18


Within two weeks, by means of a traveller in medicines whose drugs were, if you were lucky, completely useless, Kleist and his heavily pregnant wife had news of the great events in the Golan.

There had been a great battle between the Redeemers and the Laconics – terrible slaughter had been done and the army of the Redeemers had been destroyed almost to the last man. Needless to say this delighted Kleist, although not for long. He nearly swallowed his tongue when he heard the story, much embroidered for the mountain yokels, of how the day had been rescued by a mere boy, and that this boy, Cale, was now being hailed as the Angel of Death capable of raising his own spirit a mile high.

‘So this friend of yours,’ said Daisy later when they were lying in bed as she rested her aching back and terrible piles and tried to untangle the garbled news they’d heard.

‘He’s not my friend ...’

‘This friend of yours, he is not the Angel of Death capable of raising his spirit a mile high?’

‘Oh, he’s the Angel of Death all right – wherever Cale goes a funeral follows. He’s got funerals in his brain.’

‘But he can’t conjure spirits?’

‘No.’

‘Pity – a friend who could conjure spirits a mile high would be pretty useful.’

‘Well, he can’t. And I told you, wherever he goes a lot of screaming goes with him. That’s why I was trying to put as much distance between him and me as I could. If I hadn’t met you I’d be on the far side of the moon if I knew how to get there.’

‘Oh,’ she sighed, full of sorrow. ‘My poor arsehole.’

She said nothing further until the pain had subsided then handed him a jar with the cream the medicaster had sold her. ‘Put it on for me.’

‘What?’

‘Put it on for me.’

He looked at her.

‘You do it.’

‘I’m too fat. I can’t reach that far. It’s easier for you to do it.’

‘Can’t you get your sister?’

‘Don’t be disgusting. Get on with it.’

He knew well enough by now when she was not to be argued with. It was not that he lacked medical skill. The Redeemers were famously good at tending injuries on account of the fact that people were always trying to kill them. Treating piles was not an injury as set out in the Manifesto Catholico, their medical handbook, but at least being gentle with injuries was not unknown to him. Still there was a sharp intake of breath from the unfortunate girl.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s all right.’

After a few more seconds he was finished and the pain in Daisy’s bottom began to subside.

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Liar. I’ll bet you didn’t think you’d be doing this a year ago.’ Now Daisy just throbbed and she breathed a long sigh of relief. ‘Lie down with me.’ She waited as he did as he was told. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

‘What?’

‘Promise you won’t sulk?’

‘Why don’t you just get on with it?’

‘You’re going on too many robberies. It’s too dangerous.’

‘Believe me I know what risk is – and I don’t take them. I never get within five hundred yards of anything sharp.’

‘I do believe you – about you staying safe. But we’re going on twice as many raids as we used to because of you.’

‘And?’

‘The Musselmen aren’t going to just let that go on. There are Musselmen mercenaries who know how to fight better than we do.’

‘Anyone can fight better than you do. Dropping a rock on someone’s head when they’re not looking only gets you so far.’

‘There you are then. Everyone’s got greedy. It can’t last.’

‘Your father – he’ll have a stroke if I refuse to go. And I’ll be as popular as a case of piles if I refuse to help.’

‘You understand what I mean, though?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll talk to my father. I just wanted to talk to you first.’

‘And if I’d said you couldn’t?’

She looked at him, more astonished than annoyed.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

It was said of the tragically unfortunate Sharon of Tunis that she was doomed always to tell the truth but never to be believed. The Klephts may not have been hostile to women who showed a will of their own but they were no more enthusiastic about opinions they did not care to hear than people generally are. At first her father’s irritation was solely directed at Daisy, who was angrily told to keep her big nose out of matters that had nothing to do with her. Affronted by his father-in-law’s abrupt manner of speaking to his wife, Kleist defended her reasons and so brought on the general accusation that this was his idea all along and that he was using his wife as a shield for opinions that were really his, a strategy so common among the Klephts it was known as turning the cat in the pan. He was accused of laziness, cowardice and ingratitude, normally qualities that the Klephts positively admired when they were the source of them. No one except Daisy’s sister and a few of her friends would speak to them and it was made clear that if Kleist refused to help there would be trouble in the shape of a vote – foregone – to ostracize them both.

The pair were faced with either leaving in the cold weather, with Daisy heavily pregnant and nowhere to go, or staying and doing as they were told. If there was a choice Kleist didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t giving in that bothered him. Daisy burned with indignation and let her father know it but Kleist was more used to a lifetime of hostile but silent obedience. Still, it was a glum pair who backed down.

More news about Cale also made him uneasy. It was only partly that it stirred up unwelcome feelings of guilt – not about Cale but about Vague Henri – but also that it raised the ghost of something buried even deeper, so much so that he had never quite faced it directly. While Vague Henri had never once taken seriously the idea that there might be something unhuman about Cale’s talent for killing, the garbled rumours that had made it to the Quantocks, however ridiculous he would normally have held them to be, stretched a nerve in Kleist’s soul. From a distance the idea of Cale as a kind of living ghost going around the place causing supernatural catastrophes made a kind of ominous sense. He’d had his chance to put oceans between himself and Cale but that chance was gone. The itch along his spine was too much like the one you were supposed to get if someone walked over your grave.

‘As my grandmother never used to say,’ observed Daisy, ‘people believe what they want to believe.’

‘You’re not wrong there,’ said Kleist to his young wife.


Загрузка...