After a few more seconds he was finished and the pain in Daisy’s bottom began to subside.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Liar. I’ll bet you didn’t think you’d be doing this a year ago.’ Now Daisy just throbbed and she breathed a long sigh of relief. ‘Lie down with me.’ She waited as he did as he was told. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’
‘What?’
‘Promise you won’t sulk?’
‘Why don’t you just get on with it?’
‘You’re going on too many robberies. It’s too dangerous.’
‘Believe me I know what risk is – and I don’t take them. I never get within five hundred yards of anything sharp.’
‘I do believe you – about you staying safe. But we’re going on twice as many raids as we used to because of you.’
‘And?’
‘The Musselmen aren’t going to just let that go on. There are Musselmen mercenaries who know how to fight better than we do.’
‘Anyone can fight better than you do. Dropping a rock on someone’s head when they’re not looking only gets you so far.’
‘There you are then. Everyone’s got greedy. It can’t last.’
‘Your father – he’ll have a stroke if I refuse to go. And I’ll be as popular as a case of piles if I refuse to help.’
‘You understand what I mean, though?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll talk to my father. I just wanted to talk to you first.’
‘And if I’d said you couldn’t?’
She looked at him, more astonished than annoyed.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
It was said of the tragically unfortunate Sharon of Tunis that she was doomed always to tell the truth but never to be believed. The Klephts may not have been hostile to women who showed a will of their own but they were no more enthusiastic about opinions they did not care to hear than people generally are. At first her father’s irritation was solely directed at Daisy, who was angrily told to keep her big nose out of matters that had nothing to do with her. Affronted by his father-in-law’s abrupt manner of speaking to his wife, Kleist defended her reasons and so brought on the general accusation that this was his idea all along and that he was using his wife as a shield for opinions that were really his, a strategy so common among the Klephts it was known as turning the cat in the pan. He was accused of laziness, cowardice and ingratitude, normally qualities that the Klephts positively admired when they were the source of them. No one except Daisy’s sister and a few of her friends would speak to them and it was made clear that if Kleist refused to help there would be trouble in the shape of a vote – foregone – to ostracize them both.
The pair were faced with either leaving in the cold weather, with Daisy heavily pregnant and nowhere to go, or staying and doing as they were told. If there was a choice Kleist didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t giving in that bothered him. Daisy burned with indignation and let her father know it but Kleist was more used to a lifetime of hostile but silent obedience. Still, it was a glum pair who backed down.
More news about Cale also made him uneasy. It was only partly that it stirred up unwelcome feelings of guilt – not about Cale but about Vague Henri – but also that it raised the ghost of something buried even deeper, so much so that he had never quite faced it directly. While Vague Henri had never once taken seriously the idea that there might be something unhuman about Cale’s talent for killing, the garbled rumours that had made it to the Quantocks, however ridiculous he would normally have held them to be, stretched a nerve in Kleist’s soul. From a distance the idea of Cale as a kind of living ghost going around the place causing supernatural catastrophes made a kind of ominous sense. He’d had his chance to put oceans between himself and Cale but that chance was gone. The itch along his spine was too much like the one you were supposed to get if someone walked over your grave.
‘As my grandmother never used to say,’ observed Daisy, ‘people believe what they want to believe.’
‘You’re not wrong there,’ said Kleist to his young wife.
19
‘Why aren’t they advancing?’ Bosco both wanted to hear what Cale had to say about the incomprehensible inaction of the Laconics and also to reassure himself that Cale realized just how incomprehensible it was.
Cale did not look up at Bosco as he asked this but kept on examining the half-dozen Materazzi helmets strapped to their wooden heads.
‘Do you expect to find out?’ he said to Bosco, still not looking up.
‘I do not.’
‘Then why worry about it?’
‘You’ve turned very insolent.’
This time Cale did look at Bosco.
‘Am I wrong?’
Bosco smiled, still never a pretty sight.
‘No. You are not wrong.’
The master blacksmith he’d been waiting for arrived and Cale showed him a spare helmet.
‘What do you think?’ asked Cale.
‘Good workmanship and good steel but the rust is too bad on this one I’d say. I wouldn’t want it protecting my head. Can I look at the others?’
‘When I’ve finished. Stand back.’
And with that he gave each of the six Materrazi helmets a ferocious set of blows with one of the curved Laconic swords. ‘Help me take them off,’ he said to the blacksmith when he’d finished. Three had held up well, one was damaged, two had been broken through.
‘By tomorrow we should have a couple of thousand of these delivered.’
‘In the same condition?’
‘Probably. Not sure.’ He gestured at the helmets that he’d pierced.
‘Can you repair them – weld an iron plate to the top.’
The blacksmith examined them carefully for a full minute.
‘Master, I think I could do something to strengthen them. How long do I have?’
‘I don’t know. A couple of days, at least, maybe longer. Do them as quickly as you can. Order in as many smiths as you can get here. The first batch will be here this afternoon. The Quartermaster has been told to give you everything you need. Come direct to me if there are problems. You’re not to go through anyone else. Understand?’
The blacksmith looked at Bosco. Cale thought about making a point and decided against it. Bosco nodded.
‘Yes, master.’
After he’d left Bosco could not stop himself from asking: ‘Why do you need the dogs?’
‘When I was in the veldt the Folk always left a dead animal in the water tanks to make life awkward. If there was a well they’d leave one there too.’
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t see,’ said Cale. ‘With standing water you can’t hide the fact it’s poisoned because of the smell. The Laconics are taking their water from the stream that runs past their camp. The dogs are going in upstream where the Laconics won’t be able to smell anything.’
‘If it’s running water the poison will be diluted.’
‘Yes.’
‘The Redeemers at Silbury Hill all had the squits and they still won.’
‘Yes.’
‘You know that poisoning water is a mortal sin?’
‘Then it’s lucky for me I have no soul.’
The twelve dead dogs turned into eight dead pigs and a box of pigeons all suitably rancid and carefully placed by Vague Henri and twenty Purgators as close to the Laconic camp as they dared. In the middle of the night in freezing water and handling large amounts of putrid animal it was as pleasant a task as you might imagine.
Four days had passed and still there was no movement from the Laconics. The state of the helmets brought by Vague Henri could have been better, could have been worse and the smiths were well on the way to Cale’s lowest target of two thousand strengthened helmets.
‘Will you discuss your tactics with me now?’ Cale was thrown a little by Bosco’s cool but respectful tone. He considered stalling not because his tactics were unready but simply in order to be awkward. On the other hand much as he hated Bosco he was, besides Vague Henri, the only person who could properly appreciate his brilliance. Besides, he wanted to test it out against his old master and Princeps. It had been Princeps who had won the actual victory of mud and violence at Silbury even if the campaign had been planned by Cale. He was sure that his plans to destroy the Materazzi at Silbury would have worked no matter who was in command but after they’d made such a ballsucking tooze out of the whole battle how could you tell for sure? Granted he had made mistakes on the veldt but nobody was perfect and he’d learnt from them and the Folk were now banged up on their miserable prairie and not a squeak out of them in two months. Still, he could not afford a mistake against the Laconics. He needed to test his ideas but only against people he respected. And with the exception of Vague Henri the people he respected he also hated.