‘My Lord Redeemer,’ said Brigade, ‘an assassin has been sent to kill you. Come with me.’ He took him gently by the arm and smiled at the priests. ‘Please wait here until Redeemer Gant sends for you. Protect this doorway with your life.’ He then shut the door and gripping Gant by the arm pulled him swiftly down the stairs, building up speed as they reached a spacious landing on which he grasped Gant by the shoulders and, pushing the protesting Redeemer at ever greater speed, launched him out of a large window which splintered into a thousand pieces as the great prelate fell screaming to his death on the cobbles fifty feet below. A brief look and Brigade was on his way to find his escape, haring down the stairs and shouting: ‘Fire! Fire!’
This was the famous First Defenestration of the Holy Peculiar. The second is another story.
What a day!
Momentous, spiteful, terrible, tragic, cruel – no word or list could capture its horrors and its brutal drama of lives lost and empires won. There were, perhaps, fewer than fifteen hundred Redeemers that required executing but it had to be done quickly and this was awkward even for a man as experienced as Brzica and as reluctantly determined as Gil. High-quality executioners are as rare as high-quality cooks or armourers or stonemasons – and mass executions were, in fact, extremely rare. After all, except to demoralize one’s opponents, as in the massacre at Mount Nugent that sent such a clear message to the Materazzi or the peculiar circumstances of the death of Bosco’s so carefully chosen Redeemers in the House of Special Purpose what was the need? The real point of an execution was either to dispose of an individual permanently in private or to do so extravagantly in public to make an example of them. If the former then you could take your time; if the latter, it was necessary to produce something spectacular and highly individual. Killing fifteen hundred men not weakened by hunger and months of darkness and cold was a difficult matter. He did not have the assistants for this number of killings because normally he didn’t need them. So this was a damned difficult job for Brzica and Gil.
‘You ever cut the throat of a pig?’ said the former to the latter.
‘No.’
‘When I was a boy on my father’s farm,’ Brzica pointed out gloomily to Gil, ‘he used to reckon it took two years to train someone to slaughter a pig. It’s a lot harder to kill a man.’
‘I’ve brought you experienced men. They know why this is necessary.’
Brzica grunted with the impatience of a man who was used to having his great talents diminished.
‘It ain’t nothing like ... nothing like killing a man in battle or running away from battle – it has its own rhymes and reasons, its own knacks and techniques. Few’re cut out to kill in cold blood constantly – and specially not kill their own kind. But I don’t suppose you believe me.’
‘You’re more convincing than you give yourself credit for, Redeemer,’ replied Gil. ‘But I’m sure with your guidance we’ll manage.’
‘Are you now?’
Manage they did, grim though it was. First Gil reassured the prisoners, collected in half a dozen halls of up to three hundred – that they had nothing to fear unless they were guilty of involvement in that day’s Antagonist uprising of fifth columnists. It was regretfully necessary to question them all to find the few believed to be involved. But it was, as they would themselves understand, necessary for them to be questioned before the overwhelming majority could be released. They would also, he was sure, understand that they would need to be bound hand and foot but that it would be done with respect due to the great number of the innocent among them. He asked for their co-operation at a time of great crisis for the faith. To demonstrate his sincerity Gil allowed himself to have his hands tied loosely behind his back and – again loosely – from ankle to ankle. He then shuffled meekly out of the room. Reassured the arrested Redeemers allowed themselves to be bound and led out in groups of ten. The first groups were led into the nearest courtyard where Brzica and his four assistants forced them to their knees and cut their throats as a demonstration for Gil’s watching chosen men.
Initially Brzica’s baleful predictions proved accurate and only the fact that Gil had so skilfully prepared the victims and the fact of their being carefully bound prevented a fiasco as the inexperienced executioners found that cutting a throat fatally required more accuracy and precision than they were used to displaying on the battlefield. Brzica saved the day with a simple improvisation – he used a piece of charcoal to mark a line along the throats of the victims just before they were led out so that the increasingly nervous and jumpy executioners had something to follow. It remained an ugly business even for men very used to ugliness. But, as Brzica quoted, smug as well as grim, after it was over (and who would know better than him?): even the most dreadful martyrdom must run its course.
By evening the plot, like some brutal harvest, was gathered in and for all the errors and stupidities Bosco’s great gamble was closing in his favour; even this calm madman was astonished that it was done. But there was a twist of sorts to come. With the city secure, many more successes than failures, a few escapes and some regrettable errors of identity, the news of Cale’s great victory was released to a fearful and mystified population wound up to breaking point by the dreadful events of the day. News of victory gave wings to the claims that Antagonists, deep sleepers in the city’s life, had risen up and been defeated at a terrible cost in famous men and Holy Fathers of the church. It all made sense and any other explanations would have been far less plausible: a coup? A revolution? Here in Chartres? There were, besides, few left willing to contradict it. In less than thirty-six hours the Redeemers had themselves been redeemed and in Bosco’s mind the world had turned towards its greatest and most final purge.
In the late evening Pope Bento had retired to sleep knowing as much of the real nature of the day’s events as the nuns in the doorless convents of the outskirts of the city. Bosco finally had the chance to pause and eat in the palace itself, joined by Gil. Both were exhausted, worn out in ways neither of them would have thought possible, and neither spoke much.
‘You’ve done a man’s job,’ said Bosco at last. ‘And God’s great work, too.’
‘And might do more,’ replied Gil, but very softly as if he hardly had the strength to speak.
‘And how’s that?’
Gil looked at him as if he had some enormity on his mind that might be better left unsaid.
‘I want to speak freely.’
‘You can always speak freely to me. Now more than ever.’
‘I want to speak of something that can’t be spoken about.’
‘It must be infandous indeed if you need to beat about the bush so much.’
‘Very well. I’ve done horrible things in your service. Today I’ve walked knee-deep in the blood of good men. I’ll sleep differently now for as long as I breathe.’
‘No one would deny that you have risked your soul in our business.’
‘Yes, that’s right. My soul. But having risked it to the door of hell itself I do not want to have taken such a dreadful chance and let it be for nothing.’
‘I’ve taken the same risk.’
‘Have you?’
‘Meaning?’