‘Happy now, you big sissy?’ said Poll.
‘Why do you have an empty coffin in your bedroom?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Sister Wray. ‘It’s not for you.’
‘I do worry. Who’s it for?’
‘Me.’
‘Worried about cheesed off patients?’
She laughed at the idea – a lovely sound, thought Cale. Is she beautiful?
‘I belong to the order of Hieronymite nuns.’
‘Never heard of them.’
‘Also called the Women of the Grave.’
‘Never heard of them either. Don’t like the sound of them much.’
‘No?’ He had the sense that she was smiling. Poll moved her head forward and raised her floppy right arm in a way that managed to indicate loathing and contempt.
‘The Hieronymites are an Antagonist order.’ She stopped, knowing this would be a disclosure of some significance.
‘I never talked to an Antagonist before. Do you wear that thing on your head because you’ve got green teeth?’
‘No. I mean I don’t have green teeth and I’m not hiding anything, though I suppose that would be a good enough reason. Did the Redeemers really tell you that Antagonists have green teeth?’
‘I don’t remember them actually telling us. Not Bosco anyway. It was just sort of generally known.’
‘Well, it’s not true. The Antagonist Hegemony, a kind of religious committee, declared the Hieronymites to be an extreme error and dissolved the order. They ordered us, death being the alternative, to carry a coffin with us for a hundred miles so that everyone would know not to give us water or food or shelter. We carry the coffin and an ounce of salt.’
‘Because?’
‘Salt of repentance.’
‘And did you? Repent, I mean.’
‘No.’
‘So we’ve something in common.’
‘We don’t,’ said Poll, ‘have anything in common with you, you godless killing swashbuckler.’
‘Don’t pay any attention to her,’ said Sister Wray.
Cale expected her to continue but Sister Wray could see he was interested and wanted him to be at a disadvantage.
‘So what did you do wrong?’ he asked at last.
‘We pointed out that in the Testament of the Hanged Redeemer, although he doesn’t actually say that heresy should be forgiven, he does say that we should love those that hate us and forgive their trespasses not once or twice but seventy times seven. St Augustine says that if a person falls into heresy for a second time they must be burnt alive. A Hanged Redeemer who said that if a man strikes you on the cheek you must turn the other and let him strike you a second time is not a God in favour of burning.’
‘I heard he said that from the Maid of Blackbird Leys – about turning the other cheek, I mean. But if you turn your cheek when people hit you they’ll keep hitting you until your head falls off.’
She laughed. ‘I understand what you say.’
‘You can understand all you like – I’m right, whatever you think.’
‘We’ll agree to disagree.’
‘They burned her.’
‘Who?’
‘The Maid of Blackbird Leys.’
‘Why?’
‘She was saying the kind of stuff you were saying. She’d got hold of a copy of the Testament too. No coffin and no salt though, she went straight to the fire.’
‘When you say she got hold of the Testament, you mean a secret copy.’
‘Yes.’
‘Antagonists don’t have secret copies of the Hanged Redeemer’s Testament. It’s an obligation to read it – it’s translated into a dozen languages.’
‘P’raps,’ he said, ‘it’s a different Testament.’
‘Some things must be the same if they burned her for saying that the Hanged Redeemer is a God of love and not punishment.’
‘If it’s that obvious why did they punish you for saying the same thing?’
‘That’s the way mankind is.’
‘God’s greatest mistake.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘Me neither – it’s God who’s mankind’s greatest mistake.’
‘Wash your mouth out with soap, you impious sack of shit.’
This time Sister Wray did not rebuke Poll.
‘Looks like,’ said Cale, triumphant, ‘you need to teach your little friend about forgiveness.’
‘Perhaps,’ replied Sister Wray, ‘you’ve exceeded your limit.’
‘Seventy times seven,’ Cale laughed. ‘I’ve got loads left. You won’t get off that easy.’
‘Possibly. It depends on how great the sins you committed are.’
‘Does he say that, the Hanged Redeemer?’
‘No.’
‘There you are then.’
‘You’re not telling me the truth.’
‘I never said I would. Who are you? I don’t have to tell you anything I don’t want to.’
‘About the Maid of Blackbird Leys, I mean.’
‘I did what I could to save her.’ He wasn’t feeling so triumphant now. ‘That’s all there is.’
‘I don’t think that can be true. Am I wrong to think there’s more to say?’
‘No, you’re not wrong.’
‘Then why not tell me?’
‘I’m not afraid to tell you.’
‘I didn’t say you were.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘I agree. Yes, I did.’
He stared at the grid of tiny holes that covered her eyes. Maybe she was blind, he thought, and this was a waste of time. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
‘I signed the licence for her to be justified.’
‘Justified?’
‘Burned on a pile of wood. Alive. You ever seen that?’
‘No.’
‘It’s worse than it sounds.’
‘I believe you.’
‘I oversaw her being burned.’
‘Was that necessary – to be so closely involved?’
‘Yes, it was necessary.’
‘Why?’
‘None of your business.’
‘But it bothers you?’
‘Of course it fucking bothers me. She was a nice little girl. Brave. Very brave but stupid. There was nothing I could do.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘No, I’m not sure – maybe I could have jumped on a magic rope and swashbuckled my way out of a square of five thousand people and twenty-foot-high walls. Yeah, that’s what I should have done.’
‘Did you have to sign?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you have to be there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you have to be there?’ she asked again.
‘I went because I thought I should suffer … for signing … even though there was nothing else to do.’
‘Then you did all you could. That’s my opinion.’
‘That’s a relief.’ Quiet but acid. ‘Do you think she would have thought so?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘That’s the problem, isn’t it? Do you forgive me for what I did to her?’
‘God forgives you.’
‘I didn’t ask about God. Do you forgive me?’
8
Of arms and the man I sing, and of cheese; of the rage of Thomas Cale and of adequate supplies of oats for the horses delivered in the right place at the correct time; I sing of thousands going down to the house of death, carrion for the dogs and birds, and of the provision of tents, of cooks, water for ten thousand in the middle of the barren wilderness; I sing of a sufficiency of axle-grease and cooking oil.
Think of a picnic with family and friends, consider the failure of all to meet up at the proper time and place (‘I thought you said twelve o’clock’; ‘I thought the meeting place was at the elm tree on the other side of town’). Consider the endless wrongness of things, consider the jam mislaid, the site of the picnic shared with a swarm of bees, the rain, the angry farmer, the row between brothers festering for twenty years. Now imagine the bulls of war let loose to bring about the ending of mankind. To bring about the apocalypse requires cheese, cooking oil, oats, water and axle-grease to be ordered, the order made up and the order delivered. That’s why Bosco was not fighting but wasting the time of kings, emperors, supreme rulers, potentates and their armies of ministers and under-secretaries of this and that with an endless blizzard of treaties, pacts, protocols, pledges and covenants all designed to create as much space and time for the essential trivia required in order for the wiping out of the human race to be made possible. The end of the world had been postponed until the following year.