12


When Vague Henri arrived he had to be helped in by two Redeemers.

‘Lay him on the bed and leave.’

Cale walked over to him and knelt down by the bed. Vague Henri’s nose and lower lip, thickened by a hefty beating, were bleeding.

‘Look at the state of you. What in God’s name are you doing here, you bloody idiot?’

‘Pleased to see you as well.’

‘Let’s start with what you’re doing here.’

‘I was hanging around the Voynich Oasis waiting on a caravan bringing back black earth for the gardens. I followed them here and tried to hitch on the end but someone recognized me. Besides, they count everyone in and out these days.’

‘You should have thought of that.’

‘I should have but I didn’t.’

‘You should have thought of that and stayed away.’

‘Well, I’m here now.’

‘Pure luck. You came this close,’ Cale pinched his thumb and forefinger together, ‘to being slotted by Brzica and dumped in Ginky’s Field. And I’d never have known anything about it.’

‘All’s well that ends well.’ But Vague Henri was looking increasingly green. Cale’s bad temper diminished slightly. ‘I am pleased to see you.’

‘How about a kiss?’

‘I’m not that pleased.’

They both smiled.

‘How about something to eat?’ said Vague Henri.

‘It’s ordered.’

As if he’d been listening outside, Model knocked on the door and entered with a tray of food for two.

‘The same again,’ said Cale.

‘There’s a limit, sir, they won’t take my word for so much.’

Cale wrote a note threatening the kitchen with Bosco’s wrath and as Vague Henri sat down to eat he demanded that Cale give his story first.

It was more than two hours and well into Vague Henri’s second tray before Cale had finished.

‘So Bosco really is as mad as a sack of cats,’ said Vague Henri.

‘Luckily for you and me.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Stay here,’ said Cale. ‘See it through.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I’m the observed of all observers – where would I go? There’s no Memphis any more. There’s no Materazzi. Except for Antagonists who’d drop me on sight. Who else, even if I could get there, which I can’t, would be stupid enough not to hand me over? Without Bosco I’m done for. And now St Vague Henri of the goody-two-shoes, so are you. Bosco owns us from snout to tail more than he ever did.’

Vague Henri sat for a while.

‘You’re right,’ he said, at last.

‘Tell me something I didn’t know.’

They drank beer and smoked in dismal silence for a while.

‘Now you,’ said Cale.

Vague Henri started with his decision to follow Cale after his departure from Memphis.

‘Kleist wasn’t keen.’

‘I can imagine. I’m astonished he went at all.’

‘Don’t be too astonished. After a week he ran away.’

‘Which is exactly what I’d have done if Bosco had taken you instead of me.’

‘No, you wouldn’t.’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘Anyway. IdrisPukke and me we lost you near Tiger Mountain – the approaches are a bit rocky for tracking. Not my strong point anyway. IdrisPukke tried to persuade me to go with him to take the ferry out of Whitstable. I miss him. I made it to Voynich and that’s pretty much it.’

‘You were a long time in Voynich.’

‘It’s a nice place that. I wish I was back.’

And that was that for explanations. Cale had kept things short despite talking for two hours, partly because he had no taste for war stories but partly because he had seen the look in Vague Henri’s eyes when he had told him about Bosco’s belief that he was the agent of the death of mankind. He was not sure what it meant, that look, not belief and not fear or anything he could put his finger on – or wanted to put his finger on. So he played it down after that, the wrath of God stuff, even as he failed to cover up what bothered him about Vague Henri’s reaction. It was not that Vague Henri thought it might be partly true that rankled but that on the contrary he regarded the idea as laughable. Something inside was drawn to the idea of his own magnificence and did not care to be mocked.

Vague Henri on his part had not just played down the truth he had directly lied, although when he began telling his story he had not intended to do so. In six months they had both changed. And the question in both their minds was by how much.

The next day when Vague Henri was brought to his room things between them were both good-natured and awkward. But Cale wanted to show that while he had made terms with the man and religion they both hated, he had done so in a way very different from the past. He took Vague Henri to the convent, though without telling him where they were going. Then he got his first surprise – Cale produced a key! And it was, Cale let him see, one key among several keys. It was as shocking as if Cale had got down on his knees and started to celebrate mass or had produced a bishop’s mitre and stuck it on his head. But while Cale was thinking that it demonstrated that he was now in power in the Sanctuary, for Vague Henri it was a worrying sign. Perhaps Cale had taken a bribe the way Perkin Warbeck had taken a gallon of sweet sherry and a dozen sheep to betray the Hanged Redeemer. It was not possible and yet the last year had taught him that anything was possible.

Cale opened the door and they were inside the first layer of walls that protected the convent. They walked on for ten yards to a second door with no fewer than three locks which required three separate keys. Inside the convent proper the harsh green pitch of the floor changed to limestone, softened by carpets, and there were candles every few yards throwing the soft warm light of beeswax and not tallow from cows and pigs. They approached another door and Cale opened it, without keys (an unlocked door?) and, throwing it wide, gestured Vague Henri inside.

There was a great gasp and a ripple of excitement, long repressed as if his arrival was the very summit of anticipation. Around the walls in each corner were nuns, benign and smiling, and seated in the room as squirmingly impatient as a group of children awaiting the arrival of a birthday cake were twelve girls from perhaps thirteen to perhaps eighteen – pink girls, brown girls, black girls, ones with perfect olive skin, ones with complexions white as ghosts. They almost groaned with pleasure as the two young men came in the room, there was even a stifled squeal followed by a reproving cluck of the tongue from the nun behind and a cautionary hand on the shoulder.

‘Good morning, ladies,’ said a smiling Cale.

‘Good morning, Mr Cale,’ they echoed back as one.

‘Let me introduce you to my oldest and my greatest friend. This is the great Vague Henri that I told you of – legend of Memphis, hero of the Battle of Silbury Hill.’ Vague Henri smiled the smile of a man wound up. The girls burst into applause only slowly calmed by Cale’s raised palms.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now listen all of you. Who would like to take special care of Vague Henri?’

A dozen hands shot in the air.

‘ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME!’

Vague Henri seemed to go pale and blush with delight at one and the same time.

‘Patience! Patience! Girls! Behave!’ said the Mother Inferior. ‘What will Vague Henri think of us?’

‘I think I could answer that,’ whispered Cale into Vague Henri’s ear. Vague Henri looked at him and Cale realized he’d been teased enough.

‘Mother Inferior, would you choose two and send for us when the room is ready?’ The Mother Inferior bowed politely and Cale pulled Vague Henri by the arm towards a door, opened it, again without a key, and they were in a sitting room. He gestured Vague Henri over to a large sofa that was more like a bed than a place to sit.

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘No.’

‘There’s beer or wine.’

‘Beer.’

Cale pulled the linen off a jug, poured a glass and handed it to him.

‘What do you expect me to do with them?’ he said after taking a long swig.

‘What you want to do with them.’

‘They’re slaves – slavery is wrong.’

‘For what it’s worth, which isn’t anything at all, they’ve all been freed in law. They’re as free as you or me used to be.’

‘You still haven’t said what you expect me to do.’

‘Why would I expect you to do anything? If you’ve got a guilty conscience it’s because you’re pursuing evil thoughts.’

‘I’m not in the mood for jokes.’

‘All right.’

It was an apology.

‘Look. You’re in a state worse than China. All these girls have ever been brought up to do is look after men.’

‘Why?’

‘It’ll keep.’

‘No. I want to know. Riba told me everything she knew. But I want to know why.’

‘They can make you better here, look after you like you’ve never imagined being looked after, better than the most spoiled-brat Materazzi mademoiselle you could imagine.’

‘Why?’

‘Have it your own way. I’ll tell you over lunch. You just lie back on the bed and we’ll eat.’ In a few minutes nuns with trays knocked and entered and began laying out the food on the huge sofa next to Henri. There was beef with German custard, a blancmange of signal crab with sugar lumps, fried chicken and a plate heaped high with the crispiest pork crackling dripping soft fat and foot-long doozle-dogs with tomato ketchup and yellow mustard sauce. There was caviar from Nigeria and champagne from the Ukraine. And then rosewater jellies mixed with curds to finish off.

While they ate, Cale took Vague Henri through the details of Picarbo’s manifesto.

When he’d finished asking questions Vague Henri was silent for a minute and then shook his head as if trying to shake something off.

‘And I thought Bosco was completely nafi. How can you be that mad and live?’

They both giggled, back to sharing their past again.

‘And the girls don’t know anything about this?’ said Vague Henri.

‘They think that we’ve been sent here to choose them as wives and that we really do have white horses and silver armour. No, really. They’re clever enough but they don’t know anything. All they’ve ever been taught is that men are like angels – brave and courageous and kind and noble and strong. Only now and then some men might get very angry because a devil makes them but that even if they hit them they have to be kind and say sorry and be nice and then the devil in them will go away and everything will be all right again.’

‘You didn’t try telling them the truth?’

‘I don’t know how. I thought you might have some ideas but you just listen to them and let them make you better first. You’ve never heard anything like the drivel they come out with. But they believe it – every word.’

‘I’m not going to do anything to them.’

‘They won’t mind.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Do what you want or don’t want. If they’re willing, why not? You could be dead in a few weeks and so could they if Bosco makes up his mind what to do with them. Live, eat and be happy for tomorrow we die – isn’t that what IdrisPukke said?’

‘Just because IdrisPukke said it doesn’t make it true.’

‘Have it your own way.’

So it was that Vague Henri was taken to the wet and dry room.


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