The Crippled Angel (12 page)

Friday 24th May 1381

—iii—

E
mma blinked, and smiled, for she recognised him, but did not otherwise fuss. Too much had happened already this night, and she was too close to her own death to be bothered overmuch by the King of England’s entrance into her mean chamber.

Bolingbroke paused by Mary long enough to lay a hand on her shoulder and nod a greeting, then walked to Emma’s bedside to stand by Neville.

“This is Mistress Emma Hawkins,” Neville said softly, his gaze remaining on Emma’s face. Then he raised his eyes to Bolingbroke. “Your queen is come to aid the Londoners in their horror, your grace, and she is here to witness Emma’s passing into—” he stopped, unsure of what she might be passing into. Heaven as guarded by the angels, certainly not, and ever more certainly not the angels’ construction of hell.

“Her passing into love,” said Bolingbroke, and, leaning down a little, touched Emma’s swollen face. Boils and pustules now disfigured it, blowing up the flesh about her mouth and eyes.

“Thank you,” whispered Emma, and Bolingbroke nodded, then moved away. He whispered something to Culpeper, who vanished, returning a few minutes later with several more stools he’d purloined from the dwelling next door.

Neville rose from the bed and helped Culpeper arrange them about the confined space. Mary moved to a stool at the head of Emma’s bed, Margaret sat on the bed itself beside Emma, Jocelyn with her, while Bolingbroke, Neville, and a now resigned Culpeper sat on several stools arranged a little back and about the bed.

Mary and Margaret took turns wiping Emma’s face with damp cloths, while Jocelyn held her mother’s hand and silently wept.

Time passed.

“You came quickly,” Neville eventually murmured to Bolingbroke.

“I was on my way from the Tower when I met your men-at-arms approaching the bridge,” Bolingbroke replied.

Neville raised his eyebrows in silent query.

“Whittington and I,” said Bolingbroke, “thought to walk the streets of London. We could not bear to think that the Londoners suffered while we waited out the pestilence locked in the silence of the Tower.”

“You are not afraid?”

“Of the pestilence? Nay. It cannot touch us.” Bolingbroke’s steady pale grey eyes caught Neville’s brown ones. “Not my brothers and sisters of the angel-children. This is a pestilence designed to punish the ordinary men and women who supported me. The louder they cheered, the more violently they die.” He looked back to Emma. She’d drunk the potion that Margaret had fed her drop by drop, but even so she still moaned. “The pestilence also serves as a means to turn the people against me. It is not a good omen with which to begin a reign, Tom.”

Neville thought of the horrors God had visited on the Egyptian king and his people in order to force him to free Moses and the Israelites. “Sweet Jesu,” he whispered, “what else might we expect?”

Now Bolingbroke had turned his piercing eyes back to Neville. “I don’t know, Tom. It was a question I was about to ask
you.
”

Neville jerked his eyes away, studying Emma.
Jesu, these were ordinary men and women, doing the best they could in their daily travails. And for this God has lashed them with His disgusting pestilential vengeance?
Then Neville jerked slightly on his stool as a revelation—it was too powerful to be called a thought—surged through him.
God and his angels, and their Church on earth, were nothing but vehicles of hate and fear and vengeance. The demons, the angel-children, embraced Christ’s message of love.

Emma moaned, louder now, and Mary leaned forward to add her hand to that of Jocelyn’s as it held Emma’s. “Your agony will ease soon,” she whispered.

Emma opened her eyes—mere slits now between her swollen lids. “Mary,” she whispered, repeating what she’d said when she’d first realised Mary was in her chamber. “Blessed Mary!”

Mary shifted uncomfortably on her stool, a faint flush of embarrassment on her cheeks. “Her mind wanders,” she said to Margaret, who was looking at her with an odd expression in her eyes. “The liquor is so strong.”

“Maybe,” murmured Margaret, remembering the strange things that Mary herself had said while under its influence.

Emma now freed her hand from her daughter’s, and gripped Mary’s hand tightly. She twisted her head on her pillow so she could stare Mary directly in the face.

“Mary, Mary,” she said. “What you have lost you will find again.”

“Emma, I have lost nothing, I want for nothing—”

“Save your husband’s love,” Emma croaked. “Never mind, sweet Mary, Blessed Mary, it shall be yours again soon.”

Now Mary’s flush deepened, and she studiously avoided looking at Bolingbroke. “Emma—”

“You have loved, you are loved, and you will be loved,” said Emma, and then she died with nothing more dramatic than a long, comfortable sigh.

There was a lengthy silence, eventually broken by Jocelyn, who began to cry anew. Margaret gathered her into her arms, comforting her.

But she kept her eyes on Mary, sitting straight and still on her stool.

“We will wash her, and make her clean,” Mary said. “And then we will have her conveyed to a churchyard where she shall be buried.”

“Mary,” Bolingbroke said, rising from his stool. “This is not a task you should be engaged in. I can find—”

“No, Hal. I would like to do this for Emma. It will not take long, and it will be no effort.”

“Mary,” Bolingbroke said in a stronger voice, “I cannot allow it. You have already exposed yourself far too much to the pestilence, and I will
not
have you handling this woman’s noxious corpse!”

“I am dying anyway,” Mary said in a matter-of-fact tone, “and whether it be from the black imp eating me within, or the black pestilence that will swell me without, is neither here nor there.”

“Mary—”

“I can do good
here
, Hal, not cloistered up in some silken chamber. If nothing else I can bring comfort to the dying. I can let them know that their queen cares about them, and suffers alongside them in their extremity.”

“It is the same reason you are here, Hal,” Neville put in quietly. “London cannot be left to suffer alone. And Mary has Margaret and myself to care for her. When we see that she needs to rest, then she
will
rest. When we see that she needs to eat, then she
will
eat. And when we see that she needs to—”

“Then she
will
do it,” Mary finished for him, with a smile. “Hal, please, do not worry about me. If you wish I will go to one of the hospitals, and do what I can there, rather than wander the streets.”

Bolingbroke looked at her, knowing that if the hospitals were filled with the victims of the pestilence then they might be more dangerous than the streets.

But then, did she not say she was dying anyway? Who was he to gainsay her
?

He nodded tersely. “Very well. Tom, Margaret, I charge you with her care. Keep Culpeper close by you at all times, and if at any time it appears necessary, then you escort my queen to the Tower…no matter how she protests.”

Everyone nodded agreeably, even Culpeper, who looked resigned to the prospect of spending the next hours, or perhaps days, couched with his queen inside some pestilence-riddled hospital.

“Come, Margaret, Jocelyn,” Mary said. “Gather together some water and some towels, for we have Emma to see to.”

Bolingbroke watched for a brief moment, then turned to Neville. “Keep her safe,” he said, then left the room. Neville heard footsteps outside, then hooves as Bolingbroke and his escort rode away.

“I will wait in the outer chamber with Culpeper,” he said to Margaret. “For this ritual is women’s business.”

Much later, when the women were done, and bearers arrived from St Mary-le-Bow church to escort Emma Hawkins’ body to the churchyard, Mary finally consented to allow Margaret and Neville, Jocelyn close behind, to help her outside.

As they stepped into the tiny courtyard, they halted in amazement. Some forty or fifty people—ordinary Londoners—had crowded into the confined space.

“What is this?” said Neville.

The crowd parted a little, and Dick Whittington stepped forth. “One of Emma Hawkins’ neighbours saw our queen enter her lodgings,” he said, “and word spread. My queen, I speak for all these good people here, and for all Londoners, in thanking you for your mercy and goodness.”

And he dropped to one knee, sweeping his cap off his head as he did so.

One by one the other people in the courtyard did likewise, and as Mary moved slowly towards her donkey, many reached out and touched the hem of her gown.

“Beloved lady,” they whispered.

Sunday 26th May 1381

—i—

F
or three days the Dog of Pestilence stalked London, striking down innocent and sinner alike, leaving thousands to perish alone huddled in gutters or slumped in darkened alleyways. The stench of ripe decay hung like a pall over the city as muffled church bells pealed an incessant mournful toll and masked and cloaked men walked the streets, escorting creaking carts laden with the dead to the death pits dug in orchards and gardens within the city walls. In some churchyards the ground level rose two feet or more as the soil absorbed scores and scores of freshly swollen and ripening corpses; some crypts were filled to the ceiling with bodies; some wells had to be closed, as body fluids from over-packed graveyards seeped into them.

Scavenging dogs and pigs scrambled over the humped soil of the churchyards, digging with feet and snouts for the food so close beneath.

Church wardens could shoo them off, but they returned, along with the ravening crows, as soon as the wardens turned their backs.

The city gates were closed and locked. No one was allowed in or out.

The city’s population gradually sank beneath the soil.

Mary based herself at a hastily established hospital within the guildhall.

The guildhall’s internal spaces were given over to row after row of low, wide and commodious beds, each accommodating two or three victims of the pestilence. Nuns and monks moved among the rows, doing what they could for the desperate souls writhing and tossing in agony. Mary, with Jocelyn almost constantly at her side, and Margaret, Neville and Culpeper helped as best they could. Even Culpeper forgot his airs and distaste as he pierced buboes, lanced arms and legs, and trickled potions down throats swollen with pustules and fever.

Neville did his best when he saw the opportunity, offering comfort to the dying and aiding here and there by feeding fluids to those who could take them, but mostly he was concerned with Mary. He made sure she slept and rested regularly, encouraged her to eat broths and morsels to keep up her strength, and fed her small sips of Culpeper’s liquor whenever he thought the shadows of pain behind her eyes grew too dense. Faced with so much suffering, Mary was disinclined to pamper her own pain, and so Neville often had to fight to make her sip some of the liquor. Those times when he managed to get her to take enough of it that she slipped into a sleep were occasions he counted as small victories.

Sunday evening was one such victory. Mary had been on her feet for hours, moving from bed to bed, and in the end Neville almost had to hold her down and force the liquor down her throat. But eventually she took it, and consented to lie down on the bed that Neville and Margaret had caused to be made up for her in a small alcove.

Margaret and Jocelyn, exhausted, lay down on pallets beside her, and within minutes all three had slipped into a deep sleep.

Satisfied, Neville sank down to the floor himself. He leaned against the wall, relishing the coolness of the stone as it seeped through his clothes, and rested his head back. He did not mean to sleep, for the women needed to be watched, but within heartbeats his eyes slowly closed, and moments after that his chin sank down to his chest, and a low snore rumbled from his throat.

Neville jerked awake. What had happened? Something was different…something wrong…he turned his head. Mary, Margaret and Jocelyn still slept. He looked back to what he could see of the hall.

No one moved.

Neville blinked, coming to his senses.

No one moved? Someone was always moving…the nuns, a monk, a physician, or the porters come to drag away yet another victim.

But now no one moved.

Neville rose to his feet as silently as he could, again glancing at the sleeping women to satisfy himself that they were alive.

Then he looked back to the hall, taking the few steps to the edge of the alcove and looking up and down the hall’s length.

Rows upon rows of beds, filled with the writhing, tossing ill.

But no one moved among the beds. No nuns, no monks, no porters, no weeping, wailing family members come to farewell their loved ones.

An eerie silence hung over the hall. The people on the beds moved, but they made no sound.

Strange, for normally their moaning and weeping filled every hour of the day.

And the light was different. The guildhall was lit from windows high in the walls, and this natural light was augmented with torches and lamps. Now the windows were dark, for evening had fallen, but the torches still guttered in their sconces, and the lamps still glowed.

Over and above this, though, shone a silvery light.

A most unearthly light.

Neville moved forward a few paces, coming to a stop in one of the aisles.

The sick twisted to either side of him, their eyes staring, their mouths gaping in agony, their hands clutching at bed covers.

Neville paid them no heed. He looked over his shoulder, again satisfying himself that Mary, Margaret and Jocelyn remained safe.

When he turned his head back, there was a man standing in the now open doorway at the far end of the hall. A bright, silvery light shone from behind him, so Neville could make out no features, but he knew instantly who it was.

Archangel Michael.

The archangel slowly stepped forward. He was different from how Neville had ever seen him previously. Normally the archangel hid the majority of his features inside a great golden light. Now that light was gone, and the archangel strode forth in what Neville instinctively knew was his natural form.

He was incredibly beautiful. Heavenly, as only an angel could be.

His naked body was slim but well-muscled, and glimmered with a faint silvery air. The hair on his head, in his armpits and at his groin was glittering white and tightly curled. His skin glowed with the faintest undertone of pink. His face…his face was both majestic and sensual at the same moment. Beautifully proportioned angles and planes framed a well-shaped, full-lipped mouth, straight nose, and deep, black eyes.

He was wingless.

The archangel strode close to Neville, then stopped. A smile played about his lips.

“I have come to take you into the Field of Angels,” he said. “What mortals call the Kingdom of Heaven.”