‘A favour? Of course. Probably.’
‘I want a hundred of your men to relieve Vague Henri as soon as it’s clear what’s going on.’
‘That’s a big favour – it’s a hefty risk.’
‘Yes.’
Fanshawe looked down at the map of the Sanctuary and its inner buildings.
‘It’s a bit of a maze there, old boy. Getting lost would be easy and costly. But if you were there to take them in and guide them …’
Cale was fairly sure that Fanshawe had been thinking hard about what he was going to do about him. He didn’t need to think very carefully about the chances of either him or Vague Henri emerging alive from the fog of battle.
‘Unfortunately I’m needed here – but I’ve arranged for three of my Penitents who know the ghetto better than I do to take you to it.’
Fanshawe considered declining, not that he’d expected Cale to be stupid enough to agree, but it would look bad to refuse. If there were to be any questions about who was responsible for Cale’s tragic death at some time during the next twenty-four hours it would do no harm to have demonstrated to the New Model Army that the Laconics had been right behind their leader in a risky enterprise to save his closest friend.
Fanshawe went off to make the arrangements and Cale, collecting IdrisPukke on the way, went back to the summit of the Little Brother and a small tower that had been erected on top to give him as clear a view as was possible. Then it began. The ropes holding up the front of the tunnel were lowered slowly and it transformed into a massive ridge to cover the thirty-foot gap to the top of the Sanctuary walls.
Still there was nothing. There was a pause of a minute or so, a series of indistinguishable shouts and then the hand pumps, manned by twenty soldiers to build the pressure, were primed to bursting for two minutes. More shouts. A pause. Then the pumps were let loose by Hooke and the liquid in the containers burst out of a set of eight barrels like the spray from the world’s greatest fountain. Hooke lit the eight torches underneath and there was an explosive roar like the crack of doom and the spray ignited in a vast arc of flames, covering the walls in front and a hundred yards to either side. For twenty seconds this hideous device deafened everyone behind it – then Hooke, frightened it would explode, turned it off. For a minute longer the liquid burned like the lake of fire at the centre of hell and then, almost as if it had been blown out, it vanished. There was no delay – the New Model Army, lower legs protected against the heat – were through the tunnel and onto the bridge as quickly as they could to take advantage of the devastation before the Redeemers could respond.
‘YOU’LL BE FINE! IT’S ALL GRAVY FROM HERE!’
‘GET YOUR EYES ON! GET YOUR EYES ON!’
‘VALLON TO THE EDGE! VALLON … YESSSS! TO THE EDGE, YOU SHITHEAD!’
‘OVER THERE! OVER THERE! LOOK WHERE YOU’RE FUCKING STEPPING!’
‘MURDER HOLE! MURDER HOLE!’
‘HERE, BUDDY! HERE!’
But there were no bodies horribly burned. There were no survivors of the fire ready to beat them back. The shouts stopped. Then there was nothing but a terrible noiseless solitude on every side. This only raised the horrible tension, the soldier’s terrible fear of the unexpected worst: when and in what way would the blow come? They moved on packed together against the hideous fight to come. ‘SLOWLY! SLOWLY! EYES ON! WATCH FOR IT! WATCH FOR IT!’
Adding to their fear was the black smoke from the Greek fire, which covered everything in front of them in a thick smog. As they moved forward, every ordinary thing assumed the shadowy obscurity of some hideous threat, only to be revealed as a pile of barrels or a holy statue offering blessings to the saved. So a halt was called. Two thousand men, shoulder to shoulder, even the Laconics waiting behind them spooked and shaken at the terrible uncertainty of something hideous to come.
Very slowly – it was an almost windless day – the smoke began to patch and smudge, each clearing spot seeming to reveal a menace that never came. Then a small gust and then a harder one whirled and revolved the smoke into beautiful spins and rolls. The wind blew through clearly and what they saw was the defining vision of the lives most of them expected to lose that day. Everywhere, from every post, every batten in every one of the roofed walkways, from wooden frames driven into the courtyards in their hundreds, everywhere they looked were thousands of Redeemers hanging by the neck.
39
The New Model Army was well used to slaughter by now and the Laconics were, of course, a society given up entirely to its requirements. But this was not death as they knew it and so, despite the fact that what they were seeing meant that they would survive the day and that this multitude of hanged men were their most bitter enemies, a mood of creepy uneasiness settled on them all as they moved slowly through the Sanctuary. Each new prospect, each square, each courtyard, each covered pathway, each prayer garden contained only row after row of the hanging dead. The only sound was of creaking ropes, the only thing moving the slight drift and swing of bodies stirred by the light winds.
Slowly they moved inside the buildings of the Sanctuary; they could not do otherwise. In every corridor, at intervals three foot broad and long, Redeemers hung by their necks from the roof into which single hooks had been set in concrete. In every room. In every office. Every alcove. Every chapel. In the six great churches there must have been a thousand each on a dozen different levels, as silent as the decorations suspended from the tree of mortality on the Day of the Dead. The order came to halt and the Laconics and their Penitent guide headed into the recesses of the Sanctuary, hampered at every step by the bodies they set swinging back and forth as they made their way to the ghetto and Vague Henri.
Against the strongest advice to stay out of the Sanctuary until it had been thoroughly searched (‘It’s obvious, sir, they’ll hide and wait for you to come.’) Cale arrived, wide-eyed with bleak astonishment. They were right but he could not bear to wait and, closely surrounded by Penitents (what were they thinking?), he moved into the old spaces now bizarrely transformed into a priestly abattoir. How oddly his soul reacted to being back again. It was not like returning to a former home because he realized that something about what Sister Wray had said was right: he had been here in the past, he was here now, he would always be here.
The Penitents kept him in an ambulacrum where they’d cleared a space of hanged Redeemers and where he was out of everyone’s line of sight. Within a few minutes they brought him a boy that one of the New Model Army had found hiding in a box.
‘He means a confessional, sir,’ said a Penitent.
‘What are you?’ asked Cale.
‘An acolyte, sir.’
‘So was I. You’re all right, don’t worry. No one’s going to hurt you. What happened here?’
It was understandably garbled stuff but simple enough. Bosco had addressed five hundred of his closest followers and announced that, because of Thomas Cale’s treachery, he had decided to remove the faithful from the earth and never to think of mankind again. As a reward for their fidelity they were to be permitted to join God in eternal bliss by the same means as the Redeemer himself.
‘All of them went along with this?’
‘Not all, sir. But the Pope created a group of counsellors to assist all those who needed spiritual support.’
‘But not you.’
‘I was afraid.’
‘You’ll be safe now.’ Cale turned to one of the staff sergeants of the New Model Army. ‘Get him away from here. Get him some new clothes and get my cook to feed him. Make sure he’s safe. Why, for God’s sake, isn’t there any news about Henri?’ He sent two more of his Penitents. Five minutes later, when he had decided to go himself, dangerous as it was, Fanshawe turned up looking uneasy.