Cale looked out over the world feeling as if he was being held in the middle of the sky itself; heart pumping, eyes astonished, he could see around for miles with the vast blue sky above and the yellow earth beneath bending to meet it in an arc of shimmering purple haze. It seemed as if it was the entire world he was looking at and not just a crescent of fifty miles or so. Bosco said nothing for several minutes as Cale was battered by the vastness. Finally Cale turned to face him.
‘So?’
‘Firstly – your parents. I heard the rumours ...’ He paused for a moment. ‘... the rumours from Memphis not long after your slaughter of Solomon Solomon.’
‘He got what he deserved, which is more than can be said for the men you had me kill.’ Of all the many unpleasant memories the two of them shared this was the worst. Convinced that Cale’s murderous gifts were divinely inspired it had barely occurred to Bosco that being obliged to fight half a dozen experienced, if disgraced, soldiers to the death might have been deeply traumatic for a boy of twelve or thirteen, however skilled or callous.
‘My heart was in my mouth for every second I thought you were in danger.’ This was not quite the lie it seemed. At first he had been ecstatic at the murderous proof of the boy’s talent for killing. It was of an excellence that only religious inspiration could explain. But after the sixth death Bosco realized that God might resent his desire for proof and punish his presumption by allowing Cale to be hurt. It was realizing his presumption that suddenly made Bosco afraid for Cale and caused him to put an end to the slaughter.
It was more astonishment than restraint that prevented Cale from throwing him off the Jut there and then. The man who had beaten him for every reason that malice could devise, and half as many times again for none at all, was professing concern for him all along in tones that would have penetrated the hardest heart. But Cale’s heart was a good deal harder than that. If he let Bosco live it was only because his curiosity was even greater than his hatred. And besides, there were thirty evil bastards still waiting for him below.
‘Tell me about the rumours.’
‘After you killed him it was bruited about that the Redeemers had taken you while you were a baby from a family related directly to the Doge of Memphis – that you are a Materazzi and not an inconsiderable one.’ Can silence be stunned? You would believe it can had you been standing there on the Great Jut.
‘Is it true?’ Cale’s voice was only a whisper despite himself. There was a brief pause.
‘Absolutely not. Your parents were illiterate peasants of no importance in any way.’
‘Did you kill them?’
‘No. They sold you to us, and happily, for sixpence.’
Even Bosco was surprised by the bark of laughter that followed this.
‘I thought you might have been disappointed – about the Materazzi I mean – but it pleases you to have been bought for sixpence?’
‘Never you mind what pleases me. Why are we here?’
Bosco looked back over the great plain below.
‘When God decided to make mankind he took a rib from his first great creation, the Angel Satan. And from Satan’s rib he formed the first man out of the dust of the ground. Displeased that God had taken his rib while he was sleeping without consulting him, Satan rebelled against the Lord God and was thrown from heaven. But God took pity on mankind because he had been wrong to make him out of the rib of such a treacherous servant. And because it was God’s error he sent many prophets to save mankind from his own nature, hoping to bring out all those good things from which he had been formed. Finally, and desperately, he sent his own son to save them.’ Bosco turned slightly, his expression one of utter amazement, his eyes filling with tears. ‘But they hanged him.’
Again he said nothing for two or three minutes. ‘The Lord God brooded over this terrible wound for a thousand years, so loving a God is he. In all that time he turned over in his mind all that was good about men, all that was kind. But always he could hear and see the unbearable repartee between what was Godly and the poisonous error built into him by this loving, but terrible, mistake.’
Again there was a short silence as he stared out over the dizzying landscape below. When he spoke again his voice was even softer and more reasonable.
‘The heart of a man is a small thing but it desires great matters. It is not big enough for a dog’s dinner but the whole world is not big enough for it. Man spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound; from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child.’
Bosco turned back to Cale, his eyes shining with all the love and hope of a doting parent desperate to be understood by the person they love most in the world.
‘And who will exterminate him who exterminates all others? You. It is you who are charged with the slaughter of man. Of the whole earth, you will make a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed, without end, without measure, without pause, until the annihilation of all things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.’
Bosco smiled at Cale, tolerant, genuinely understanding.
‘Why would you do such a terrible thing? Because it is in your nature to do so. You are not a man, you are God’s anger made flesh. There is enough of mankind in you to wish to be other than what you are. You want to love, you want to show kindness, you want to be merciful. But in your heart you know you are none of these things. That is why people hate you and why the more you try to love them the more they fear you. This is why the girl betrayed you and why you will always be betrayed as long as you live. You are a wolf pretending to himself that he is a lamb.
‘Where else do you think you get your genius for mayhem and death? You kill with as much ease as others breathe. You turn up in the greatest city in the world and despite all your good intentions it took you six months to leave it in ruins. You do not bring disaster, you are disaster. You are the Grimperson, the Angel of Death, and you’d better like it or lump it. But if you don’t like it you’d better get used to wandering where everyone will despise you and everyone will try and kill you for no reason they’ll ever know. Come with me and when your work is finished and everything that lives now is dead, you will come here and be taken up into heaven. It is the only way you’ll ever have peace of mind. This is a promise.’
Within three hours the two of them had walked down to the Redeemers waiting for them and that night a respectful Bosco talked to a silent Cale late into the night.
‘Do you know why God made you?’ It was a quote instantly recognizable from the Catechism of the Hanged Redeemer. Cale’s reply, cautious, was nevertheless by rote.
‘He made us to know and love him.’
‘Do you think God made him well?’
‘Not in my experience,’ said Cale, ‘but I might just have been unlucky.’