14
‘Only God and those girls could love you for yourself,’ said Cale to Vague Henri after two weeks of being handed from one set of girls to the next as if he were a wonderful prize. ‘The poor things just don’t know any better.’
‘All the more reason to enjoy it while it lasts.’
And there was no arguing with that. One night one of the girls who had drunk more wine that she was capable of holding had blabbed to Vague Henri that he was by far the girls’ favourite of the two boys. Obviously delighted, Vague Henri had demanded to be told more and, despite the scolding of her partner, the loquacious girl had happily spilled all the pearls. ‘Your friend is always either sad or angry,’ she complained. ‘Nothing we do really delights him, not like you. He can be such hard work. You know what we call him, some of us?’
‘Can’t you keep your big mouth shut for once,’ scolded her friend.
‘Shut up, you! We call him – we call him Vinegar Tom.’
‘You mustn’t be too hard on him,’ said Vague Henri, a little maudlin because he too had taken too much wine. ‘He has a broken heart.’
‘Really?’ said the girl and fell asleep. But the other girl, Vincenza, was a clever thing and, as was her smart practice, having hardly touched a drop questioned the loose-tongued Vague Henri and got the whole story out of him.
‘A bad girl,’ said Vincenza. ‘What a wicked thing to do.’
‘I used to like her,’ said a now sad Vague Henri. ‘Kleist never did.’
‘I think your friend Kleist was right not to like her.’
‘I don’t think Kleist liked anybody.’
Unknown of course to Vague Henri this, if it ever had been true, was certainly no longer the case. Kleist was now happily, not to say ecstatically, married, not that among the Klephts this was particularly complicated. It was a simple, even cursory, affair without the weeks of pointless feasting and ruinous expense, as Daisy’s father complacently pointed out, of the even humblest Musselman wedding. ‘What a performance! What on earth for?’
In fact the Klephts were always anxious to pick up news of Musselman weddings in the hope that those they couldn’t rob on their way to the ceremony they could rob on the way back. And it was during a particularly epic one of these even more fabulous than usual marriage celebrations that Kleist first went to work on behalf of his new relatives.
Realizing that large numbers of men would be away in one place for the duration, the Klephts launched a raid on Musselman territory and given the considerable nature of the opportunity they put more men into the raiding party than it was their usual habit to risk. Though carefully calculated, it turned out to be unwise. The Musselmen had spread the rumours of the great marriage solely as bait for the Klephts and having drawn them in had sprung the trap and surrounded them in the Bakah Valley, also with considerable skill and great cunning. Suveri had led a breakout from the valley at night and tried to lead the bulk of those who had survived the first day back to the mountains. It was a long way and a difficult one and he would certainly have died along with his seventy men if it had not been for Kleist. For the next three days the two hundred and fifty Musselmen, who had tried to follow with every intention of massacring them, were picked off by a sixteen- or possibly fifteen-year-old boy they never even saw. By the end of the third day Kleist had killed so many of them he had become sick of the slaughter and, much to his new father-in-law’s annoyance, just shot their horses from under them. But when the screams of the animals also became too much to bear he just fired warning shots. With such terrible losses and all their attempts to find their tormentor a failure, the Musselmen reluctantly turned back, taking their dead with them and leaving the victory to Kleist, who returned to the mountains both pleased with his work and also somewhat low at how easy it was to kill other human beings in such large numbers. If he did not stay down for long, neither, in a small but marked way, was he ever quite the same again. He knew it was a terrible thing to kill a man because he felt most strongly that he did not want to be killed himself. He had worked hard to stay alive even in the Sanctuary, a place where he now understood that life was not really worth living. So he knew he ought to feel worse than he did - even though he felt bad for a few days after killing so many. But something nagged at him, perhaps the conscience the Redeemers were always blathering on about but never showed any signs of possessing themselves. But it was not strong enough to be remorse or guilt, just strong enough to tell him that the Redeemers had made their mark on him, not the one they intended but one that would never go away. He did wonder from time to time what he would have been like if he had never gone into the Sanctuary. Utterly different that was for sure. But what had been done couldn’t be undone so there wasn’t much point worrying about it. And, by and large, he didn’t.