Nevertheless, Cale and Hooke were still astonished when an hour later, and still white with horror, Bosco refused to let Cale use this abominable engine against the Laconic mercenaries.
‘Do you realize,’ he said, ‘what the Curia will do when they find out about these eruptions? They’ll make such a bonfire out of every one of us they’ll be able to warm their buttocks on it in Memphis. Do you and this loon have no idea what you’ve let loose today?’
‘What we’ve let loose, Lord Redeemer,’ shouted back a furious Cale, ‘is the one sure way to defeat an army who’ve already wiped the floor with you. And if they do it again they can march all the way to the throne of the Hanged Redeemer in Chartres without anyone to so much as piss on them.’
This extravagant but substantially true claim seemed to startle them both into silence. Princeps and Hooke as Fancher looked on in amazement at this fishwife exchange between the great prelate and the boy who was not a boy but the indignation-of-God-made-flesh. In control of himself now it was Cale who spoke again first.
‘If I lose there will be no second chance. This is what you wanted from me.’
‘The time is not yet right to move against the Curia.’
‘What other time will there be?’
It was not possible to disagree and once Bosco realized that everything he had worked towards for thirty years had come to the great pinch of action he said little more. If it was not now it would be never.
‘We must go now if we are to prepare events in Chartres. If you have a victory, send news, surely and quickly. If not the Laconics will bring the news for you.’
And that was that. He left the tent without saying anything more but returned almost immediately with a letter in his hand. ‘I meant to pass this on several days ago. It’s from your replacement on the veldt. Thought you’d be interested.’ With great show Cale put it in one of his ostentatiously numerous pockets – ostentatious because acolytes were forbidden to have pockets, which stood in the Redeemer faith for all that was secretive and hidden in the human soul. ‘Pocket’ was a nickname for the devil himself.
Twenty minutes later Bosco and Princeps were on their way to Chartres and Cale was finishing telling Vague Henri what had happened while he was outside the tent trying to listen in. They sat in silence for some time.
‘Now might be a chance to slip away – if you wanted to try,’ said Cale.
‘I thought you said it was too risky.’
‘Could be wrong. And now Bosco has to trust me whether he wants to or not. No one will be coming after you. It’s risky if you stay – fifty-fifty.’
‘I can’t go.’
It was clear Vague Henri had something else in mind.
‘Why?’
‘I can’t leave the girls.’
Cale groaned in disbelief. ‘There’s nothing you can do for them.’
‘So I should walk away?’
‘If there’s nothing you can do, why not?’
‘What if you win? What will you do about them?’
‘What I can – which is probably not much. Or anything. I don’t know what to do about myself – or you.’
‘But you know how to beat the greatest army ever put into a war.’
‘Possibly.’
‘How can that be right?’
‘Because beating the Laconics is possible but flying into and out of the Sanctuary on the wings of angels isn’t.’
‘You want to fight them, don’t you?’
‘Because I’d rather take my chances doing what I’m good at than running away, which I’m obviously not.’
‘It’s not just that – you want to fight them. You like this.’
‘Tell me what choice I have.’
‘Run away.’
‘I told you. No. A worse choice isn’t a choice.’
‘But it’s all right for me?’
‘I didn’t say that. Why are you trying to pick a fight?’
‘Look who’s talking. Picking a fight is just what you do. It’s what you are. You could pick a fight with a one-eyed sloth.’
‘That doesn’t even make sense. What’s a sloth?’
‘They have them in the zoo in Memphis.’
‘Amiable?’
‘Very.’
‘If you go up with Hooke on the Golan you should be as safe as anywhere.’
‘Right.’
‘So – you’re not going to insist on staying with me in the thick of battle?’
‘No.’
‘Showing some sense at last.’
‘Are you going to be in the thick of battle?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘You thought that at Eight Martyrs.’
‘I’ll try to learn from my mistakes.’
‘You better not make any this time.’
‘No.’
‘We can’t leave them.’
‘We can. Bosco won’t kill the girls just for the sake of it.’
‘You didn’t always think so well of him.’
‘I don’t. I just know him better. What he thinks I can do matters more to him than his own life. It matters a lot more than the girls in the Sanctuary.’
‘And what do you think you can do?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Not sure. Maybe it means that you’re beginning to like the idea of being a God.’
‘You’re the one who thinks I can pluck girls out of thin air, not me. All I’m trying to do is stay alive – and, for reasons I can’t put my finger on, do the same for you.’
‘Tell me you aren’t looking forward to tomorrow.’
‘I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I don’t care what you believe.’ There was a silence while they both tried to think of something nastier to say. Oddly, it was Cale who backed down.
‘He won’t kill the girls even if we run,’ said Cale.
‘Why not?’
‘Because if he keeps them they might be useful.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No – but it’s what I think.’
‘It’s what you think I want to hear, that’s what you think.’
‘That, too. But it’s true all the same. Everything he does is for a reason. I used to think he hit me because he was a shit. But it’s more complicated than that.’
‘You like him?’
‘I admire him.’
‘You like him.’
‘He’s as mad as a sack of cats – but he thinks everything through. I admire that. I like that. It’s a quality that will save me – save us – if I can get him right.’
‘If you end up understanding Bosco, you better watch out.’
‘Blab! Blab! Blab! Are you talking or is it just the sound of the wind exhafflating from your backside?’
‘There’s no such word.’
‘Prove it.’
20
‘How can I help you, IdrisPukke? Or to put it another way, what have you got to offer that I could possibly want?’
The man talking was Señor Bose Ikard sitting across from IdrisPukke on the other side of a desk as large as a king’s mattress. His expression was one of self-satisfied and cynical certainty – a look that said I’ve-got-your-number-and-don’t-think-I-haven’t. He was renowned throughout the four quarters as a lawyer, a natural philosopher (he had invented a method of preserving chicken in snow) and, most famously of all, an advisor of great men, particulary King Zog of Switzerland, a man famous as much for his learning as for his stupidity and unsavoury personal habits. It was not a matter of great doubt in the world at large that Switzerland would have lost its renowned ability to stay out of any sort of war for the last five hundred years had it not been for Bose Ikard – but there was considerable doubt as to whether in the widely predicted coming storm even a man so clever and unprincipled would continue to be able to do so. This explained his hostility to the presence of IdrisPukke, a man who had brought that storm right into the heart of Spanish Leeds and Switzerland.