Paul Hoffman: The Left Hand of God

Nearly six hours later Bosco entered the locked room in which Cale had been confined. He was carrying two letters. He handed one of them to Cale. Cale read it without expression, apparently twice. Then Bosco offered him the second.

“She asked me, tearfully, to give this to you after we had taken you prisoner. It asks you to believe how hard it was to deliver you into my hands and to try and forgive her.”

Cale took the offered letter and threw it on the fire.

“I dreamt something wonderful,” said Cale. “Now I’m awake I’m angry at myself. Say what you have to say.”

Bosco sat down behind a table that made up the only other furniture in the room.

“Thirty years ago, when I went into the wilderness to fast and pray before I became a priest, the Hanged Redeemer’s mother, peace be upon her, appeared to me in three visions. In the first, she told me that God had waited in vain for mankind to repent for killing His son and had now despaired of its nature. The wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was continually evil. He repents that He had ever made him. In the second vision, she told me that God had said: ‘The end of all flesh is come before me; every living man and woman that I have made you will destroy from the face of the earth. When you have accomplished this the world will end, the saved will enter paradise, and men and women will exist no more.’ I asked her how it would be possible to do this, and she told me to fast and wait for a third and final vision. In the third and final vision, she brought with her a small boy carrying a hawthorn stick, and from the end of that stick dripped vinegar. ‘Look for this child, and when you see him, prepare him for his work. He is the left hand of God, also called the Angel of Death, and he will bring about all these things.’ ”

Throughout all this it seemed as if Bosco had become transfixed, as if he were not in a room in Memphis but back in the deserts of Fatima thirty years before, listening to the Mother of God. Then it was as if some light had been put out and he was back. He looked at Cale.

“As soon as I saw that boy brought into the Sanctuary ten years ago, I knew him.” He smiled at Cale in the strangest way, a smile of love and tenderness. “It was you.”

A week later a procession paused briefly in the keep. Among those on horseback were Lord Militant Redeemer Bosco and by his side was Cale. Among those gathered to watch them leave were Marshal Materazzi, Chancellor Vipond and such of his senior men who had survived the battle at Silbury Hill. Between them were two lines of Redeemer soldiers, there to make sure that the now free but unarmed Cale did nothing untoward. It suited Bosco for the time being to keep the Marshal where he was. However, he thought wiser of provoking Cale by having the girl present, and he had ordered her in person, much to her relief, to stay away from the official humiliation being handed out to her father and everyone else in Memphis. Instead she was to watch and listen from a nearby window. She needed no warning not to make her presence known. Despite his precautions, Bosco wondered if he had been wise to let Cale go unrestrained. Cale pulled his horse up and stared at the Marshal over the heads of the guards. Standing next to him, distraught, was Simon. Cale did not seem to be aware of him. When he began speaking, it was so softly he could barely be heard over the noise of the restless horses.

“I have a message for your daughter,” said Cale. “I am bound to her with cables that not even God can break. One day, if there is a soft breeze on her cheek, it may be my breath; one night, if the cool wind plays with her hair, it may be my shadow passing by.”

And with this terrible threat he faced forward and the procession started once more. In less than a minute they were gone. In her shady room Arbell Swan-Neck stood white and cold as alabaster.

Quickly and silently the Marshal and his people left to dwell on their mortification. As Vipond returned to his palazzo accompanied by Captain Albin, he turned to him and said quietly, “You know, Albin, the older I get, the more I believe that if love is to be judged by most of its visible effects, it looks more like hatred than friendship.”

Half a day later the procession had cleared the outer reaches of Memphis and turned toward the Scablands and the Sanctuary beyond. During this time Lord Militant Redeemer Bosco and Cale had not exchanged a single word.

From a small cloud of trees some distance from the road, Vague Henri, Kleist and IdrisPukke watched the procession pass out of sight. Then they began to follow.

Firstly, my thanks to Alex Clarke, my editor at Penguin, who has been a heroic champion of this book. Also thanks to Ben Sevier of Dutton, my American editor. They are a pleasure to work with. Thanks too to my agent, Anthony Goff, endlessly determined, and Alexandra Hoffman for her good sense. Without Lorraine Hedger’s uncanny guesswork while typing the illegible manuscript, it would have taken twice as long. Jeremy O’Grady was a reassuring long-stop. My gratitude also to the Rights Department at Penguin: Sarah Hunt-Cooke, Kate Brotherhood, Rachel Mills and Chantal Noel.

This book draws on endless bits and pieces of everything I have ever read or heard, from the Book of Judges to The Duchess of Malfi to a line from an old children’s film-too many to mention individually. Some borrowings are crucial: I am indebted to John Keegan’s brilliant The Face of Battle, and not just for his description and analysis of the Battle of Agincourt. Agincourt by Juliet Barker was immensely useful in its detail of the complex days leading up to the battle itself, as was Matthew Strickland and Robert Hardy’s The Great Warbow, from which I took precise details of the use of the bow and crossbow. For IdrisPukke’s philosophy of life, I stole heavily from Arthur Schopenhauer’s Essays and Aphorisms and On the Suffering of the World; for Chancellor Vipond’s, La Rochefoucauld ’s Maxims set the tone. Scattered here and there are lines from Robert Graves’s great translation of Homer, The Anger of Achilles. The letter on page 309 is based on one written by Sullivan Ballou in 1861. There are two or three descriptive sentences from Tolstoy near the end-good hunting.