Richard Beard - Acts of the Assassins

‘You look miserable.’

‘I live in a randomly brutal universe.’

‘We’ve done our job. Nothing more we could do.’

‘I wonder. Where do you think Baruch is now?’

‘In a bag in cold storage at John W. Varlow and Son.’

‘He changed his mind about death being the end. Baruch couldn’t stand the idea that Simon knew more about death than he did. He came to believe that the disciples had made a decisive discovery, one that changed everything.’

‘So now Baruch is chasing dead disciples in the afterlife?’ Claudia withdraws her hand. She can allow Gallio a day or two of vulnerability, considering the bloodbath he witnessed, but he shouldn’t fall apart. ‘This isn’t easy for me, either. I didn’t sign up to strap a man’s hips back together before he’d fit into a body bag. If you’re not thinking straight give the reason a name. Shock. Symptoms are confusion and energy deficit. First week of Speculator training.’

Cassius Gallio adds sugar to his tea and stirs, even though the tea is cold. One day he might even get around to drinking it.

‘Where’s Bartholomew?’

‘At the church. Where he usually is.’

‘Not a committed mourner, Bartholomew. You probably noticed. Hardly overcome with grief, is he?’

‘Let’s go back. We should pack.’

They have a twin room upstairs at the White Hart. Bartholomew has the next room along, a double. Claudia booked them in on the evening they arrived, when the pub’s other two rooms were taken by married ramblers and an agricultural products salesman. All three left Caistor first thing the next morning, after a blue-lit night disturbed by mayhem and murder. Two days later Gallio and Claudia are still in the twin. Gallio blames confusion and energy deficit. Claudia cites Valeria’s budget, and worries that Gallio might be scared of the dark. Between them they can easily justify the twin beds, and they confirm that this is a strictly professional arrangement by showing the utmost respect for each other’s privacy.

Gallio flops onto his single bed, lies on his back. Stomach, side. Back. He kicks off his shoes in the middle of the afternoon, pulls a pillow over his face.

‘We’re supposed to be packing. Cairo, remember? Matthew is doing whatever he does in Cairo. He’s at risk.’

‘I have this picture stuck in my head,’ Gallio says.

‘What?’

Gallio lifts up the pillow. ‘Baruch before he killed himself. The determined look in his eyes.’

On the table separating the beds is a novel Claudia pretends to read before sleeping. Gallio picks up the book, reads the premise on the back. Young Americans adrift in Spain, deft, very very funny. He wonders how she can relate to that, when here in England a disciple of Jesus was sawn in half.

‘I’m going to shower,’ she says.

‘Again?’

‘Then we should make a move. We can’t stay here for ever.’

She locks herself in the bathroom, though Gallio would like her to lie down next to him on his narrow single bed. He’d like that very much, though he wouldn’t know how to ask. He has spent a long time living with men, making sure to avoid sex except for that one misjudgement in Hamburg. He went back to the shoe shop the next afternoon, to apologise and to offer the girl money. She refused, said she liked him. He never saw her again.

Of course he’s shaken up, and he understands his reaction. He has seen death and he wants sex, suddenly alert to the only clock that matters, death then sex then death then sex then death sex death, one thing after another. He needs to fuck Claudia. He wants, needs, whatever, to push her head down into the sheets and to be in her. Not just now. He wanted it already last night and the night before and every night but he stayed where he was in his bed. He’s suffering from an instinctive reaction, an equalling out, and he recognises his impulse for what it is. Sex as a compensation, a consolation. Sex as the opposite of death.

He is, all the same, slightly ashamed of himself for wanting Claudia so fiercely. It reminds him that before he was civilised he was not. His people long ago and seemingly for ever lived in forests in Germany, until they were massacred in battle by an army with superior technology. Civilisation had arrived. Gallio’s stepfather, the general in charge, had offered to adopt the orphaned children of slaughtered enemy chieftains. He was full of human decency, after the battle was won.

But however young those children, the slate was never wiped entirely clean. Cassius Gallio can dream of matted blonde hair and double-edged hatchets. In his past, somewhere in the history that made him, a blue-eyed shaman pierces a chain through his tongue, and for years on end he drags a clutter of human skulls behind him. In days gone by, a long time ago, this must have seemed important. The shaman and the papery skulls and the firelight chant to Odin for victory in the upcoming battle.

They lost.

As an adult, a modern civilised man, Gallio almost believes that reason will prevail. Sometimes, though, the instinctive equations reassert themselves, and no rational argument will deny them. We should pray for victory in the battle. Sex is the opposite of death.

Claudia sits at the end of her bed wrapped in a hotel bath towel. A smaller towel is around her hair like a turban.

‘You haven’t moved.’

His eyes settle on her damp neck like fingers, then move across her reddened ears and along her jawline to her chin. This is so inconvenient for him, if he wants to be good.

‘I need to wash my hands.’

‘Again?’

Cassius Gallio goes to the bathroom and washes his hands. He comes back out, and in the last half-hour between them they have used three of the four guest-room towels provided, thus hastening the end of the world. Gallio can’t bring himself to care, not after the last few days. He lies on his side, watches Claudia inspect her toenails.

‘One more day,’ she says, ‘then we move on.’

She bumps herself up the bed and sits back against the headboard, picks up her book and puts on her reading glasses. Reads for a bit, looks across at him over the frames. ‘I was thinking. If you ever come to Rome there are places I could show you.’

‘I know Rome pretty well.’

‘Take your mind off the disciples.’ Claudia has given up on packing. If Gallio isn’t leaving today, neither is she. ‘The city changes. Changes all the time.’

‘But also stays the same.’

Gallio could fuck her now. Reach for her, exploit his instinct that life wins out over death. He’ll have to deceive her a little, pretend he likes her more than he does, that he’s always liked her, suggest that sex between them is therefore somehow inevitable, and it is right and good. His feelings for her have a past and a future, that’s the message to convey, even though he’s not sure what those feelings are.

He wonders if he ever loved his wife, or Valeria. If he did he loved them and he lost them, but he was young, and the earlier love is lost the less serious it is, like chickenpox. He moved on and he was lucky because losing love later, as a grown-up, can scar the victim for life. People can actually die.

He’d be a fool to fall in love now. Wanting Claudia is probably connected with Valeria, and with his younger self. He wishes he didn’t think so much.

Still, Gallio could fuck her now. He swings off the bed and waits until he’s sure his feet are making solid contact with the floor. Then he stands up. He locks his hands behind his neck and pushes his head back against them.

‘To work!’ he says. He flings out his arms. The disciples of Jesus have no monopoly on virtue.

They’re in Caistor the next day, and still they haven’t packed. Cassius Gallio has a pain in his left shoulder from the single bed, and at some point in his sleep he pulled out the stitches above his eye. He checks in the bathroom mirror, tugs out the one remaining stitch, and disinfects the seeping wound with aftershave. He is not entirely indifferent to the future.