‘Tomorrow at six, then,’ said Cale, and made his way through the low-ceilinged corridors where he had so disgraced himself during his last uninvited visit. What hideously mixed feelings twisted in his soul; dread and hope, hope and dread. Then – and he might have made the same visit fifty times and they would have never met – she was in front of him, having decided to take her son to see Simon, who delighted in the baby because he could neither fear Simon nor pity him. Cale’s heart lurched in his chest as if it would tear itself from his body. For a moment they stared at each other – the boiling sea off Cape Wrath was nothing to it. Not love or hate but some braying mule of an emotion, ugly and raucously alive. The baby waved his hand about happily then suddenly slapped his mouth against his mother’s cheek and began making loud slurping noises.
‘Is that good for him?’ Cale said. ‘You might be catching.’
‘Have you come to threaten us again?’ She was also shocked at the change in him, gaunt where he was once muscular, with the dark circles around his eyes that no good night’s sleep would ever wipe away.
‘You remember every sin of mine that was just words and forget everything I did to keep you safe at any cost. You’re still alive because of me – now the dogs bark at me in the street because of you.’
Ah, self-pity and blame, a combination to win the heart of any woman. But he couldn’t help himself.
‘Abl blab abl baddle de dah,’ said the baby, nearly poking his mother in the eye.
‘Shshshsh.’ She settled him on her hip and started to swing from side to side.
‘If there was any good in you, you’d leave us alone now.’
‘He seems happy enough.’
‘That’s because he’s a baby and would play with a snake if I let him.’
‘Is that supposed to be me – that’s what I am to you?’
‘You’re frightening me – let me go.’
But he couldn’t. He could feel the pointlessness of talking to her but there was no way to stop. Part of him wanted to say he was sorry and part of him was furious with himself for feeling so. There was nothing to be sorry for – his soul demanded that she throw herself to the floor and, weeping, beg his completely undeserved forgiveness. But not even that would have been enough, she would have needed to spend the rest of her life on her knees to stop his heart from scalding him about what she’d done. But not even that.
‘The man you sold me to told me he’d already bought me once before – for sixpence.’
‘Then your price has risen, hasn’t it?’
Angry and guilty, and therefore angrier, it was unwise to say something like that to him. But like Cale she had a taste for the last word. As much as her presence was poison to him he couldn’t bear to see her go. But he couldn’t think of anything to say. She pushed past, the baby on the far side, away from him. Into his chest something seeped: oil of vitriol. Acid was kind next to it.
‘Yaaar! Blah baa! Pluh!’ shouted the baby.
19
History teaches us that there are approximately twice as many triumphant military exits from great cities as there are triumphant returns. The exodus from Spanish Leeds was greater than most in terms of trumpets, rows of well-drilled troops, cheering crowds and emotional young women shouting goodbyes to their heart-burstingly proud men. And then there were the horses – the power and glory, the head-brasses and the colours of blue and yellow and red – and the gorgeous men riding them. There were children present who would remember the splendour and the noise of steel on stone and the cheers until the day they died.
Twenty minutes outside the city, off came the armour and most of the horses were sent back to their stables. Not only did they consume fodder the way a bear eats buns, but Conn Materazzi would not be allowing the Redeemer archers to destroy a cavalry charge from three hundred yards away as they’d done at Silbury Hill. The cavalry were mostly useful for gathering information before a battle and running away afterwards if it all went wrong.
Even though Conn’s vanity and pride had largely given way to an impressively mature good judgement he still had a blind spot, understandably enough, when it came to Thomas Cale. Although Cale had no intention of fighting in a battle where he wasn’t in control, he was furious when he was told that he wouldn’t be allowed to bring the Purgators anywhere near the army. Even Artemisia, guilty by association, was refused a part on the grounds that her troops were irregular and not suited to a pitched battle. She would be allowed, however, to lead the sixty or so reconnaissance riders who had helped her slow the Redeemer movement through Halicarnassus. Artemisia had let Cale sulk for several days then suggested he come with her, pointing out that he wouldn’t be able to fight but he might be able to watch.
‘I’m not sure if I can,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I have the strength even for watching.’ He had not told her anything like the whole story of his illness but it was too obvious that something was seriously wrong with him not to give some explanation. He claimed he was suffering from bad-air disease caught in the Scablands. The symptoms were well known to be vague and recurring. Why shouldn’t she believe him?
‘Try it for a few days. You can always come back.’
Six days into the march to the border the news reached Conn that a Redeemer army of around thirty-five thousand was heading to the Mittelland in two parts of twenty-five and ten thousand respectively, the latter coming through the Vaud, probably in an attempt to take Conn’s army from behind. Unfortunately, but not unusually, some of this information was wrong.
The Redeemer army under Santos Hall had, on balance, decided to move forward only to take the high ground outside the village of Bex and again on balance to divide the army so that they could move more quickly to do so. Shifting thirty-five thousand men with all their carts and baggage could easily lead to a queue two miles wide and twenty miles back. The speed needed to reach the best ground outside Bex was the priority here. But by the time the Redeemers arrived a delighted Conn was solidly placed in front of Bex, protected on his left by the River Gar and to the right by a dense wood, full of lacerating briars thick as fingers and wince-sharp thorns known as dog’s teeth. This gave Conn a space about a mile wide into which to fit thirty-two thousand men. Just before nightfall, the Redeemers started to set up in a position they glumly realized was very much second best. Between the two armies was a slope, much shallower down the Redeemer front and much steeper up to the Swiss army. Conn had won the first battle: he had control of the steeper slope and he had archers almost as good as the Redeemers, and more of them. The battle tomorrow would start with a forty-minute exchange between the two. In that time more tens of thousands of arrows would be exchanged, arriving at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, fired into packed ranks. One of the sides would not be able to endure such a killing squall and would be forced to attack. The side that did so would probably lose the battle, defence being far easier than attack. Odds against the Redeemers were much worse because they had to advance up a steep slope under fire and with fewer men when they got to the top because of the numbers of the dying and dead. More alarming than this was that the ten thousand troops Santos Hall had moved separately from his main army in order to outflank the Axis had got lost and were now blundering around the Swiss countryside.
During the night something changed that might make the situation better for the Redeemers or very much worse, although it was nothing either side could do anything about. It was a feature of the local climate that because of the effect of the nearby mountains the weather could change dramatically. The unusually hot sun that day emerged out of a clear sky, which at nightfall allowed the heat to escape upwards in minutes. In turn, cold air off the mountains began flowing into the valley so that the temperature dropped quickly to freezing in a few hours and a deep frost covered everything. By two o’clock in the morning the ground was like iron. But then the wind picked up. It blew over the battlefield first one way then the other, and then back again. Conn and Little Fauconberg, not much more than five foot two, stood in the freezing cold at the top of the hill outside Bex and looked over their own ineffective fires at the equally ineffective fires of the Redeemers, who didn’t even have the shelter of the wood to protect them from the cold wind.