Odds and Gods (16 page)

Twelve priests with reeking censers scuttled out from the shadows and hit the deck, pineal glands pumping, brains clamouring, What on earth does he mean, remember Joppa? As soon as they were in place, the second section scrambled forward, dragging behind them an enormous sled-mounted bell.

‘Nice work,’ snapped the Monsignor. ‘Red Section stand by, and -
candles
.’

On all four sides of the courtyard, enormous spotlights snapped on, drenching the ancient stones with photons. At precisely the same moment, the chainsaws screamed through the last few millimetres of the tailgate, which fell out into the courtyard with a tinny clang. The censers, launched with unerring aim, sailed through the air into the back of the lorry, filling the confined space with thick billows of scented smoke. The bell boomed.

‘Doing good, guys,’ O’Rourke muttered. ‘Now, in there with the book, and . . .’

His lips froze. Damn. Damn. There’s always something, isn’t there?

‘Listen up, guys,’ he said, as casually as he could. ‘Anybody out there got a spare bible?’

 

Inside the body of the lorry, the situation wasn’t good. By the time Osiris had recovered from the effects of an unexpected lungful of incense and had tumbled to what was going on, it had almost been too late. Absolute chaos, he reflected, absolutely typical. Still, what the hell do you expect from a generation that believes that the Earth revolves around the sun?

He rallied his forces, which had been reduced to a manageable size by a snatch squad of PVC-cassocked priests who had knocked out Kurt Lundqvist with a weighted crucifix and whisked him away. Admittedly, the man had been trying to help; but elbow room inside the lorry had been limited at the best of times, and Lundqvist rolling around firing his gun and lobbing stun grenades had taken up rather more of it than his net usefulness warranted. Someone would no doubt get him back in due course. When the time was right.

‘Carl,’ he shouted. ‘Fetch a tyre iron.’

‘This,’ Pan coughed, fanning incense out of his eyes, ‘is ludicrous. Why don’t we just turn them all into woodlice and be done with it?’

Osiris shook his head. ‘A bit out of touch, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘No can do, ever since we all signed the Ravenna Convention.’

Pan blinked. ‘The what?’

‘The Ravenna Convention.’ Osiris ducked to avoid a hand-thrown rosary. ‘Part of the handover deal when we packed it all in. Basically it says that the Christian mob can push us about all they like and we can do bugger all about it.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘Wasn’t my idea,’ Osiris replied. He reached up, caught a censer in mid-flight and threw it back. ‘It was the Roman lot, I seem to remember, always quarrelling among themselves, reckoned they needed some sort of peace-keeping force once they retired, to stop them cutting each other’s throats in the TV room and shoving laxatives in the Sanatogen.’ He gave Pan a meaningful look.

‘Nothing to do with me,’ Pan replied. ‘Never heard of it, in fact. Certainly never signed anything.’ His face brightened. ‘Which means, surely, I can change them into anything I like and nobody can touch me for it.’

‘You,’ Osiris replied, ‘no. Me, yes. If you so much as transform a hair of their heads, then I’m mythology. But not,’ he added grimly, ‘before I turn you into a sewer god. Understood?’

‘You wouldn’t?’

‘It’s a dirty, rotten job,’ Osiris replied, ‘but someone’s got to do it.’

‘Fine.’ Pan sighed. ‘So what are we going to do now?’

‘That’s what I need the tyre iron for. Thanks, Carl. Break open those crates, will you?’

‘Can I help?’ Sandra, who had spent the last ten minutes sleeping peacefully after a direct hit on the side of the head from a hassock, crawled to the wheel-arch and crouched down behind a crate. It was at times like this, she felt, when the battle is raging all around and the menfolk are battling desperately for mere survival, that you wish you’d brought your knitting.

‘I expect so,’ Osiris replied. ‘When did you last eat anything?’

Sandra considered. ‘I had a packet of crisps on the ferry,’ she replied, ‘and a Mars bar and an apple a couple of hours after that. I’m farnished,’ she added.

‘Fine,’ said Osiris, as Carl reduced the nearest packing case to matchwood with a well-aimed blow of the tyre iron. ‘Have a prune.’

 

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

From behind the curtain there was a faint snap, as the priest lit a Lucky Strike. ‘Yeah, sure,’ he said wearily. ‘Okay, let’s hear it. And what trivial misdemeanour is bothering us today?’

‘Um.’ The penitent hesitated. ‘Well, I missed confession yesterday.’

‘Big deal.’ The priest yawned. ‘You didn’t have anything to confess, right? C’mon, you must be able to do better than that.’

‘Well . . .’ There was a pause, during which the priest drew down a lungful of smoke and coughed savagely. ‘I also harboured uncharitable thoughts about Brother Justinian.’

‘You harboured uncharitable thoughts against Brother Justinian.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Well, yes. I suppose so.’

‘You guys, you make me want to puke, you know that? Sins? You don’t know sins from
nothing
. Where I come from, now, we could teach you wimps a thing or two about sinning.’

‘Er . . .’

‘Where I come from . . .’ the priest paused, hawked mightily and spat, ringing a spittoon somewhere on his side of the curtain like a gigantic gong. ‘Where I come from,’ he continued, ‘we wouldn’t give you the snot from our noses for anything less than a double aggravated rape. And you come hassling me with goddamn uncharitable thoughts. Get outa here, will you?’

There was a long, puzzled silence; then the penitent said, ‘Shall I say three Hail Marys?’

‘Hey.’ The priest clicked his tongue. ‘I get this feeling,’ he said, ‘that you’re gonna say them no matter what I tell you, so basically yeah, go for it, do your karma. Now get . . . Jesus H. Christ, man, what was
that
?’

As the shock waves of the tremor died away, the priest ripped aside the curtains of the confessional and sprinted away down the cloister towards the presumed source of the noise, scattering popcorn as he went.

About thirty seconds later he turned a corner into the small courtyard by the goods entrance and stopped dead in his tracks, as if he’d just run straight into a transparent breeze-block wall.

‘Holy shit!’ he whispered. Not entirely without justification.

He saw, in the eerie glow of blue flares and bright white floods, a lorry in the middle of the yard, ringed by monks crouched down behind such cover as they could find. From the back of the van emanated a succession of scintillating and extremely colourful sparks and forks of lightning, which arced and buzzed their way round the yard before earthing themselves back into the van. By way of return fire, the monks were lobbing in smoking censers, lighted candles and handbells. Two rather more worldly figures on an adjoining balcony were blazing away with automatic pistols, although to no perceptible effect.There was a stifling odour of sanctity and sulphur; and, from inside the lorry, audible even above the sundry bangs and crashes, the sound of steadily chomping jaws, punctuated by the occasional rending belch.

‘Hey,’ breathed the priest, as the penitent scurried up and ducked down beside him, ‘this is
real
, you know? Sure, back home you don’t go out the vestry door without your can of Mace and your shiv, but this is something else, you know?’ He laughed for sheer joy. ‘Man,’ he breathed, ‘this is better than
Ghostbusters
.’

Two monks wheeled in a supermarket trolley laden with the biggest bible the penitent had ever seen, under cover of three Augustinian canons with perspex riot shields. A particularly flamboyant sparkle whizzed through the air, splattered against a shield, and dissolved into a floral tribute of green and orange cinders. Two monks ran up and doused the flames.

‘Support group,’ crackled a bullhorn, ‘deploy the holy water cannon. Come on, guys, move it.’

A platform of monks darted off into the shadows and returned with one of the Papal fork-lifts from the goods entrance (painted bright yellow and emblazoned with
In hic signo vinces
stencilled on the wings). On the forks was an enormous contraption like an outsize fire extinguisher, out of which led a hundred yards of black rubber hose. Two of the monks contrived to tangle their feet in it and fall over. A pale lilac sparkle soared through the air in a graceful parabola and lit on the roof of the forklift, which promptly vanished from sight in a retina-engraving flurry of colours.

‘C’mon, guys, this is sloppy,’ snorted the bullhorn. ‘Blue section, give cover. Purple section, deploy the book.’

With cries of ‘Geronimo!’, ‘Yee-haaah!’ and ‘Blessed be the name of St Teresa of Avila, whose day this is’, parties of monks wheeled the trolley forward under the cover of huge asbestos screens. All around, handbells clanged, candles flared. It was, the priest remarked to the penitent, like Bloody Septuagesima all over again.

Inside the lorry, the atmosphere was tense; and, of course, thick as cream cheese with incense from the censers. Pan, with a handkerchief over his face and a barricade of smashed crates affording some slight cover, was shooting coloured lightning from his fingertips and doing his best to dodge flying handbells at the same time. Behind him, Osiris, Sandra and Carl huddled round a heap of empty tins and chewed grimly.

‘That’s it,’ Sandra groaned through a full mouth, ‘I can’t eat another one, I’m sorry. You’ll just have to leave me.’

Osiris said nothing - his mouth was stuffed so full his lips could scarcely meet - but instead grabbed a can, slit the top off with his thumbnail and thrust it at her. She winced and took it.

They were eating prunes.

And, of course, spitting out the stones into an upended crate, which by now was three-quarters full. The floor of the lorry was six inches deep in empty tins, and there was syrup everywhere.

‘Are you jokers nearly done?’ Pan yelled over his shoulder. ‘There’s no way I can keep this up for much longer.’

‘Tinker, tailor, soldier . . .’

‘Stay with it,’ Osiris mumbled back. ‘Just a few more dozen should do it, if only you can . . .’

‘. . . Sailor, rich man, poor man . . .’

Osiris turned his head and stared. ‘Carl,’ he said. ‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’

‘Beggarman,’ replied Carl, looking up. ‘Eating prunes, like you said. Thief.’

‘Yes, fine, but what’s all this soldier sailor stuff? Have you gone completely—?’

‘It’s what you say when you eat prunes.’

‘Is it? Why?’

‘Dunno.’ Carl considered for a moment, his jaws moving. ‘Brings you luck, I s’pose.’

‘Does it?’

‘It’s s’posed to, I s’pose.’

Osiris thought about it. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘can’t do any harm, I guess. Chartered surveyor, inspector of taxes, research physicist . . .’ He paused, ejected a mouthful of stones into the crate, and wiped a torrent of juice off his chin. ‘Management consultant, systems co-ordinator . . .’

‘It’s a shame,’ Sandra observed, ‘there isn’t any custard. My mum always does lots of hot custard with prunes.’

‘Computer software designer, trainee account executive, there, that’ll have to do.’ Osiris spat out the last few stones, took a deep breath and drew the crate towards him. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘This is what—’

‘Builder, milkman, postman, bookie’s runner . . .’

‘This is what we have to do.’

The monks had finally succeeded in manhandling the trolley with the book in it right up to the tailgate of the lorry. Not without heavy losses: seven of their number were ambling aimlessly round the courtyard clothed from head to foot in bright blue fire, bumping into corners and singing quietly to themselves. Another dozen lay on their backs on the flagstones, glowing alarmingly and giggling at the moon.

‘Okay, you’re doing great, guys,’ rasped the bullhorn. ‘On my command, open the book.’

And then there was a horrible moment as the whole courtyard seemed to fill with a bright green flare, as handfuls of prunestones flew out of the lorry into the air. A split second later they came down, rattling on the flags, bouncing and skittering. And there they lay.

A monk, who was on fatigues for a week for dropping a loaded chalice on the sergeant-major’s foot, stared at the stones and whimpered. Bloody tourists, he thought, who exactly do they think is going to have to sweep that lot up?

Crack.

One prunestone, which had chanced to fall into a shallow pool of fizzing blue light, twitched sharply. Out of one side a tiny green shoot nuzzled its way out, groped with a tendril and touched down on the courtyard floor. A second later, it wasn’t alone.

‘Come
on
,’ Osiris muttered under his breath. ‘What the hell’s keeping you?’

It all happened in a fraction of a second. There was a fusillade of tiny cracks, a scurrying of prunestone shells, a filthy smell . . .