He sat down and listened to them phewing, susurrating and wheezing for a while, and considered searching her bedroom. He stood up, decided against it, and instead moved to her side and began lifting her veil.
‘What are you doing, thou wretched thing of blood?’
‘Looking for something I lost,’ said Cale.
‘Well, you won’t find it there,’ replied Poll.
Cale dropped the lower edge of the veil as carefully as he had picked it up, then went and sat down as guiltless as a bad cat. Cale sat for a full minute while Poll stared at him.
‘Are you going to wake her up?’ he said to Poll.
‘No.’
‘We could talk,’ said Cale, affably.
‘Why?’
‘Get to know each other.’
‘I know,’ said Poll, ‘as much about you as I want to.’
‘I’m all right when you get to know me.’
‘No, you aren’t.’
‘You think you understand what I’m really like?’
‘You think I don’t?’
Sister Wray slept on.
‘What have I ever done to you?’
It wasn’t an aggrieved question, just a matter of curiosity.
‘You know very well.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘She,’ said Poll, looking up at Sister Wray, ‘is all nobility and grace and generosity.’
‘So?’
‘Her weakness, though I love her for it, is that these great gifts that she passes on to others smother her proper fear of you.’
Though he tried not to show it, Cale was rattled by this. ‘She’s got no reason to be afraid of me.’
There was a gasp of impatience from Poll.
‘You think that the only thing people should be afraid of is what you can do to them – that you could punch them on the nose or cut their head off? She’s afraid of what you are – of what your soul can do to hers.’
‘What’s that strange buzzing noise in my ears?’ said Cale. ‘It sounds like words but they don’t make any sense.’
‘You understand what I’m talking about. You think it just as much as I do.’
‘No, I don’t, because everything you say is camel-shit.’
‘You know … you infect other people … you know exactly, you snivelling little chisler.’
‘I don’t snivel. No one’s ever heard me snivel. And it’s lucky for you I don’t know what a chisler is.’
‘Or what?’ said a triumphant Poll. ‘You’d cut my head off?’
‘You don’t have a head. You’re made of wool.’
‘I am not,’ said an indignant Poll, quickly. ‘But at least I don’t suffer from soul murder.’
Then for the first time he heard Poll gasp – a guilty sigh of someone who’s let the cat out of the bag.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Nothing,’ said Poll.
‘It’s not nothing. Why so guilty? What are you afraid of?’
‘Not you, anyway.’
‘Then tell me, wool-for-brains.’
‘You deserve to be told.’ Poll looked away at the sleeping Sister Wray, still snoring like a two-year-old. A pause. Making up her mind. Then Poll looked back at Cale with all the kindness, it seemed to the boy, in the eyes of a weasel he had once come across while it was eating a rabbit. It had raised its head and looked at him for a moment, utterly indifferent, and then gone back to its meal.
‘I heard her talking to the Director when she thought I was asleep.’
‘I thought you two knew everything about each other – little heart-pals.’
‘You don’t see anything about the two of us. You think you do but you don’t.’
‘Get on with it. I can feel my left leg going to sleep.’
‘You asked for it.’
‘Now I can feel my other leg wants forty winks.’
‘Soul murder is the worst thing that can happen to you.’
‘Worse than death? Worse than five hours dying with your giblets hanging out of your tum? Your liver dribbling out of your bread basket?’ Cale was laying it on thick but not thicker than it was.
‘Soul murder,’ said Poll, ‘is living death.’
‘Get on with it, I’ve got fish to fry.’
But the truth was he didn’t much like the sound of it, nor, even if Poll did have wool between the ears, the look in her eyes.
‘Soul murder is what happens to children who take more than forty blows to the heart.’
‘Do blows to the head count? Never had one to the heart.’
‘They killed your joy – that’s what she said.’
‘You wouldn’t be lying at all? I was wrong about the wool – that nasty tongue of yours sounds like it’s made from the arse hairs of a sheep-shagger – most likely I should think that was a considerable possibility.’
‘I don’t think your joy is dead.’
‘I don’t care what you think.’
‘Your joy is all in laying waste to things – blight and desolation is what makes your soul glad.’
‘That’s a bloody lie – you were here when I told Wray …’
‘Sister Wray!’
‘… when I told her about the girl I saved in the Sanctuary. I didn’t even know her.’
‘And you’ve regretted it ever since.’
‘I was joking.’
‘Nobody’s laughing – nobody does when you’re around, not for long.’
‘I got rid of Kevin Meatyard.’
‘Says you.’
‘I saved Arbell Materazzi.’
‘It wasn’t your soul doing the thinking, was it? It was your prick.’
‘And I saved her brother.’
‘That’s true,’ said Poll. ‘I agree that you did good there.’
‘So you’re wrong – you said it yourself,’ said Cale suspiciously.
‘I didn’t say your heart was dead, lots of soul-dead people have a heart, a good heart. I bet you were a lovely little boy. I bet you would have grown up a real goody-goody. But the Redeemers got you and murdered your soul and that was that. Not everybody can be saved. Some wounds go too deep’
‘Drop dead.’ He was rattled.
‘It’s not your fault,’ said a delighted Poll. ‘You can’t help yourself. You weren’t born bad but you’re bad all the same. Nothing can be done. Poor Cale. Nothing can be done.’
‘That’s not what she believes,’ he said, looking at Sister Wray.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘She never said that.’
‘She didn’t have to. I know what she thinks even before she thinks it. You’re going to make her suffer, aren’t you?’
‘Sister Wray?’
‘Not Sister Wray, you idiot – that treacherous slut you’re always whingeing about.’
‘I never hurt her.’
‘Not yet, you haven’t. But you will. And when you cross that river we’re all going to suffer – because once she’s dead there’ll be nothing to stop you. You know the river I’m talking about, don’t you?’
‘There’s that buzzing sound in my ears again.’
‘It’s the river of no return – THE WATERS OF DEATH – and over that river is the MEADOW OF DESOLATION. That’s where you’re heading, young man, despair’s your destination. You’re the salt in our wound, that’s what you are. You stink of misery and pretty soon the smell is going to fill the whole world.’
Poll was beginning to shout.
‘I’d be sorry for you if we all weren’t going to get it in the neck as a result. You’re the angel of death all right – you stink of it. Cross over the river of no return into the land of lost content, the valley of the shadow of death …’
Poll had raised her voice so much that Sister Wray came to with a loud snort.
‘What?’ she said.
There was only silence. ‘Oh, Thomas, it’s you. I fell asleep. Have you been here long?’