The Programme

CHAPTER NINE-1

CHAPTER NINEThe New York State Supreme Court was in the City Hall neighbourhood, a few blocks north of Wall Street, not a long journey from the SoHo Chapter House to which Matthew and Carey and Emily had returned from New Orleans the night before the hearing.

They met their own lawyers in the corridor.

“’Morning,” Carey said. “We’ve got someone for you to meet.”

Nahum drew out Amanda from behind Matthew. Carey said:

“This is the real plaintiff, Amanda Kroger.”

“Pleased to meet you, Amanda.” Danny Trask - their lead lawyer - held out a hand, grinning. Lawyers do love to win. They do not care how.

Cassandra had not gone to New York. She had planned a Special Mass at Hammer Reach, in which only her closest confidants would participate: a trial of another kind. Matthew was their defence in the real one.

“I have never asked for money or other property from any member.”

“You’ve never refused it?”

“There have been occasions when I’ve felt that money was being used to buy acceptance in place of earning it with commitment.”

“Can you give me any examples?”

“By date, no. I have nothing to do with financial management. We have a member who is an accountant. My wife would deal with any questions. She might ask me if she should accept.”

“Your wife would deal with it? What are we talking about here, the housekeeping?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m talking about building a home that people haven’t been able to find elsewhere. That’s a full-time job, Mr Kennedy.”

“You had s*x with Amanda Kroger, didn’t you?”

“I don’t think that’s your business, Mr Kennedy.”

“Instruct to answer, Your Honour?”

Matthew answered without waiting:

“I was very close to Amanda; we were lovers at one time, yes.”

“While your wife looked after The Programme?”

“We all looked after The Programme, Mr Kennedy. My relations with Amanda were not kept secret from my wife.”

“So what have we got here? A group for free s*x? Or just for you to pick and choose?”

“A group with a lot of love in it, Mr Kennedy; something most of our members missed in their lives beforehand; sometimes, that would mean physical love, yes. If you sleep with a woman, Mr Kennedy, does she give you all her money?”

“It was more than sleeping with members, though, wasn’t it, Mr Crane? We’re talking about how they came to want to sleep with you.”

“There’s no accounting for taste.”

Even the judge was amused; the audience laughed aloud.

“It doesn’t answer the question, Mr Crane.”

“For the life of me, Your Honour,” Trask half-rose. “I can’t see what the question is.”

“I’ll rephrase it, Your Honour, so even Mr Trask can understand it.”

Carey had been permitted to sit at the counsel table, introduced to the court as The Programme’s English lawyer; she glanced around to the public seats, sought out Emily, winked at her, won a comforting smile back.

“Would Ms Kroger have given you money but for The Programme?”

“I would have thought quite obviously not.”

“Or the tenancy of Hammer Reach?”

“I assume the same is true.”

“So what made her do it is The Programme, right?”

“She did it; she was - is - a member of The Programme. I don’t think that means The Programme made her do it.”

“You’ve accepted she wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been?”

“I don’t put money in a charity box that isn’t there, Mr Kennedy.”

“The Programme wasn’t there without you, was it, Mr Crane?”

“Nor Christianity without Christ.”

“Are you Christ, Mr Crane? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Mr Kennedy’s twisting Mr Crane’s words, Your Honour.” Trask.

“Withdrawn. Mr Crane, all I’m trying to get at, really, is this: it was The Programme that caused Ms Kroger to give you her money, right?”

“Ms Kroger gave the money to The Programme.”

“Which you sent Mr Eccles to collect?”

“Ms Kroger asked Father Nahum to take it to me.”

“Did you know about the money beforehand?”

“I knew she had money and that she was increasingly committed to The Programme. Did I think: well, that means she will give us her money? No. Did I think, in general terms, that there was money amongst our members, which would help us develop? Of course I did; that is one of the ways we have managed to survive and grow.”

“I’m curious, Mr Crane: how many members of The Programme have you slept with?”

Trask objected.

“This is none of Mr Kennedy’s business, Your Honour.”

“Goes to Mr Crane’s domination of The Programme, Your Honour.”

“I’ll allow it.”

“Mr Crane?”

“I couldn’t tell you. If you’re asking if I sleep with all the members, the answer is no. You already know I wasn’t sleeping only with my wife.”

“Where does it go, The Programme, Mr Crane?” Kennedy held up a hand to forestall the objection. “No, that wasn’t my question. I just find myself wondering, if people abandon one set of values for another, don’t they become kind of dependent on, well, whatever, whoever those new values come from?”

“It all depends on the person, Mr Kennedy.”

“Calls for speculation, Your Honour,” Trask interrupted.

The judge mumbled:

“That seems to be the area, doesn’t it, Mr Trask?”

Caleb is seated cross-legged on a bale of hay draped with a silk cloth on which the symbol of The Programme has been painted. He is naked. Beside him, on the floor, there is a bowl of oil in which stands a candle.

They are in the basement of the house at Hammer Reach, the large meditation area onto which the punishment cells open. Each of the cell-doors is closed, two of them with keys in their locks. There is silence from within them. The floor is covered with coconut matting.

Caleb is at one end of the basement; The Seer reclines at the other on a bed along the wall: against the middle of the bed is a much more substantial cushion, like the one in The Temple in London.

She is - unusually - wearing a white dress like The Programme’s other female members, although - unlike their uniforms - hers is short, not reaching her knees. Instead of wearing the silver chain on which herProgramme symbol hands around her neck, however, she has extended it to use it as a loose belt, the symbol itself dangling suggestively between her legs. She is bare-legged, barefoot. There is no member present - of either gender - who is not actively thinking of her s*x.

The basement is lit only by candles, the rest in brass holders tied to long nails hammered into the walls. A gong hangs from the low ceiling like a disembodied head ready to look them in the eye. There are a dozen members present, not including the principal ceremonial protagonists. Between two of the cell doors, Christopher sits on a small cushion, his erect back to the wall, the master of ceremonies. He is wearing a loose, black robe. Opposite him, Paimon lounges between the other two cell doors, dressed wholly in red: red jeans, red sweater, red scarf around his neck, red socks, red sneakers. The reds do not match, but they are all bright, all promise blood.

The other members are - like The Seer - in traditional white. They sit upright on cushions or sprawl on the ground. Micah up from New York and Sister Gloria - recently arrived from England - lean casually against one another for support. There are others who were members in England, though several of even those are American. Some are from Caleb’s private unit of Initiates, now promoted Messengers, three slight youths, smaller than Caleb and not so stocky: Brother Reuben - Jacob’s eldest son by his first wife, who had used Bilhah, his father’s own mistress; Brother Lemuel - the mysterious king of whom nothing was known; Brother Ehud - who massacred ten thousand Moabites.

Sister Mary had been Mary when she joined, then Aholah the unfaithful; recently she had reverted to her given name, leaving unexplained whether it was a movement back or forwards onto the highest plane of all. Sister Pascale, likewise, was a given name. Sister Diana vied with Helen in Boston - as they had in London - for the title of Chapter belle; unlike Helen, though, she was openly vain about her looks.

These three long-time friends sit in a group. What they are about to do is something that would have been unthinkable in London, in Matthew’sProgramme. They are scared. The Programme has kept them well for years. The Seer has asked them to join her, to experiment. She told them she wanted familiars, loyalists even. It was not a game that Matthew would play, she said with a giggle, but that did not mean it was wrong. It was part of the voyage that he had put her in command of - part of the purpose in coming to America; time to explore the extremes.

They are scared but they are excited; they make a pact to go down the road together; if one pulls back, so would they all.

Those who had not been members in England are the elite of the new members. They have shown a natural gift. They include the only black members of The Programme. Either side of thirty, they bore Biblical names from birth Brothers Jeroboam and Jeremiah - given them by their father, the preacher of a Harlem fringe church with an undercurrent of Voudon, jailed for stealing from his congregation, dead from a heart attack on his third day inside.

The two Jays, as they quickly came to be called in The Programme, had an already established taste for loud worship, black magic, s****l frenzy and mind control. They fit perfectly into Cassandra’s image of how The Programme should develop.

Finally, a couple of Boston locals, one of them a woman friend of Leah’s, the other a young man who wandered into the Coffee Lounge one afternoon shortly after it opened and sat in silence without food or drink until it was ready to close. When they came to ask him to leave, he said simply:

“No.”

They had accepted him without more, not even the usual medical tests. His name was Lee. Leah’s friend was Karen, recently released from an addiction unit, her place in college lost, shunned by her parents, broke, terrified she would fall back into drugs, her headlong dive into the life and language of The Programme was as logical as it felt natural.

Caleb chanted his own version of an early magic spell:

“’Hail, lover of power, as he spits on the angels!

“’Hail, Adonai! Hail, Jehova! Hail, Satan!

“’Hail he who has beheld the mask of his father in pain!"’

The Seer intoned:

“This is the new beginning that we came to America for. This is the time when words alone are not enough, this is an exploration of energies of which others are too frightened to do more than pay lip service - even some of our brothers and sisters in The Programme. I shall make you into soldiers, into an army: I shall make you into the army of God and Satan.”

She calls out:

“Anthony, can you hear me?”

From behind a cell door, a choked voice answers hesitantly:

“I am one, Seer.”

“We are many,” the members respond automatically.

“Leah, can you hear me?”

From within another cell, Leah replies, firmly and with evident joy:

“I am one, Seer.”

“We are many,” the members reply in harmony.

Paimon rises, steps into their middle, takes a small, brass mallet from his pocket, strikes the gong once and says:

“I am Paimon. I obey only Lucifer. Tonight we shall bring into our midst the goddess of love,” he smiles at Diana.“We shall bring her into our midst to show that love can heal. Tonight we shall heal our brother Anthony, and we shall heal him with love. Can you hear me, Anthony?”

“I am one, Paimon,” the voice trembles from behind the cell door.

“We are many,” the members reply.

Paimon gestures and Diana rises and comes towards him. None of this has been rehearsed. They are making ritual on the run. It comes easily. There have been years of Masses and Meditations within The Programme, and exhortations to share with one another their darkest impulses. For Matthew, there it stopped: he worshipped the capacity to realise oneself, leaving individuals to work out for themselves how far they wanted to take its enactment. For The Seer, that was the step short of ultimate control that had weakened Matthew and left him vulnerable.

Diana peels her dress over her head, stands naked before Paimon. She is unashamed: some of the men have seen her naked before, and - soon after arrival in Boston - she had accompanied Cassandra to New York, found herself sharing first a hotel room and then her bed. She is a full-bodied woman. She touches Paimon, fondles him through his trousers, strokes him until he reaches across her and strikes repeatedly on the gong, faster and more frenziedly until, suddenly, he stops and jerks away unspent.