Kleist laughed. “Well, now at least there’s some point to you.”
Lying on the ground was an assortment of light and heavy crossbows. Vague Henri picked up one of them with a rack-and-pinion winding system. “Look, an arbalest. I bet you’d get something special from this. And this…” He picked up a small crossbow with what looked like a box on top. “I think this is a repeater. I’ve heard about them but never seen one.”
“It looks like a kid’s toy.”
“We’ll see once I can get some bolts made. None of them have got any bolts. The Materazzi probably left them behind-didn’t know what they were.”
Simon made a few finger passes at Koolhaus.
“He’s worried about what you said about Henri.”
Kleist looked puzzled. “I didn’t say anything.”
“About there not being a point to him. He wants you to apologize or you’ll feel his boot up your shiv.”
It was easy for Simon not to understand the way the boys spoke to each other. Before he met them, he was used only to outright insult or outright toadying. Kleist looked at Simon. Koolhaus’s fingers raced as he spoke.
“Vague Henri is what the Materazzi call…” He lost the word and began searching. “A cecchino… a hit man. The crossbow is all he ever uses.”
It was two hours later before Cale turned up in the guardroom, and the news of the crossbows immediately put him in a bad mood.
“Did you tell Simon and Koolhaus to keep it callow?”
“Why would we need to do that?” said Kleist.
“Because,” replied Cale, now really irritable, “I can’t see any good reasons for anyone knowing Henri is a sniper.”
“And the bad reason?”
“What they don’t know can’t hurt us. The less they know about us the better.”
“That’s rich coming from someone who made such an exhibition of themselves in the summer garden,” said Kleist.
“Look, Cale,” said Henri, “how could I have got the bows out or done anything with them without someone finding out? I’ll need to get bolts made and I need to practice.”
By then it was too late in any case. Two days later the three of them were summoned to see Captain Albin. He seemed amused as much as anything.
“You don’t seem like the murderous type, Henri.”
“I’m not a murderer, I’m just a sniper.”
“Jonathan Koolhaus said you were a cecchino.”
“You don’t want to listen to Koolhaus.”
“So you’re a sniper who doesn’t kill people. What’s the point of you, then?”
Vague Henri, aggrieved, refused to rise to the bait, but the upshot of it all was that Albin demanded a demonstration.
“I’ve heard about this contraption. I’d like to see one at work.”
“It’s not one contraption; there are six of them.”
“Very well, six. Will the Field of Dreams be all right?”
“How long is it?”
“Three hundred yards or so.”
“No.”
“Then what do you need?”
“About six hundred.”
Albin laughed. “You’re telling me you can hit something at six hundred yards with these things.”
“Only with one of them.”
Albin looked doubtful. “I suppose we could close off the western edge of the Royal Park. Five days, then?”
“I’ll need eight. I’ve got to get some bolts made and all the bows need to be restrung.”
“Very well.” He looked at Kleist. “Koolhaus tells me you’re an archer.”
“He’s got a big gob, that Koolhaus.”
“Not withstanding the size of his gob, is it true?”
“Better than you’ve ever seen.”
“Then we’ll have a demo from you as well. How about you, Cale, do you have any more party tricks you’ve been keeping under your top hat?”
Eight days later a small gathering of Materazzi generals, the Marshal, who had invited himself, and Vipond met behind large canvas screens usually used for herding deer past society women who wanted to do a little hunting. Albin, as relentlessly cautious as Cale, had decided it might be better to keep the demonstration quiet. He could not have said why, but the three boys were always hiding something and therefore unpredictable. And there was something about the boy Cale that always promised havoc. Best to be on the safe side of sorry.
Within five minutes of the start of the demonstration, Albin realized that he had made a dreadful mistake. It is not easy to accept, not deep in the deepest recesses of the soul, that by reason of birth other people less able, hardworking, intelligent and willing to learn, should always have the first opportunity to stick their snouts in what the poet Demidov calls “the great pig trough of life.” Having had so much to do with Vipond-a hardworking man of intelligence and with outstanding ability-the sense of childish justice still hidden in Albin’s soul had willingly overlooked the fact that aristocratic Vipond could easily have been chancellor had he been a complete dunce. The generals waiting for the demonstration to begin were no more or less able as generals than any other group selected by virtue of their relatives. Bakers, brewers, stonemasons in Memphis, all observed the rights of birth as rigidly as any Materazzi duchess. You are an idiot, thought Albin to himself, and deserve this humiliation. It was not merely that these three were children-if pretty odd, as children go-but that they weren’t even common. It was possible to respect a stonemason, an armorer; even to be rude to a servant was regarded as vulgar by most Materazzi. But these boys were without identity, part of nothing, migrants, and, most important, one of them had gone too far. It was not that the generals would have condoned the matter of bullying by the Mond and Solomon Solomon-widely acknowledged to be a boor-it was that putting it right was a matter for the Materazzi themselves. Such things as injustice to members of the underclass were to be settled quietly, but if they were not settled, then they were not settled. It was not for the offended against in such circumstances to take matters into their own hands and in such an effective and humiliating manner. That Cale should have resolved his own grievances was a painful threat. And perhaps they’re right, thought Albin.
First up was Kleist. Twelve wooden soldiers, usually used for sword practice, had been set up three hundred yards away. The Materazzi were familiar with bows but used them primarily for hunting: they were elegantly and beautifully made composites imported at great expense. Kleist’s bow was the nearest thing to a broomstick they had ever seen. It seemed impossible to bend such an ugly-looking item. He placed the bottom of the bow on the ground, bracing it with the instep of his left foot. Holding the bowstring just under the loop, he started to bend the bow. Thicker than a fat man’s thumb, it slowly curved to his great strength and then he delicately lifted the loop into the notch. Turning to the semicircle of arrows stuck into the ground behind him, he pulled one, notched it onto the bowstring, drew it back to his cheek, aimed and fired. All this was done in one flowing movement, one arrow loosed every five seconds. There were eleven identical thwacks as the arrows hit-and one silent miss. One of Albin’s men ran from behind a protective wall of wooden beams and confirmed the score by waving two flags: eleven of twelve. The Marshal applauded enthusiastically; his generals followed his guidance, not enthusiastically.
“Oh, well done!” said the Doge. Miffed at the lack of response from the generals, Kleist gave a resentful nod in acknowledgment and stepped away for Vague Henri to show what he could do.
“There are three basic types of crossbow,” he began brightly, convinced that his audience would share his enthusiasm. He held up the lightest of two resting in their cradles in front of him. “This is the one-foot crossbow-we call it that because you put one foot in here.” He put his right foot in the stirrup at the top of the crossbow, hooked the string with a claw attached to a belt around his waist and pushed down with his foot and straightened his back at the same time, letting the trigger mechanism grab the string and hold it in place.