‘With all respect to His Majesty, while I understand his impatience to engage the Redeemers, what you suggest is too hazardous. The only force that stopped the Redeemers from walking into this room has not been any army but the existence of the Mississippi. But for a mile of water we would not be talking together now.’
This simple and straightforward truth was the cause of huge and vocal resentment: ‘Army’; ‘Noble traditions’; ‘Heroism’; ‘Brave lads’; ‘Our heroes’; ‘Courage’; ‘Second to none’.
‘I’m not questioning the courage of anyone,’ she shouted above the racket of objections. ‘But the Redeemers are stuck where they are in the north until early next year. They must build an uncountable number of boats and train enough shoremen to get them across the river. I can tell you because I know that it’s the work of years to know how to navigate the currents of the Mississippi. Now’s the time to reconstruct what’s left of the armies that made it across.’ A reminder here, a little too subtle, that so many were still alive because of her. ‘We must send the best of the troops we have north to retrain the troops that were rescued and use the greatest ally we have – the size and currents of the Mississippi.’
Enormous howls of protest went up at this and the speaker had to work himself up into a fury to bring the meeting to order.
‘We thank the Margravine of Halicarnassus for her forthright views but she understandably may not know that it is not done in this place to speak slightingly of the brave heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of others.’
‘Hear! Hear! Hear! Hear! Hear!’ And that was that.
‘If you will forgive me for being blunt, Margravine,’ said Ikard, half an hour later in his office, ‘but you have behaved like a complete twerp.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the term. Not a compliment, I s’pose.’
‘No, it’s not. Whatever the merits of your views – and I know there are others of reputation who agree with you – you made any chance of influencing matters impossible with your ridiculous defiance.’
She made a brief sound with her tongue against her front teeth.
‘Do I take it that signals disagreement?’ said Ikard.
‘You didn’t bother asking my opinion before, what possible reason could I have to believe you’d have listened if I’d kept my mouth shut?’
‘The King,’ lied the Chancellor, ‘has until now spoken of you with respect and admiration. Now you hang in his favour like an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard.’
‘So,’ she said, ‘I must be like Cassandra, doomed always to tell the truth but never to be believed.’
‘You flatter yourself, Margravine. I have always understood the story about Cassandra to demonstrate not that she was so wise but that she was so foolish: there’s no point in telling people the truth when there’s no chance of them hearing. You must wait until they’re ready. That’s the moral of the story. Take it from someone who knows. The course you suggested, whatever its merits militarily, is in every way socially and politically impossible. The army will not stand for such abuse, the aristocracy will not endure it, and the people whose sons and husbands died in their thousands will neither stand for it nor endure it. You may know something about war but you know nothing about politics. Something must be done.’
Then she was dismissed. It was ten minutes before she thought of a strong reply – although the young man she told about her dressing-down didn’t have to know that.
‘So what did you say?’ asked Cale.
‘I said, “Unfortunately for you, Chancellor, the facts don’t give a damn about politics.”’
He laughed. ‘A good shout, that.’ She was a little ashamed but not too much.
For Cale and Artemisia, waiting for the pig to pass through the python was in some ways a frustrating experience and in other ways delightful. Great events that they wanted to influence were taking place without them but they had endless hours for each other, and though there was more talking than the giving of pleasure, there was not very much more. If the Axis failed (and what was to stop them?) he could soon be on top of a bonfire big enough to be seen all the way to the moon. On the other hand, neither Vague Henri nor Kleist were well enough to make it out over the mountains. Besides, he was used to waiting for the unspeakably grim, used to it all his life; but the pleasure of being with the woman asleep next to him was a rare thing and he knew it. Now was the time for girls and cake.
There was one way in which he was involved in the new plan to attack the Redeemers. He was sworn to secrecy by Vipond, who risked a great deal by showing him a copy of the plans drawn up by Conn Materazzi for the advance through the Schallenberg and the attack on the Redeemers. It was a trust Cale immediately betrayed by discussing what he’d been shown in great detail with Artemisia.
Cale’s feelings on going through the plan were oddly mixed. It was not at all bad. In Conn’s position he would not have done much different. It turned out he wasn’t just an over-privileged, chinless wonder after all. Apparently he had expressed sympathy with Artemisia’s dismissal of the King’s idea (irritatingly showing even more good sense) but Cale realized Conn had no choice but to attack if he wanted to stay as Commander in Chief, and he’d made a pretty good fist of coming up with a decent plan. But it was still too risky.
‘The trouble with decisive battles,’ said IdrisPukke, not for the first time, ‘is that they decide things.’
‘If you get the chance,’ said Cale, ‘you might want to suggest he cuts out a couple of thousand extra men to stay in the Schallenberg, just in case it all goes a bit porcupine. If he loses that’s all there’ll be between the Redeemers and us and a lot of running about and screaming.’
Later, on his way back to Artemisia, he stopped to see Arbell’s brother, Simon. It was a visit he’d been avoiding, not for lack of affection – he’d rescued the boy from the isolation and contempt of being unable to hear or speak – but because he both feared and – horribly, hatefully – desperately desired to see his sister.
He spent several hours talking to Simon through his reluctant and disagreeable aide, Koolhaus. Koolhaus had been a low-ranking civil servant in rank-obsessed Memphis, not because he lacked ability, but because his father was a merdapis, an untouchable who carried away the excrement and urine from the palaces of the Materazzi. Koolhaus was two parts of resentment to three parts of intelligence. It was Koolhaus who, in a matter of days, had devised an expressive language out of the short list of signs given to him by Cale, which was based on the simple signing system the Redeemers used to direct an attack when silence was required. Cale and Vague Henri had developed it a little in order to make offensive remarks about the monks around them during the brain-destroyingly boring three hour high masses at the Sanctuary
‘I’d like to borrow Koolhaus for an hour or so a day.’
The attempt to bend Koolhaus out of shape by suggesting he was some sort of useful household item was deliberate. Annoying Koolhaus was something that had always delighted the three boys (‘If you were an egg, Koolhaus, would you rather be fried or boiled?’). They could have been friends and allies – and should have been – but they were not. That’s boys for you.
Simon could see that his interpreter was annoyed – it didn’t take much. Their master and servant relationship was awkward, the balance of power shifting between Simon’s dependency on him to make contact with the world – which he often resented – and Koolhaus’s entirely justified feeling that he was meant for greater things than being a talking puppet. An offer to pay Koolhaus more money usually mollified him, but only temporarily.