‘Can we rebuild an army in seven months and hold them at the river?’ asked the King.
It was the question, or something like it, that Cale had been waiting for.
‘No, you can’t, Your Majesty,’ he said, and stood up. Thin and pale in his elegant black cassock (he was comfortable in them after all the years he’d worn them, although his tailor designed the cut more elegantly and made it out of the softest Sertsey wool), Cale looked like something out of a fairy story to frighten intelligent children. The King, affronted, turned his hand aside and an explanation was given in whispers as to who this was and his (largely undeserved) heroic status.
‘You were a Redeemer, I understand.’
‘I was brought up as one,’ said Cale. ‘But I was never one of them.’ There was more whispering in the King’s ear.
‘Is this true that you commanded a Redeemer army?’
‘Yes.’
‘It seems unlikely – you’re very young.’
‘I’m a very remarkable person, Your Majesty.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes. I destroyed the Folk and after I destroyed the Folk I came back to Chartres and destroyed the Laconic army at the Golan. You had no one to rival me even before Bex. Now I’m all there is.’
‘You’re very boastful.’
‘I’m not boasting, Your Majesty, I’m simply telling you the truth.’
‘Are you telling us you can hold the Redeemers at the Mississippi?’
‘No. It can’t be done. You couldn’t have stopped them there even with an army and now you don’t even have an army.’
There was an outcry at this: that the Swiss and their allies would raise thousands to their cause, that you could take their land but you could never take their freedom, that the people would fight them in the woods and on the plains and in the streets, that they would never give in, and so on. Zog, a very much more sober person than he’d been only a week before, signalled them to stop.
‘Are you saying that we must lose?’
‘I’m saying that you can win.’
‘With no army?’
‘I’ll give you a new army.’
‘That’s very good of you.’
‘Goodness has nothing to do with it.’
‘How can you do this?’
‘If you will see me tomorrow in private I’ll show Your Majesty.’
It’s been said that a confidence trickster gets his name not by gaining the confidence of those he tricks, but by giving them some of his own. The truth was very simple: they were utterly lost and now one person was claiming he could find them again. In such circumstances his implausibility was a sign in his favour: only something unbelievably strange could save them.
At Bex, the Redeemers now had the appalling job of burying the thirty thousand they’d killed there. It was a week after the battle itself and the two days of intense cold directly following the fight had given way, as it often did in that part of the world, to a warm spell. The bodies that stank the worst were those who had died from internal injuries caused by the heft of the poleaxes. The blood stayed inside and rotted and when the Redeemers moved the bodies the blood poured out of the noses and mouths. Then it got hotter still and the bodies began to bloat, so big that on the cheaper armour the rivets burst open with an enormous SNAP! Then the bodies went blue and then black and the skin peeled and those who had to burn them thought they’d never get the smell out of the backs of their throats.
Most news is never as bad or as good as it first seems. This was certainly true of the great Redeemer victory at Bex. Redeemer General Gil was impressed by the skill with which the Office of the Propagation of the Faith had managed to pull off the contradiction involved in praising the courage, strength and sacrifice of the Redeemer army while also suggesting that God had ensured victory was inevitable. As Gil knew from his many protégés who had been in the fight at Bex, it had been a damned close-run thing. The bad news was that Cale had been seen by a handful of Redeemers but he hadn’t heard of it early enough to quarantine them and stop the news from spreading.
‘Tell me exactly what you saw – don’t add anything. You understand?’
‘Yes, Redeemer General.’
He’d decided to see the snipers who’d stumbled into Cale in the woods one by one, starting with the sergeant.
‘Go on.’
‘He was seven foot tall and a great light shone from his face. Around his head was a halo of red fire and the mother of the Hanged Redeemer was next to him all in blue and with seven stars at her forehead and she was weeping tears of sorrow for our glorious dead. And there were two angels holding arrows of fire.’
‘And did they have halos as well?’
‘I don’t think so, Redeemer General.’
For half an hour he tried to get some sense out of the sergeant but someone who believed Cale was seven-foot tall and that his face shone with anything but suspicion and loathing was clearly not going to be of much help. After interrogating two more of the group, whose accounts were even more ridiculous, he gave up.
He was now faced with two questions. Was this just an excess of holy glee, or had they really seen Cale? If so, what did it mean? Why was he skulking in the woods and not leading troops in the battle? It didn’t even solve the problem of what had happened to Cale after the Two Trevors had been killed. Gil had hoped he’d died of his injuries – surely the Trevors must have got in at least one blow before he killed them? They were supposed to be the best murderers in the Four Quarters and Cale was supposed to be sick. Maybe Cale was dead, in which case the stories about him appearing at the battle were even more worrying. Or were they? Was it better to have him alive and without power or dead and turning up seven-foot tall and with a halo, creating God-knows-what havoc among the unwary faithful? If this seemsunusually sceptical for a man of deep spiritual beliefs in the One True Faith, the fact of the matter was that Gil was changing in his old age. As long as miracles and visions concerned people or things he hadn’t experienced directly he’d been ready to accept them without question. But the reality of his personal experience of Cale and the progressively more nonsensical stories about him increasingly stuck in his throat. He had known Cale since he was a smelly little boy, had trained him day after day under Bosco’s instructions, had seen him wet himself with fear after a fight before the blow on the head gave him that odd talent no one could match. It was the work of God, said Bosco. But it was just too hard for Gil to think of Cale as someone chosen by the Lord to bring about the end of everything. In his heart, Gil thought of him as a boy he didn’t like. What Gil did not realize, or want to realize, was that such realism was poisoning his faith. Not to believe in Cale was not to believe in Bosco: not to believe in Bosco was not to believe in the need for the end of the world. To acknowledge this was to question his central place in bringing it about. Better not to go there. But it was easier not done than not thought about.
The more immediate problem was what, if anything, to tell Bosco. Tell him about this miraculous drivel and he’d be certain to be inspired. Not tell him and if he found out there would be trouble. He decided not to take the risk and several hours later he was with Pope Bosco and coming to the conclusion of his report on the unusual sighting of Thomas Cale.
‘Do you believe them?’ said Bosco when Gil had finished. Answering this was tricky. Hedge his reply with thoughtful doubt and perhaps he might be able to shape Bosco’s response. But he decided it was a test and he was right. But even telling Bosco what he wanted to hear presented problems. Too much enthusiasm would make him suspicious and Gil feared what might happen if Bosco cooled any more towards him.
‘I remain reasonably sure, Your Holiness, that Cale has not grown by more than a foot and nor does his face shine with a holy light, but I believe they saw him. The question is: what was he doing there?’