In turn Cale told him about his life with the Redeemers.
“At first it wasn’t just the beatings that scared us. In those days we believed what they said-that even if we weren’t caught doing something wrong we were born evil and that God saw everything we did so we had to confess to everything. If we didn’t and we died in a state of sin, we would go to hell and burn for all eternity. And we did die, every few months, and what they told us was that most of us went to hell and burned for all eternity. I used to lie awake at night in those days after the prayers that always finished ‘What if you should die tonight?’ Sometimes I was absolutely certain that if I fell asleep, I’d die and burn forever in agony.” He stopped talking for a moment. “How old, IdrisPukke, were you before you knew what terror was?”
“A lot older than five, anyway. It was at the Battle of Goat River. I was, what, seventeen. We were ambushed on a scouting trip. My first time in a real fight. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been trained. And I was pretty good, third in my year. The Druse Cavalry came over the hill and then there was just confusion and noise and chaos. I couldn’t speak, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I began to shake and I wanted to… well… I mean.”
“Shit yourself?” offered Cale.
“Why not be blunt? When it was all over, and it didn’t last more than five minutes, I was still alive. But I hadn’t even drawn my sword.”
“Did anyone else see?”
“Yes.”
“What did they say?”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“They didn’t beat you?”
“No. But if it happened again, well, you weren’t going to last long.” There was another pause. “So you’ve never felt like that?” said IdrisPukke at last.
It was by no means a simple question. One of the conditions on which his brother, or, to be precise, his half brother, had released IdrisPukke and put Cale in his control was that he must find out everything about the boy-and most important his apparent lack of fear and whether or not this was exceptional or in some way engineered by the Redeemers.
“I used to be afraid all the time when I was young,” said Cale after a while. “But then it stopped.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” This was not true, of course, or not entirely true.
“And now you’re not afraid at all?”
Cale looked at him. The last few weeks had amazed him, and he was grateful to IdrisPukke and had felt many odd and unfamiliar emotions of friendship and trust. But it would take more than a few weeks of kindness and generosity to shake Cale’s wariness. He considered whether or not to change the subject. But it didn’t, on the face of it, seem to matter much if he told the truth.
“I feel afraid about things that can hurt me in general. I know what the Redeemers want to do to me. It’s hard to explain. But fighting-it’s different. What you were saying about the Battle of…” He looked at IdrisPukke.
“Goat River.”
“… That stuff about shaking and wanting to shit yourself.”
“Don’t think you have to spare my feelings at all.”
“For me it’s the opposite. I just go cold-everything becomes very clear.”
“And afterwards?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you feel afraid?”
“No. Mostly I don’t feel anything-except after I gave Conn Materazzi a good hiding. That felt pretty good. It still does. But when I killed the soldiers in the ring, I didn’t feel good. After all-they never did me any harm.” He paused. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
And being wise, IdrisPukke did not push his luck. And so for the next few weeks Cale went back to his wandering, and in the evening they drank, smoked and ate together, the food slowly becoming richer as Cale was better able to take some fish fried in crispy batter, more butter on his vegetables, a drop of cream with his blackberries.
During the two months that Cale and IdrisPukke had been enjoying the calm and tranquillity of Treetops, a man and a woman had been watching over them. This should not imply care or concern-imagine the loving watchfulness of a mother over her child but without the love.
In stories of the good and bad it’s only the good who are subject to dreadful luck, mischance and blundering. The bad are always sharp and act with discipline, have cunning plans only just thwarted in the nick of time. The evil are always on the cusp of winning ways. In real life bad as well as good make simple and easily avoidable mistakes, have dreadful days and go awry. The wicked have weaknesses other than their willingness to kill and maim. Even the bleakest, cruelest soul can have its tender spots. Even the harshest desert has its pools, its shady trees and gentle streams. It’s not just the rain that falls on the just and the unjust alike, but good and bad luck, unlooked-for victories and unmerited defeats.
Daniel Cadbury, his back against a mulberry tree, closed the book he was reading, The Melancholy Prince, and grunted with satisfaction.
“Be quiet!” said the woman, who had been attentively facing away from him but, on hearing the snap of the book being shut, turned her head sharply in his direction.
“He’s two hundred yards away,” said Cadbury. “The boy heard nothing.”
Checking briefly that Cale was still asleep on the banks of the river below, the woman looked back at Cadbury and this time merely stared. Had he been other than he was-murderer, former galley slave and sometime intelligencer to Kitty the Hare-Cadbury might well have been unnerved. She was not ugly, exactly, perhaps just extremely plain- but her eyes, empty of everything but hostility, would have made almost anyone uneasy.
“Would you like to borrow it?” said Cadbury, gesturing at her with the book. “It’s very fine.”
“I can’t read,” she said, thinking that he was mocking her, which he was. Normally Cadbury would not have been so unwise as to taunt Jennifer Plunkett, a killer so admired by Kitty the Hare that he reserved her for none but his most difficult assassinations. He had groaned in dismay when Kitty the Hare had told him who was to partner him.
“Not Jennifer Plunkett, please.”
“Not an amicable companion, I agree,” gurgled Kitty, “but there are many very important persons interested in this boy, myself included, and it is my instinct that a good deal of mayhem of the kind at which Jennifer Plunkett so excels might be required. Abide her for my sake, Cadbury.” So that was that.
It was boredom that caused Cadbury to goad the dangerously talented butcher still glaring at him. They had been watching the boy for nearly a month now, and all he had done was eat, sleep, swim, walk and run. Even the pleasures of The Melancholy Prince, a book he had enjoyed through a dozen readings in as many years, was not enough to stop him from growing restless.
“No offense, Jennifer.”
“Don’t call me Jennifer.”
“I have to call you something.”
“No, you don’t.” She did not look away and did not blink. There were limits to her tolerance and they were not very great. He shrugged to suggest that he was giving way, but she did not move. He began to wonder if he should get ready. Then, like an animal, not the kind that cared for human company, she turned her head away and went back to staring at the sleeping boy.
It’s not just her eyes that are odd, thought Cadbury, it’s what’s behind them. She’s alive, but I can’t put my finger on exactly how.
Given his profession, Cadbury was entirely familiar with murderous persons. He was, after all, one himself. He killed when it was required, rarely with any pleasure and sometimes with reluctance and even remorse. Most murderers for hire took a certain pleasure, more or less, in what they did. Jennifer Plunkett was different in that he found it impossible to tell what was going on when she killed. His experience of watching her dispose of the two men IdrisPukke had bribed the soldiers to arrest was unlike anything he had witnessed before. On their release and unaware of their role as stooges, they had somehow blundered into the forest half a mile from Treetops and made camp. Without consulting him-professionally discourteous, but he’d decided to let the matter drop-she had walked toward them as they sat brewing up a pot of tea and stabbed them both. It was the lack of fuss that so astonished Cadbury. She killed them with as little effort as a mother might give to the picking up of her children’s toys, a kind of bored distraction. By the time the men realized what was happening, they were already dying. Even the most vicious murderers in his experience had to, or wanted to, work themselves up to kill. But not Jennifer Plunkett.