‘Put them on the list,’ said Cale, laughing. ‘Along with all the others.’
Let us consider the acts of Thomas Cale and how they came about: the saving of Riba from a dreadful death, though only after he had run away; the somewhat reluctant return to save his not quite friends; the vandalous breaking of the beautiful Danzig Shiv; the killing of men in their sleep; the rescuing of Arbell Materazzi; the killing, sans merci, of Solomon Solomon at the Red Opera; the restoration of the Palace idiot, Simon Materazzi; Arbell saved again; the much regretted deliverance of Conn at Silbury Hill; the signing of the warrant of execution for the Maid of Blackbird Leys; the poisoning of the waters at the Golan Heights; the destruction and invention of the camps, in which five thousand women and children died of starvation and disease; the strangling of Kitty the Hare; the burning of the bridge after Bex; and perjuring himself at Conn Materazzi’s trial. To these he now added the kidnap and murder of the twenty merchants he held responsible for the trash delivered to his depots the week before. Naked as worms, the men were strung up in front of the palacios of the royal princes of the blood who had accepted bribes from them. Their bodies were horribly mutilated, noses and ears cut off, lips and fingers stitched together holding a coin in their tongueless mouths and clenched hands. Their left eyes were gouged, their gallbladders – held to be the seat of greed – removed. Around their necks a sheet of paper, later distributed in hundreds throughout the city, revealed the terrible nature of their crimes against every man, woman and child whose lives they were prepared to sell in pursuit of money. The pamphlet was signed ‘The Knights of the Left Hand’.
To be strictly fair to Cale and Vague Henri, the men had been murdered as quickly and painlessly as time and circumstances allowed. The terrible torture inflicted on them as a lesson to the rest was done after they had been killed. History cannot judge: history is written by historians. Only the reader in possession of the facts can decide whether he could have acted otherwise in the circumstances or reasonably seen the consequences of his acts.
On the walls of the palacios from which the bodies were hung a sentence was written in old Spanish, it being an affectation of the aristocracy that they should speak a language among themselves of a kind not spoken in Spain for several hundred years.
Pesado has sido en balanza, y fuiste hallado falto.
Broadly speaking this could be translated as ‘You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting’ – an observation that would be found meaningless to hoi polloi but menacing enough to the twelve princes of the blood involved in taking money from the dead men hanging upside down outside their mansions. Cale let them fret for twenty-four hours and then IdrisPukke, on behalf of the OAR, delivered a large paper bag of money to compensate them for the loss of revenue from their entirely legitimate contract with the late factory owners that the OAR had now been obliged, in the face of grave national emergency, to take over in the greater interest of all. The twelve princes of the blood acquiesced because they were not sure what else to do: they had been threatened although they did not know precisely how, and rewarded although they did not know precisely why.
Not only was there very little fuss concerning the kidnapping, torture and murder of men who had faced no trial, let alone their accusers, rather there was a clamour to root out anyone else involved, and much support from the slums upwards for the Knights of the Left Hand and their methods.
A week after Spanish Leeds had been set alight by the murders, Robert Hooke received a visit from Cale to hear his initial report on the possibility of manufacturing guns.
‘There’s nothing wrong with the idea of guns,’ said Hooke, as they looked over the expensively bought shooting iron. ‘It’s the practice that’s the problem. The villainous saltpetre that’s packed in at this end – it’s too much for the iron. That’s why it explodes. Simple as that really.’
‘Then get better iron.’
‘It doesn’t exist. Not yet.’
‘How long?’
‘No idea – months, years. Not enough time anyway.’
‘So that’s it?’
‘Mmm … no … maybe not. I was talking to Vague Henri. He told me he’d made his crossbows much easier to load – but it means they’re much less powerful.’
‘We don’t need them to be powerful – they’re for close range fighting – a few feet.’
‘You never said that.’
‘So?’
‘So? It’s everything. What’s the maximum range you’ll be fighting at?’
‘A few yards mostly – our men will be behind wooden walls – as little man to man fighting as possible.’
‘Will the Redeemers have armour?’
‘Some, but not much. But I suppose they’ll start using more.’
Hooke looked down at the shooting iron. ‘Then you don’t need this.’ He held up a large lead shot the size of a chicken’s egg. ‘You don’t need this either.’ He gestured Cale over to a table covered by a cloth and drew it off like a conjuror at a children’s party revealing a magic cake.
‘It’s just a wooden mock-up – but you can see the principle.’
It was similar to the shooting iron – a tube sealed at one end and open at the other – but cut longways in two so you could see the inner workings.
‘The thing is,’ said Hooke, ‘is not to overload it. You need the right amount of villainous saltpetre – as little as possible – and something light to be exploded out the other end.’
‘How light?’
Hooke opened up a small canvas bag and spread its contents on the table. It was just a collection of nails, small shards and nuggets of metal – even a few stones. It was hard to be impressed. ‘The main thing is to get the size of the charge right. Every time. No offence but your men’ll overdo it. And then I thought – why not put a uniform charge in a little canvas bag, easy to load, always the same charge? Then I thought, why not do the same with the metal and stone shot? Then,’ he said, warming to his brilliance, ‘I thought – why not put them both into another bag? Easy to load, and damn quick. Brilliant.’
‘Will it work?’
‘Come and see.’
Hooke ushered Cale outside where two of his assistants stood next to an iron pipe, much like the shooting iron, held in a wooden vice. About ten yards away was a dead dog strapped to a plank. Hooke, Cale and the assistants took cover behind a pouisse. One of the assistants lit a taper on the end of a long stick and carefully eased it out to the shooting iron. As he was trying to expose as little of himself as possible it took several tries to light the pan. Able to watch through a set of drilled holes, Cale saw the villainous saltpetre in the pan flash, followed a few seconds later by a BANG! – loud, but not as loud as he’d expected. They waited a few seconds and Hooke walked out through the dense smoke, followed by Cale, and over to the dead dog. He’d expected to see something terrible but at first he thought the shot must have missed. It hadn’t – at least, not entirely. Once Hooke pointed out the wounds there were clearly half a dozen bits of nail and stone embedded quite deep in the animal’s flesh.
‘It might not kill. But you get hit by this and you won’t be taking part in anything more than groaning in agony for some time. And the thing is – if you only use it at mass ranks close in, each shot will wound two or three or more every time.’
‘How many times a minute to load and fire?’
‘We can do three. But we’re not in battle conditions. I’d say – conservative – two.’
They spent another hour discussing the men and materials he needed and where the new shooting irons could be cast and how reliable the supply would be.