‘How’s your leg?’ replied Cale. He was, after all, in many ways still young.
‘For God’s sake,’ whispered IdrisPukke. By now the wave of attentive silence had spread down one half of the hall. But having come with the intention of tormenting Arbell at length Cale realized that the control that would have made this at least plausible had deserted him – a reservoir of loss and anger had opened up far deeper than he had realized he felt – and he had certainly known that it was deep. ‘You’re not wanted here,’ said Conn, ‘why don’t you stop embarrassing yourself and leave.’ Either of these would have done. Like some hypocaust bellows – fed by a frenetic bedlamite – Cale was fired up beyond control. He stood up and was reaching for his belt when a weak hand curled around his wrist.
‘Hello, Tom,’ said Vague Henri gently. ‘I’ve brought someone to see you.’ Like cool water his voice poured over the expectant silence of the lookers-on. Cale stared for a moment at the white skin and the still striking mark along his face and then the two standing next to him: Simon Materazzi and the always reluctant Koolhaus.
‘Simon Materazzi says hello, Cale,’ said Koolhaus. Then the deaf and dumb young man folded him in his arms and would not let him go until they were out of the hall and having a smoke in the damp cold air of Spanish Leeds.
It was two hours later before IdrisPukke tracked them down by the simple expedient of waiting in Cale’s room until he returned.
‘Take Henri and Simon back to bed before they fall down,’ he told Koolhaus, who very gladly did as he was told. Cale sat down on his bed not looking at IdrisPukke.
‘I hope you’re pleased with yourself. Your reputation is no longer that of being God’s wrath, more his village idiot.’
This stung enough at least to get Cale to look at him, although he still said nothing, miserable as a limp drum.
‘Do you think you can bully the world?’
‘I’ve done all right so far.’
‘So far I suppose you have. But that isn’t all that far considering you’re so very young and there’s such a lot of the world to go.’
Neither of them said anything for a full minute.
‘I want her to suffer. She deserves it.’ He spoke so softly and with such sadness IdrisPukke hardly knew what to say.
‘I know how hard it is to give up a great love.’
‘I saved her life.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did I do something wrong?’
‘No.’
‘Why then?’
‘Nobody knows the answer to that. You can’t say to someone love this woman or love that man.’
‘But she used to.’
‘What lovers say to one another is written in the wind and the water. Some poet or other said that but it’s true all the same.’
‘She gave me away to Bosco. It’s not right to let that go.’
IdrisPukke might, in the interests of balance and fairness, have pointed out that Arbell had been in something of a difficult position at the time. But it had been years since he was foolish enough to have said so.
‘Unfortunately we live in interesting times. You can have a great say in them, perhaps the greatest – so, young as you are and however much this is a pain to you, in matters of love and politics and war small things in life must give way to greater.’
Cale looked at him.
‘Not if the small come first.’
Another long silence. Not even IdrisPukke could think of a reply. He changed the subject.
‘I don’t know what the Redeemers and their Pope are going to do about you. I wouldn’t bank on it being nothing. You make enemies the way other people breathe. To speak angrily the way you do, to show your hatred by what you say or by the way you look, is an unnecessary proceeding: dangerous, foolish, ridiculous and vulgar – though I suppose vulgarity is the least of your problems. You must either learn more discretion or start running now.’
Cale said nothing while IdrisPukke sat on the bed feeling sorry for the strange boy next to him. After a few minutes IdrisPukke began to worry that in his silence Cale was drifting too far.
‘Did you look up at the night sky while you were out?’
Cale laughed, softly and oddly, thought IdrisPukke – but it was better than the silence before.
‘No,’ said Cale. ‘Do the stars still shine?’
‘You have been the Master of Ceremonies,’ said Vipond to IdrisPukke later that night, ‘to a great many disasters but this must be one of your finest.’
‘Not at all. I’ve been involved in many worse things than a squabble between two lovers.’
‘You know it’s a good deal worse than that. Bose Ikard wants us expelled and you can be very sure a report about a brawl between the Materazzi heirs and your friend Nogbad the Bad will be on its way to the King of Switzerland as we speak, and a carefully embroidered one at that.’
‘King Zog may be an old woman but he’s not going to throw us out over a squabble like this – however much Ikard stirs it up.’
‘He will if he tells him that there is some question over the paternity of Arbell’s child.’
‘What do you think?’
‘What do you think?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘There’s no arguing with that. The point is that the rumours are leaking under every doorway in Spanish Leeds. King Zog takes a very dim view of promiscuous behaviour and particularly between an aristocrat and some yob who carries the coal into her bedroom.’
‘He’s a great deal more than that.’
‘Not to King Zog of Switzerland. God never created a greater snob. His only reading is to spend hours sighing with pleasure and delight over his ancestry in the Almanach de Gotha.’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, brother’– IdrisPukke never called him this unless he was particularly annoyed with him – ‘the Materazzi have descended into a kind of nothing. Without Cale to stop them the Redeemers are ready to roll up the Antagonists, the Laconics, Switzerland and everyone else like an old carpet. And they’ll piss on King Zog as they go by.’
‘Conn Materazzi is a prospect, given time.’
‘Cale plotted our destruction and that of the Laconics. Not bad for a coal-carrying yob. If you think Conn Materazzi has that in him you must be the old fool that there’s no fool like.’
‘We only have his word for the defeat of the Laconics.’
‘We were there at Silbury to witness what Cale’s plans did to us.’
‘All excuses aside, that was as much luck as judgement.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘You can’t control him.’
‘No.’
‘He can’t control himself.’
‘He wouldn’t be the first. He’s young, he’ll get over it.’
‘You’re wrong about that. I heard him threaten her when he left Memphis and again tonight. He’ll never be free of her. People talk about children as if they’re in some way different from adults. But there isn’t any difference, not really. Just souls crazy for love. The lover and the killer are in him like linsey-woolsey – never to be singled out.’
‘Then get Arbell out of Spanish Leeds and Conn with her. Out of sight, out of mind. Then we use Cale to come up with a plan to deal with the Redeemers.’
‘Why should he help us?’
‘He hates Arbell because he loved her and saved her and still she gave him up to them.’
‘We all did that.’
‘Speak for yourself. And he didn’t worship the ground you walked on. It’s in his interests to strike a deal with us because there isn’t anywhere else he can go. With Cale directing a Swiss army there’s at least a chance for us and a chance for him. He’ll see that. Arbell or no Arbell, he’s always had survival on his mind.’
‘Isn’t he just a danger to everyone?’
‘Then we must help him focus his attention where he can
do most damage.’
‘It’s not much of a plan.’
‘It is when you don’t have a better one.’
‘Did you know he’s been talking to Kitty the Hare?’
‘Yes.’
‘You liar!’ As if they were young boys again no offence was intended or taken.
‘Do you tell anyone else all your comings and goings?’ said IdrisPukke.
‘I’m renowned for my candid nature.’
‘Exactly so. If he’s going to save the rest of us from the Redeemers I hope to God he has his thumbs on as many scales as there are sea shells on the shore.’
‘Another threat to Arbell from the Redeemers would be useful – good excuse to encourage Arbell’s absence.’
‘Would Conn go with her?’
‘Too much to hope for. Besides, Zog won’t have a guttersnipe leading an army he’s paying for, whatever you think.’
‘Then he’s a fool.’
‘No one has ever argued otherwise.’
‘Can you control Conn?’
‘Yes,’ replied Vipond.
‘Enough to let himself become a front for someone who might be the father of his first child?’
‘Not an approach I was thinking of trying. Besides, we have an advantage.’
‘Which is?’
‘He doesn’t want to believe it. We must encourage that natural desire as much as possible.’
But their plan had an unforeseen flaw – though this was not in itself something that would have surprised either of them.
Part of Bose Ikard’s way of making the Materazzi feel unwelcome was to ensure the inadequacy of their accommodation. When it came to Arbell this involved a message delivered by putting her in rooms designed two hundred years earlier as living space for the then King’s new bride, the Infanta Pilar. The Infanta never grew above two and a half cubits (a cubit being the distance between the elbow and the fingers of an outstretched hand). Adored for her good nature, wit and generosity to the poor, she inspired numerous buildings in the resultant craze for all things Spanish that had given what was then mere Leeds its unusual additional name. Once a byword for all that was dismal (‘You look like Leeds’ was an ancient joke at the expense of the unhappy – and the expense of Leeds), the desire to please the tiny Infanta led to an explosion of exotic public and private houses in the Spanish style. The Infanta’s personal apartments were built by her doting husband to her scale rather than that of the giants who surrounded her. The result for Arbell was that while her apartments were certainly fit for a queen they were fit for a very small queen forty-two inches high. To the Infanta the ceiling was lofty, to Arbell there were many parts of her rooms where she had to bow her beautiful neck just ever-so-slightly.
It was the night after the dreadful banquet and Conn and Arbell were sitting down in her apartments. Given they were both tall this gave the proportions of the room a comic aspect as if they were sat in a place somewhere between a ship’s cabin and a large doll’s house.
Arbell was looking down at her breasts and stomach. ‘I feel,’ she said ruefully to Conn, ‘as if I’d swallowed the heads of three bald men. Big-headed bald men. God, how much longer?’
‘You look very beautiful.’
‘I made you say that.’
Conn smiled.
‘It’s true you did make me say it. But it’s true anyway.’
‘You lie so sweetly it’s almost a pleasure to be deceived by you.’
‘Have it your own way,’ he said, taking her hand.
‘Promise me you’ll stay away from Thomas Cale,’ she said.
‘I wondered how long before you brought him up.’
‘Now you know. Promise me.’
‘You forget that he saved my life. It’s not so easy to kill someone you owe so much to. He saved yours as well and that makes it harder still. So I promise – even if he was so rude to you.’
‘I’ll live. But I want to ask you something much harder.’
‘What?’
‘He is not so gracious. I want you to promise to walk away if he comes looking for you.’
‘And my pride?’
‘It’s nothing. It’ll pass. Pride is nothing.’
‘You say that because you’re a woman.’
‘And so I don’t have any pride?’
‘What makes you proud is different – so what’s possible or impossible is different.’
‘Will you take pride in giving Cale what he wants? He’s not stupid enough to provoke you when you’re in full armour. He knows that you’d have the advantage.’ Some flattery, probably true, was needed here. She had pushed him too far already.
‘And what am I supposed to do if he dares me?’
‘My God you sound like a schoolboy!’
‘If you choose not to understand.’ He was annoyed at being spoken to like this but allowances must be made for women and especially women in the late stages of pregnancy. ‘If I walk away from him then my reputation, the thing that I am, walks away from me at the same time. You tell me that you will continue to respect me – but will you?’
‘Of course I will.’
‘That’s what you say now. But I won’t have the respect of anyone else.’
She sighed and said nothing for a while.
‘I know what you are – you are courageous and skilful and daring.’ More necessary flattery – and also true. ‘But he’s not,’ she looked hard for the right word and failed, ‘he’s not normal. He doesn’t bring catastrophe, he is a catastrophe. His friend, Kleist – the one who never liked him – he said he had funerals in his brain. Well, it’s true.’
‘How is anyone to live without respect? What’s the point?’
She sighed again and moved her stiff neck from side to side and groaned. Look at yourself, she thought, as fat as gluttony. ‘When will it ever end?’ she said aloud and looked at her husband sideways. ‘You owe him your life.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then how can you honourably kill him? Let it be more widely known that he behaved bravely – more, praise his courage so that people will admire you more than they admire him. Make it clear that you are inevitably in his debt and everyone will praise you for walking away if he provokes you. What courage! What true honour that Conn Materazzi could so easily fight and yet risks that honour in order to be honourable. It’s true after all, you said so yourself.’
‘Won’t that mean he gains a reputation …’ He had to think about this: was it an honourable objection to make in the circumstances? ‘… a name for courage?’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ replied Arbell. ‘He’ll soon spoil the good opinion anyone has of him. He thinks it’s beneath him to be admired by people he despises – and he despises everyone.’
‘You’re very clever.’
‘Yes I am.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Now go away and let me sleep.’
He stood up and cracked his head on the ceiling.
‘Ow!’
She winced along with him but could see he was not hurt. She made to get up to kiss it better – no mean feat. ‘Stay where you are,’ he said.
She needed no encouragement. ‘I will if you don’t mind.’ He bent down and kissed her lightly on the mouth. Then with exaggerated comic carefulness he made his way to the door and was gone. She eased herself further back onto the sofa, twisting from side to side to stretch her aching back and decided to wait for another ten minutes before making the effort to go to bed. She closed her eyes, enjoying the peace and quiet.
And then from the shadows at the back of the room a low voice said softly:
‘I do haunt you still.’
Some say the world will end in ice. If so, it was something of that terminal cold that froze the hairs on the neck of the young mother-to-be. She moved quick as you like for all the aching back and enormous bulge and turned in horror as Cale emerged into the candlelight. ‘I
n case you were wondering,’ he said putting his finger precisely on the fear uppermost in her mind, ‘I heard everything you said. Not very nice.’
‘I’ll scream.’
‘I wouldn’t. Things would be grim for anyone who came through the door when you did.’
‘You expect me to die without a word?’
‘God no. I wouldn’t expect you to comb your own hair without complaining.’ This was not fair. She was by no means a trivial person. ‘Whine all you like, your majesty, but do it quietly.’
‘Are you going to kill me?’
‘I’m thinking of killing you.’
‘I know you believe I’ve offended you but how has my baby offended?’
‘That’s why I’m thinking about it.’
‘It’s yours.’
‘You would say that.’
‘It’s true.’
‘It’s true that I saved your life twice and you said you loved me more deeply than …’ He smiled, not pleasantly. ‘… you know I can’t remember but I seem to recall it was a thing of great depth. Perhaps you can help me.’
‘It is true,’ she said, almost impossible to hear.
‘The rumour in the vegetable market is that you’re a slut – and betting is even as to who the father is: either the Memphis village idiot or the prole who carried the coals into your bedroom.’
‘You know that isn’t true.’
‘I don’t know. You sold me to men who for all you knew were going to take me to a place of execution, hang me and then cut me down alive, gut me … while I watched … fry those guts … while I watched … cut off my cock and balls … while I watched. Well, you see. It looks bad.’
‘They promised me they wouldn’t hurt you.’
‘And what made you think a promise meant more to them than it meant to you. You were tired of me, and wanted to see the back of me, and didn’t care how.’
‘That’s not true.’ She was crying now but barely audibly.
‘It may not be the whole truth but it’s true enough. Anyway I’m sick of listening to you.’