Paul Hoffman - The Left Hand of God

“He didn’t,” she said, laughing.

“He certainly did. He doesn’t have much respect for my sensitive side.”

“Do you have one?”

“I don’t know. Do you think it would be a good thing?”

“I think it would be a wonderful thing.”

“Then I’ll try-though I don’t know how. Perhaps you could tell me when I’m behaving like a hooligan and tell me off.”

“I’d be too frightened,” she said, her eyelids fluttering slowly up and down.

He laughed. “I know everyone thinks I’m no more good-natured than a polecat, but I draw the line at killing someone just for telling me off about being a thug.”

“You’re much more than that.” Her eyes still fluttered.

“But still a thug, all the same.”

“Now you’re being oversensitive again.”

“You see. You’ve told me off and I haven’t killed anyone-and I’ll keep trying to do better.”

She smiled and he laughed, and yet another step was taken deeper into the chambers of her baffled heart.

Kleist was teaching Simon and Koolhaus how to fletch an arrow with goose feathers. This was Simon’s third failed effort, and he was so furious he broke the arrow and threw the two pieces across the room. Kleist looked at him calmly and signaled to Koolhaus to translate.

“Do that again, Simon, and you’ll get my boot up your shiv.”

“Shiv?” asked Koolhaus, wanting to show his distaste for such coarseness.

“You’re so clever, work it out for yourself.”

“Guess what I’ve found in the cellar under here?” said Vague Henri, coming into the room as if someone had given him jam on his bread as well as butter.

“How, in God’s name,” said Kleist not looking up from the table, “am I supposed to guess what you’ve found in the cellar?”

Vague Henri refused to allow his excitement to be diminished. “Come and look.” His joy was so obvious that now Kleist was curious. Henri led them down to the floor under the palazzo and along an increasingly dark corridor to a small door that he opened with difficulty. Once in, a high-up casement window gave them all the light they needed.

“I was talking to one of the old soldiers, who was telling me all his war stories-interesting stuff, as it happens-and he mentioned that about five years ago he’d been on a scouting duty in the Scablands looking for Gurriers and they came across a Redeemer juggernaut that’d got separated from the main wagon train. There were only a couple of Redeemers standing about, so they told them to get lost and confiscated the juggernaut.” He went over to a tarpaulin and swept it to one side. Underneath was a huge collection of relics: holy gibbets of various sizes in wood and metal, statues of the Hanged Redeemer’s Holy Sister, the blackened toes and fingers of various martyrs preserved in small, elaborately decorated containers-one even had a nose in it, at least that was what Vague Henri thought it was; after seven hundred years it was hard to tell. There was Saint Stephen of Hungary’s right forearm and also a perfectly preserved heart.

Koolhaus looked at Vague Henri. “What is all this? I don’t understand.”

Vague Henri held up a small bottle three-quarters filled and read the label: “This is ‘Oil of sanctity that dripped from the coffin of Saint Walburga.’ ”

Kleist had lost patience and the pile of relics had stirred up bad memories. “Tell me you didn’t bring us down here for this.”

“No.” He walked over to a smaller tarp and this time whisked it away like the climax to the magician’s reveal they had seen in the palazzo upstairs the week before.

Kleist laughed. “Well, now at least there’s some point to you.”

Lying on the ground was an assortment of light and heavy crossbows. Vague Henri picked up one of them with a rack-and-pinion winding system. “Look, an arbalest. I bet you’d get something special from this. And this…” He picked up a small crossbow with what looked like a box on top. “I think this is a repeater. I’ve heard about them but never seen one.”

“It looks like a kid’s toy.”

“We’ll see once I can get some bolts made. None of them have got any bolts. The Materazzi probably left them behind-didn’t know what they were.”

Simon made a few finger passes at Koolhaus.

“He’s worried about what you said about Henri.”

Kleist looked puzzled. “I didn’t say anything.”

“About there not being a point to him. He wants you to apologize or you’ll feel his boot up your shiv.”

It was easy for Simon not to understand the way the boys spoke to each other. Before he met them, he was used only to outright insult or outright toadying. Kleist looked at Simon. Koolhaus’s fingers raced as he spoke.

“Vague Henri is what the Materazzi call…” He lost the word and began searching. “A cecchino… a hit man. The crossbow is all he ever uses.”

It was two hours later before Cale turned up in the guardroom, and the news of the crossbows immediately put him in a bad mood.

“Did you tell Simon and Koolhaus to keep it callow?”

“Why would we need to do that?” said Kleist.

“Because,” replied Cale, now really irritable, “I can’t see any good reasons for anyone knowing Henri is a sniper.”

“And the bad reason?”

“What they don’t know can’t hurt us. The less they know about us the better.”

“That’s rich coming from someone who made such an exhibition of themselves in the summer garden,” said Kleist.

“Look, Cale,” said Henri, “how could I have got the bows out or done anything with them without someone finding out? I’ll need to get bolts made and I need to practice.”

By then it was too late in any case. Two days later the three of them were summoned to see Captain Albin. He seemed amused as much as anything.

“You don’t seem like the murderous type, Henri.”

“I’m not a murderer, I’m just a sniper.”

“Jonathan Koolhaus said you were a cecchino.”

“You don’t want to listen to Koolhaus.”

“So you’re a sniper who doesn’t kill people. What’s the point of you, then?”

Vague Henri, aggrieved, refused to rise to the bait, but the upshot of it all was that Albin demanded a demonstration.

“I’ve heard about this contraption. I’d like to see one at work.”

“It’s not one contraption; there are six of them.”

“Very well, six. Will the Field of Dreams be all right?”

“How long is it?”

“Three hundred yards or so.”

“No.”

“Then what do you need?”

“About six hundred.”

Albin laughed. “You’re telling me you can hit something at six hundred yards with these things.”

“Only with one of them.”

Albin looked doubtful. “I suppose we could close off the western edge of the Royal Park. Five days, then?”

“I’ll need eight. I’ve got to get some bolts made and all the bows need to be restrung.”

“Very well.” He looked at Kleist. “Koolhaus tells me you’re an archer.”

“He’s got a big gob, that Koolhaus.”

“Not withstanding the size of his gob, is it true?”

“Better than you’ve ever seen.”

“Then we’ll have a demo from you as well. How about you, Cale, do you have any more party tricks you’ve been keeping under your top hat?”

Eight days later a small gathering of Materazzi generals, the Marshal, who had invited himself, and Vipond met behind large canvas screens usually used for herding deer past society women who wanted to do a little hunting. Albin, as relentlessly cautious as Cale, had decided it might be better to keep the demonstration quiet. He could not have said why, but the three boys were always hiding something and therefore unpredictable. And there was something about the boy Cale that always promised havoc. Best to be on the safe side of sorry.