Bosco, tears of gratitude pouring from his eyes, held out both of his arms and began to pray.
‘Purge me with hyssop, Lord, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Deliver me from my guilt so that the spirit and the heart of Thomas Cale, which I have broken, may rejoice.’
As Bosco prayed, Cale began to look around as if for a key he had absentmindedly misplaced. Everyone else stared at him, horribly thrilled at what was happening. Fanshawe spoke softly to IdrisPukke as Cale walked over to the far end of the table on which Vague Henri’s body was lying and started pulling at a small piece of two by four that had been nailed to the refectory wall and the table to keep it from moving.
‘Think of the information we can get from Bosco,’ said Fanshawe. ‘We need him alive.’
‘I agree. Be my guest.’ Fanshawe did not move.
Cale’s attempt to pull away the block of wood, no more than nine inches long, was unsuccessful, the nails still being in too deep. Then he gave the block an almighty wrench and it came free. As he walked back to Bosco the old man was still praying.
‘With this sacrifice of your priests wipe away all tears from his eyes so that there shall be no more sorrow, nor shall there be any more pain.’
Slowly Cale began to circle behind him – a weighing up of something clearly going on in his mind.
‘Just as the Hanged Redeemer offered his broken neck for our salvation, with the sacrificial chokings of Your Redeemers wipe clean the needless insults to his soul, so that he will be free at last to do his terrible kindness to the world. Free at la – ’
Cale took two steps forward and brought the block of wood down on the top of the old man’s head. But it was not an especially hard blow and it was not an especially heavy piece of wood. Bosco’s head jerked forward slightly, not much, and a thin line of blood dripped down his face. He opened his mouth as if to continue but not a sound emerged. He tried to speak again but immediately there was another blow and again his head jerked forward but again the blow was much less heavy than it could have been. The men watching were not at all strangers to the hideous but already some of them were looking away. Then another blow. Another trickle of blood.
Bosco was waving his head about and his hands had fallen halfway to his sides. He gasped.
‘Into … thy … ha – ’
Another blow stopped his mouth but still he was too strong to fall or the blows deliberately not heavy enough. Then another crack of wood against skull and another. This time he almost fell on his face but something drew him nearly upright again. Another blow and this time a cry from Bosco as half a dozen lines of blood flowed down his shaved skull and covered his face.
‘For God’s sake, Thomas, enough,’ said IdrisPukke. Cale looked directly at him like a fox smelling a slight sniff of something in the wind: Important? Not at all. Then the interruption was entirely dismissed as if it had never happened. He turned to concentrate on Bosco again. He dropped the stained block of wood and then, with great care, took hold of the penitents’ rope around Bosco’s neck and started to sway him gently from side to side, supporting his neck so he would do no harm, the way a mother holds the head of a baby she’s about to bathe.
‘Thomas!’ called out IdrisPukke.
But it was no use: he was somewhere very far beyond the reaches of pity. Cale pulled Bosco up to his face and slapped him with one hand to bring him round. Slowly, Bosco woke up. As he recognized Cale he started to smile lovingly at the boy.
‘I want …’
But what Bosco wanted was cut short in a second as Cale, hyena-souled, whipped the rope upwards and then down with a snap so furious it broke the old man’s neck with a loud crack.
There was a sound from the men around, an intake of breath. Cale pulled Bosco’s face back to his own until they were almost touching, fixing his death in his mind so that he would not forget – then, very carefully, he laid the dead man on the ground and walked away. The witnesses were shaking, every one of them, even Fanshawe. They had all seen hard deaths before, and anger, but nothing like this, not from someone who was still, really, a boy.
41
The fire that had nearly suffocated Vague Henri the day before had still not been put out completely and after a few hours it regained its hold, though only in the ghetto where the girls had been held. Still it was enough to give off an orange glow that lit the undersides of the grey clouds that had settled low over the Sanctuary and enabled IdrisPukke to find Cale, about half a mile from the gate, about four hours after he’d killed Bosco.
‘I’m very sorry about Vague Henri,’ said IdrisPukke.
There was no reply at first.
‘How did you know I’d be here?’
‘I didn’t. I sent people out but I thought that somewhere here would be a possibility.’
Cale was sitting on a rock about a hundred yards from the isolated compound where Arbell Materazzi was being kept. ‘Were you thinking of going in?’
‘I was mulling it over, yes.’
‘Would you mind if I asked you not to?’
Again there was no reply for a time.
‘I was thinking of burying Vague Henri at the Voynich oasis,’ he said eventually.
‘I don’t know it.’
‘Not far from here. A lake. Nice trees, birds singing and stuff. He’d like that.’
‘He would, yes.’
‘I want the girls to go. They’ll cry, I suppose. He’d like that as well. Stupid really. What difference does it make?’
‘I’ve been to a fair number of funerals. They make a difference sometimes.’
‘Not to him.’
‘No, not to him.’
A few minutes’ more silence. Then Cale laughed.
‘Did I ever tell you about Vague Henri and the upside down prayer book?’
‘I don’t believe you did.’ In fact he’d told IdrisPukke the story when they were at Treetops.
‘Don’t know where he got the idea but he tore the cover off the missal we were supposed to read for an hour a day and glued it on upside down. He’d take it out whenever he came across a pig who didn’t know him and start reading. It drove them crazy when they saw it – pretending to read the Holy Missal … blasphemy! They’d come racing over and rip it out of his hands and clip him on the ear. But he didn’t mind. Then he’d show them the cover had been stuck on upside down and tell them he was waiting for a new one. Even piggy Redeemers had to do a grovel at that. Some of them even said they were sorry. He made a fortune betting the acolytes he could get a Redeemer to ask for forgiveness.’
Another silence.
‘I hate her.’
‘Yes.’
‘I never hated her before. I pretended I did, but I didn’t. I was ashamed that she stopped loving me and sold me up but I didn’t stop loving her, not for a moment.’ Another silence. ‘Do you know about mortification?’
‘No.’
‘Bosco said it meant that you could die of shame – you know, shame for your sins. I felt mortification by loving her. So weak – weak and ashamed.’ For the first time he looked over at IdrisPukke. ‘Do you know why Henri died?’
‘No.’
‘Because of her.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘See, I came back here because of her. I brought her here to show her. I mean I didn’t plan it or anything, not in my head. But I can see it now. Now he’s dead.’
‘See what?’
‘I wanted her to see the Sanctuary – so she’d understand why I was so odd and then she’d love me again. And then I wanted to show her that I could destroy it – that she didn’t have to give me away to Bosco because I could have beaten them. I would have done. I have done. I wanted her to see what a dreadful thing she did for no good reason. But all I did was bring Vague Henri back so that he could die in this shithole. Here of all places. To die here.’