In the light of such a successful catastrophe the Ephors of Laconia must have their say on what to do and this was why they stopped, when had they advanced around the Golan Heights and taken the Redeemer trenches from the rear this great war might have counted its end in months or even weeks.
The Ephors ordered their troops before the Golan to dig themselves in and then made an offer to their Helot slaves: if they would pick among themselves three thousand of their strongest, most courageous and their brightest men then all who fought with the Laconics in the Golan would be freed on their return, and given two hundred dollars and a strip of land. The Helots seized upon this unprecedented chance of freedom and prosperity and three thousand of their finest turned up at the appointed time and place unarmed and were immediately massacred by the Laconics where they stood. And so reassured that they had both terrorized the Helots that remained and killed the strongest who had the will to free themselves, the Ephors took the additional money offered by the Antagonists and decided to advance once more. But planning and delivering a massacre takes time, as did extorting more money from the Antagonists, and it was nearly three weeks before the Laconic army was on the move again and during that time Bosco had excelled himself.
Within less than two days he had news of the defeat and in another two he’d taken advantage of the paralysis that had descended on the Holy See and was in Chartres insisting he be allowed an audience with the Pope, all the while having sent go-betweens to his secret fraternity of believers, and his most persuasive envoys to fellow travellers who, though in a panic and a funk, also watched to see what in this calamity they might profitably do.
However desperate the need for salvation from the Laconics it did not follow that everyone was equally willing to believe in Cale. Bosco’s enemies were in something of a bind. On the one hand they were as appalled by the defeat to the Laconics as any Redeemer would be and equally horrified by its likely consequences. And just because they were treacherous, scheming and self-interested did not mean they lacked genuine religious zeal. What if he was indeed the Grimperson, long if vaguely promised in a roundabout and ambiguous fashion? Some doubted if the Grimperson was a prophecy at all but was a mistranslation of the original and badly damaged text and could have meant not a deadly destroyer of the Redeemers’ enemies who might, or might not, bring about the end of all things, but a kind of holy cake of seventy raisins and nuts that would be provided by the Lord to bring an end to hunger should famine ever last longer than a year. The debate as to whether the prophecy concerned a dark destroyer or a substantial cake was largely unimportant considering that the Redeemer faith unquestionably faced annihilation.
At first Bosco’s astonishing request that Cale be put in charge of the Eighth Army of the Wras was rejected out of hand. A more cautious and plausible decision was made by the Pope in a brief moment of clarity to order Redeemer General Princeps, conqueror of the Materazzi and already in Chartres, to take command. However, at Bosco’s instruction Princeps claimed to be at death’s door with a fish bone stuck in his throat. He wrote a letter, not for the first time, making it clear he had only followed Cale’s plan in his victory over the Materazzi and called for the Pontiff in all humility to confirm the young man at the head of the Eighth Army. To convince unbelievers in his illness, of whom they were many, Princeps asked for the prayer for the dying to be said for him by the Pope himself. This was a blasphemy he had been unwilling to undertake other than at Bosco’s insistence on the grounds that unrequested their enemies would be certain to smell a rat.
It would be hard to exaggerate the blow this struck to Gant and Parsi. They regarded Princeps as if not their last hope then certainly their best.
‘We must act at once or we will be lost. Give it to the boy,’ moaned Parsi.
‘I’ll be damned if I’ll expose the faith to such a reckless act. If he’s a messenger from God I’ll want a bloody sight better sign than a magical fog or the word of that bastard Bosco.’ But among the faithful, desperate for a saviour, there was too much fervour for either of them to do nothing.
‘Well then,’ said Gant at last, ‘let the dog see the rabbit.’
Within an hour a Pontifical messenger and eight armed guards arrived at Bosco’s quarters and demanded that Cale come at once to an audience. Bosco, alarmed at the suddenness of this, attempted to go with him but was ordered with some obvious fear on the part of the messenger to stay where he was. ‘I have received orders directly, Redeemer,’ he apologized. ‘You are not to come.’
And so unable to brief Cale on what to say and do, or not to say and do, he was obliged to watch him head off for what he knew would be some sort of trap.
Cale was brought to an antechamber and told to wait in the hope that he would have enough time to work himself up into a panic before the audience. At the far end of the room lit by candles and hazed with smoke from four incense burners was a statue of the first of all the Redeemer martyrs, St Joseph, being stoned to death. It was an event notable for one other incident: it was perhaps the last time someone tried to intervene out of compassion on a Redeemer’s side. As the men of the town had gathered to take part in St Joseph’s execution for dishonouring their own One True Faith, a wandering, though much respected, preacher tried to prevent the killing by calling out, ‘Anyone of you who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.’ Unfortunately for the compassionate preacher and even more unfortunately for St Joseph, one man, unabashed, rushed over to him carrying a large rock over his head and cried out confidently, ‘I’m without sin!’ and brought the rock crashing down on the shin of the Redeemer breaking his leg with a hideous crack!
The statue was of the moment when the sinless executioner had raised another large rock above his head and was about to cast it down on the agonized St Joseph. Cale was used to seeing gesso-painted wooden statues of terrible martyrdoms – flatly painted in simple colours, crude or merely competent carvings produced by the thousand for the benefit of the faithful in every Redeemer church. The statues of Chartres, and there were many of them, were like nothing he had ever seen. They were more real than the real itself, the carving not just beautifully done but full of life. The carved hands of the executioner were not just beautifully carved but beautifully observed: they were the hands of a working man. There were small cuts healed and almost healed on nearly every finger. There was dirt under every fingernail but one. The expression on his face was more than just a snarl of malice; it also caught the delight in cruelty, the pleasure, and beneath the animated face a bass note of despair. The teeth made of the finest ivory had been carefully discoloured, two were chipped, one seemed to be dead. As for St Joseph he would have drawn pity from the hardest heart: his left leg had not just been broken by the first stone but smashed, the bone protruding from his shin, jagged, bloody, agonizing – the glistening marrow leaking from the break was made of glass. His mouth was open in a cry of pain – no holy resignation to his fate but fear and anguish expressed in every line and fold. His hand was raised to stop the second blow, the arm thin, an old man’s arm with liver spots, it seemed impossibly to shake with pain and fear. But Cale’s eye was drawn back to the man who stood over him, his face punchy with hate, his eyes so filled with furious anger that only another’s death could answer it.