‘I never had a mother,’ replied Cale. ‘Is that a good thing?’
‘Homo hominis lupus. Is that what you are, Thomas, a wolf to man?’
‘It would be fair to say,’ he replied thoughtfully, ‘that I’ve done my share of wolfy things. But just because rumours have reached you about me even in here doesn’t mean they’re true. You should hear what they say about you.’
‘What do you want?’ she said.
This was a good question because he was not sure. Certainly he was curious about how a woman had managed to anger the Redeemers in so many different ways. But the truth was he had asked Bosco for this visit more to annoy him than to satisfy his own curiosity. He had expected him to say no.
From his pockets – he could now have as many pockets as he liked – he began producing food: a pastie, half a small loaf of bread divided in two for convenience, a large slice of cheese, an apple and some gurr cake, and a bottle of milk. Her eyes, which already seemed to fill her tiny face, grew even wider.
‘I hope it’s not too rich.’
‘Rich?’
‘For your stomach.’
‘I’m not some bog trotter who never had a pie before or lived on rutabagas all my life. I’m a Reeve’s daughter. I can read. I know Latin.’
‘Is that what it was? Isn’t that the sin of pride?’
‘Being able to read?’
‘I meant looking down on the poor – it’s not their fault they never had a pie or some gurr cakes. I never had them much myself until recent times. That’s why I’m taking offence.’
By now he was smiling and she took her rebuke well.
‘May I?’ she said looking with a great covetous yearning at the food.
‘Please.’ She began eating but her intention not to stuff herself was lost in the sheer wonder of the pastie.
‘The food is sickening enough outside this place – it must be beyond belief in this shithole.’
‘Mnugh bwaarh gnuff,’ she agreed and kept on eating. He watched with alarm as the cheese – at least a pound in weight – started to follow the pastie. With some difficulty he took what was left of the cheese out of her fingers and put it on the table. ‘You’ll be sick. Give it a chance to go down.’ He held her by the shoulders and pushed her down onto the bed, giving her a moment or two to recover the equanimity of a Reeve’s daughter – whatever a Reeve was. It was as if the very soul of the food, the milk, the cheese, the anticipation of the honey in the pastry, was breathing new life into her. He waited for almost a minute and it was as if she was a near-dead thing restored to life – she seemed to have grown, her eyes no longer straining against her skull. They began to fill with tears.
‘You’re not the angel of death, you’re the angel of life.’
He did not know what to say to this and so said nothing.
‘How can I help you?’ she asked for all the world like the Reeve’s daughter in her father’s parlour brought out to impress the visitors with her piety and learning.
‘I knew all about the placards you wrote and put on the church doors. That you got other people to do the same. I want to know why.’
She might have looked like a dead thing but she was not a fool.
‘Will they use this against me in court?’
‘You’ve had all the hearings you’re ever going to have.’ He felt sorry for the brutality of what he’d said but it was out before he could stop himself. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ she said, barely audible. ‘Do you know when they’ll kill me?’
This unnerved him. He felt shifty and responsible.
‘No. I don’t know. I don’t think it’ll be soon. From what I know they’ll take you to Chartres first.’
‘Then I’ll see the sky again?’
This unnerved him even more.
‘Yes. For sure. It’s a hundred miles.’
There was a long silence.
‘You want to know why?’ she said at last.
‘Yes.’ Though now he didn’t want to know anything more about her at all.
‘About two years ago I sneaked into the sacristy at the church when the priest was away. I’m a very Nosy Parker – everyone says so.’
He nodded in the gloom but he did not know what a Nosy Parker was. ‘In the reservatory which he was supposed to keep locked I found a strong box he was supposed to lock as well. Inside were the Hanged Redeemer’s four books of good news. These were the words of the Hanged Redeemer as he spoke them himself to his disciples. Have you read the good news?’
‘No’
‘Have you talked to anyone who has?’
He laughed at such a barmy idea. ‘Of course not. What was a parish priest doing with the four books of the Redeemer? Only the Cardinals are supposed to read them and then only once in case they defile them with human understanding. There aren’t more than fifty of them and I can’t see them sharing with a priest from the parish of Bumhole-in-the-Dale. No offence.’
She did seem, if not offended, then certainly startled.
‘It was a copy. I’m sure it was the parish priest’s handwriting – he wasn’t a proper scribe but his script was careful.’
‘So it was done from memory.’ It was clear what he thought of this and it wasn’t much.
‘Don’t you care what it said?’ she asked, clearly astonished.
‘No.’
She would not be put off.
‘It said that we should love our neighbour as we love ourselves, do to others as we would be done by, that if someone strikes us on the left cheek we should turn the right one.’
‘Arse or face?’
‘It’s true!’
‘How do you know?’
‘It was written in the book itself.’
‘In some nutter Redeemer’s handwriting. They burn a dozen a year in the courtyard two hundred yards from here – madmen who’ve had the word of God revealed to them in a vision. The only difference is that your mopus had the sense at least to try and keep his gibberish locked away.’
‘It was the truth. I know it.’
‘That’s what they all say – what else?’
‘Peace and good will to all men,’ she said.
Cale laughed as if this were the most delightfully funny thing he had ever heard. ‘Pull the other one,’ he said, ‘it’s got bells on. “Obey and suffer ... Give in and take your kicking”, that’s more the Redeemer style.’
She looked at him eyes as wide, thought Cale, as that weird creature in the zoo at Memphis, the one with the index finger half the size of its body.
‘Those who hurt children are to be punished. It will be better for them if they had a millstone tied around their neck and be cast into the sea.’
Oddly enough he did not seem to find this so amusing and said nothing for some time. She sat on the edge of the bed looking frail and scrawny and he thought about what was going to happen to her and he felt bad about laughing at the things that had brought her here to this dreadful place.
‘I’ll do what I can to get some food to you.’ It was all the comfort he could imagine. She looked at him and it made him feel horribly old and bad, very bad.
‘Can you help me to get away?’
‘No. I wish I could but I can’t.’
Once outside the House of Special Purpose it was to find that winter had arrived at last and in the great square of the Sanctuary the new-fallen snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even. The choughs coughed in the leafless trees as Cale crunched past and the nail-toothed hunting dogs barked at the cold as if it were a burglar or escapee. Nothing could give the drably monumental buildings of the Sanctuary charm, but covered in snow and lit by the only fitfully clouded moon it had that night a frigid beauty to it – as long as you didn’t have to live there.
Later he asked Bosco if he could send the Maid food.
‘I can’t allow that.’
‘You won’t.’
‘No. I can’t. You’ve never heard that phrase: “A lion at home, a spaniel in the world?”’