It was not Vague Henri but this horrible demon holding him in his arms – reaching for anything to save himself he pulled out a sharpened pencil he’d been using to count off his list of those he was to hang and, with the strength of the utterly terrified, he stabbed at the creature holding him who cried out and fell away, dropping the Redeemer and finally breaking his neck.
‘Ow! Ow!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Bastard stabbed me.’
Cale started pushing his way through the hanging bodies that mocked him by banging into him and each other. There was a little more space around the now dead Redeemer – when he’d come to hang himself there was room left over. Vague Henri was feeling around under his arm and towards his back.
‘He stabbed me,’ he said, indignant. ‘He stabbed me with a fucking pencil.’
The Redeemer, soul now in everlasting bliss, or not, did indeed have a pencil grasped in his right hand.
‘Lucky that’s all it was. Bloody stupid bloody thing to do.’
‘Shut up – have a look.’
He held up his left arm and turned his back. It took a while to find the hole in the wool – Cale had to cut his way in to get a proper look.
There was indeed a pencil-shaped hole – but not much blood, though it was pumping a bit.
‘What’s it like?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t want one – it’ll sting a bit.’
‘It does.’
‘It’s not too bad. Let’s go back, get it seen to.’
‘It’s all right. We’ve come this far. Give me a couple of minutes.’
He took a few deep breaths and then began to recover.
‘How far?’
‘Just down the corridor a bit.’
‘Do you think he’ll still be alive? He might be waiting to take you with him.’
‘He probably won’t even be there.’
‘Bet you a dollar.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘What would be the point?’
‘I feel a bit wobbly,’ said Vague Henri. He looked it, too. Beads of sweat, small ones, had begun to cover his face and he was looking pale. He sat down, using the wall to support his weight. Cale didn’t like the look of him.
‘Let me see the wound again.’
Vague Henri turned to his right. Now it was pumping blood slightly, so not too bad, but there was more than he expected. It must have gone in a bit deeper than he thought. But even as Cale looked the blood stopped flowing. He eased Vague Henri back to rest against the wall but by now he was already dead.
40
IdrisPukke was standing in the main square of the Sanctuary talking to Fanshawe, whose mind was elsewhere, wondering if Windsor had managed to kill Thomas Cale. He was so preoccupied that he didn’t notice at first that IdrisPukke had stopped talking. Then everyone around them went silent as well. Across the large square Cale was walking slowly towards them, carrying Vague Henri piggyback, as if he were a small child who’d fallen asleep after a too-exciting day. For a moment no one moved, unable to grasp what they were seeing. Were they fooling about? They often did. Cale stopped and then hitched the boy further up his back as if he were about to slip off. Then a dozen men ran towards them and he allowed them to take Vague Henri into their arms. IdrisPukke and Fanshawe walked slowly up to him. Vague Henri was dead – they had too much experience not to recognize the terrible absence.
‘What happened?’ asked IdrisPukke.
Cale didn’t seem to hear. ‘He’s not going back into a room in this place. Get one of the tables out of the refectory over there. They’re big – you’ll need a dozen men.’
It was clear he didn’t want to talk so they stood for five minutes with Cale as he looked around the Sanctuary as if he was trying to remember where he’d left something, with Vague Henri being held carefully in the arms of four of his own people. Then the table, clearly as hefty as Cale had said and some thirty-foot long, was hauled into the middle of the square. Cale took Vague Henri from the men and laid him carefully in the middle and then arranged the body at first with his hands by his side and then folded on his chest. Death had already drawn his top lip back over his front teeth, mocking him with the rabbity smile of the dead. It was with some difficulty that Cale pulled it back into shape. Then his eyelids started to open and Cale couldn’t get them to stay shut. He signalled one of the sergeants to give him a white scarf he was wearing; he folded it several times and then put it over Vague Henri’s eyes like a blindfold. Still no one said anything until one of the soldiers gasped: ‘Good God!’
Everyone looked up except for Cale, who was lost in a world of his own, staring down at his friend. Around him there was silence so intense that it finally pierced the fog of his disbelief that Vague Henri was gone for good. He looked up. At the far end of the square, barefoot, dressed in white linen and with the penitent’s noose around his neck, Pope Bosco XVI was walking towards them with a gentle smile on his face. He was much thinner than when Cale had last seen him and the linen tunic was much too large which, along with the gaping of his mouth as he made the effort to walk, gave his face the look of a chick not quite ready to leave the nest. It took the old man almost a minute to make it over to the group standing next to the huge table and whose eyes moved silently back and forward between Cale and the old man shambling towards them. Cale did not move nor blink but watched Bosco entirely transfixed. It seemed to those watching that the old man and Cale had become the only people who existed in the square. Bosco stopped, still smiling lovingly at the boy.
‘I’ve been waiting patiently for you – to explain everything and to ask your forgiveness for the terrible suffering I caused you.’
Still Cale did not move or say anything. He looked as if he would never speak again.
‘I could not understand how God was speaking to me through all your many victories over us. Waterless and without food I prayed for day after day. I could see but I could not perceive, hear but not understand. Then in his mercy for my stupidity he cut away the skin from my eyes. When you came here as a boy I saw at once what you were but I thought that you needed me to teach you how to wipe away his great mistake. Every night I wept at the pain and suffering I must inflict on you so that you would have the strength of soul and body to do such unspeakable work. All of the things I did to make you strong only built hatred where there should have been love. The death of the world was an act of holy tenderness to mankind and not a punishment – it was to be done as a gift so that he could begin again. I thought you were the incarnation of God’s wrath but you were his love made flesh, not his anger. In my incompetence I maddened you and made you hateful when all I should have done was treat you with the kindness that you were to show the world by helping all its souls into the next life to start again. My fault, my fault, my most grievous fault.’
Bosco knelt down in front of Cale.
‘Forgive me, Thomas. God was telling me through all your victories against us that the damage done to your soul had to be undone by the man who caused that damage. I thought that I and my fellow priests would be the last to join God for the great renewal of souls, but now it’s necessary for us to be first, so that you can go about God’s work with a spirit at peace. Only by our poor sacrifice can your soul-hatred be wiped away.’