The Last Four Things Read Free Page A

either side.
    Bosco ordered his men to make camp, though it was still early afternoon, and then turned to Cale and spoke to him directly for the second time.
    â€˜They’ll stay here. We have to go on. There’s something I need to show you. We should also get something straight. The only way back down this part of the mountain is through this pass. If you attempt to come back down on your own you know what will happen.’
    With this gently spoken warning he set off up through the pass and Cale followed. They climbed for thirty minutes, Cale always staying about ten yards behind his former master until they reached a shelf about twenty feet deep. To one side there was a simply constructed but beautifully made stone altar.
    â€˜That was where Jephthah kept his oath to the Lord and sacrificed his only daughter.’ His tone of voice was odd, not reverential at all.
    â€˜And I suppose,’ replied Cale, ‘that stain on the side there is supposed to be her blood. She must have been filled with strong stuff – you can still see it a thousand years after it was spilled halfway up a mountain.’
    â€˜With God all things are possible.’ They looked at each other for some time. ‘No one knows where he killed her. This altar was built for the benefit of the faithful, some of whom are permitted to come here on Bad Friday – a painter comes the day after their visit and paints it again so that there’s time for it to weather in for the following year.’
    â€˜So it’s not true.’
    â€˜What is truth?’ he said and did not wait for an answer.
    After two hours they were only some five hundred yards from the snow line and into the last climb before they could talk to God himself. But it was just here that Bosco turned aside and began to walk around the mountain parallel with the snow. Here the thin air made the going harder for all that they were no longer climbing. Cale’s head began to ache. As he followed Bosco around a small bluff he lost sight of him for a moment and when he made contact again almost knocked him over. Bosco had stopped and was looking with great intensity at a flat rock cantilevered out from the mountain like the abandoned first section of a bridge.
    â€˜This is the Great Jut where Satan tempted the Hanged Redeemer by offering him power over all the world.’ He turned to look at Cale. ‘I want you to come out there with me,’ he said, pointing at the end of the Jut.
    â€˜You first.’
    Bosco smiled. ‘I’m putting my life as much in your hands as you are in mine.’
    â€˜Not really,’ replied Cale, ‘given there are thirty guards below us with spiteful thoughts on their mind.’
    â€˜Fair enough. But do you think I’ve gone to all this trouble to try and throw you off a mountain?’
    â€˜I don’t care to think anything about you.’
    In the past Bosco would have beaten Cale severely for speaking to him like this. And Cale would have let him. It was then that Cale realized something, though he could not have said what it was exactly, about just how great was the change that had come over both of them in only a few months.
    â€˜If I say no?’
    â€˜I can’t make you and I won’t try.’
    â€˜But you’ll have me killed.’
    â€˜To be honest – no. But however great your hatred for me – something that gives me great pain – you must realize by now that you and I are bound together by unbreakable chains – I believe that’s the expression you used to Arbell Materazzi when we left Memphis.’
    Perhaps Bosco realized how very close he was to having his neck broken. If he did, he didn’t show it. But there was anxiety there, the anxiety, incomprehensible to Cale, of someone who deeply wants to be believed, to be understood, and fears that they will not. ‘Besides,’ added Bosco, ‘I have something to tell you about your