The infamous black soup mentioned in the song was made of pig’s blood and vinegar. A Duena diplomat, a hired negotiator in the way that mercenaries are hired soldiers, having once tasted this concoction said to the Laconics who had given it to him that it was so revolting it explained why they were so willing to die. As such wits are prone to do, he repeated much the same joke about the Materazzi and their infamously difficult-to-please wives. The difference between the Materazzi and the Laconians was that the latter thought the joke extremely funny. Another oddity about this black soup, and a revealing one, is that while its taste can hardly have been better than the rancid fat and nuts of dead men’s feet – Cale, Kleist and Vague Henri never thought of this revolting slab with anything other than a shudder – it was well known that the Laconics regarded black soup as wonderfully toothsome and that even exiles pined for it in their absence as for nothing else.
If their sense of humour softens your opinion of the Laconics and you find it preferable to the fanaticism and cruelty of the Redeemers, or the arrogance and snobbery of the Materrazi, we now come to the darkest and most revolting of all the practices conceived by perhaps the strangest people in the history of all the world. Whereas all right-thinking people regard sexual intercourse between adult males and young boys as a crime calling out to the heavens for vengeance and punish those who commit such actions by death (the more horrible the better), in Laconia this perversion was not only tolerated but legally enforced. The older man who did not choose a twelve-year-old to use in this way would be heavily fined for failing to set a good example in manly virtue.
How such a disgusting, peculiar hurdy-gurdy came about I cannot say. They are also reported to have had an unusually high valuation of mothers, allowing these to express insulting opinions to every rank of man and even permitting them to inherit property – a custom, which it is said, gives much offence to their neighbours and for which they are much more often criticized than for the disgusting practice of compulsory pederasty.
All of this information had been given to Cale by Bosco in an embargoed testament which he had been told to keep strictly to himself. But one section of the document clearly included long before most of the other information in the testament particularly caught Cale’s attention, and was one he wanted to discuss with Vague Henri. It concerned the claim made by an exiled Laconian soldier who was reliably questioned in the document itself about the existence of the Krypteia – a small and particularly secret service made up of what he called ‘anti-soldiers’. Selected from the most ruthless and cruel young Laconians, they were encouraged to develop qualities of originality and independence of thought and actions otherwise discouraged in those who were expected to fight in massed ranks without thought of personal survival.
‘I wonder,’ said Cale to Vague Henri, ‘if that’s where Bosco got the idea for me?’
‘And I wonder,’ said Vague Henri to Cale, ‘if your head gets any bigger whether or not you’ll be able to fit through the door. Besides even if you’re right – just be grateful it was the only idea he took from them.’
Cale’s face wrinkled with pruny disgust. ‘Good God,’ he said.
16
‘I want to talk to the Maid of Blackbird Leys.’ This was a demand from Cale that expected a refusal and it was a reminder to Bosco that the destructive soul of his God made flesh was also an adolescent. There was satisfaction to be had from refusing to conform to Cale’s expectations.
‘Of course.’
There was a gratifying silence in response.
‘Now.’
‘As you wish.’ Bosco reached over to a pile of a dozen parchments already imprinted with his seal and began writing.
‘I want to see her on my own.’
‘I have no desire to see the Maid of Blackbird Leys again I can assure you.’ More satisfaction.
Bosco made it clear that it would take at least an hour and a half to be cleared through the four levels of security that protected the ten occupants of the inner cells of the House of Special Purpose. He had to wait for fifty minutes at the last level because a messenger had to be sent back to Bosco to return with a letter of confirmation to confirm the letter Cale had brought with him. Forty of those fifty minutes were taken up by Bosco’s third pleasure of the evening as he let the messenger hang about outside his office.
Eventually the messenger returned and the keyholder let Cale first through one great door and then through to the Maid’s cell.
She had been lying down but sat up straight as the cell door opened, afraid as she had every right to be at such an unusual event.
‘Go away,’ Cale said. The keyholder tried to argue. ‘I won’t tell you a second time.’
‘I’ll have to lock you in.’
‘When I call you back.’ Cale paused to make his meaning clear. ‘Don’t.’
The keyholder knew exactly what this apparently mysterious warning meant because keeping Cale waiting when he called to be let out was exactly what he was intending to do.
In a terrible suppressed temper the keyholder locked the door and Cale put the candle he was holding on the table, no chair, that was the only other item of furniture in the cell. The girl, scrawny from dreadful food and too little of it, stared at him with huge brown eyes. They seemed bigger than they probably were because her hair had been shaved off – party because of lice, partly because of malice.
‘I’ve just come to talk to you. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Not from me.’
‘From someone else?’
‘You’re in the House of Special Purpose in the Sanctuary – of course from someone else.’
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Thomas Cale.’
‘I’ve never heard of you.’
‘I can see that you have.’
‘Unless you’re the Thomas Cale sent by God to kill all his enemies.’ Cale did not say anything. ‘God,’ she said, a rebuke, ‘is a mother to his children.’