‘Traditionally the road to hell is paved with good intentions.’
‘Well, it wasn’t a good intention, exactly. If I had to do it again I’d do it differently – but I don’t. I have bad dreams instead. But not every night. If you do something terrible you either throw yourself over a cliff or get on with it.’
They sat in silence for a while.
‘Except for that shit-bag Solomon Solomon, I never acted out of malice. Well, him and a few other people.’
‘You laughed when they killed Conn Materazzi – and you cut off a man’s head for telling you to bring him a glass of water.’
Cale smiled, not needing to point out neither was true.
‘It’s only fair to tell you,’ added IdrisPukke after a short silence, ‘that Imamuel Kant also said it was always wrong to tell lies. He said that if you decided to hide a friend who’d come to your house and said a murderer was after him, and then that murderer came to your door and asked if your friend was there because he had to kill him – well, then it would be wrong to tell a lie. You’d have to do the right thing and give him up.’
‘You’re making fun of me.’
‘No. I promise. He really said that.’
‘Tell me, IdrisPukke, if you faced the extermination of you and yours at the hands of the Redeemers, who would you want standing between you and them – me or Imamuel Kant?’
Most of us experience days like this: from the moment the sun rises like a ribbon until it sets in rosy fingers everything goes wonderfully well, except for the things that go even better – money arrives unexpectedly in large amounts, beautiful women stroke your arm as if they thought nothing was more wonderful than the touch of your skin, a chance remark allows you to see that everyone who does not love you holds you still in high regard. Who is so unfortunate not to have had days like these? Cale was so fortunate that he’d been having these days for three months, pretty much, in a row – and this for someone who was held to have flocks of bad luck owls always hovering around his head. Not just funerals but disaster usually seemed to follow him everywhere. But not for the glorious ninety days in which everything he attempted nearly always worked. The Hanse administrators arrived within three weeks along with the geniuses of the order book, of freight deliveries, of incentive schemes for work of quality (backed up by threats of violence from Thomas Cale). They centralized the planning of transport so the bacon arrived maggot-free, the tack biscuits unshared with the weevils, and devised paperwork so that when wagons or weapons or blankets needed to be replaced there was something in the storehouses waiting to supply that need. The training of the peasants in their wooden forts staggered the hopes of them all as the peasants absorbed with eagerness the harshness of their instruction by the Laconics and the Purgators. No mutinous grumbles, only backbone and getting on with the job. Vague Henri and the miserable Kleist worked at every weakness the Redeemers might find in Cale’s design and tactics and seemed inspired at creating solutions to the limitations that they found. The atmosphere of breaking with the past, of revolution and metamorphosis, seemed to be in the air itself. Not yet aware that Cale had lied about helping the Helots, Fanshawe, an establishment maverick of the kind that every sensible rigid society looks to find a place for, discovered he very much enjoyed destroying entrenched attitudes as long as they weren’t his own.
Every decision seemed to turn out better than hoped: Koolhaus the sullen was as good as his ambition was enormous; he seemed to have the entire campaign down to the last round of cheese sorted in his brain. Within a month he was back with Cale and IdrisPukke. He either knew everything or knew how to find out about it. He seemed barely human, as if he was in possession of a magical device that could search a vast memory and provide an instant answer. Koolhaus was irritating and objectionable and had the imagination of a brick, but as a bureaucrat he was something of a genius. As for Simon Materazzi, he found war was a generous mother to those who were dismissed in more peaceful times. Anxious to be rid of his aristocratic burden, Koolhaus had spent many hours weaning Simon off the sign language and working out how he might learn to lipread. Yet again driven by self-interest, Koolhaus turned his considerable brain to the invention of an unheard-of skill. Just as anxious to be rid of Koolhaus as Koolhaus was to be rid of him, Simon worked for hours a day at perfecting this ability. The two of them had already been planning their divorce when Cale’s offer arrived and led to their final weeks together. But while Koolhaus was finally able to rub the faces of others in the superiority of his skill at almost everything (barring skill with people or anything original) Simon discovered the immense pleasure and even greater usefulness of having people ignore him while he listened to everything they had to say. The Laconics were in the habit of throwing children born lame or blind into a chasm outside the capital, so someone like Simon was a novelty and they treated him as if he were an amusing monkey. Simon took his revenge by making use of the complete ease with which they talked in front of him to keep Cale informed in surprising detail about what they were up to. Interestingly, even had Simon been born a Laconic he would have lived. There was one exception to their otherwise iron rule: a child of the Laconic royal family, no matter how sickly, would never make the long fall onto the rocks of that terrible place. So it was and ever shall be. It amused the Laconics to see Simon and Koolhaus chattering silently away, hand to hand, in the beautifully fluent way they had of speaking. They would gesture Simon over to them at night and write down words for him to teach them how to sign them. They enjoyed making a condescending fuss of him and they had no idea that if they spoke while facing him he could read nearly every word they were saying – including the light-hearted abuse directed at him. When Koolhaus was recalled to Spanish Leeds, Simon made a deal with him to become his replacement, leaving an old schoolfriend of Koolhaus to stay and pretend to translate for him so that the Laconics would not become suspicious.
‘Are you sure he can do the job?’ said Cale, when Koolhaus returned.
‘I thought you were his friend?’ said Koolhaus.
‘Can he do the job?’
‘Yes, he can do the job.’
Koolhaus decided that Simon’s skills – won with as much effort from him as from Simon – would be better kept to himself. The useful things he might, and indeed already was learning, would enhance Koolhaus’ reputation for being a man with all sorts of things at his fingertips. The preparations for the crossing of the Mississippi were also going well and waited only for the weather and Cale’s final say-so.
There were a few wasps in Cale’s honey but the one that affected him the most directly was the introduction of rationing, a move demanded by the bureaucrats of the Hanse to prevent panic-buying, hoarding and shortages of goods that were vital for the New Model Army. Their arguments had been reviewed by Koolhaus at Cale’s instruction and he’d concluded their case was unanswerable – rationing was as vital to the defeat of the Redeemers as the provision of weapons.
‘It will, of course,’ said Koolhaus, reporting to the OAR, ‘be necessary for the sake of public morale that these restrictions apply to everyone. There can be no exceptions,’ he declared piously, ‘except, of course, for the Royal Family.’
As it happened, Koolhaus made his declaration while Vague Henri was in the room, having returned to Spanish Leeds briefly to discuss his preparations in the west with Cale. No sooner had the words ‘Royal Family’ passed his lips than Koolhaus, still inexperienced but a quick learner, realized he’d made a serious mistake. Perhaps worse than serious. ‘The temperature dropped so quickly,’ said a delighted IdrisPukke later to his brother, ‘I thought the North Pole had stopped by for a cup of tea. God, that Koolhaus is a cocky little sod.’