Clive Barker - Weave World

Some had a bitter sting:

‘The pestilence of families

Is not congenital disease

But feet that follow where the foot

That has proceeeded them was put.'

Others were fragments from poems which he'd either forgotten or never been taught in their entirety. One in particular kept coming back to him.

‘How I love the pie-bald horses! Best of all, the pie-bald horses!'

That was the closing lines of something, he presumed, but of what he couldn't remember.

There were plenty of other fragments. He recited the lines over and over as he drove, polishing his delivery, finding a new emphasis here, a fresh rhythm there.

There was no prompting from the back of his head; the poet was quite silent. Or was it that he and Mad Mooney were finally speaking with a single voice?

2

He crossed the border into Scotland about two-thirty in the morning and continued to drive North, the landscape becoming hillier and less populated as he drove. He was getting hungry, and his muscles were beginning to ache after so many hours of uninterrupted driving, but nothing short of Armageddon would have coaxed him to slow down or stop. With every mile he came nearer to Wonderland, in which a life too long delayed was waiting to be lived.

‘You were about to tell me

something, child-but you

left off before you began ‘

William Congreve The Old Bachelor

STRATEGY

Shadwell's army of deliverance consisted of three main battalions.

The first, and by far the largest, was the mass of the Prophet's followers, the converts whose fervour he had whipped to fanatical proportions, and whose devotion to him and to his promise of a new age knew no bounds. He had warned them that there would be bloodshed, and bloodshed they would have, much of it their own. But they were prepared for such sacrifice; indeed the wilder faction amongst them, chiefly Ye-me, the most hot-headed of the Families, were fairly itching to break some bones.

It was an enthusiasm Shadwell had already used - albeit discreetly - when occasional members of his congregation had called his preaching into question, and he was ready to use it again if there was any sign of softening in the ranks. He would of course do what he could to subdue the Fugue by rhetoric, but he didn't much fancy his chances. His followers had been easily duped: their lives in the Kingdom had so immersed them in half-truths that they were ready to believe any fiction if it was properly advertised. But the Seerkind who had remained in the Fugue would not be so easily misled. That was when the truncheons and the pistols would be called into play.

The second part of his army was made up of Hobart's confederates, choice members of the Squad Hobart had diligently prepared for a day of revolution that had never come. Shadwell had introduced them to the pleasures of his jacket, and they had all found something in the folds worth selling their souls for. Now they were his Elite, ready to defend his person to the death should circumstance demand.

The third and final battalion was less visible than the other two, but no less powerful for that. Its soldiers were the by-blows, the sons and daughters of the Magdalene: an unnumbered and unordered rabble whose resemblance to their fathers was usually remote, and whose natures ranged from the subtly lunatic to the beserk. Shadwell had made sure the sisters had kept their charges well hidden, as they were evidence of a corruption the Prophet could scarcely be associated with, but they were waiting, scrabbling at the veils Imma-colata had flung around them, ready for release should the campaign demand such terrors.

He had planned his invasion with the precision of a Napoleon.

The first phase, which he undertook within an hour of dawn, was to go to Capra's House, there to confront the Council of the Families before it had time to debate the situation. The approach was made as a triumphal march, with the Prophet's car, its smoked glass windows concealing the passengers from the eyes of the inquisitive, leading a convoy of a dozen vehicles. In the back of the car Shadwell sat with Immacolata at his side. As they drove he offered his condolences on the death of the Magdalene.

‘I'm most distressed ...' he said quietly. ‘... we've lost a valued ally.'

Immacolata said nothing.

Shadwell took a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit up. The cigarette, and the covetous way he had of smoking it, as if any moment it would be snatched from his lips, was utterly out of synch with the mask he wore.

‘I think we're both aware of how this changes things,' he said, his tone colourless.

‘What does it change?' she said. How he liked the unease that was plain on her face.

‘You're vulnerable,' he reminded her. ‘Now more than ever. That concerns me.'

‘Nothing's going to happen to me,' she insisted.

‘Oh but it might,' he said softly. ‘We don't know how much resistance we're going to meet. It might be wise if you withdrew from the Fugue entirely.'

‘No! I want to see them burn.'

‘Understandable,' Shadwell said. ‘But you're going to be a target. And if we lose you, we lose access to the Magdalene's children as well,'

Immacolata looked across at Shadwell. ‘Is that what this is about? You want the by-blows?'

‘Well... I think there's some tactical -'

‘Have them,' she interrupted. ‘Take them, they're yours. My gift to you. I don't want to be reminded of them. I despised her appetites,'

Shadwell offered a thin smile.

‘My thanks,' he said.

‘You're welcome to them. Just let me watch the fires, that's all I ask,'

‘Oh certainly. Absolutely,'

‘And I want the woman found. Suzanna. I want her found and given to me,'

‘She's yours,' said Shadwell, as though nothing were simpler. ‘One thing though. The children. Is there some particular word I use to bring them to me?'

There is,'

He drew on his cigarette. ‘I'd best have it,' he said. ‘As they're mine,'

‘Just call them by the names she gave them. That'll unleash them,'

‘And what are their names?' he said, reaching into his pocket for a pen.

He scribbled them on the back of the cigarette pack as he recited them, so as not to forget them. Then, the business concluded, they continued their drive in silence.

II

THE BURIAL PARTY

Suzanna and Cal's first duty was to locate Jerichau's body, which took fully half an hour. The landscape of the Fugue had long since invaded the place where she'd left him, and it was more by luck than system that they found him. Luck, and the sound of children; for Jerichau had not remained unaccompanied. Two women, and a half dozen of their offspring, from two years to seven or so, were standing (and playing) around the corpse.

‘Who is he?' one of the women wanted to know when they approached.

‘His name is Jerichau,' said Suzanna. ‘Was,' one of the children corrected her. ‘Was.'

Cal posed the inevitable, and delicate, question. ‘What happens to bodies here? I mean ... where do we take him?'

The woman grinned, displaying an impressive absence of teeth.

‘Leave him here,' she said. ‘He's not going to mind, is he? Bury him.'

She looked down lovingly on her smallest boy, who was naked and filthy, his hair full of leaves. ‘What do you think?' she asked him. He took his thumb from his mouth, and shouted: ‘Bury him!' - a chant which was immediately taken up by the other children. ‘Bury him! Bury him!' they yelled, and instantly one of them fell to her knees and began to dig at the earth like a mongrel in search of a bone.

‘Surely there must be some formalities,' Cal said.

‘Are you a Cuckoo then?' one of the mothers enquired.