The Last Four Things

  By virtue of a deliberate failure to make it clear who was responsible for taking over the following watch of the stockade and the horses, it was daylight before the escape was discovered. On being informed, Cale pretended to threaten every kind of death and torture for those responsible before ordering instant preparations for pursuit of the Laconics by the Purgators, led by himself swearing to undo this blot on his reputation personally. If there were awkward questions to be asked no one asked them and by nine o’clock Cale, Vague Henri and some two hundred or so Purgators were off in pursuit weighed down with what might in other circumstances be considered a suspiciously excessive quantity of supplies for a chase of this kind.

  Gil or Bosco would also have asked why Cale was taking along Hooke, someone who could be of no possible value in such circumstances. Just before he left, a message arrived from Bosco congratulating him on his victory, setting out briefly the events in Chartres and ordering him to return immediately if the victory permitted. He handed the letter to Vague Henri.

  ‘Odd. I wonder what’s going on.’

  ‘Let’s hope we never get the chance to find out.’

  ‘Will you reply?’

  ‘Best.’

  Instructing the messenger not to leave until the following day, Cale wrote a quick response lying, as was his usual habit, with as much of the truth as possible – that a number of Laconics had escaped and he feared that they might meet up with those who had fled the battle and possibly make a counter-attack. With this in mind he had ordered trenches dug for a major defence and decided to pursue the escaped either to destroy them or at least be sure that they were returning to the border and not planning further attacks on Chartres. With luck it would be several days before Bosco worked out what was happening and he, Vague Henri and Hooke would be well clear. There remained two problems: the danger of pursuing twice their number of troops and ones with a powerful reason to turn on them if they learned the truth; and what he would say to the Purgators once they realized they had, instead of being welcomed back into the fold of the Redeemers, become outcasts again?

  On the second night of the chase Cale had demanded that Fanshawe light a small beacon so that he could check on his position without coming too close by daylight, something which would involve some tricky explanations to the Purgators if he did not attack. He sent Vague Henri ahead to spot the fire and on his return was surprised to discover that Fanshawe had done as he agreed.

  ‘I didn’t think he’d stick to his bargain.’

  ‘He did and he didn’t. The beacon wasn’t in their camp – it was just two Laconics on their own.’

  ‘He could be miles away.’

  ‘Could be, but isn’t. I arrived as they were changing guards and followed the watchmen. Fanshawe and the rest of them are about four miles away.’

  ‘Murderous arse-bandits who keep their word. Odd bunch.’

  ‘When are you going to tell the Purgators?’

  ‘Tomorrow. If they don’t kill us we’ll have the whole day.’

  ‘Rather you than me.’

  ‘Now I think about it, you’d better keep your distance. See how it goes. Badly and you can take off – have the ’scope.’

  ‘That’s very generous.’

  ‘I’m a generous person.’

  They both laughed but Vague Henri didn’t say yes or no.

  The next morning after most of the Purgators had eaten a breakfast of porridge mixed with dried fruit, pot-walloped by Cale as an alternative to the dead men’s feet that some of the Purgators still preferred, he called them together. Ten minutes earlier he had watched as Vague Henri had ridden out of camp both nodding goodbye to each other as he did so. Just as he leapt up onto a rock to talk to the Purgators Vague Henri came wandering back into camp and dismounted. With another nod Cale simply stared at him for a few moments. But now he had other things on his mind. He began to regret not just legging it with Vague Henri during the night. On the other hand, the chances of two people making it across such heavily guarded borders didn’t look any better. Was this the least worst of two bad choices?

  ‘You, my Lord Redeemers, know me as well as I know every one of you. On all occasions,’ he lied, ‘I have told you everything it was possible to tell you straight and plain.’ There was a general murmur of agreement that this indeed was true.

  ‘Two days ago I lied to you.’

  Another murmur. ‘Pretty good,’ thought Vague Henri from his perch at the back and with the safety catch of his crossbow loose and lying out of sight behind him on the grass.

  ‘But it was a lie I made only to save your lives.’ He waved the paper not unlike the one he had received from Bosco in the air. ‘This is a letter, more poisonous than a toad, from Bosco – a man I trusted more than my life itself and on whose word I risked your lives and lost so many who were dear to us, men who had suffered next to you in war and in the House of Special Purpose. This letter attempts to draw us together in a plot against the Pontiff that we love, to kill those dear to him and turn the One True Faith into who knows what toxic lies Bosco is ashamed even in the presence of these other treacheries to write.’

  The letter was not the one from Bosco but a fake that Cale had bodged together with Vague Henri. The truth of Bosco’s betrayal might have been just as corrosive to his reputation among the Purgators but the real letter implicated Cale as much. The Purgators were silent now, many had gone white. Cale detailed the names of the newly dead in Chartres – all true enough, it should be said, and watched eyes on every face as the Purgators to a man stood still as stumps asking themselves whether to believe the unbelievable.

  ‘I brought you here, a two-day ride, so that you can make a choice, and not be chained to the wheel with me as I make mine never to accept this disgrace. Each one of you must choose: return or leave with me. I promise now that he who has no stomach for this flight, let him depart. His parole and passport freeing him I’ll sign myself. Ten dollars in his purse that man will have, for in this dreadful division of our faith I would not want it on my mind to die in that man’s company who in his conscience would not die with us. Read this letter,’ he said, waving it towards them. ‘If it does not turn your blood to stone and make your choice. I saved you once and every one of you has paid me back a dozen times. The man who comes with me will be my brother – the man who leaves shall in his leaving still for ever be my friend. I’ll stand aside and let you read but make it quick – our flight is noted and the dogs are up.’ With that he jumped down, handed the letter to the nearest Purgator, and walked over to Vague Henri and sat down.

  ‘What will you do,’ asked Vague Henri, ‘if some of them decide to leave?’

  ‘Why not all?’

  ‘And make it through the rancorous priests, the dogs, all for a chance to knock on the door of the slaughterhouse of Chartres?’

  ‘They have the letter.’

  ‘And it’s almost true.’

  They watched as the Purgators talked and read and talked and read.

  ‘Good speech,’ said Vague Henri.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Not yours.’

  ‘I read it in a book in Bosco’s library.’

  ‘Do you remember the name?’

  ‘Not of the maker, no. I remember the book,’ he paused. ‘Tip of my tongue.’

  ‘Not very grateful …’

  ‘Death to the French,’ Cale interrupted with satisfaction. ‘That’s what it was called.’

  In the end Vague Henri turned out to be wrong. About twenty of the Purgators, to the great hostility of the remainder, decided to return. Cale stopped a row that could have turned ugly and took some pleasure in keeping his promises of parole and money. His reputation for integrity among the Purgators was one he valued. Besides, being seen to be honest in these matters would ensure that everyone who came with him would do so willingly. And indeed, seeing him prove his honesty, three more Purgators chose to
leave. In five minutes they had collected their gear and were gone. Another five minutes and Cale, still with slightly more than a hundred and sixty men, was heading in the opposite direction having ensured that Vague Henri had let slip to one of the ringleaders of the departed the direction in which they were heading.

  ‘I’m amazed,’ said Hooke, as he left riding between Vague Henri and Cale, ‘that even a Purgator could let himself be fooled by such a palpable device.’

  ‘Keep your mouth shut,’ said Vague Henri.

  ‘What about me?’ said Hooke.

  ‘What about you?’ replied Vague Henri.

  ‘You may keep your ten dollars but I want a passport and a parole the same as you offered them.’

  ‘You?’ said Cale. ‘I own you from snout to whistle. You’re going nowhere.’

  ‘If I’m so grossly incapable I wonder it wouldn’t be a relief to see the back of me.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Cale, softly smiling and all the more menacing for it. ‘You can learn to see the world more like I do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that the next time I use one of your devices in a brew – you’re going to be two steps in front of me when it all kicks off.’

  After two more days heading in the direction he’d asked Vague Henri to spill to the returning Purgators, Cale realized that those who remained would have been getting suspicious as to why they kept following the Laconics but not engaging them.

  ‘I am calling off this chase. With our band of brothers shaved by more than twenty, we are outnumbered three to one. The Antagonist border is close and with it Laconic reinforcements might be anywhere and lying in wait for us. We will head to Spanish Leeds.’

  ‘They are allies to the Antagonists,’ called out a Purgator.

  ‘Only in good weather. The Swiss are neutral in their nature – even when they offer help it never comes. Even so you must remove your cassocks before we cross – it’s no easy feat in any case – impossible if you’re dressed like this.’

  ‘You ask a great deal, Captain, to deny our faith.’

  ‘Keeping your mouth shut isn’t a denial of anything – just common sense.’

  ‘I thought we were brothers, Captain.’

  ‘And so we are. Just as I’m the eldest. Take your money and your pass and go. My promise is entente even now.’

  ‘I want to stay, Captain.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want to stay. I talk too much.’

  ‘I don’t. Leave.’

  The rest of the Purgators, Cale could see, were shocked at the insolence shown to Cale and pleased by his arbitrary exercise of power. They were not used to the first and comforted by the second.

  Realizing the entire mood of the Purgators was against him the man left quickly.

  ‘Should I follow him?’ said Vague Henri.

  ‘Follow him?’ replied Cale pretending not to understand.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Cale shook his head.

  ‘You’ve grown very bloodthirsty in your old age.’

  ‘He’s just a Redeemer – the loyalty the pig farmer owes to the pig – right?’

  Cale smiled. ‘You’ve been talking to Hooke. He’s a bad influence that man, as well as useless. As to the other, leave him alone. He’s too far from Chartres to do us any harm – even if he gets there. Which I doubt. I want you to take five men and let Fanshawe get a good look at you.’ He drew a few lines in the dust. ‘Then double back and we’ll wait for you here.’

  23

  You may have heard the devil referred to as Old Merk, a name taken from Nicholas Merk, the most infamous of those infamous diplomats for hire, the Talleyrand. Nevertheless for all the disgracefully cynical advice he handed out we must all admit an obligation to Merk: he tells us not how men ought to be but how they are.

  ‘A ruler determined to go on a foreign adventure should always take the path of conquest by plunder rather than conquest by possession. It is all very well for a great man to look at the maps on his wall and consider for how many hours the sun shines on his territories, but the problem with conquered peoples is that if you do not steal their possessions and leave at once you must run their country for them, repair their waterways so that they do not die of thirst, fill the potholes in the roads, stuff their granaries so that they do not perish of hunger. You must decide on their squabbles, which will usually be many and lethal, and pay your soldiers or theirs when the agreements you have so patiently negotiated break down, which they always do.

  ‘You may consider a conquered land to be like an inherited great house – wonderful to contemplate at first and worthy of blessing your good fortune but in reality nothing but trouble and a drain on your time, patience, blood and treasure. Steal!’

  It was such a squabble of the endless kind Merk predicts that brought five hundred bad-tempered Redeemers marching into the foothills of the Quantocks to deal with an increase in the number of raids by mountain bandits on the local Musselman communities. It was cold and it was wet and there was little enough to eat because so much had been stolen from the Musselmen. The Redeemers could not see why they should be enduring these deprivations, not to say risking their lives, coming to the aid of people who were not even heretics. They worshipped false Gods, not even the right God wrongly like the Antagonists. It was not a habit of the new Redeemer Governor of Memphis to explain his actions to his men and nor did he, but the reasons were simple enough: Memphis must eat and the Musselmen provided the city with a significant proportion of its food. The actions of these mountain crooks were a fairly serious nuisance and an advertisement that Redeemer rules could be flouted and flamboyantly so. The expedition was not intended to restore order but to demonstrate to anyone watching what could be expected if Redeemer authority was challenged in any way. The Redeemers arrived as punishers not policemen.

  While the notion of having nothing to do was certainly an agreeable one among the Klephts there was a deep antipathy to being obliged to have nothing to do and fulfilling that obligation in a prescribed place. Guard duty was therefore regarded with special loathing and while everyone under the age of forty was supposed to take their turn it was a custom, as Mary, Countess of Pembroke, used to say, ‘more honoured in the breach than the observance’. Those who had the means paid others to take their place, generally those too lazy, useless and stupid to earn a living any other way. Now with so many of the daring and intelligent earning so much from the increased number of raids on Musselman territory there was more money around for more people to bribe the least competent of their fellows to stand on a hillside during winter in the extreme cold with nothing happening and nothing much likely to happen.

  There were strict guidelines about the use of fires by the guards – only at night, small, in the recesses of light-smothering rocks and with the driest wood. It was not easy in the cold and rain to conform to these sensible but uncomfortable rules. There was also the sheer unlikeliness of an attack by the Musselmen in winter and at night. Blundering around on the steeps in the dark and in the ice or rain, possibly both, was as good a way to get yourself killed as any. Lying there in the cold or wet the temptation to take a tiny risk, probably not even that, and build up the fire a bit and use the damper wood because keeping anything dry up there was a mare, you could see how things would slip. And so the consequences of Kleist’s arrival worked themselves out: his talent gave the Klephts the opportunity for more raids and therefore more wealth and therefore more bribes, while all the time increasing the need for a watchfulness that actually grew less and less instead of more intense. And had it not been for Cale’s unintended heroism in saving Riba and all the disasters that grew from it, the guards calculating the balance of risk between catching pneumonia or getting their throats cut by Musselmen in the middle of the night would have been entirely reasonable. But they had not reckoned on the Redeemers. And why would they? But for all that, it was
Redeemers who were crawling over the icy surfaces of Mounts How and Usborne and killing Klephts by the light of their forgivably overstoked fires.

  But luck runs out even for the wicked and after the third set of Klepht guards had been piped they were spotted by an insomniac watchman who despite the larger fires had been too cold to sleep. He died in the fight but in the moil that followed one of the Klephts escaped and made his way home, warning the other outposts as he came. Now wary enough to stay alive, soon messengers with more detailed information arrived.

  It did not take long as the story unfolded for Kleist to realize who he was dealing with.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Suveri, ‘they’re Materazzi. They came about twenty years ago and burnt out half a dozen villages.’

  ‘There aren’t any Materazzi any more.’

  ‘Not official maybe. But there must be any number of trained men needing to earn a bob.’

  ‘They’re not Materazzi for hire or anything else,’ said Kleist.

  He explained and for some time there was silence.

  ‘When the Materazzi came we just upped sticks and hid in the mountains. We wait them out, they burn the villages – a pity – but they can’t stay here for ever.’

  There was considerable protest at this: their recent increase in wealth had started not just the richest to build themselves new houses more fit for their improved circumstances. Many were half finished and there was much resentment at the idea of abandoning them to be destroyed. This squabble continued for some time.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ said Kleist when he couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘They haven’t come here to make a point – not to you anyway because there won’t be one of you left alive to learn any lesson they’re bringing with them. They’re not going to burn a few houses to teach you not to be so greedy. They’re going to wipe you off the face of the earth. They’ll kill the old men, the young, the girls, the children. They’ll pass over nothing that lives. And they’ll do all this in front of you so that it’s the last thing you see before they put you under with saws and harrows of iron and the axe and the rope. Then they’ll pass all of you through the brick kiln. Then they’ll pour the ashes into the rivers and the streams so that they run black and all that will be remembered of you is cinders, all that will remain of you is a byword for ruin.’