‘I wondered how long before you brought him up.’
‘Now you know. Promise me.’
‘You forget that he saved my life. It’s not so easy to kill someone you owe so much to. He saved yours as well and that makes it harder still. So I promise – even if he was so rude to you.’
‘I’ll live. But I want to ask you something much harder.’
‘What?’
‘He is not so gracious. I want you to promise to walk away if he comes looking for you.’
‘And my pride?’
‘It’s nothing. It’ll pass. Pride is nothing.’
‘You say that because you’re a woman.’
‘And so I don’t have any pride?’
‘What makes you proud is different – so what’s possible or impossible is different.’
‘Will you take pride in giving Cale what he wants? He’s not stupid enough to provoke you when you’re in full armour. He knows that you’d have the advantage.’ Some flattery, probably true, was needed here. She had pushed him too far already.
‘And what am I supposed to do if he dares me?’
‘My God you sound like a schoolboy!’
‘If you choose not to understand.’ He was annoyed at being spoken to like this but allowances must be made for women and especially women in the late stages of pregnancy. ‘If I walk away from him then my reputation, the thing that I am, walks away from me at the same time. You tell me that you will continue to respect me – but will you?’
‘Of course I will.’
‘That’s what you say now. But I won’t have the respect of anyone else.’
She sighed and said nothing for a while.
‘I know what you are – you are courageous and skilful and daring.’ More necessary flattery – and also true. ‘But he’s not,’ she looked hard for the right word and failed, ‘he’s not normal. He doesn’t bring catastrophe, he is a catastrophe. His friend, Kleist – the one who never liked him – he said he had funerals in his brain. Well, it’s true.’
‘How is anyone to live without respect? What’s the point?’
She sighed again and moved her stiff neck from side to side and groaned. Look at yourself, she thought, as fat as gluttony. ‘When will it ever end?’ she said aloud and looked at her husband sideways. ‘You owe him your life.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then how can you honourably kill him? Let it be more widely known that he behaved bravely – more, praise his courage so that people will admire you more than they admire him. Make it clear that you are inevitably in his debt and everyone will praise you for walking away if he provokes you. What courage! What true honour that Conn Materazzi could so easily fight and yet risks that honour in order to be honourable. It’s true after all, you said so yourself.’
‘Won’t that mean he gains a reputation ...’ He had to think about this: was it an honourable objection to make in the circumstances? ‘... a name for courage?’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ replied Arbell. ‘He’ll soon spoil the good opinion anyone has of him. He thinks it’s beneath him to be admired by people he despises – and he despises everyone.’
‘You’re very clever.’
‘Yes I am.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Now go away and let me sleep.’
He stood up and cracked his head on the ceiling.
‘Ow!’
She winced along with him but could see he was not hurt. She made to get up to kiss it better – no mean feat. ‘Stay where you are,’ he said.
She needed no encouragement. ‘I will if you don’t mind.’ He bent down and kissed her lightly on the mouth. Then with exaggerated comic carefulness he made his way to the door and was gone. She eased herself further back onto the sofa, twisting from side to side to stretch her aching back and decided to wait for another ten minutes before making the effort to go to bed. She closed her eyes, enjoying the peace and quiet.
And then from the shadows at the back of the room a low voice said softly:
‘I do haunt you still.’
Some say the world will end in ice. If so, it was something of that terminal cold that froze the hairs on the neck of the young mother-to-be. She moved quick as you like for all the aching back and enormous bulge and turned in horror as Cale emerged into the candlelight. ‘In case you were wondering,’ he said putting his finger precisely on the fear uppermost in her mind, ‘I heard everything you said. Not very nice.’
‘I’ll scream.’
‘I wouldn’t. Things would be grim for anyone who came through the door when you did.’
‘You expect me to die without a word?’
‘God no. I wouldn’t expect you to comb your own hair without complaining.’ This was not fair. She was by no means a trivial person. ‘Whine all you like, your majesty, but do it quietly.’
‘Are you going to kill me?’
‘I’m thinking of killing you.’
‘I know you believe I’ve offended you but how has my baby offended?’
‘That’s why I’m thinking about it.’
‘It’s yours.’
‘You would say that.’
‘It’s true.’
‘It’s true that I saved your life twice and you said you loved me more deeply than ...’ He smiled, not pleasantly. ‘... you know I can’t remember but I seem to recall it was a thing of great depth. Perhaps you can help me.’
‘It is true,’ she said, almost impossible to hear.
‘The rumour in the vegetable market is that you’re a slut – and betting is even as to who the father is: either the Memphis village idiot or the prole who carried the coals into your bedroom.’
‘You know that isn’t true.’
‘I don’t know. You sold me to men who for all you knew were going to take me to a place of execution, hang me and then cut me down alive, gut me ... while I watched ... fry those guts ... while I watched ... cut off my cock and balls ... while I watched. Well, you see. It looks bad.’
‘They promised me they wouldn’t hurt you.’
‘And what made you think a promise meant more to them than it meant to you. You were tired of me, and wanted to see the back of me, and didn’t care how.’
‘That’s not true.’ She was crying now but barely audibly.
‘It may not be the whole truth but it’s true enough. Anyway I’m sick of listening to you.’
‘They didn’t do any of those things to you. He promised to make you a great man. Aren’t you? Didn’t he keep his promise?’
This was too much. In a few strides he was over to her as she backed away to the wall holding her hands out in terror to protect her child. He reached behind her head and grabbed her golden pony tail and dragged her over to the sofa pushing her to her knees.
‘I’ll show you how he kept his promise, you lying bitch.’ He kept tight hold of her hair with one hand and pulled the lamp on the table next to the sofa so that it cast a better light. Then with his free hand he reached into a back pocket and took out the letter given to him by Bosco and over which he had squabbled with Vague Henri. He unfolded it on the sofa rug, violently pushing her head down so that her face was almost touching it.
‘Read!’ he said.
‘You’re hurting me.’
He twisted her hair sharply. She called out.
‘Scream quietly,’ he whispered. ‘Someone might be unlucky enough to hear. Now read who it’s from.’ Another encouraging tug.
‘From Redeemer General Archer, Commander Forces of the Veldt, to Redeemer General Bosco.’
‘You can skip the first five lines.’
Arbell continued with some difficulty – his grip was fierce and she was too close to the script.
‘Before he left Thomas Cale ordered us to sweep up every village on the Veldt within fifty miles of our camps and bring in all the women and children, their animals to be used to feed the three thousand souls we managed to intern. Some sort of rinderpest killed most of their cattle and reduced very much the milk of those that survived. Often lacking sufficient rations ourselves there were none to spare. Given their weakness many have succumbed to starvation, measles and the squits, in all about two and a half thousand. I was not informed until very late and when I inspected the camp I saw such wretchedness any heart would have rued the sight ...’