The Last Four Things
‘You know, Cale, the Ghurkhas swear a vow that they’ll never sheath their sword until it’s tasted blood.’
‘Lucky for you you’re not a Ghurkha then.’
‘Where’s Vague Henri?’
‘He’s hurt – bad. He took an arrow in the face at the border. Can’t get it out. We need a surgeon.’
‘There are two, I think, with us here. I’ll see …’
‘Not a Materazzi surgeon. No offence.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. Where is he?’
‘He’s with three of my men in a farm about ten miles away.’
‘So it’s not just you and him?’
‘Not exactly.’
He explained about the Purgators.
‘You’re telling me,’ said Vipond, ‘you’ve brought a hundred and sixty Redeemers here.’
‘They’re not really Redeemers.’
‘And what do you expect me to do with these hundred and sixty non-Redeemers?’
‘Well, I won’t tell anyone who they are if you don’t. Have you ever seen a Khazak mercenary?’
‘No,’ said Vipond.
Cale looked at IdrisPukke.
‘No,’ he said at last.
‘Then they’re Khazak mercenaries. Who’s going to know different?’
‘It’s a bit thin,’ said IdrisPukke.
‘It’ll have to do. I’ll worry about it later. Vague Henri is the point.’
‘He must be in great pain.’
‘Not really.’
‘Every philosopher can stand the toothache except the one who has it, right?’
‘No. You’ve seen that kit I have for stitching wounds and that.’
‘I remember.’
‘It’s got a small cake of opium in it.’
‘You never said.’
‘Why would I?’
‘Sounds a bit indulgent for Redeemers,’ said IdrisPukke.
‘They can be very generous when it comes to themselves. Nobody likes the idea of dying in agony if they don’t have to. Anyway, with a hundred and sixty of us we can keep him toked until the cows come home. We got the shaft out but it snapped off and the head is stuck real deep.’
In the end IdrisPukke persuaded Cale to bring Vague Henri into Spanish Leeds while he sorted out the surgeon. Cale took two days of rations for the Purgators in one of two wagons and sent it on to a wood twenty miles away with the two Purgators who’d been guarding Vague Henri. Then along with Hooke, who fancied himself as a bit of a doctor, he made his way back to Spanish Leeds with the nearly unconscious Vague Henri lying in the back of the other wagon. As long as they could keep him from his occasional fits of shouting they’d have a good chance of getting into the city. The borders might be jumpy but Spanish Leeds was a merchant town and the men who’d made it rich didn’t see that it was necessary yet to start annoying customers or encouraging the authorities to begin sticking their noses into things that didn’t concern them. So Hooke gave Vague Henri an extra half-cake of opium to keep him quiet and shoved a pile of blankets over him. They passed into the city without a problem and soon Vague Henri was snoring away back to a lighter state of unconsciousness in Vipond’s bedroom being examined by the uneasy surgeon, a John Bradmore, who IdrisPukke had managed to bribe to come and offer his opinion.
The surgeon spent twenty minutes examining Vague Henri and dictating to a secretary.
‘The arrowhead has entered the patient’s face just under the eye.’ He felt along the side of Vague Henri’s neck. A groan. ‘Fortunately it is, I think, a narrow bodkin type, head – five or six inches perhaps. Um … no question of pushing it through the wound – we’d take half his brain with it.’ He sniffed and grimaced. ‘Close to the jugular. Tricky.’ For a further three or four minutes he touched and squeezed, apparently indifferent to the continuing smothered cries of poor Vague Henri. He dictated a few more notes and then turned to IdrisPukke.
‘What did Painter tell you?’
‘I’m sorry?’ evaded IdrisPukke.
‘I know you consulted him. Besides, you needn’t tell me, I already know. He said the wound should be left for up to fourteen days until it becomes loosened by pus. No?’
IdrisPukke shrugged.
‘That’ll work – once the wound has filled with rot the arrow will be easy enough to remove. Mind you, he’ll die – slowly of blood poisoning or pretty quickly as the withdrawal bursts his putrefied jugular vein on the way out.’ Bradmore sighed. ‘It’s very difficult, you see. The head of the arrow is jammed in against the bone. It’s a question of getting a grip on the head but it’s in too deep and stuck so far. That’s why Painter wants to let it decay its way out.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘Not that anyway. The wound must be cleansed and deeply – an infection has started already. It must be stopped while I work out some way to grip the arrowhead.’
There was a short silence broken by Hooke, who had crept in unnoticed and hidden himself at the back of the room.
‘I think I can help.’
There was another muffled groan from Vague Henri. It was not a cry of pain but of protest. Unfortunately the wound and the opium meant that no one could understand a word he said.
27
While Vague Henri was unwillingly having his life put in the hands of a man in whom he had absolutely no confidence, Kleist was also fighting to stay alive in the mountains along with fewer than a hundred Klephts.
The Redeemers who had murdered the old, the women and the children in the escaping Klepht train had returned to the mountains and attacked the men in Lydon Gorge from the rear. Unable to go forward or back they began to take casualties in far greater numbers. The Redeemers were now in no hurry, picking off the Klephts with bolts or arrows and by heavily armoured forays that lasted only a few minutes but inflicted heavy casualties. In two more days they would have finished the job with barely any harm to their own number, but the Redeemers from the massacre made the mistake of shouting out at night what they had done to the Klepht women and children only three days before. To bring a man to despair is a very desirable thing if hope, or freedom, safety, a return to a loving family, is what keeps him fighting. It was in their attitude to sacrifice, or, to be more precise, self-sacrifice, that the Klephts differed so greatly from almost all other men. Now in the terrible jeers of the Redeemers the priests unwittingly released the Klephts of that high hope that came above everything. Despair robbed them of their greatest weakness as soldiers: a willingness to kill but not to die in the process.
Kleist was in a dreadful moil himself, but knowing the Redeemers and their willingness to use lies against an enemy, he was still tormented by the hope that his wife and unborn were still alive. Now was not the time to give the Klephts hope. Only their belief that there was nothing left living for would do. He stopped them from rushing the Redeemers and persuaded them to wait till dawn and attack at his direction in such a way that they would exact the heaviest price. Meanwhile the taunts and gibes from the surrounding Redeemers in the dark were like a noble speech to honourable men as far as making the Klephts determined to die bringing as much mayhem with them as possible. Kleist knew the Klephts were lost but he had done his best and did not intend to lose himself along with them. He had done what he could but he had every intention of using the attack to push through on his own and find out whether or not his wife was indeed dead. It would not end for him here on this mountain in the back of beyond.
Kleist gathered the ninety or so survivors and drew a map in the gravelly dust. Their situation was simple enough: they were trapped in a pass about a hundred yards wide with sheer sides and with the remaining Redeemers split equally between their front and rear.
‘We attack the Redeemers who’ve come up from the plain. Those are the ones we want, yes?’
There were nods all round.
‘In my view we attack the line here in two wedges
either side then try to break through and join up behind them. We’ll almost certainly fail to do even that but it will surprise them and you’ll kill more of them. If we can join up then we’ll have all the Redeemers in front of us. It’ll be a bloody sight harder for them if we can do that.’ His plan was probably hopeless – it certainly sounded pretty thin when he said it aloud – but with speed and surprise and the new desperation of the Klephts he might make the space to get away. He owed these people something but not his life – and they would have taken the same view about him. They wouldn’t have agonized about it either.
‘This is the best I can do,’ he thought. ‘Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. I can’t save them but I can save myself. That’s all there is.’
He nearly broke as he went through the plan again but not quite – the still, small voice of survival screaming in his soul got him through.
When he finished he divided the group into two with a few swaps for family reasons and placed himself on the right wing because he judged that group to have the better fighters.
He did not want any shouting or noise of any kind to signal the attack and undermine the surprise so they led out a line of pack twine between the two groups. Kleist would give it a hefty pull when he thought it was just light enough for an attack. Kleist’s one concession to the finger-wag of his nobility was to tell them to head to a flagpost he’d place behind the Redeemers to show them where to regroup. He regretted making this promise as soon as he’d spoken but it meant he had a good reason to outstrip the others. Once he’d planted it they were on their own.
It would have been too much to have expected the Redeemers to be unprepared but the circumstances were ideal for the Klephts given that revenge had made them careless of their own lives for once. They were quick and this was their ground. It was hard to judge what you could see and not see in the early light and the Klephts were nearly on top of the Redeemer lookouts before the shout of warning went up – each took a Klepht or two with them but the rest of the attackers did as they were told and silently rushed on to the camp itself already stirring but still surprised. Kleist, bamboo pole in hand, was already ahead and running into and through the camp and shouting ‘Retreat! Retreat!’ as if he were one of the Redeemers running away in panic. ‘Shut your mouth!’ shouted one centenar and pulled at his arm as he went past – but it never occurred to him that Kleist was anything but a scared young Redeemer. He pulled away and ran like hell. Just as he was about to clear the compound another Redeemer stepped in his way and knocked him over.
‘Show some –’
But what he was supposed to show was unspoken as Kleist stood up and knifed him in the chest in one movement, picked up his flag and was over the wall of rocks the Redeemers had raised to cover their rear, never expecting it would be used. It would make an excellent wall of defence for the Klephts. Kleist loosened the large red cloth of silk and stuck it into a crevice where anyone who made it through would see it easily. Then he hared off up the mountain, fast and agile as a goat and never looked back.
A day later he was off the mountain. Another day after that he stood in front of the ten gallows of the Redeemers and the piles of ash and dry bones underneath them. He stood for a while then sat down with his head in his hands and cried. He was still there a day later when, in threes and fours, the twenty-one Klephts who had survived the fight in the mountains walked up and sat down next to him. Had he known the Klephts better he would have realized that it had never occurred to any of them that he would stay.
They could not bury the women and children because the Redeemers were surely following. They left, promising to return, and went on as best they could.
28
Unusually for medicine men, who generally suspected each other of stealing their cures, Hooke and Bradmore got on like brothers, no doubt because the lines between their skills were so plain. It was clear that the wound must be correctly enlarged to make Hooke’s idea possible. He intended to build a set of hollow tongs in reverse and the width of the arrow. This would then be inserted into the wound and inside the hollow metal head of the arrow. Then by means of a screw the tip of the device already divided in two would slowly be forced apart inside the arrow shaft which it would grip tightly. The arrowhead could then be pulled out the way it had gone in. While Hooke went off to the foundry to make this subtle and tiny device, Bradmore set about enlarging the wound so that it could be introduced. First he made a set of probes from elder wood also the thickness of an arrow shaft, dried them and covered them in linen soaked in rose honey to prevent infection. The shortest probe first, he inserted them into Vague Henri’s wound and then progressively introduced longer probes until he was satisfied he had made a clear run to the bottom of the wound. This took three days and by the end of this hideously painful process, Hooke, through great trial and error, arrived with a device that he was satisfied would do the job. Coming to Vague Henri’s face he presented the mechanism at the same angle the arrowhead had first entered and, placing the tip of the mechanism in the centre of the wound, slowly pushed it the six inches inside necessary for the tip of the tongs to fit inside the socket of the arrowhead. They were obliged to move it about backwards and forwards a good deal. Then Hooke turned the screw at the top of the device hoping it would open at the far tip, grip the head and stay firm enough for them to extract it.
They again began moving the device back and forth tugging firmly and, little by little, finally pulled the offending arrow out of Vague Henri’s face. Of the agony the poor boy endured it need only be said that the opium has not been grown that could dull the pain of that exercise.
His suffering was not over anyway. The danger of such a wound was the terrible risk of infection, something concerning which Bradmore was a great genius. Once the arrowhead was out – and big enough it was once it was lying on a plate – Bradmore took a squirtillo and filled it with white wine and flushed it into the wound. Then he placed in new probes made of wads of flax soaked in finely sieved bread, turpentine and honey. He left this for a day and then replaced the flax wads with shorter wads and so on for another twenty days. Afterwards he covered the wound in a dark ointment called Unguetum Fuscum and concerning which he was very secretive. After this treatment had stopped hell no longer held quite the terror it used to have for Vague Henri.
Bradmore had been appalled by the amount of opium Cale had been feeding Vague Henri and demanded he hand it over before he killed him, not least by causing him to explode – a terrible constipation having afflicted him as a result. He spent as much time as he could sitting with his friend, who was often in too much pain to reply or hallucinating even on the much more limited supply of opium Bradmore was prepared to give him. He instructed Cale to go into the market, almost as famous as that formerly of Memphis, and buy various types of food that he had never heard of and nearly all of which was extremely expensive.
‘You’ve bunged him up, you sort him out.’
The trouble was that no one had any money – the question of Bradmore’s fee having been carefully avoided. Bradmore had assumed that the Materazzi had escaped with at least some of their renowned wealth. This was not the case, as Cale well knew, and what they did have was not going to be spent on ruinous medical fees for some boy. They had troubles enough of their own. Vipond agreed to create the impression to Bradmore that money was no object when it came to the treatment of Vague Henri but paying was going to be Cale’s problem. Cale’s one option was to sell a small ruby he had stolen from the diadem of a statue of the Redeemer’s Mother in the anteroom at Chartres. At least he hoped it was a ruby, or at least valuable.
It was not his only financial problem. He had the Purgators as well as Vague Henri’s future to pay for. Part of him wished they just vanish but he knew this wasn’t going to happen. Not only were they devoted to him but he knew that having control of a hundred and sixty experienced fighting men would give him a good deal of heft in what was to come. But they had to b
e paid for and kept out of sight. If any of the Materazzi found out who they were there would be trouble.
So the day after Bradmore’s removal of the arrow, Cale went off on his own to buy food to treat Vague Henri’s terrible constipation but also to see if he could get something for his ruby. While he was making his way among the numerous stalls and the incomprehensible cries of the sellers (‘Bompos! Bompos! Bompos! Tufradoluh! Chiliwillis luvilanascarleta! Mushrumps cheap enough, luvli, to cook for someone yu don even like!’), he noticed three shops together opposite a stall of carrots and parsnips and cauliflowers artfully composed in the shape of a face. In each shop was a woman at a table stitching clothes. He watched the first two for a couple of minutes but lingered at the last of the three, partly because the woman was much younger than the others but also because she was working at such an astonishing rate. He watched for several more minutes now, fascinated not so much by her speed as the almost magical skill with which she was stitching a collar to a jacket. He liked watching skilled people work. She looked up a couple of times at Cale – there was no glass in the window – and finally spoke.
‘Want a suit?’
‘No.’
‘Then bugger off.’
It was not his way these days to let anyone these days have the last word, even a girl in a shop, but he felt tired and ill. Coming down with something, he thought, best get on. He left and she did not look up from her work. After a ten-minute walk that would usually have taken five he made it to Wallbow Gardens. Unlike the usual commercial squares of Spanish Leeds there were half a dozen extravagantly liveried guards wandering about to warn off criminals from the twenty or so gold and jewellery shops that made up the square and which had now replaced Memphis as the centre of trade in the four quarters for dealings in precious metals.
The first jeweller told him it was only semi-precious and worth about fifty dollars. This pleased Cale because it was clear the jeweller was lying and this must mean it was worth considerably more. When he told him he wanted it back the jeweller offered more but Cale thought it best to move on. The next claimed it was glass. The one after that again claimed it was only semi-precious and offered him a hundred and fifty dollars.