The lights had reached a white heat, but the Prophet did not step forward and bathe in this blaze of glory. He hung back at the edge of the pool, teasing the crowd, which begged him with their moans to show himself. Still he resisted; still they summoned him, their wordless prayers growing feverish.
Only after three or four minutes of this holding back did he consent to answer their appeal, and step into the light. He was a sizeable man - a fellow Babu, Jerichau guessed - but some infirmity slowed his footsteps. His features were benign, even slightly effeminate; his hair, fine as a baby's, was a white mane.
Reaching the chair, he sat down - apparently with some pain - and surveyed the gathering. Little by little the murmuring grew softer. He did not speak, however, until it had ceased entirely. And when he did speak it was not with the voice Jerichau had expected from a Prophet: strident, possessed. It was a small, musical voice; its tone gentle, even hesitant.
‘My friends ...' he said. ‘We're assembled here in the name of Capra
‘Capra ...' The name was whispered from wall to wall.
‘I've heard Capra's words. They say the time is very, very close.' He spoke, Jerichau thought, almost reluctantly, as though he were the vessel of this knowledge, but far from comfortable with it.
‘If there are many doubters amongst you -' the Prophet said,'- prepare to shed your doubts.'
Nimrod cast Jerichau a glance as if to say: he means you.
‘We are greater by the day...' the Prophet said. ‘Capra's word is everywhere finding its way to the forgotten and the forgetful. It stirs the sleeping into wakefulness. It makes the dying dance.' He spoke very quietly, letting the rhetoric substitute for volume. His congregation attended like children. ‘Very soon we'll be home,' he said. ‘We'll be back amongst our loved ones, walking where our mothers and fathers walked. We won't have to hide any longer. This Capra tells us. We will rise, my friends. Rise and be bright.'
There were barely stifled sobs from around the hall. He heard them, and hushed them with an indulgent smile.
‘No need to weep,' he said. ‘I see an end to weeping. An end to waiting.'
‘Yes,' said the crowd, as one. ‘Yes. Yes.'
Jerichau felt the swell of affirmation picking him up. He had no desire to resist. He was a part of these people wasn't he? Their tragedy was his tragedy; and their longing his too.
‘Yes ...' he found himself saying, ‘yes ... yes.'
At his side Nimrod said: ‘Now do you believe?' then joined the chant himself.
The Prophet raised his gloved hands to subdue the voices. It took longer for the crowd to be hushed this time, but when the Prophet spoke again his voice was stronger, as though nourished by this display of fellow-feeling.
‘My friends. Capra loves peace as we all love it, but let us not deceive ourselves. We have enemies. Enemies amongst Humankind, and yes, amongst our own Kind too. There are many who have cheated us. Conspired with the Cuckoos to keep our lands in sleep. This Capra has seen, with his own eyes. Treachery and lies, my friends; everywhere.' He bowed his head a moment, as if the effort of those words was close to defeating him. ‘What shall we do?' he said, his voice despairing.
‘Lead us!' somebody shouted.
The Prophet raised his head at this, his face troubled.
‘I can only show you the way,' he protested.
But the cry had been taken up by others around the hall, and was growing.
‘Lead us!' they called to him. ‘Lead us!'
Slowly, the Prophet got to his feet. Again, he raised his hands to silence the congregation, but this time they would not be subdued so readily.
‘Please -' he said, obliged for the first time to raise his voice. ‘Please. Listen to me!'
‘We'll follow you!' Nimrod was shouting. ‘We'll follow!'
Was it Jerichau's imagination, or had the lights above the platform begun to burn with fresh brilliance, the Prophet's hair a halo above his benevolent features? To judge by his expression the call to arms that rose from the floor distressed him; the vox populi wanted more than his vague promises.
‘Listen to me,' he appealed. ‘If you want me to lead you -'
‘Yes!' roared five hundred throats.
‘If that's what you want I have to warn you, it will not be easy. We would have to put away tenderness. We would have to be hard as stone. Blood will flow.'
His warning didn't chasten the crowd a jot. If anything it spurred their enthusiasm to new heights.
‘We must be cunning -' said the Prophet,'- as those who've conspired against us have been cunning.'
The crowd was raising the roof now, Jerichau along with them.
‘The Fugue calls us home!'
‘Home! Home!'
‘And its voice will not be denied. We must march!'
The door at the back of the platform had been opened a little, presumably so that the Prophet's entourage could hear the speech. Now a movement there caught Jerichau's eye. There was somebody in the doorway, whose shadowy face he seemed to know –
‘We will go into the Fugue together,' the Prophet was saying, his voice finally losing its frailty, its reluctance.
Jerichau looked past the speaker, trying to divide the watcher at the door from the darkness that concealed him.
‘We will take the Fugue back from our enemies in the name of Capra.'
The man Jerichau was watching moved a step, and for an instant a fugitive beam of light caught him. Jerichau's stomach convulsed as he silently put a name to the face he saw. It bore a smile, but he knew there was no humour in it, for its owner knew no humour. Or love either; or mercy -
‘Shout, my Kind! Shout!'
It was Hobart.
‘Make them hear us, in their sleep. Hear us and fear our judgment!'
There could be no doubt of it. The time Jerichau had spent in the Inspector's company was burned into his memory forever. Hobart it was.
The voice of the Prophet was finding new strength with every syllable. Even his face seemed to have altered in some subtle fashion. Any sham of kindliness had been dropped; it was all righteous fury now.
‘Spread the word -' he was saying. The exiles are returning!'
Jerichau watched the performance with fresh eyes, keeping up a pretence of enthusiasm, while questions fretted his thumping head.
Chief amongst them: who was this man, stirring the Kind with promises of Deliverance? A hermit, as Nimrod had described him, an innocent, being used by Hobart for his own ends? That was the best hope. The worst, that he and Hobart were in cahoots; a conspiracy of Kind and Humankind, created with what could only be one intention: possessing and perhaps destroying the Fugue.
The voices around him were deafening, but Jerichau was no longer buoyed up by this tide, he was drowning in it. They were fodder, these people; Hobart's dupes. It made him sick to think of it.
‘Be ready,' the Prophet was telling the assembly. ‘Be ready. The hour is near.'
With that promise, the lights above the platform went out. When they came on again, moments later, the voice of Capra had gone, leaving an empty chair and a congregation ready to follow him wherever he chose to lead them.
There were cries from around the hall for him to speak to them again, but the door at the back of the stage was closed and not reopened. Gradually, realizing they wouldn't persuade their leader to appear again, the crowd began to disperse.
‘Didn't I tell you?' said Nimrod. He stank of sweat, as did they all. ‘Didn't I say?'
‘Yes, you did.'
Nimrod seized hold of Jerichau's arm.
‘Come with me now,' he said, eyes gleaming. ‘We'll go to the Prophet. We'll tell him where the carpet is.'
‘Now?'
‘Why not? Why give our enemies any more time to prepare themselves?'
Jerichau had vaguely anticipated this exchange. He had his excuses prepared.