“I do not know, at this point, whether Joshua Joseph Spork is the man of my life. He could be. I have given it considerable thought. The jury is still out. The issue between you and me is that you wish to deprive me of the opportunity to find out. Joe Spork is not yours to give or to withhold from me, Mr. Cummerbund. He is mine, until I decide otherwise. You have caused him grief, sullied his name, and you have hurt him. If anyone is going to make him weep, or lie about him, or even do bad things to him, it is me.
“We are more angry than you can understand. And you are here, with us, in the land of do-as-you-please. It’s like wonderland, Mr. Cummerbund. Only much less good.”
She smiles sharply.
“A friend of mine would have said,” she adds, “that we are aglœc-wif. Monstrous hags. Or you could say we are ‘women of consequence.’ What happens to you here, in this room, can reflect that as little or as much as you wish.”
And then they sit there without speaking, listening to the muffled sound of traffic, and the wind in the trees, and Cecily Foalbury working a piece of bourbon biscuit out of her heirloom dentures. The dog Bastion pads across the room to Joe Spork and burbles mournfully until he is lifted up and held.
Abbie Watson sorts through the sinister apparatus on the table as if wondering where she will begin. Arvin Cummerbund dimly remembers that she is a qualified nurse. He wonders who is watching her children, and whether she wanted to bring them along. Even Mercer Cradle looks a little windy about what will happen next, and this is truly alarming because, as far as Arvin Cummerbund has been able to ascertain, Mercer is absolutely devoid of compunction of any kind where those who interfere with his family’s happiness are concerned.
A shadow falls across Arvin; a shadow which fills him with a measure of guilt. He inhales slightly, and winces at the odour of dog breath. Bastion snuffles at him curiously, and then yawns, displaying tooth stumps and slime.
“Mercer,” Polly Cradle says, “if you wouldn’t mind.”
Mercer gets to his feet and goes outside, returning with a heavy glass jar or demijohn filled with reddish ooze.
“Excellent,” Polly Cradle says. “Now that Mr. Titwhistle is here, you need have no scruples about speaking behind his back.” She indicates the ooze. “Although I fear it’s rather difficult to say in which direction he is facing.”
Arvin Cummerbund stares at the jar. It cannot possibly be Rodney Titwhistle. These people would not do something so vile. He is almost certain of it. Yet Polly Cradle’s analysis was compelling. As are the instruments on the table before him.
The silence is very thick as he thinks about that.
“No,” Joe Spork says abruptly. “This isn’t me. It isn’t us.”
Polly Cradle looks over at him.
“This—” He gestures at the room. “This is them. Not us.”
Polly Cradle nods. “Okay.”
Joe puts down the dog and looks Arvin in the eye.
“Arvin,” Joe Spork says, “the jar is full of giblets. I think that’s a grape. We’re not going to bleed you to death or put you through a woodchipper.”
“Nor am I going to eat you,” Cecily Foalbury interjects, somewhat unreassuringly.
“Quite,” Joe Spork continues, “although Abbie has put in a very strong bid that I should beat the shit out of you with a plank with salt on it for what happened to Griff.”
“And I said I’d buy the plank,” adds Sister Harriet primly.
“But Arvin, listen, seriously. You have to know that what’s going on is a disaster. I mean, a bloody nightmare. Look what you’ve got. The Ruskinites are monsters. They scare professional crooks, which sounds oh-so-clever until you remember that you’re supposed to be on the side of the angels. You’ve got torture camps in the shires; you’ve got imprisonment without trial. Vaughn Parry works for you! And don’t tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn’t. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That’s what we live with.
“Unless Edie Banister was right and Shem Shem Tsien wants to bring the world to an end, in which case, see point one.”
Arvin Cummerbund breathes deeply, in, out, in, out, and contemplates his soul. It occurs to him that Rodney Titwhistle’s search for truth, for knowing, is a curious thing when a man may hear truth spoken and recognise it, by any human measure, quite without doubt.
“Could I have some of that tea?” he asks.
“I’ll make some fresh,” Harriet Spork says. “Start talking.”
Well. It would not be entirely inappropriate, in this situation, to bargain for his release with unimportant information. More than that, however, Arvin Cummerbund is finding it increasingly difficult to suppress a nagging unease that these people know more about what is actually going on than he does. Rodney has been taking the lead on the Angelmaker situation. Rodney is very astute and very ruthless. But if he has a failing, it is that he is so astute, and so ruthless, that he occasionally misses things which are muddled and human. So Arvin Cummerbund says:
“What do you want to know?”
“Who killed Billy Friend?” Polly Cradle says.
Arvin had sort of forgotten about irritating, brash Billy in the interim, what with the business of trying to reclaim Britain’s supremacy in the world and collaborating with an insane cultist. Curious, now that he thinks about it, that those two should go together.
“That was Sheamus,” he says, “or maybe one of the… Automata.” He sighs. “It was stupid, sending him. We just weren’t thinking properly. We thought he’d be more careful. More circumspect, because this is his focus. But it went the other way. He’s genuinely obsessed, you see, with truth and God and all that. Or I suppose you could be generous and say he believes. I think he had a moment of passion. Your friend was… shattered.” He remembers the panic when he heard, and Rodney Titwhistle’s calm acceptance: Our amanuensis has murdered, and that is bad, but we are protecting the nation. These things must be seen in their proper context.
Joe peers at Arvin Cummerbund and wonders. “Sheamus,” the fat man keeps saying. Not “Shem Shem Tsien.” “Do you know what Sheamus plans to do with the Apprehension Engine, now that he has the calibration drum?”
Arvin Cummerbund shakes his head. “He doesn’t have it. He’s very upset about that. He says he can’t switch the machine off unless he finds it.”
Joe Spork glances at Polly Cradle. She meets his eyes: Yes, Joe. Follow that. Joe raises one index finger: point of information. “He does. The escape con worked and I bubbled. I told him outright where to find it.” He searches Arvin Cummerbund’s wide face. “But he hasn’t passed that information on to you.”
“No.”
“I believe I know why. Do you know who—what—he is?”
“A monk. Obviously. A believer.”
“No. Or, not exactly.” And to Arvin Cummerbund’s growing alarm, Joe outlines the history of Sheamus, Shem Shem Tsien and Vaughn Parry so far as he knows it, from Edie’s time to the fake escape from Happy Acres, and the more he speaks, the more sallow and sick Arvin Cummerbund appears.
“I told Parry,” Joe says. “I worked it out, in that place. At the last minute, actually. I told him and then I realised he… wasn’t my friend. Because there was a moment when I thought the most wanted murderer in the country was my friend, or wanted to think so, because I was alone.”
He laughs.
Cummerbunds do not mist up. They are not in touch with their feminine sides. They do not emote. Nor do they yield to the sudden fear that they’ve been stitched up like a kipper and induced to conspire against the existence of mankind. They do not change allegiances or defect. On certain occasions, however, it may be as well to consider one’s position vis-à-vis the established lines of battle.