would you have done any better?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have been there in the first place.’

  ‘He doesn’t deserve to die.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how little that’s got to do with it.’

  ‘Are you so full of hatred for me you’ll let a good man die to get your own back?’

  ‘I saved his life once already, probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, and if I wanted to pay you back, you treacherous bitch, you’d be dead already.’

  ‘He doesn’t deserve to die.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So help him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘No.’

  It was a rare and intense pleasure to watch her suffer. He felt as if he could never have enough of it. And yet he also felt the dread of the loss of her, a horror that increased the greater his delight at watching her in pain. It was like scratching an itch that only made the pain worse even as it ecstatically soothed the very same.

  She was shaking now and pale with fear.

  ‘I know it was you who set fire to the bridge.’

  This was a bit of a shock.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the proof?’

  ‘I know you.’

  ‘They’ll need more than that.’

  ‘And I know two witnesses who know you too.’

  This was entirely possible; there were a lot of people at the bridge and maybe some of Artemisia’s men had snitched.

  ‘You’ve changed your tune,’ said Cale. ‘First it’s tears, now it’s threats.’

  ‘It was you.’

  ‘Nobody cares. Whoever set fire to the bridge was a god-damned hero. It just wasn’t me. Even if someone confessed it wouldn’t matter. Someone has to be to blame. Conn’s the one. That’s all. Now take your sniffles and menaces and shove off.’

  He stood up and walked out, half of him pleased, the other half devastated. Outside in the hall, Riba and Vague Henri broke off the earnest conversation they were having. She moved towards him and started to speak.

  ‘Shut up!’ he said, and like a spoilt and angry child stormed off up the stairs to bed.

  23

  ‘What did Arbell Materazzi want?’ asked Bose Ikard.

  The meeting with Cale had started badly with another ill-tempered question. ‘What the bloody hell did you think you were playing at?’ This was in regard to Cale’s peculiar performance at Conn Materazzi’s trial. ‘It was made perfectly clear to you what you were supposed to say.’

  This was true enough.

  ‘That was before I realized you had your witnesses queuing up to give the same story. I don’t know why you didn’t go the whole hog and pay t
hem on their way down from the witness stand. I made the whole thing look plausible at least.’

  This was entirely true. Cale’s half-baked prevarication had indeed had the effect of drawing the sting, if only in part, of the Materazzi claim that the trial was a mere show. Conn’s impressive performance at the trial had won him some sympathy and when at Riba’s urging her husband had raised objections on behalf of the Hanse as to its fairness, Ikard had been able to point to Cale’s testimony as proof that the evidence had not been fixed in advance. It had also benefitted Cale by giving the impression he was honest and had refused to do a bad turn to a fellow soldier even when it was in his interests to do so. Besides, a kind of mania had lifted Cale out of the realm of ordinary men. In a matter of days he had become famous. It was hardly surprising given the hideous circumstances in which the Axis found itself. If ever a saviour was required it was now.

  ‘Are you spying on me?’ asked Cale, very well aware of the answer.

  ‘You are the observed of all observers, Mr Cale. You can’t piss in a pot without its significance being discussed at every dinner table in the city. What did she want?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing.’

  ‘You aren’t going to intercede on his behalf?’

  ‘Would it help if I did?’

  ‘You could put in a plea for leniency, if you wished. In writing. I’d make sure the King received it personally.’

  That was it then.

  ‘No, it’s nothing to do with me.’

  A pity, thought Bose. He would certainly not have passed it to the King had Cale been foolish enough to write such a plea. The King had forgotten his obsession with Conn – or rather he now regarded himself as having been overly influenced by Bose Ikard’s enthusiasm for the young man (as if his Chancellor had had any choice but to go along with his master’s hysterical favouritism). For now, Cale was everyone’s favourite, including the King’s, so it wouldn’t do to be seen to work against him. But Bose was sceptical about the boy’s ability to keep people happy for long. Whatever his skills, politics wasn’t one of them. And in the end ability and talent were nothing in the face of politics. It might have been useful to have a letter in his back pocket.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Cale, touching himself just under the chin with the flat of his right hand. ‘I’m up to here with sureness.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be some sort of pleasantry at my expense?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And are you also sure that you have the men to create your New Model Army?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because I have experienced and knowledgeable advisors who say it’s not possible to create an army out of peasants, not in general and certainly not one capable of beating the Redeemers. Let’s not even consider the lack of time involved.’

  ‘They’re right.’

  ‘I see. But it’s possible for you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘At the Golan the Laconics inflicted the greatest defeat on the Redeemers in their history. Ten days later the Redeemers inflicted on the Laconics the greatest defeat of theirs. The difference was me.’ Cale had been slumped insolently in his chair but now stretched upright. ‘Is that sneak behind the screen going to join in or am I going to have to go over there and drag him out?’

  Bose sighed. ‘Come out.’ A young man, smiling amiably and in his early twenties, emerged. It was Robert Fanshawe, Laconic scout. Cale had last seen him when they’d cut a deal over prisoners after the battle he’d just been boasting about.

  ‘You don’t look well, Cale, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘I do mind.’

  ‘You don’t look well all the same.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bose Ikard. ‘At least it proves you know him.’

  ‘Know him?’ said Fanshawe. ‘We’re special pals.’

  ‘No, we’re not!’ said Cale, his alarm at how this might be taken delighting Fanshawe who laughed, revelling in his discomfort.

  ‘Do Mr Cale’s claims about his importance to the Redeemer victory have merit?’

  ‘I’m not claiming anything,’ said Cale. Fanshawe looked at him, cool, not laughing any more.

  ‘Yes, this young man was the difference.’

  ‘So why are you so sure his New Model Army will fail?’

  ‘There have been peasant rebellions as long as there have been peasants,’ said Fanshawe. ‘Tell me one that succeeded?’ He looked at them both, head mockingly turned, waiting for a reply. ‘The Laconics have fought six wars against our Helots in the last hundred years – if you can call the slaughter of untrained hillbillies a war. It ends one way. Always.’

  ‘Not this time,’ said Cale.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d rather show than tell.’

  ‘Excellent. I look forward to your presentation of the details.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Bose Ikard.

  ‘I’m not giving a performance so your dunces get to offer me the benefit of their experience. There’s going to be a fight and whoever’s left standing at the end wins the argument. One hundred each side.’

  ‘The rules?’

  ‘There are no rules.’

  ‘A real fight?’

  ‘Is there any other kind? Bring who you like, how you like.’

  ‘And you’ll just have your peasants?’

  ‘I’ll bring whoever I damn well please.’ But it was too hard to resist. ‘There’ll be eighty plebs and twenty of my veterans.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ll be watching Fanshawe getting the shit kicked out of him.’

  ‘Me? I’m just a Laconic advisor. I couldn’t possibly take part.’

  Bose Ikard was suspicious, always, but considered that perhaps it was for the best: he wanted to know what Cale was up to and it was hard to think of a better way than something like this. There were Swiss soldiers who felt they deserved recognition before some miserable-looking boy. Now they’d have the chance to prove it.

  ‘I’ll get back to you,’ he said. ‘Close the door on your way out, Mr Cale. A word, Mr Fanshawe.’

  24

  The sun came up on the morning of Conn’s execution with as much warmth and honeyed light as if it had been the Jubilee celebrations of a much-loved monarch. At ten in the morning he was taken from his cell in the Swarthmore, then down to the West Gate and through the Parc Beaulieu to the place of execution on the Quai des Moulins. Five of his men, but not Vipond, or his wife, walked with him, bareheaded and unarmed. There he ate a piece of bread and drank a glass of wine in the Vetch Gallery. From before dawn a huge crowd had been gathering in order to get the best places from which to see the action.

  Along with the usual excitement of a crowd who delighted in the hideous suffering of a fellow human being was added the hatred of citizens who held Conn Materazzi responsible not only for the defeat at Bex but for their justified fear that in the spring of next year the Redeemers would be doing very much the same to them as they were now about to do to him.

  A brass band of sorts, sponsored by the city’s biggest pie-maker, belted out rough versions of popular songs and blaring versions of boastful martial anthems about Switzerlanders never being slaves. The crowd was a peculiar mixture of unequals: do-bads, thieves, tarts and lollygaggers, carpenters and shopkeepers, merchants and their wives and daughters and, of course, a specially erected terrace for those who really mattered. In all, it was such a crush of spiteful humanity that those not used to it suffered terribly, namely the wives and daughters of the gentility who fainted in the heat and had to be carried out with their plunging necklines all disordered, which got the drunk apprentices going (‘GET YOUR TITS OUT FOR THE LADS!’). As always, it was a bad day for cats: at least a dozen were thrown into the air to bellowing shouts around the great space in front of the place of execution.

  In general, throughout the Four Quar
ters, judicial death came about through hanging, beheading with an axe or burning – sometimes all three, if you were particularly unfortunate. But in Spanish Leeds, commoner and aristocrat were both beheaded after a peculiar manner and by a most unusual executioner. Formally it was called the Leeds Gibbet but the polloi called it Topping Bob. It consisted of a frame of wood about sixteen foot high and four foot wide bolted into a large block. It was something like a French guillotine, although much bigger and much cruder. But unlike the guillotine there is no single executioner for the Leeds Gibbet: there are many. Once the block and axe is pulled to the top of the frame and held with a pin, the rope holding the pin in place is handed out to any of the people below who can get a grasp of it. Those who can’t stretch out their hands to show that they assent and agree to the execution. This, then, was the sight that waited for Conn as he stepped out onto the platform and his death.

  His shirt of black silk had been cut around the collar without much skill to leave his neck visible. Black silk shirts, then the height of fashion, were unpopular for many years afterwards. The gibbet, of course, dominated the scene and if beauty is the shape that most conveys the purpose of an object then its ugliness was beautiful. It looked like what it was. It was a pity that none of Conn’s friends had been allowed out onto the platform with him: he deserved someone to witness his bravery in the face of that awful device. Perhaps there were some in the crowd, not many, who sensed the young man’s courage. It was true that he’d shown great courage in battle but that was courage shown where all around were to share a part in the same fate; where there was fear but also fellow feeling and the prospect of honour and purpose. Here it was all isolation among the taunts and the cruelty; giving people the pleasure of watching hideous suffering inflicted without risk to themselves. But there was at least one person there who admired him, who knew the injustice and unfairness, the wrongness of his death. Cale was in the bell tower of St Anne’s cathedral, which looked down on the square – a distance from the gibbet of about fifty yards and a hundred and thirty feet high. He was alone and smoking one of the fine Swiss cigars, a Diplomat No. 4, to which he had become addicted now that he could afford them every day. He couldn’t have told you how he felt – not sick to his stomach, as he’d been at the death of the Maid of Blackbird Leys, but a kind of dead tranquillity in which he seemed, paradoxically, alive to everything: the mocking obscenities, the whistles, the man smiling at Conn and holding two fingers to his forehead, delighting in the horror to come. But he also felt removed, as if the tower had taken him above the fog of malice and pleasure below. A small tribe of dogs chased each other, barking happily, in and out of the legs of the soldiers who faced the crowd from the platform, not armed but carrying drums.