Paul Hoffman: The Left Hand of God

“I was looking for Simon Materazzi.”

“Well, it’s nothing to do with me. Now we’re going to blindfold you. Don’t be a pain about it.”

“What for?”

“Because I said so.”

In fact it was a sack, heavy and smelling of hops, the hessian so thick that it cut out almost as much sound as light.

Five hours later and he could sense the horse under him straining as the going suddenly became steep. Then through the sacking he could hear the hollow sound of horseshoes on wood. They were going through one of the three gates into Memphis. Despite the sacking, he expected to hear much more noise now that they were in the city, but though there were occasional muffled shouts, only the continued sense of going uphill indicated that they were heading for the keep. His anxiety over Arbell began to form a knot in his stomach.

At last they came to a halt.

“Take him down,” said Albin. Two men reached up on his left side and pulled him over, gently enough, then stood him on his feet.

“Albin,” said Cale from under the sacking, “take this off.”

“Sorry.”

The two men took him by either arm and pushed him forward. He heard a door open, then he sensed he was inside. He was led along what sounded like a corridor. Another door creaked open and again he was carefully pulled along. Within a few yards he was stopped. There was a pause and then the sack was pulled off his head.

A mixture of dirt in his eyes and having been in complete darkness for so many hours meant that he could not see at first. With his bound hands he rubbed his eyes free of the specks of hop dust and looked at the only two men in the hall. One he could tell immediately was IdrisPukke, gagged and with his hands tied-but as he recognized the other man standing beside him, a terrible surge of fear and anger made his heart miss a beat. It was the Lord Militant Redeemer Bosco.

After the first few seconds of shock and hatred, Cale felt like sinking to his knees and weeping like a child. And would have done but for the fact that hatred rescued him.

“And so, Cale,” said Bosco, “God’s will brings us back to where we began. Think about that while you gawp at me like a bad-tempered dog. What have all your anger and divagations brought you?”

“What’s happened to Arbell Materazzi?”

“Oh, she’s quite safe.”

Cale was unsure for all his deep shock whether to ask about Vague Henri and Kleist. He said nothing.

“Not concerned about your friends?” asked Bosco. “Redeemer,” he called out loudly as a door opened at the far end of the room and Vague Henri and Kleist, gagged and with hands tied, were led into the room.

There wasn’t a mark on them, although they were clearly terrified.

“There are a number of things I am about to tell you, Cale, and I would like to waste as little time as possible with conventional expressions of disbelief. Have I ever lied to you?” he asked.

He had beaten him savagely every week of his life and made him kill on five occasions, but now that he had been asked the question, he had to admit that Bosco had, as far as he was aware, never told him an ordinary lie.

“No.”

“Remember that as you listen to what I’m about to tell you. You must be sure that the importance of what I’m going to say lies far beyond such kinds of pettiness. And to make my good faith clear to you I am going to let your friends go, all three of them.”

“Prove it,” said Cale.

Bosco laughed. “In the past such a tone of voice would have proved painful.”

He held out his hand, and Redeemer Stape Roy handed him a thick leather-bound book. “This is the Testament of the Hanged Redeemer. ” Cale had never seen one before. Bosco placed the palm of his hand on the cover.

“I swear before God at the cost of my everlasting soul that the promises I make now and everything I say today is the truth and the whole truth and not anything but the truth.” He looked at Cale. “Are you satisfied?”

The mere fact that, among all the other atrocities Bosco had visited on him, perjury wasn’t one of them certainly didn’t prompt Cale into believing him. But an oath was of central importance to Bosco. And, besides, he had no choice.

“Yes,” said Cale.

Bosco turned to Redeemer Stape Roy. “Give them what they need, within reason, and a warrant of passage, then let them go.”

Stape Roy walked over to IdrisPukke, grabbed him by the arm and shoved him toward Vague Henri and Kleist. Then he pushed all three of them toward the door. Cale was reassured that Bosco might be telling the truth: his instructions not to give the three too much and the casual roughness of their treatment seemed genuine-anything more generous or less churlish would have been suspicious.

“What about Arbell Materazzi?”

Bosco smiled. “Why so determined to discover just how deluded you are about the world?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you. Though you must allow yourself to be gagged as well as bound and agree to stay behind that screen in the shadows there and make no fuss, no matter what you hear.”

“Why should I promise you anything?”

“In exchange for the life of your friends? That doesn’t seem unreasonable.”

Cale nodded, and Bosco gestured for one of his guards to take him behind the small screen at the back of the room. Just before he reached the screen, Cale turned back toward Bosco.

“How did you take the city?”

Bosco laughed, almost self-deprecatingly. “Easily and without a fight. Princeps sent news of the Fourth Army’s great victory to Port Erroll within three hours and ordered the fleet to withdraw and attack Memphis without delay. Here the entire population went into the most Godless funk. Fifty miles out the fleet saw a panic of ships heading away from Memphis. We simply landed without any fuss. Quite surprising, all in all. But very satisfying. Stay quietly back there and you will see and hear everything.”

With that Bosco waved him behind the screen. The guard took a gag out of his pocket and showed it to Cale.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard. I don’t mind which.” But Cale was anxious to see Arbell and did not resist. There was a pause of a few minutes, Bosco’s presence and the strangeness of his manner creating growing uneasiness in Cale. He watched as a table and three chairs were placed in the center of the room. Then the door opened and the Marshal and his daughter were shown in.

Cale did not know that it was possible to feel relief of such depth-a powerful, joyous surge of happiness. She was white and terrified but seemed unharmed, as did her father, though his eyes were gaunt and his face haggard. He looked twenty years older, and a sick twenty years at that.

“Sit down,” said Bosco softly.

“Kill me,” said the Marshal. “But I ask you in all humility to let my daughter live.”

“My intentions are far less bloody than you imagine,” said Bosco, still softly. “Sit down. I won’t ask you again.” This uneasy mixture of benevolence and menace cowed the two of them even further and they did as they were told.

“Before I begin, I want you to try to grasp that the requirements and zeals of those who serve the Hanged Redeemer are not to be understood by the likes of you. I neither want nor seek your understanding, but it is necessary for your sake to appreciate how things stand.” He nodded to one of the Redeemers, who pulled back the third chair, and then Bosco allowed himself to be seated. “Now I will be unequivocal. We are in complete control of Memphis and your army now consists of no more than two thousand trained soldiers, most of whom are our prisoners. Your empire, vast though it is, is already beginning to fall apart. You agree this is so?”