Paul Hoffman - The Left Hand of God

“You kept me waiting!” said the High Redeemer, the voice distant but sharp.

“I came as soon as I could, Your Grace.” He was not believed, nor did he expect to be.

“When I summon you, Bosco, you drop everything instantly and damned quick.” He laughed. It was a particularly unpleasant sound that only, perhaps, Bosco in all the Sanctuary would not have been unnerved by. It was the sound of something dead, animated only by an intense malice and anger.

“What did you wish to see me about, Your Grace?” The High Redeemer stared at him for a moment.

“That Cale boy.”

“Yes, Your Grace?”

“He’s made a fool of you.”

“How so, Your Grace?”

“You had plans for him.”

“You know that I did, Your Grace.”

“He must be brought back.”

“You and I differ on nothing, Your Grace.”

“Brought back and scourged.”

“Of course, Your Grace.”

“Then hanged and quartered.”

Bosco did not respond at first.

“He murdered a Redeemer. He must become an Act of Faith.”

Bosco looked thoughtful for a moment.

“My investigations have made it clear that it was the two other acolytes who were responsible. It seems likely that they coerced Cale into leaving with them. They were armed; he was not. If this is true, then Cale should be punished merely as an example. The quartering, however, seems unnecessary to me. The others will do, given the fault is theirs.”

There was a snort of contempt that might have been mistaken for choking.

“Ha! Pity is nothing of kin to you, Bosco. This is just your vanity talking. It doesn’t matter whether Cale or these other two killed Picarbo. By God, I’ve half a mind to burn the entire dormitory along with them.”

The High Redeemer had allowed himself to become rather too excited and was now choking on his own spittle. He gestured toward a mug of water on his bedside table. Taking his time, Bosco handed it to him. He drank noisily. Finally, he handed back the now sloppy wet mug. Bosco replaced it on the table with a look of fine distaste.

Gradually the High Redeemer’s sucking breath began to slow and return to normal. The light of malevolence, however, had only increased.

“Tell me about this business with Picarbo.”

“Business, Your Grace?”

“Yes, business, Bosco, the business of the Lord of Discipline being found in his rooms with a disemboweled slut!”

“Ah,” said Bosco thoughtfully. “That business.”

“You think because I’m old and sick that I don’t know what’s going on here? Well, not for the first time, you’re wrong. Sick as I am, you still can’t get up early enough to catch me out, Bosco.”

“No one of any intelligence would underestimate your wisdom and experience, Your Grace, but…” He let out a regretful sigh. “I had hoped to spare you the revolting nature of what we found in Redeemer Picarbo’s rooms. It would be a pity if a reign as distinguished as your own should be overshadowed by something like this.”

“I’m too old for that flannel, Bosco. I want to know what he was doing with her. It wasn’t just fucking, was it?”

Even Bosco, a man apparently unmoved by anything, was unsettled by the use of the term. Such direct reference to the sex act was never heard, it usually being spoken of only using such circumlocutions as “beastliness” and “uglification”-though, even then, rarely.

“Perhaps his soul had gone bad. Evil is always at work, Your Grace. He had perhaps taken pleasure in the just punishments meted out to the acolytes. It has been known before, I think.”

The High Redeemer grunted. “How did he get hold of a girl out here?”

“As yet I have been unable to find out. But he had many keys. You and I alone would be permitted to ask questions of a Lord of Discipline. It will take time.”

“He couldn’t have done this without help. This could be about more than beastliness-it might be a heresy.”

“The thought had occurred to me, Your Grace. There are twenty of his cronies in isolation in the House of Special Purpose. The more senior deny-so far-that they knew anything, but the ordinary Redeemers admit they created a further cordon around the convent under Picarbo’s orders by sealing up farther layers of corridors so no one would suspect anything. The convent was already completely isolated from the Redeemers, after all. No one was ever supposed to see the brides’ faces. Picarbo disguised their activities in and out of the place by moving the kitchen and laundry used for higher Redeemers inside the cordon. Everything goes in and out by a great drum. Because Picarbo had the Lord of Vittles and the Master of the Laundry as part of his little set of heretics there was no problem drawing off food or anything else.”

“But we’re opening up the old corridors by the mile. Molloy would have found them sooner or later.”

“Unfortunately the Master of Reclamation was one of them.”

“My God! That sanctimonious pismire Molloy was helping turn the Sanctuary into a whorehouse?” The High Redeemer lay and gasped at the horrible enormity of it all. “We need a purging, we need Acts of Faith from here to the end of the year… we must disem-”

“Your Grace,” interrupted Bosco, “it is by no means clear that uglification was the purpose of this harem. I’m not sure it was a harem at all, more a place of isolation. From what I have been able to decipher from his writings, mad as they are, Picarbo was looking for something, something very specific.”

“What would he find in the bowels of some fat slut?”

“I can’t say as yet, Your Grace. Purging may be required, and a great deal of it, but we should wait until I’ve got to the bottom of this before we start lighting the candles to God.” Lighting candles to God had nothing to do with wax or wicks.

“You watch out, Bosco. You think that you’re the better for knowing things, but I know… ” He jabbed a finger at Bosco and raised his voice, “I KNOW that knowledge is the root of all evil. That bitch Eve wanted to know things and that was what brought sin and death down upon all of us.”

Bosco stood up and moved to the door.

“Redeemer Bosco!”

Bosco turned and looked at the shriveled old priest.

“When you bring Cale back here, he is to be executed. And I will issue an order to that effect today. And you forget about digging into that shit Picarbo’s debauchery. You cleanse everyone who had dealings with him. I don’t care if they might be innocent. We can’t take the chance of heresy-burn them and let God sort them out. The blameless will get a better reward of eternal life.”

An observer of the kind on whom nothing was lost might have seen the Lord Militant blink as if he had considered something and made a decision. But it might merely have been a trick of the lack of light. He stepped forward and bent down as if to plump up the pillows around the High Redeemer. But instead he took one of them and placed it carefully and firmly around his tiny old face, all of it done with such speed and so little fuss that it was only in the fraction of a second before the pillow closed over his mouth that the Lord High Redeemer realized the horror of what was happening.

Two minutes later Bosco emerged from the bedroom and saw the tall Redeemer instantly stand up to go into his master.

“He fell asleep while we were talking. Not like the High Redeemer at all. Perhaps you should take a look at him.”

Bosco had not only murdered the High Redeemer, he’d lied to him. He had not told him the true extent of Picarbo’s collection of young women or of his growing suspicions about the aims of the late Lord of Discipline’s disgusting experiments. There would need to be a period of assessment concerning what to do with the women, but in due course they would make an extremely useful pretext for his next move to take complete control of the Sanctuary and an object lesson for Cale on his return.