‘If things are so bad why haven’t the Antagonists defeated you?’
‘Again, well done. They face the same problems. It is not lack of religion that’s destroying mankind, it is mankind that is destroying religion. Such a creature is incompetent to aspire to the likeness of God. God tried but failed. He will try again.’
‘I thought God was perfect,’ said Cale.
‘God is perfect.’
‘Then why has he made such a mess of mankind?’
‘Because he is perfectly generous. God is not some criminal who cheats in his own card game. He wishes to engage with us freely, out of choice. Not even God can make a circle square. God is lonely – he wants mankind to choose obedience, not be frightened into it. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘I understand what you’re saying, yes.’
‘Neither I nor the God we both serve need you to agree. You are not a man and you are not a god, you are anger and disappointment made flesh. What you do is what you are. What you think is irrelevant.’
‘And when it’s over?’
‘I have been told in my visions that you will be taken up and set aside in the Island of Avalon, a place flowing with milk and honey. You will stay there clothed in white samite until a time, if it comes, when God needs you again.’
After this Cale did not say anything for some time.
‘Tell me about Chartres.’
‘The Sanctuary is the military heart of the faith but that’s why it’s positioned here in the back of beyond – to curtail its shout. Although I have great power, any commander of the Sanctuary who approaches within forty miles of Chartres would be excommunicated by fiat of the Pope. I am permitted there only by his express permission – rarely forthcoming – and never with more than a dozen priests. Even then I haven’t met with him alone since Gant and Parsi sealed him off from the world like a pea in a pod.’
‘I don’t know what that is.’ A pause. ‘Why don’t they kill you?’
‘Straight there as usual. They count me as a rival but one effectively neutralized because all my power is in the army and not in Chartres. Your running away, Cale, advanced matters too quickly.’
‘Or you,’ said Cale, ‘have allowed them to drift.’
‘Not so. Almost since the day you arrived here I have been recruiting three hundred military officers who have accepted that mankind cannot be cured and that you are its solution. They will be here soon. You will train these already considerable men and they will train three hundred more and so on. Within two years you will have prepared four thousand officers and I will be ready to move against Gant and Parsi. If I am successful we will be invited into Chartres to save the Pope.’
‘And how will you do that?’
‘That’s not something you need to worry about.’
‘But I do worry.’
‘Then worry away.’
‘What’s samite?’
‘Silk. Heavy white silk.’
It was not that Cale believed Bosco about Avalon, though Bosco was clearly sincere in his certainty of the existence of the place, but he was dubious at the picture of the pleasures that awaited him there.
‘The last time I saw anyone wearing heavy white silk it was some archbishop giving a high mass in praise of God. Four hours was bad enough. In case you hadn’t noticed I’m not the praising type.’
‘Why would you be? In Avalon you will be cared for by seventy-two creatures who are not exactly angels.’
‘Meaning?’
‘They are feminine spirits. Lesser than the rebel angels they made common cause with because they were resentful, as always, about their place in heaven. But seventy-two of them realized before God’s final victory that they would lose even what they already had, and so, weeping tears, they persuaded God to show them mercy – against the advice of the Holy Mother, who saw them for the conniving slags they were. But a forgiving God sent them to Avalon in recognition of that repentance and as punishment for having wavered in their faith. They are waiting for you and to serve you in any way you desire.’
‘Like the nuns in the convent.’
‘That will be a matter for you – and so I assume not at all like the nuns in the convent.’
‘And how do you know this?’
‘It was revealed to me in the desert.’
2
According to the Janes the heart of a child can take forty-nine blows before it’s damaged for ever and what’s done can never be undone. Consider, then, the heart of Thomas Cale, sold for sixpence, fed on beatings, steeled to murder and then betrayed by the only living creature to show him love (a particularly hard one, that). Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul. Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation. Imagine what poison was poured into Cale’s breast that afternoon and night on Tiger Mountain. Consider the damage done and the power offered to make it right. It is not against reason, said the Englishman, to prefer the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger – how much easier to understand the same price for the gash in your soul.
3
When Vague Henri, IdrisPukke and Kleist had decided on their careful pursuit of Bosco and his prize they had expected him to head straight for the safety of the Sanctuary, so the long detour taken by Bosco made them wary and suspicious. IdrisPukke only realized where they were going a few hours before Tiger Mountain appeared on the horizon. He was surprised that the news seemed to amaze the two boys.
‘This is the Holiest site in the Good Book,’ said Vague Henri.
‘I didn’t think you believed in all that any more,’ replied IdrisPukke.
‘Who said we do?’ For the last few days Kleist had been even touchier than usual.
‘It’s not that,’ said Vague Henri, ‘but we’ve heard about this place all our lives. God spoke to Prester John on that mountain. Jephthah sacrificed his only daughter to the Lord there.’
‘What?’
The two patiently explained the story, so often repeated to them it no longer seemed a real event with real people – a none-too-sharp knife and a twelve-year-old girl willingly bent over a curved rock.
‘Good grief,’ said IdrisPukke when they’d finished.
‘And it was where Satan tempted the Hanged Redeemer with power over the whole world. I got a hefty thrashing for pointing out that Satan must’ve been a bit of a dunce.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘What’s the point of tempting someone with something they don’t want?’
The unexpectedness of Bosco’s diversion meant that they had little water and no food for two days. But Kleist had shot a fox and they were waiting with sore stomachs for it to cook.
‘Do you think it’s ready?’
‘Better wait,’ said Kleist. ‘You don’t want to be eating undercooked fox.’
IdrisPukke didn’t want to be eating fox, undercooked or otherwise. When it was ready Kleist cut it (carving a fox into three equal parts was no mean feat), complete equality of shares being ensured by the law of the acolytes that whoever divided what they were about to eat had to take the smallest portion, an insight into human nature that had it been extended to a great many grander matters would have transformed the history of the world. IdrisPukke was still looking down at the fair third of the crisply done animal on his plate while the other two were on the point of finishing, though a good half-hour of bone and marrow sucking would follow.
‘What’s it like?’ said IdrisPukke.