At nearly six foot four, in armour that cost the price of the better kind of manor house, Conn was the man observed by all observers, Axis and Redeemer alike. He was the latter’s target, too. Redeemer marksmen, a couple hiding in the trees that defined one side of the battlefield, fired at him repeatedly – but even when they hit their man the fortune lavished on his suit of lights showed that in armour you get what you pay for. The arrows pinged harmlessly away as he moved across the back of the line, shouting and moving to the front. Like some towering elegant insect, silver and gold, he stabbed, crushed and punched his opponents, whose armour he seemed to open up as if it was made of tin. There were few swords here – Conn preferred the hideous poleaxe for fighting in this press, men trying to get at each other with hardly a couple of feet to either side.
The poleaxe was a thug’s weapon used by gentlemen. Not more than four foot long it was hammer, hatchet, club and spike. Of all the weapons of killing it was the most honest because anyone could tell what it was for just by looking at it. Poets might blather on about magic swords or holy spears but none of them had ever used a poleaxe to symbolize anything: it was made to crush and split and didn’t pretend otherwise.
For ten minutes at a time Conn punched the life out of everyone who came at him: brutality was never so graceful, splintering of bones never so deft, the bursting and crushing of flesh never so debonair; his reach the greater, his heart the stronger, muscle and sinew bound together in his ugly skill and beautiful violence.
A few hundred yards away, keeping shtum in the trees, Cale watched Conn fighting like an angel and envied him his strength. But he admired him too. He was quite something out there in the blood and chaos.
‘We have to go,’ whispered Artemisia, as loud as a whisper can go. She was standing at the foot of the tree with two of her hefty-looking soldiers. She had declined to climb up with Cale.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘Worried about your nails?’
‘The Swiss Pickers are coming to root out the archers. They won’t know who we are – it’s too dangerous. We’ve to go.’
He was down almost before she’d finished, breathing heavily and sweating not at all healthily. They moved off but not quickly; too much in the way of razor briars. Careful of the dog’s teeth thorns they pushed through into a clearing. Ten yards away, so did others. Four Redeemers, the marksmen the Pickers were looking for. No one did anything. No one moved. For years Bosco had set Cale tests in which he was faced with the completely unexpected with only a few seconds to solve the problem before the blow to the back of his head that followed if he failed. To make things worse, the punishment was not always immediate; sometimes the blow fell a few hours or a day or a week later. This was to teach him to assess things before he acted, no matter how immediate the danger. Four Redeemers against four of them. Artemisia would be no use – the two guards with her would be handy but not a match. And neither was he. Turn their backs and run? Not through the briars. Take the Redeemers on? Not a chance. Never expect rescue, Bosco used to say, because rescue never comes. But it came to Cale then, and by means of the greatest curse of his life. The four Redeemers knelt down; one of them – the leader apparently – burst into tears.
‘We were told,’ he said, beating his breast three times in terrible remorse, ‘that the Left Hand of God would be watching over us. But I did not believe. Forgive me.’
Fortunately Artemisia and her bodyguards did not need to be told to stay still. The four Redeemers looked at Cale fearfully and lovingly. He raised his hand and drew a circle in the air. It was the sign of the noose, a gesture only permitted to the Pope. And now, it seemed, also to the incarnation of the Wrath of God. It was as if he had opened a door into the next world and through it passed eternal grace into the hearts of the four men. Cale said nothing but waved them away with a kindly smile. Open-mouthed, struck by the love of God, the four Redeemers left.
When they’d gone he turned to Artemisia. ‘Perhaps, in future,’ he said, ‘you won’t answer back so often.’
‘They think you’re a God?’ said an astonished Artemisia.
‘That’d be blasphemy. They think I’m one of God’s feelings made flesh.’
‘Really?’
‘Disappointment. And anger, in case you were wondering.’
‘That’s two feelings.’
‘I thought you weren’t going to answer back.’
‘I don’t think you’re anything made flesh. I think you’re just a horrible little boy.’
‘A horrible little boy who just saved your life.’
‘What’s he angry about, your God?’
‘He’s not my God. He’s angry and disappointed because he sent mankind his only son and they hanged him.’
‘You can see his point, I suppose.’
On the battlefield the next crisis was approaching, but this time for the Redeemers. Between Conn’s blistering violence driving the Swiss and their allies forward as he moved up and down the line and Fauconberg, some fifty yards behind, disposing and allocating, assigning and putting things right, the Redeemer line began to buckle and also to twist ever more quickly against the clock so that now the front moved slantwise across the field. But though they came close they did not break. Not yet, at any rate, but without the ten thousand Redeemers who had failed to turn up, it was only a question of time. What had become of the missing Redeemers? They were still lost. Not by much, a couple of miles, but the battlefield was only the size of four of the larger fields the locals used for wheat. And the hideous wind that had worked so wonderfully to favour the Redeemers earlier now worked against them. The screams of orders and agony, of anger and effort, made for a hefty din. Only a couple of miles away, the arriving Redeemers would normally have followed the sound and that was what they did. But the wind had thrown the noise to the east and following the sound took them away from and not towards the fight. Now the line of battle had been turned so that the Redeemers were being pushed back towards the woods, where the thickly planted trees and the razor briars formed a barrier through which only the first few hundred men would be able to escape. For the rest it might as well have been a wall of brick.
But battles breathe out as well as in. In its sixth hour something in the Swiss began to fade, something in the Redeemers to emerge. In the continuous circulation of fighting men, no one should fight for more than half an hour. But change destroys the rhythm of the side that’s fighting well, brings, perhaps, new impetus to the soldiers doing badly. Conn had fought too long; at Fauconberg’s insistence he needed a longer rest, a drink and something to eat. Conn removed his helmet and, so that he could drink, the metal gorge that protected his throat. Three of his friends around him, Cosmo Materazzi, Otis Manfredi and Valentine Sforza, did the same. The legend afterwards was that the Redeemer marksmen in the trees had waited for this chance for hours. But legends are often wrong, or only partly right. There was nothing aimed at Conn by cunning assassins, it was just bad luck, a gust of a few haphazard arrows, not even ten. But three of them took Cosmo in the face, one hit Otis in the neck and another struck Valentine in the back of the head. Friends of a lifetime were gone inside a minute.