21
The aftermath of any disaster usually demands two things: first, the person responsible for the disaster must be named, shamed and punished in the most elaborate manner possible; second, though less important, it was highly desirable to find someone who demonstrated, through their personal courage, intelligence and skill, that the dreadful disaster could and should have been averted. In the case of the disaster at Bex, that there wasn’t anyone to blame or anyone particularly to praise was neither here nor there. Already, by virtue of his great experience of triumph and disaster, Little Fauconberg was alert to the likelihood of retribution and some three days after the miserable remnants of the Swiss army returned to Spanish Leeds, Fauconberg realized the way things were going and sent a message to Conn Materazzi that he might do well to make himself scarce. He took his own advice and by nightfall was well on his way towards a little-known pass over the mountains that he had marked out for this purpose as soon as he was appointed second-in-command.
But by then Conn had already been arrested and charged with misfeasance in the face of the enemy and failure to strive. In short, he was accused of not winning a battle, a crime of which he was unquestionably guilty. The rage of the King and the people did not permit any great amount of time to pass and Conn’s trial was ordered to take place in the Commons on the following Wednesday. Just as Conn was being unjustifiably blamed, Cale found himself being unjustifiably praised, much to the fury of Artemisia Halicarnassus. All the credit for heroically saving the remnants of the army and seeing them safely to the Schallenberg Pass had been given to Cale: the idea that the only soldier who’d shown the necessary bravery and skill was a woman was not just unacceptable in a crude sense but impossible to grasp.
‘There’s no point blaming me,’ said Cale.
‘Why not?’
This was hard to answer. He entirely understood her anger but, as he unwisely pointed out, that was just the way things were. ‘There’s no point whining about it.’
‘Take that back!’
‘All right. Whining will make an enormous difference.’
‘I’m not whining. I deserve the credit.’
‘I agree. You deserve the credit for saving fifteen hundred men. Absolutely.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t mean anything.’
‘Yes, you do. What are you driving at?’
‘All right. You deserve the credit for saving fifteen hundred men. They’re giving it to me and I don’t deserve it – but what they’re really saying is that whoever’s responsible for that – which is you – would have beaten the Redeemers.’
‘And you’re saying that I couldn’t.’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Conn did everything right. I couldn’t have done it better.’
‘So of course that’s proof enough. No one could do better than you.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You didn’t have to.’
‘I admire you.’
‘Not as much as you admire yourself.’
‘That would be asking a lot,’ he said, smiling.
‘I can see right through you, don’t worry. You’re not joking, I know.’
‘You could run that battle a hundred times and Conn would have won fifty of them. What the people are screaming is that whoever saved the fifteen hundred – you – would have won the battle. That’s credit you don’t deserve, even if it’s been given to someone who deserves it less.’
‘You, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Say it.’
‘I don’t deserve the credit. You do.’
She said nothing for a moment.
In the meantime another charge had been added to the accusations levelled against Conn: that he had, in a manner cowardly and craven, set fire to the bridge at Glane and, in order to save his own treacherous skin, condemned thousands to die at the hands of the Redeemers. Of all the counts against him this was the most damaging. It was also the most unfair. Conn hadn’t been within five miles of the bridge and couldn’t, therefore, have set fire to it. But even if he had, it had been a necessary act. The stranded men killed on the left bank would have made it over and survived only to be chased down and killed once the Redeemers crossed to the right behind them. Those already on the right bank survived only because someone took the hard decision to burn the bridge. The person who had set fire to the bridge, disguised by means of an abandoned helmet, was Thomas Cale.
Perhaps no historical subject has been written about so thoroughly as the rise of the Fifth Reich under Alois Huttler. The failure to explain how a man of little education, less intelligence and no obvious talent except for windy inspirational speeches about his country’s manifest destiny to rule the world could come as close as any man in history to achieving this end is obvious. No one knows how he managed the rise from imprisonment for aggressive begging to ruling the lives of millions across vast territories and bringing a level of destruction to the world never seen before in human history. No historian will conclude at the end of a book that there is no explanation for the things he describes. In the case of Alois there is none. That it happened is all the reason that will ever be uncovered. It is a good deal easier to explain satisfactorily how, by the end of the week following the disaster at Bex, Thomas Cale, boy lunatic, had become the second most important military commander in the Swiss Alliance.
Because of his new-found heroic status he had been invited to attend the conference to discuss what to do now that the Redeemers had sealed up Switzerland from the rear and had only to cross the Mississippi to crush Spanish Leeds in a vice. There was no army left to stop them and no one left alive to lead it even if there had been. There were a fair number of speeches given indignantly making it clear that the speakers had never been in favour of attacking the Redeemers in such a disastrous fashion, although solid evidence of their stand was somehow lacking. The only person who’d clearly stood out against the action, Artemisia, went unmentioned, although she had without any fuss been allowed back in to attend the conference.
Before she attended Vipond had tried to mark her card as well as Cale’s.
‘Whatever you say at the conference you won’t say “I told you so”, will you?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ said Artemisia.
‘She won’t say it,’ said Cale.
‘I will.’
Cale looked at her. ‘She won’t say it.’
It was not an order, or even a demand. Indeed it was hard to say what it was – a laying out of an inevitable fact, perhaps. With a sigh, she less than gracefully accepted the advice.
At the conference itself Cale made a point of saying nothing at first in order to let the accusations and hand-wringing go on for long enough for them to demoralize everyone in the room. Then the lamentations began.
‘How long before they come?’ asked the King. It was a morose Supreme Leader of the Allied Forces who replied.
‘They’ll take all summer to build the boats needed to come across the Mississippi. The autumn floods will make the river treacherous and the winter ice more treacherous still. It will be late spring next year.’