Cale had come back into the room from boaking up in the jakes of his apartment at the No-Worries Palace, a newly built refuge with all the most recent innovations in plumbing. Fortunately he had held off vomiting in front of the crowd; his slow and fragile departure was interpreted by all who witnessed it – and even more strongly by those who didn’t – as a sign of his ethereal detachment from even the most terrifying events. He lay down on the bed and looked so dreadful that Vague Henri repented of his lack of sympathy. He was, in truth, angry with Cale for nearly having died.
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘A cup of tea,’ said Cale. ‘With sugar lumps.’
With Vague Henri gone, Cale was left alone with IdrisPukke.
‘I thought you were feeling better?’
‘Me too … but I made the mistake of trying to do something.’
IdrisPukke walked over to the window and stared out over the newly installed lavender maze.
‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘Vipond is right. Without you to fire them up I can only see it going one way, to be frank.’ Cale didn’t reply. ‘I suppose taking that stuff your witch-doctor gave you wouldn’t help?’
‘Into a hole, six by two.’
‘Pity.’
A thought struck Cale, tired as he was.
‘That woman who gave me St somebody or other’s ashes. I didn’t think the Antagonists believed in relics – or saints.’
‘Antagonism is a pretty broad church, which is to say they have an expansive number of ways of loathing each other. She must have been a Piscopalian – they’re pretty much just like Redeemers in what they believe except they don’t accept the authority of the Pope. The others can’t abide them because of all the ritual and saint worship but mostly because they believe in the Verglass Apocalypse – they think the world was once nearly destroyed by ice as a punishment from God and that in ice it will end.’
‘So?’
‘The others insist that God uses water to discipline mankind – ice is a blasphemous invention from the mind of heretics.’
‘I need to sleep.’
A few seconds later he heard the door close and in seconds he was out.
He was in a valley surrounded by high and craggy mountains swept by wind and lightning. He was tied to a post, arms and legs bound, and a small cat was eating his toes. All he could do was spit at it to drive it off. At first the cat retreated but as he ran out of slobber the cat slowly made its way back to his feet and began eating them again. He looked up and in the distance he could see an enormous puppet Poll laughing and holding out a naked foot, twiddling her toes to show that she still had them and shouting, ‘Eat up, kitty, kitty!’ Next to her, on each of the other mountain ridges that surrounded the valley he saw three versions of himself striking a theatrical pose. In one he was holding his sword pointing at the ground, in another he was kneeling on a high rock with a massively ornate sword held across his chest. The final version of Cale was on the highest of all the ridges, legs akimbo, back arched as if he was about to soar into the air, with his cloak flailing behind him like a ragged wing. But what struck him most was that he was hooded in all of them, his face completely obscured in shadow. I never wear a hood, he thought to himself, and then the cat started eating his toes again and he woke up.
‘I had a dream,’ he said to IdrisPukke and Vague Henri a few hours later.
‘What would it take,’ said IdrisPukke, ‘for you not to tell it to me?’
‘There was three of you?’ said Vague Henri when Cale had finished. ‘I’d call that a nightmare.’
‘You can smirk all you like,’ said Cale, and then smiled himself. ‘I never saw the hand of God so clear in anything.’
‘I can’t say I feel the same,’ said IdrisPukke. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain it for those of us without a direct line to God Almighty.’
‘Imagine there were thirty of me – spare me the jokes.’
‘All right.’
‘You saw what happened today. I didn’t do anything – I was just there. They did it all; I did nothing. They needed someone to save them.’
‘There’s nothing much to that,’ said Vague Henri. ‘You already have saved them. They want you to do it again, that’s all. There’s nothing magic about it.’
‘You’re wrong,’ said IdrisPukke. ‘I’ve seen generals worshipped by the crowds for some great victory. But they don’t want a man now, they want a god, because only the unearthly can save them.’
Vague Henri looked at Cale.
‘Isn’t that what Bosco wanted you to be?’
‘Well, if you can come up with anything better, you gobshite, be my guest.’
‘Children!’ said IdrisPukke. ‘Play nicely together.’ He turned to Cale. ‘Go on.’
‘They don’t need me – they need the Left Hand of God. So we give it to them. That’s what the dream was telling me – all that standing on a mountain in a cloak and waving a sword. Be seen! it was saying – but where you can’t be touched, show them you’re watching over them. Wherever they fight, there I’ll be; wherever they die, there I’ll be. Lose – there I’ll be. Win – there I’ll be. In the darkest night – or in the brightest day.’
‘But you won’t, though, will you?’ said Vague Henri.
‘All right, it’s a lie. So what? It’s for their own good.’
IdrisPukke laughed.
‘Vague Henri is quite wrong,’ he said. ‘Don’t think of it as a lie, think of it as the truth under imaginary circumstances.’
‘What about the cat eating your toes?’ asked Vague Henri. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It was just a stupid dream.’
Cale should have rested for a week but there was no time and in three days he was back in Spanish Leeds, having worked out the details of his forgeries.
‘Numbers.’
‘Twenty.’
‘Too many.’
‘They don’t have to do anything – they’re not impersonating me. They just have to be good at striking poses. A pantomime is all we need. The theatres are shut so we’ll have our pick.’
‘And if they talk?’
‘We put the fear of God into them. And pay them decent money. And keep them isolated and watched – four people at all times.’
When they arrived back it was to some upsetting news for Cale.
‘We heard you were dead.’
The unusual thing was that, despite the fact it was untrue, the issue of a formal confirmation that Cale was indeed alive didn’t do much to stop the rumour that he was dead from gaining ground. More strongly worded official denials were issued. ‘Never believe anything,’ said IdrisPukke, ‘until there’s an official denial. You’ve been invited to an engagement at the Palace – with the King. He thinks it might be true.’
‘He wishes it were true,’ said Cale.
‘I’m in two minds about what’s at the root of all this – the attempt to kill you at Potsdam, obviously. But I don’t think they want you dead – not yet. No doubt in the fullness of time if you were to fall off a cliff it would be very acceptable. But not now. For the present they’re more worried about the Redeemers than they are about you.’
‘Should I go?’
‘I think so. This is one lie that won’t be doing any good – best to strangle it now. If we can.’
‘But I’m not dead,’ said an exasperated Cale. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
‘But proving that isn’t so easy.’
‘But I’ll be there. They’ll be able to see me.’
‘What if you’re an imposter?’
One person who had no mixed feelings at all about the possibility of Cale being dead was Bose Ikard. He arranged for priority in invitations to be given to those who had met Cale in the past. But Cale kept his inner circle pretty close – and they weren’t vulnerable to Ikard’s promises or threats.
He decided to pursue another tack: sex. It was not subtle but Bose was too old and experienced to believe there was any particular virtue in subtlety. The walls of his apartments were, so to speak, cluttered with the mounted heads of sophisticated opponents who had looked down on his powers of discrimination as rather crude and had done so right up to the moment he’d had them killed. He’d once had IdrisPukke sentenced to death – a mistake, he now conceded; he’d swapped him for someone whose death, at the time, seemed more pressing. The truth was that Bose was afraid of IdrisPukke because he was an artful man with a penetrating grasp of complex matters, able to put the boot in when it was called for. It was this respectful loathing that fuelled his belief in the rumours about Cale being dead. It was the kind of thing he feared IdrisPukke could pull off. This was why he was talking to Dorothy Rothschild. Dorothy was certainly not a whore but she was something like one: reassuringly expensive, though no fee as such was ever negotiated. Her reward came in the shape of access to power, introductions concerning expensive contracts for this and that – she went on her back cushioned by the expensive silken sheets of enormous influence.