‘What’s up?’ said Cale.
‘I’ve had some news back but it’s the usual mess of stuff.’
‘But you’ve heard something?’
‘You know as well as I do the first news is always horse-shit.’
‘I understand. What is it? Tell me what you’ve heard.’
‘Have it your own way. The news is that your friend is dead. I spoke to someone who said they saw him.’
‘Did they know him? How well?’
‘He’d seen him around and about. Who hasn’t? The place is an inferno apparently – you know what it’s like: nothing makes any sense at first. He’s probably heard the same thing about you.’
Cale called out to his Penitents and was heading to the ghetto when, from an entrance blowing light grey smoke into the courtyard, a figure walked out. Even though the smoke obscured him and his face was black, the way he moved gave him away immediately. Then Vague Henri recognized Cale – and also that he was staring at him in a peculiar way.
‘What?’ he said, defensive.
Cale looked him over for a while.
‘There was a rumour you were dead.’
Taken aback by this, Henri gave the impression he was considering how reliable it was.
‘No,’ he said, at last.
Cale kept looking at him.
‘What happened?’
Vague Henri smiled.
‘Nothing much. We got in real neat. We only took out half a dozen on the way to the girls. Now I can see why.’
‘They didn’t attack?’
‘No.’
‘What about the fires?’
‘We scared the shit out of the nuns. One of them spilt a pan of hot fat – the place went up like a hay-rack – spread under the floorboards and everything. That’s why the fires kept breaking out all over. Got a bit scary.’
‘Are the girls all right?’
‘Fine. All of them.’ He laughed. ‘Bosco put them on half an acolyte’s rations – thin as a hair now.’
‘A hare?’
‘Yeah – on your head.’
‘Oh, I thought you meant, you know, a rabbit kind of hare. Doesn’t make sense, a rabbit, does it?’
‘No.’
‘I wonder why he didn’t kill them?’
‘I suppose,’ said Vague Henri, ‘there’s good in everyone.’
They both smiled. Cale nodded at the bodies hanging all around the courtyard.
‘What do you make of this?’
‘I don’t make anything of it,’ he said, suddenly angry. ‘Fucking good fucking riddance.’ Then he laughed; humour certainly but horror also. ‘Didn’t see it coming, though.’
‘Bosco told them this was how they’d get to heaven.’
Vague Henri nodded.
‘Find him yet?’ Cale asked.
‘No. Want to?’
‘One way or the other. He’ll be in his room, maybe.’
‘Not,’ said Vague Henri ‘a good idea to go wandering around without being firm-handed.’
‘I’m impatient. Really, I can’t wait.’
Windsor, the cancer-infected Laconic tasked with killing Thomas Cale that day, was feeling particularly unwell. He was not long for the world one way or the other. He’d seen Cale talking to Vague Henri and tried to get to a high vantage point where he could get a decent shot. He put on a cassock he’d stripped off one of the Redeemers. He’d hoped for a good deal more confusion and days of fighting to give him an opportunity but now everything was static and soldiers were milling about in their thousands, gloomy and depressed by the hanging dead; having been wound up so tight and then it all being over there was nowhere for their horrible mix of feelings to go but inside.
Unfamiliar with the Sanctuary and its twists, Windsor got lost on his way to a walled ledge he’d spotted, and by the time he arrived it was only to see Cale and Vague Henri leaving the square on a reconnoitre which could only be considered seriously ill-advised. Though, of course, if they’d done the wise thing and stayed where they were, Cale would have had only a few seconds to live.
Windsor got rid of the cassock – there were plenty spare where that came from – and headed off in pursuit of the two boys, though not with any great optimism that he’d find them in the vast confusion of the place. On the other hand, there were now Laconics wandering all over the Sanctuary so there would be no problem stalking them. He paused only to vomit, something he now did three times a day.
It was no easy progress for Cale and Vague Henri – although the floors were clear, everything above two feet was packed with hanging priests and their headway was slow and singular as they pushed their way through the packed mass of dangling bodies. Just as he expected, Windsor was quickly lost, but while staring out of a window he noticed that though he couldn’t see the two boys themselves they gave away their trail by the movement of bodies swinging back and forth in their wake. He decided that it would be quicker, even with brief stops to check their progress, to crawl under the priests rather than push through them. The thought had also occurred to Cale and Vague Henri but not only did they find the idea of crawling under their former masters objectionable, the truth was that they were enjoying themselves. The general soldiers might have been cowed by the Redeemers’ grim willingness to embrace death in such a terrible and determined fashion but Cale and Vague Henri were made of sterner stuff – this hideous end struck them as entirely deserved and better than anything they could have thought up for themselves. It was no exaggeration to say that once they’d got over the initial shock they were thrilled by what had happened, an ecstasy of satisfaction that all their pain had been in some measure reimbursed. These deaths were very sweet to both of them, a sweetness that required to be made complete by a confrontation, dead or alive, with Bosco himself.
At one point Windsor came within forty yards of them but the darkness and the maziness of the place defeated him again: he took a wrong turn and crawled off under the vault of pointy feet ever further into the inner snarl of the Sanctuary.
As Cale and Vague Henri came to the end of the largest of the corridors they heard a sound. At first it was hard to make out, stopping and starting – it was a scratching sound and a scrabbling sound like a trapped animal, a small one, trying to escape. It was a desperate sound: scratch and scrape, silence, scratch and scrape. In the increasing darkness and silence it tightened the skin on the back of their skulls. Scratch and scrape, silence, scratch and scrape. Then an odd scuffing fluttery sound. Slowly they moved to the end of the corridor, where it turned right and also opened up into a space the size of a large room. Twitchy, they lowered themselves to the ground and saw what was causing the sound: manic, sandalled feet, flapping and scrabbling at the floor and wretchedly trying to get contact with something solid to support the weight of its body. The knot must have slipped or the rope stretched. As the corner of the corridor turned there was enough space for them to sit back against the wall without the lines of turned down feet in their faces.
‘Getting too dark to see,’ said Vague Henri.
Scrabble, scrabble, scrape.
‘It’s pretty close – just the other side of this latitude here.’
Scrape, scrape, scrabble.
‘That sound – it’s giving me the shrinks.’
‘Then let’s get away from it.’
Keeping close to the stone, they eased along the wall of the Latitude. Scrabble, scrape, scrabble, scrape. Then suddenly a wild and desperate scratching and rasps as the choking man, raging to breathe, lashed out for purchase on the floor.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ said Vague Henri and pushed through the hanging dead and grabbed the choking Redeemer by the waist to ease his weight and cut him down with his knife.
The dying Redeemer, almost gone, took in a breath of air and regained consciousness – but only of a sort. An overseer of the hanging itself, he had been among the last to hang. The rope had seemed all right but it turned out to be inferior stuff and had stretched to allow the tips of his toes to take enough of his weight to keep him alive for hours. When Vague Henri took him by the waist he was able to breathe and started to wake up from the death nightmare he’d been trying to run away from: a devil was coming for him, bug-eyed and fat with gappy teeth, all pink and white with a slimy, drippy, red erection and laughing madly, like a pig might laugh.