‘Kitty the Hare’s red books are like windows into the souls of the great and good of Spanish Leeds. Little birds everywhere sing.’
‘What’s he going to do?’ asked Cale.
‘He’s got two choices, I’d say: go along with what we say until he has a chance to use it when things get really bad; or use it to arrest us now and make peace with the Redeemers.’
This startled Vague Henri, who had planned to be cock-of-the-walk for at least six months more. ‘You really think he’ll do that?’
‘On balance? No. It’s not enough to be sure of victory. He knows the consequences if he gets it wrong. He’ll lay it down in the cellar till he can use it. But we have to be quick off the mark, present this as a heroic effort treacherously betrayed – noble woman, daring raid, heroic. Last words.’ Cale looked at him. ‘Sorry,’ said IdrisPukke. ‘I’ve lived too long and have too many bad habits. But we won’t honour her memory by allowing it to be seen as a total disaster. It has to be seen as a heroic failure.’
‘It was a heroic failure.’
‘Only if we present it as one. People need stories of individual daring, of courage and selfless sacrifice, of near victory and treacherous stabs in the back.’
‘Let’s hope we get them then,’ said Vague Henri.
‘Hope has nothing to do with it,’ said IdrisPukke. ‘I have my people writing them now. They’ll be posted all over the city by tomorrow morning.’ He turned to Cale, feeling himself mean-spirited and cynical. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. It’s a pity death took her off so soon.’
IdrisPukke left the two boys, the soft sunlight beaming through the windows as if the house were a domestic cathedral blessed by angels.
‘When are you away?’ Cale said at last.
‘Tomorrow. Early.’
Another long silence.
‘I’m sorry for your loss, too,’ said Vague Henri. ‘Don’t know what else to say. I liked her.’
‘She didn’t like me. Not in the end.’
Another silence.
‘Well,’ said Vague Henri, ‘you’re easy to get wrong.’ A snort of derision from Cale. Vague Henri continued trying to be comforting. ‘It wasn’t your fault. It’s just how things are.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Cale, after a moment. ‘I don’t know how I feel about her now she’s dead. I don’t feel the right way, that’s for sure.’
PART FOUR
‘Now go, attack the Amalekites, and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’
1 Samuel 15:3
31
The Redeemers crossed the Mississippi in April, and to a landing largely unresisted. The scouts they sent out across the gently rolling plains, which extended for three hundred miles from the south bank of the river, returned with the news that almost every village, town and city was deserted and not only of people. All animals, from pigs to cows to rabbits, were gone along with the population. The fields were left unsown with wheat or barley and left to the poppies, which had come early with the unseasonably warm weather. ‘It’s beautiful,’ said a Redeemer scout on his return. ‘I doubt if the fields of heaven itself can match it: mile after mile of poppy and eyebright, hellebore and Deptford pinks, touch-me-not and fine-leaved vetch. But damn all to eat for fifteen days in any direction. Unless you’re a cow or a horse.’
The scout had presumed too much on Cale’s generosity. He had no intention of allowing the Redeemers to feed their animals. As soon as the ground was soft enough he’d ordered the women and children out into the fields and instead of sowing wheat and barley had them planting Crazy Charlie, Stringhat and Stinking Willy – all poisonous to ruminants. There was considerable anger at this: ‘What will happen,’ they cried, ‘to our animals when we return?’
‘I’d worry about that,’ said Cale, ‘if you return.’
However, he’d carefully mapped the poisoned areas, which reassured them though that hadn’t been his intention – he had just wanted to know where it was safe to feed the horses that drew the war wagons.
It was General Redeemer Princeps and his Fourth Army who’d come across the Mississippi first, veterans of the destruction of the Materazzi at Silbury Hill. Princeps knew very well what Cale was capable of, having followed carefully much of the boy’s plan for the invasion of Materazzi territory when he was still at the Sanctuary. He knew that once he crossed the Mississippi there would be ugly things waiting for him and his men. He hadn’t expected the landing to be unopposed, but had expected the decision not to plant. But he hadn’t expected the sowing of toxic herbs to poison his horses and sheep. It took several weeks to bring in fodder and longer to find anyone who could identify the plants causing the problem. He’d expected he would have to hold a bridgehead on the south bank while the Axis tried to push them back into the Mississippi. Instead, he had three hundred miles to do with, so it appeared, as he wished. Cale had turned the prairie into a flowery wasteland. Supplying a large army in this desert of red and yellow and pink would mean a significant rethink and more time. For now, Princeps stayed close to the river and organized the means to support a new plan to advance on Switzerland. It was a week into this hiatus that a five-hundred-strong force of mounted Redeemer infantry – their horses now muzzled against the poisons waiting for them in the grass – encountered a most peculiar sight: some kind of round wooden fort, not large, containing about three acres and with a ditch dug all the way around it.
When Redeemer Partiger was brought forward by his scouts to take a look, he said a quiet prayer to St Martha of Lesbos, patron saint of those who required protection from the unexpected. She had earned her place among the list of the holy because of the strange nature of her martyrdom – she had been forced to swallow a six-sided hook on a string, with hinges on each hook so that the device could travel through her digestive system without catching. Some twelve hours later, when her executioners felt the hook had travelled far enough, they hauled on the string and pulled her inside out. In Redeemer dogma, ingenuity was always portrayed as a threat and hence the need for a saint with a specific responsibility to intercede to protect the faithful from its perils.
‘Send someone forward under a white flag,’ said Partiger.
Several minutes later, a rider under a flag of truce approached to within about fifty yards of the war wagons.
‘In …’
Whatever he was going to say was cut short by a crossbow bolt in the middle of his chest.
‘Why has he stopped?’ said Partiger – then very slowly the messenger slumped to one side of the horse and fell off.
The watching Redeemers were outraged at this breach in the rules of war, despite the fact that they never acknowledged such laws themselves. Given this, there was certainly no particular disadvantage to killing the herald but it was, in fact, an accident. The sniper who’d shot the messenger had merely taken a bead on the man as a precaution – but the wagons were cramped inside and a nervous former hop-picker had moved and jogged his arm.
‘I wonder what he wanted?’ called out someone and there was a nervous burst of laughter.
Partiger considered what to do next. The Redeemers were skilled enough at siege warfare but the trebuchets they used were extremely heavy and the few they’d brought were all on the other side of the Mississippi because there were no important walled towns within three hundred and fifty miles of the river. It would take several weeks to get one here. Besides, the fort wasn’t very big and it was of wood not stone. Despite his understandable uneasiness at the novelty of what was in front of him, he knew he’d be expected to find out what sort of novelty it was so he couldn’t just go around it. However strange, it did not look particularly formidable. He ordered an attack by three hundred. Fifty of them were armoured cavalry – an innovation by the Redeemers themselves – the rest were more lightly-protected mounted infantry.