‘Meaning?’
‘There’ll come a time when it isn’t.’
‘When?’
‘Hard to say. The thing is that whenever it comes to an end the person whose time it used to be is usually the last to realize.’
25
There’s not much to be said for being sick, except that if you’re sick for long enough it gives you endless opportunities to think. For the permanently unwell there are not enough distractions to fill the endless days and, besides, illness can drain you easily of the energy you need to read or play a game. Then you must think, even if it’s the drifting sort of thinking that floats you aimlessly from past to present, from meals eaten, lovers kissed, to nights of humiliation, bitter regrets. Cale had a talent for this kind of thing. In the madhouse ruled by Kevin Meatyard he had been able to use the skills honed in the Sanctuary for all those years to go into hiding somewhere inside his head. But in those days he’d been as ignorant of the world as a stone: there was his hideous real life and his imaginary world where everything was wonderful. Now the drifting daydreams were all mixed up with the numerous things that had happened to him since then. Daydreaming was not so much a pleasure any more. So he tried to think of useful things – the mulling of ideas, the beating out of plans and working up of notions that had he been well he would have brushed to the back of his mind and left to the dust.
The religion of the upper classes of the Swiss and their allies was an odd affair. It had come as a considerable surprise to Cale that they also worshipped the Hanged Redeemer – but as the true Redeemers had created a religion full of sin and punishment and hell, of things that filled every waking moment, the religion of the Swiss aristocrats and merchants had developed in more or less precisely the other direction: beyond church on Sundays, weddings and funerals, there seemed to be no specific demands made nor any reference to the dire consequences that would result from failing to meet these loosely-hinted-at suggestions. But this was not the case with the working people and the peasants. The latter in particular were extremely religious, so much so that they had a large number of creeds to service them but at the bottom of them all was the Hanged Redeemer. Though each sect considered itself to be the sole true heir of his beliefs, they recognized to varying degrees that they belonged to a family. But one thing that united them was their universal loathing for the Redeemers themselves, whom they regarded as corrupt, idol-worshipping, usurping, murderous heretics. Whatever the differences between the Plain People and the Millerites, the Two by Twos and the Gnostic Jennifers, Cale had talked to enough of them to know that their commitment to destroying the Redeemers was of a kind where death would be a privilege rather than a price. Whatever his own feelings about martyrs he was used to making them work for him. It was a currency that he understood. It was now nearly three weeks after the death of Conn Materazzi, and he had used the time to persuade the various heads of the important religious factions (Moderators, Pastors, Archimandrites, Apostles) that he was as deeply committed to destroying the Redeemers and their hideous perversion of the true teachings of the Hanged Redeemer as only someone who had suffered personally under their yoke could be. Fortunately this did not require Hanseatic diplomatic skills: they were only too ready to believe in him. And hence why all of them were present on the Silver Field at ten in the morning to witness the very far from mock battle between Cale’s fledgling New Model Army and the Swiss. Also present were Vague Henri, IdrisPukke, Kleist and a still frosty Artemisia Halicarnassus. Standing to one side, looking suspicious, was Bose Ikard and an assortment of newly appointed Swiss generals, elevated to their new positions courtesy of the cull of their former senior officers now rotting gently in the grave pits at Bex.
The day after the meeting with Bose Ikard and Fanshawe, Cale had written to demand that, as the fate of several nations hung on his successful attempt to create this New Model Army, the fight of his one hundred against that of the Swiss Knights should be fought with sharp weapons and without rules, except that surrender would be permissible. As intended this alarmed the Swiss who, rightly suspicious, demanded that only blunt practice arms be used. Cale refused. Eventually a compromise was reached: unsharpened weapons, no spikes or points, and crossbow bolts and arrows to have dull tips and bars to prevent deep entry.
The day began with a strange incident involving Cale, which in the telling and re-telling gave rise to a peculiar legend. The person involved was only a very minor member of the country aristocracy who had arrived in Spanish Leeds the night before and had managed to hang onto the coat-tails of some prince or other and was enjoying the attention of the various flunkeys seeing to the needs of the assembled gentry. Not realizing that the white-faced boy standing next to him in his plain black cassock was the incarnation of the Wrath of God and all-round exterminating angel, he had mistaken him for a servant and politely, it must be said, asked for a glass of water with a slice of lemon. The servant ignored him.
‘Look here,’ he said to Cale more forcefully. ‘Get me a glass of water and a slice of lemon and do it now. I won’t ask you again.’ The servant looked at him, eyes blazing with an incredulity and disdain that he took for the worst kind of dumb insolence.
‘What?’ said Cale.
The newly arrived country toff was anxious not to be regarded as a bumpkin of the kind who would allow himself to be intimidated by a dogsbody and took the stunned silence from those around to signal that they were waiting to see whether he was up to dealing with insolence from a servant. He fetched Cale an enormous blow to the side of his face. There followed a paralysed stillness that made the previous silence seem raucous. It was the prince who’d invited him who broke it.
‘My God, man, this is Thomas Cale.’
There is no adjective in any language fit to describe the whiteness of the country gentleman’s face as the blood drained into his boots. His mouth opened. The others waited for something horrible to happen.
Cale looked at him. There was a long pause, a dreadful silence, suddenly broken when Cale let out a single loud bark of amusement. Then he walked away.
Each side had been allowed forty horses and when the Swiss entered the field they certainly looked impressive, the horses pulling at their bits, anxious to get on, and beside them seventy knights on foot, armour carapaces sparkling in the morning sun. Beautiful. Formidable. They took up a line and waited. Not for long. From the other side of the park what looked like a peasant wagon came into view, and another one after it and another – fifteen in all. Each one was led by two heavy shirehorses, bigger than the hunters ridden by the knights by half as much again. As they approached it became clear that these were not the usual wagons for carrying hay or pigs – they were smaller, the sides slanted and they had roofs. By contrast, the fifteen wagons were flanked by ten of Artemisia’s horse scouts, slight men on fast and famously agile Manipur ponies. They were carrying crossbows, not a weapon used much in Halicarnassus. They’d been designed by Vague Henri for use on horseback – light, nothing like as powerful as his own overstrung but very much easier to draw and load. The wagons came to their marked place and then curved round into a circle. The drivers leapt off and unhitched the horses, pulling them into the centre. The gap between the wagons was not very great as the horses had been carefully trained to offset them before they were unharnessed. Each driver quickly removed a detachable wooden shield hung from the back of the wagons, which they slotted between them so that now the wagons and shields formed a continuous circle without gaps.