‘Not if the small come first.’
Another long silence. Not even IdrisPukke could think of a reply. He changed the subject.
‘I don’t know what the Redeemers and their Pope are going to do about you. I wouldn’t bank on it being nothing. You make enemies the way other people breathe. To speak angrily the way you do, to show your hatred by what you say or by the way you look, is an unnecessary proceeding: dangerous, foolish, ridiculous and vulgar – though I suppose vulgarity is the least of your problems. You must either learn more discretion or start running now.’
Cale said nothing while IdrisPukke sat on the bed feeling sorry for the strange boy next to him. After a few minutes IdrisPukke began to worry that in his silence Cale was drifting too far.
‘Did you look up at the night sky while you were out?’
Cale laughed, softly and oddly, thought IdrisPukke – but it was better than the silence before.
‘No,’ said Cale. ‘Do the stars still shine?’
‘You have been the Master of Ceremonies,’ said Vipond to IdrisPukke later that night, ‘to a great many disasters but this must be one of your finest.’
‘Not at all. I’ve been involved in many worse things than a squabble between two lovers.’
‘You know it’s a good deal worse than that. Bose Ikard wants us expelled and you can be very sure a report about a brawl between the Materazzi heirs and your friend Nogbad the Bad will be on its way to the King of Switzerland as we speak, and a carefully embroidered one at that.’
‘King Zog may be an old woman but he’s not going to throw us out over a squabble like this – however much Ikard stirs it up.’
‘He will if he tells him that there is some question over the paternity of Arbell’s child.’
‘What do you think?’
‘What do you think?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘There’s no arguing with that. The point is that the rumours are leaking under every doorway in Spanish Leeds. King Zog takes a very dim view of promiscuous behaviour and particularly between an aristocrat and some yob who carries the coal into her bedroom.’
‘He’s a great deal more than that.’
‘Not to King Zog of Switzerland. God never created a greater snob. His only reading is to spend hours sighing with pleasure and delight over his ancestry in the Almanach de Gotha.’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, brother’- IdrisPukke never called him this unless he was particularly annoyed with him – ‘the Materazzi have descended into a kind of nothing. Without Cale to stop them the Redeemers are ready to roll up the Antagonists, the Laconics, Switzerland and everyone else like an old carpet. And they’ll piss on King Zog as they go by.’
‘Conn Materazzi is a prospect, given time.’
‘Cale plotted our destruction and that of the Laconics. Not bad for a coal-carrying yob. If you think Conn Materazzi has that in him you must be the old fool that there’s no fool like.’
‘We only have his word for the defeat of the Laconics.’
‘We were there at Silbury to witness what Cale’s plans did to us.’
‘All excuses aside, that was as much luck as judgement.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘You can’t control him.’
‘No.’
‘He can’t control himself.’
‘He wouldn’t be the first. He’s young, he’ll get over it.’
‘You’re wrong about that. I heard him threaten her when he left Memphis and again tonight. He’ll never be free of her. People talk about children as if they’re in some way different from adults. But there isn’t any difference, not really. Just souls crazy for love. The lover and the killer are in him like linsey-woolsey – never to be singled out.’
‘Then get Arbell out of Spanish Leeds and Conn with her. Out of sight, out of mind. Then we use Cale to come up with a plan to deal with the Redeemers.’
‘Why should he help us?’
‘He hates Arbell because he loved her and saved her and still she gave him up to them.’
‘We all did that.’
‘Speak for yourself. And he didn’t worship the ground you walked on. It’s in his interests to strike a deal with us because there isn’t anywhere else he can go. With Cale directing a Swiss army there’s at least a chance for us and a chance for him. He’ll see that. Arbell or no Arbell, he’s always had survival on his mind.’
‘Isn’t he just a danger to everyone?’
‘Then we must help him focus his attention where he can do most damage.’
‘It’s not much of a plan.’
‘It is when you don’t have a better one.’
‘Did you know he’s been talking to Kitty the Hare?’
‘Yes.’
‘You liar!’ As if they were young boys again no offence was intended or taken.
‘Do you tell anyone else all your comings and goings?’ said IdrisPukke.
‘I’m renowned for my candid nature.’
‘Exactly so. If he’s going to save the rest of us from the Redeemers I hope to God he has his thumbs on as many scales as there are sea shells on the shore.’
‘Another threat to Arbell from the Redeemers would be useful – good excuse to encourage Arbell’s absence.’
‘Would Conn go with her?’
‘Too much to hope for. Besides, Zog won’t have a guttersnipe leading an army he’s paying for, whatever you think.’
‘Then he’s a fool.’
‘No one has ever argued otherwise.’
‘Can you control Conn?’
‘Yes,’ replied Vipond.
‘Enough to let himself become a front for someone who might be the father of his first child?’
‘Not an approach I was thinking of trying. Besides, we have an advantage.’
‘Which is?’
‘He doesn’t want to believe it. We must encourage that natural desire as much as possible.’
But their plan had an unforeseen flaw – though this was not in itself something that would have surprised either of them.
Part of Bose Ikard’s way of making the Materazzi feel unwelcome was to ensure the inadequacy of their accommodation. When it came to Arbell this involved a message delivered by putting her in rooms designed two hundred years earlier as living space for the then King’s new bride, the Infanta Pilar. The Infanta never grew above two and a half cubits (a cubit being the distance between the elbow and the fingers of an outstretched hand). Adored for her good nature, wit and generosity to the poor, she inspired numerous buildings in the resultant craze for all things Spanish that had given what was then mere Leeds its unusual additional name. Once a byword for all that was dismal (‘You look like Leeds’ was an ancient joke at the expense of the unhappy – and the expense of Leeds), the desire to please the tiny Infanta led to an explosion of exotic public and private houses in the Spanish style. The Infanta’s personal apartments were built by her doting husband to her scale rather than that of the giants who surrounded her. The result for Arbell was that while her apartments were certainly fit for a queen they were fit for a very small queen forty-two inches high. To the Infanta the ceiling was lofty, to Arbell there were many parts of her rooms where she had to bow her beautiful neck just ever-so-slightly.
It was the night after the dreadful banquet and Conn and Arbell were sitting down in her apartments. Given they were both tall this gave the proportions of the room a comic aspect as if they were sat in a place somewhere between a ship’s cabin and a large doll’s house.
Arbell was looking down at her breasts and stomach. ‘I feel,’ she said ruefully to Conn, ‘as if I’d swallowed the heads of three bald men. Big-headed bald men. God, how much longer?’
‘You look very beautiful.’
‘I made you say that.’
Conn smiled.
‘It’s true you did make me say it. But it’s true anyway.’
‘You lie so sweetly it’s almost a pleasure to be deceived by you.’
‘Have it your own way,’ he said, taking her hand.
‘Promise me you’ll stay away from Thomas Cale,’ she said.