‘There shouldn’t be a problem. The stress on these will be much lower so it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with the quality we need. Besides, I suppose it’s pretty clear what’ll happen if they deliver anything second-rate.’
He looked at Cale thoughtfully.
‘Everyone knows it was you.’
Cale looked back at him.
‘Everyone knows it was me who laughed at Conn when he died. Everyone knows it was me who cut off a man’s head for ordering me to bring him a drink of water.’
Hooke smiled.
‘Everyone knows it was you.’
‘Everyone,’ said Bose Ikard, ‘knows it was him.’
‘There was an old lady,’ said Fanshawe in reply, ‘who swallowed a bird.’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘You see, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider that she swallowed in order to catch the fly that she swallowed.’
‘You mean something but I’m too irritable for your cockiness.’
‘I was merely suggesting that even if the cure for the disease is not as bad as the disease, Thomas Cale might be very bad indeed for you.’
‘But not you?’
‘Indeed he might. The Laconics are outnumbered four to one by serfs.’
‘Our peasants are the salt of the earth, not slaves. We don’t kill them without compunction. So we’re not afraid to go to sleep in case they cut our throats. We are one nation.’
‘I truly doubt that. But of course you’re in the middle of a wonderful experiment to test your confidence. It will be so interesting if Cale pulls it off to see whether your people are happy to go back to a life of sheep-shagging and forelock-tugging.’
‘What’s your point, if you have one?’
‘That you have to know when to stop swallowing. Do you want to know how the song ends?’
‘Not particularly,’ said Bose Ikard.
‘But it’s enchanting. “There was an old lady who swallowed a horse. She’s dead of course.”’
28
‘Fanshawe has offered to supply a hundred Laconics to train the New Model Army.’
The three boys, Kleist ever more silent, were eating oysters in lemon juice with IdrisPukke, accompanied by a dry, flinty Sancerre to cut out the saltiness.
‘Obviously you can’t trust him,’ said IdrisPukke, enjoying the puzzle concerning what Fanshawe was up to as much as the oysters and the wine. ‘But in what way can’t you trust him?’
‘He doesn’t expect me to believe he’s doing it out of the goodness of his heart. He doesn’t think I’m that stupid.’
‘So how stupid does he think you are?’
There was a delightful snigger from Vague Henri at this. Nothing from Kleist. He seemed not to be listening.
‘I think Fanshawe’s realized we might stop Bosco and they want to be on the … not losing side.’
At this point they were joined by Artemisia.
‘Oysters, my dear?’ said IdrisPukke.
‘No, thank you,’ she said sweetly. ‘Where I come from we feed them to the pigs.’ He was highly amused by this, rather to her surprise, because she’d intended to take him down a peg: for some reason she wrongly suspected him of condescending to her. He turned back to Cale.
‘How is he intending to explain the presence of so many Laconics to the Redeemers?’
‘It’s only a hundred. He’s going to claim they’re renegades.’
‘All right. You don’t believe him. But again, how don’t you believe him?’
‘I don’t know. Not yet. But I need his instructors whatever his reasons. Losses are going to be high. We need to churn out replacements at five thousand a month. And that’s cutting it fine. It’s going to be a damn close-run thing.’
‘It’s an idea,’ said Kleist, ‘worth discussing, I think.’ When he spoke these days, which was rarely, it was about details. He seemed to find some peace in the minute particulars of the heel of a boot or the way the leather was stitched to keep out the wet. ‘We’ve been assuming they aren’t going to try to come across the Mississippi in the winter.’
Artemisia groaned in irritation.
‘I’ve told you – the Mississippi doesn’t freeze over like other rivers, not completely. It becomes a mass of ice blocks breaking and crashing into each other. Treacherous doesn’t begin to describe it. They’re not coming over in numbers until well into the spring.’
‘I believe you,’ said Kleist, quietly. ‘But you said they couldn’t come over in numbers.’
‘So?’
‘But it would be possible to cross …’
‘Not with an army or anything like it.’
Kleist didn’t react to the irritated interruption, he just kept on in his dull monotone. ‘But it would be possible to cross a small force.’
‘What good would that do?’
‘I don’t mean for the Redeemers to cross in small numbers, I mean for us to cross in small numbers over to them.’
There was a short silence.
‘To do what?’ said Cale.
‘You said it would be close.’
‘It will.’
‘What if you had more time … months, maybe a whole year?’
‘Go on.’
‘The Redeemers are building boats over the winter for an invasion in the spring. Do you know where they’re building them?’
‘I don’t see …’ said Artemisia.
‘Do you know where they’re building them?’ Now it was Kleist doing the interrupting.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The section on the North Bank between Athens and Austerlitz is packed with boatyards but the Redeemers have moved the factories back, along with the builders, to Lucknow so they can control construction of the fleet.’
‘So all their boats are in one place?’
‘Mostly, as far as I know.’
‘So if you could get a force of, say, a thousand across the river in maybe early spring, could you attack Lucknow and burn their fleet?’
‘I couldn’t get a thousand across,’ said Artemisia. ‘Or anything like it.’
‘How many then?’ said Cale, clearly excited.
‘I don’t know. I’d have to talk to the river pilots. I don’t know.’
‘Two hundred?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘It would be worth the risk,’ said Cale.
‘It would be my people taking it,’ said Artemisia.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Cale. ‘That’s true. But if it could be done.’
‘I’d have to lead it,’ she said.
Cale wasn’t happy with this.
‘I need you here and alive. Your outriders are the eyes and ears of the fortress wagons.’ This was true enough, but it was not the only, or even the main, reason. ‘Besides,’ he lied, ‘it’s an unbroken rule that the man … the person who comes up with the plan has the right to put it into operation.’
Artemisia stared at Kleist. ‘You have an extensive knowledge of riverwork and know the North Bank of the Mississippi in Halicarnassus?’
‘No.’
‘I do have an extensive knowledge of riverwork and, as it happens, I own the North Bank of the Mississippi in Halicarnassus.’
This even made Kleist smile.
‘I withdraw,’ he said. Cale looked at him, not pleasantly.
‘There’s another problem,’ said IdrisPukke.
‘Are you an expert on riverwork and Halicarnassus as well as all your other achievements?’
‘No, my dear, I know nothing about either. This is more politics.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Everything comes down to politics one way or another. Is this a risky venture, would you say?’
‘Of course.’
‘You might easily fail then?’
‘Cale’s right,’ said Artemisia. ‘If there’s even a limited chance of causing such damage we should take it. It’s my life and those of my people.’
‘I wasn’t so much, I’m afraid, worrying about the lives of two hundred people – there’ll be many sets of two hundred dead before this is over. I was worrying more about what the implications for everything else would be if you fail.’