With the battle won, the slaughter against the Laconics was as dreadful as they had inflicted against the Redeemers only a few weeks before. What is to be said? The terror, the horror, the downward stab, the blood upon the ground. He could not have stopped them even if he had wanted to. He left it to the centenars to stop it as they could. By the time they did there were only five hundred prisoners and the few thousand who managed to get away completely. Cale himself had two pressing tasks. One was to inform the waiting Bosco of the victory, the other was to shrivel the hairs on Guido Hooke’s arse by means of a bollocking so desperate in its vituperativeness that it became almost as much a legend as the battle itself.
What Cale did not realize was that his victory had replaced one mortal danger to him with another, this time one over which he would have no control. Bosco’s reluctance to take decisive action in Chartres was not born out of indecision but the complexities of the problems that he faced. He must not only destroy his enemies, and do so quickly above all, but also destroy a great many of his friends. He knew perfectly well that many of his allies were allies of disaffection. They were not passionate supporters of Bosco’s dream of a completely cleansed world for the simple reason that they did not know what it was he believed and would have been appalled if they had. He had put together an ugly rainbow coalition of theological disaffections, many of them utterly incompatible, personal grudges, religious grudges and self-seving malcontents clear that change was in the air but wary of being caught on the wrong side. Most dangerous of all were those as committed as Bosco to a vision of a pure new world, who considered themselves just as vital to the scouring that must precede it. Chief among these dangerous partners was Redeemer Paul Moseby, long the keeper of the money that supported this collection of visionaries and fellow travellers. Distributor of favours and influence, he was owed much by many and expected to be paid. A year before, Moseby had gained even greater power in Chartres by arresting with great speed a cadre of Antagonist plotters who had burnt down the Basilica of Mercy and Compassion in the very heart of the old city, second in importance and holiness only to the vast Dome of Learning. Moseby, having grown impatient of a real conspiracy, had set the fire himself, or arranged for it, and arrested four previously designated brothers with a history of mind disease helped along in their incoherence by the careful administration of soporific drugs. They had been swiftly executed and as a reward Moseby had been put in charge of administering an ‘enabling’ Act, so called because it enabled him to imprison anyone for up to forty days without bringing charges. He rarely required the allotted time to find something to justify any arrest he made. Some were released both because it looked fair-minded to do so but also because their card had been duly marked and a lesson learned as to what would happen if they did not co-operate in future.
But Moseby started to enjoy the increase in power he now began to experience in its almost purest form. He arrested and threatened Redeemers that Bosco did not want arrested or threatened. He started to argue with Bosco about his own ideas concerning the renewed Redeemer faith. More, he disagreed in meetings, and not in private, where he could show his importance compared to Bosco and that he was not a retainer to be taken by the new faithful for an obedient servant. Worse, it had come to Bosco’s attention that he had questioned Cale’s divine origins. It had, in fact, been only a joke to the effect that while he might indeed be the anger of the Lord made flesh he did not look like it. A casual sneer had the same effect on Bosco as it so often does in life of causing as much, or more, damage than a carefully reasoned argument. From that point it might be said that the fate of Moseby, and that of his familiars, was decided. It was by no means sealed, however. Bosco was about to take on two powerful factions at the same time, neither of whom he could be sure of destroying separately let alone together in a few hours. He had one great advantage: the complete unexpectedness and shocking originality of what he was about to try and do.
Few battles are truly decisive. Even the one fought at Golan Heights which seemed to define that term depended for any lasting significance on the events that took place in Chartres immediately following the victory over the Laconics. Bosco had first convened a Congress of the Sodalities of Perpetual Adoration with the intention, avowedly, of praying for the deliverance of Redeemers from the Laconics. If Cale lost they could pray away for all the good it would do them. If he won what would happen was very much the opposite of prayer.
Once Bosco had heard of the defeat of the Laconics he had his own battle to fight. The members of the congress, which included most of Bosco’s supporters, reliable or otherwise, were sealed into the meeting house by his religious sentinel, Redeemer Francis Haldera. A senior member of the Sodalities, he had been of considerable use during Bosco’s years of trying to build support in Chartres from his distant power base in the Sanctuary. He was an endlessy biddable fixer and easer of things, smooth as butter to those who needed flattery, ruthless to those for whom blackmail was the most useful approach. The time was coming, one way or another, when these qualities would no longer be required and his essential lack of belief or courage was to be made a central part of Bosco’s delicately balanced plan. Haldera had been taken aside and isolated in a private room before the beginning of prayers and reassured with certain lies. Once news of Cale’s victory had been received he was confronted with evidence that he had pugnated four acolytes and burglarized another, which was true, and conspired with the Antagonist heresy along with numerous others, which was not. It was made clear to him he would be slowly grilled alive for the crimes he had committed, real and false, but that if he confessed and co-operated he would merely be exiled. It was unsurprising, therefore, that he agreed to denounce both himself and anyone else he was told to. He was given a document to read out and twenty minutes to rehearse it, while the unsuspecting Sodalities prayed on for a victory that had already been won.