‘Bad luck.’
‘Luck had nothing to do with it. He has gone to a better place – or at least a place from which no traveller returns, nor anything the traveller might have learned before his departure. It’s all in the paperwork.’
‘And I can read it?’
‘You are not a person to be tainted, you are the anger of God made flesh. It doesn’t matter what you read, what you hear, you are the sea-green incorruptible.’
Cale thought about this for a few moments.
‘And the beardy man?’
‘Guido Hooke.’
‘Yes?’
‘He is a natural philosopher who claims that the moon is not perfectly round.’
‘But it is round,’ said Cale. ‘All you need to do is look at it. If you’re going to kill people for being stupid you’re going to need a lot more executioners.’
Bosco smiled.
‘Guido Hooke is very far from stupid, although he is eccentric. And he is right about the moon.’
There was a snort of dismissal from Cale.
‘Anyone can see on any unclouded night that the moon is round.’
‘That is an illusion created by the moon’s distance from the earth. Consider Tiger Mountain – from a distance its slopes seem smooth as butter, close to it’s as wrinkled as an old man’s sack.’
‘How do you know? About the moon, I mean.’
‘I’ll show you tonight if you wish.’
‘If Hooke is right, why is he going to die for telling the truth?’
‘It’s a matter of authority. The Pope has ruled that the moon is precisely round – an expression of the perfect creation of God. Guido Hooke has contradicted him.’
‘But you say he’s right.’
‘What does that matter? He’s contradicted the rock on which the One True Faith is built: the right to the last word. If he is allowed to do so, consider where it will end: the death of authority. Without authority there is no church, without the church no salvation.’ He smiled. ‘Hooke speaks for the lower truth, the Pope for a higher one.’
‘But you don’t believe in salvation.’
‘Which is why I must become Pope so that what is true and what I believe become the same thing. Why are you so interested in the Purgators?’
5
Kleist was singing wildly, happily off-key.
‘The buzzing of the trees and the cigarette bees
The soda water fountains
Where the bluebell rings
And the lemonade sings
On the big rock candy mountain
In the big rock candy mountain
The priests all quack like ducks
There’s a five-cent whore at every door
At dinner there is always more
And never was heard a discouraging word
In the big rock candy mountain.’
He reached down, casual like, to check the knife sheathed in a pocket of the horse’s saddle and went on bawling not with much respect for tunefulness.
‘There’s a lake of stew and whisky too
You can paddle all around it in a big canoe
In the big rock -‘
Then he was off, pulling the knife with him and running for a patch of blackberry briars. He leapt into the middle, his speed and weight carrying him, thorns scraping his skin red as he went. But the tangle of shoots was thicker than he’d realized and the older suckers in the middle were tough and thick-barbed and his headlong flight was painfully brought to a halt.
Powerful hands grabbed him by the heels and dragged him backwards out of the briars. They had to tug hard and it gave Kleist a couple of seconds to decide. He dropped the knife in the briars and then he was free and being dragged into the open.
Other hands grabbed his wrists as he kicked and wriggled. Once he was held fast he knew there was no point and stopped struggling.
One man stood in front of him, his precise features hidden by the sun in Kleist’s eyes.
‘We’re going to search you, so don’t move. Any weapons?’
‘No.’
Two hands, swiftly and cleanly, skilfully frisked him.
‘Good. If you had lied to us it would have been the last thing you ever did. Get him up.’
Kleist was pulled roughly into a sitting position and all five men, knives and short swords pulled, let him go in disciplined order. These people knew what they were doing.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Thomas Cale.’
‘What are you up to out here on your own?’
‘I was heading for Post Moresby.’ A hefty blow landed on the side of his head.
‘Say “Lord Dunbar” when you speak to Lord Dunbar.’
‘All right. How was I supposed to know?’
Another blow to teach him not to be lippy.
‘What would you do there?’ said Lord Dunbar.
Kleist looked at him – he was scruffy, dirty and badly dressed in an ugly-looking tartan. He didn’t look like any lord Kleist had ever seen.
‘I want to get on a boat and get as far away from here as I can.’
‘Why?’
‘The Redeemers killed my family in the massacre on Mount Nugent. When they took Memphis I knew it was time to go away where I’d never see one of them ever again.’ This was half true as far as it went.
‘Where did you get the horse?’
‘It’s mine.’
Another blow to the head.
‘I found it. I think it was a stray from the battle at Silbury Hill.’
‘I heard about that.’
‘Perhaps the Redeemers would pay cash for him,’ said Handsome Johnny.
‘Perhaps they’ll string you up when you try,’ said Kleist, getting another clip on the ear.
‘Lord Dunbar!’
‘Lord Dunbar, all right.’
‘Handsome Johnny,’ said Dunbar. ‘Search his horse.’ Dunbar squatted down beside him.
‘What are these Redeemers after?’
‘I don’t know. All I know is they’re a bunch of murdering bastards, Lord Dunbar, and the best thing to do is get away from them.’
‘The Materazzi haven’t been able to catch us in twenty years,’ said Lord Dunbar. ‘It doesn’t much matter to us who’s trying to hunt us down.’
Handsome Johnny came back and laid an armful of Kleist’s possessions on the ground. There was a good haul. Kleist had made sure that however basic the purpose of anything he took from Memphis, it was all of the highest quality: the swords of Portuguese steel, inlaid with ivory at the handle, a blanket of cashmere wool, and so on, then the money – eighty dollars in a silk purse. This cheered the five men considerably. For all Dunbar’s boasting the pickings were pretty scant if their clothes and ragged state were anything to go by.
‘All right,’ said Kleist. ‘You’ve got everything I own. It’s a pretty good drag. Just let me go.’
Another blow.
‘Lord Dunbar.’
‘We should shallow the cheeky little sod.’
Kleist didn’t like the sound of that.
‘Let me take him back there,’ said Handsome Johnny. ‘I’ll save any trouble.’
Lord Dunbar glared at him.
‘I know what beastliness you want to do before that, Handsome Johnny,’ he shouted. He looked back at Kleist. ‘Get up.’ Kleist got to his feet. ‘Give us your jacket.’ Kleist took off his short coat, one he’d stolen off a hook in Vipond’s attendance room, soft leather and simply but beautifully cut.
‘You’ve been lying to me and I like that in a man,’ said Dunbar, admiring the jacket and mourning the fact that it was too small. ‘But you’re right about fair dos.’ He pointed to a roughish path. ‘That’ll take you in the general direction out of the woods. After that you’re on your own. Now bugger off!’
Kleist didn’t need to be told twice. He passed by Handsome Johnny, who watched him go with resentful lasciviousness and vanished into the woods with nothing but half the clothes he’d been wearing five minutes before.
*
‘You can’t replace three hundred men carefully chosen for their great qualities and bound to you with hoops of steel with those degenerates in the House of Special Purpose.’