The Crippled Angel (27 page)

Thursday 15th August 1381

—ii—

N
eville sidestepped, and began to laugh. It was weak at first, but then it turned into the full-blown hilarity of true humour.

“An angel!” he said, now laughing so hard he had to rest his hands on his thighs. “An angel! An
angel
!”

Bolingbroke had stopped, his hands slowly lowering to his sides, his face wreathed in confusion at Neville’s reaction. “You did not know?”

Neville lifted one hand to wipe tears of laughter from his eyes. “No, I did not know, although I think the signs had been there for me to see for months, if not years. An angel. Oh, Lord Jesus Christ…an
angel
!’

He went off into another gale of laughter, then abruptly sank down into a chair that, fortuitously, sat right behind him. “An angel, an angel…” he muttered, trying to bring his laughter under control.

He finally managed to regain some measure of sobriety, and looked up at Bolingbroke, still standing, regarding him with absolute bewilderment.

“It changes nothing,” Neville said. “Nothing.”

“But…”

“I am not your enemy, Hal. I have never been. And if I am an angel…well, then I am a most crippled one.”

“Crippled?”

“Crippled by love, Hal, as Jesus is.”

Bolingbroke’s face creased even more. “Jesus is…”

“Sweet Jesu is an angel as well. Engendered by the combined will of the angels.” Neville paused. “Sweet Lord,” he murmured, “what my poor mother must have gone through, to have been visited by the combined will of the angels.”

Then he stood up. “You must excuse me, Hal. I have some words to pass with my wife, I think.”

And then he was gone, leaving Bolingbroke still standing, still bewildered, staring after him.

Margaret stood in a trancelike fugue, staring at her hands as they dipped in and out of the soapy water in the large basin on the table before her…in and out…in and out. All she had been doing this morning was wash out linens dirtied during the care of Mary. Bedgowns, flannels, small linen squares to drape dampened over Mary’s brow, pillow covers, sheets, undergarments, towels…

In and out…in and out…wring and drape over the drying rack. Pick up next piece to wash. In and out…in and out…

Mary, she hoped, was asleep in her bed. Margaret had given her an extra dose of Culpeper’s liquor an hour ago when she’d heard Mary wake moaning from a nap. Margaret had followed up Culpeper’s herbal with a little of her own power, rubbed gently into Margaret’s hands.

She hoped it helped…but little seemed to help Mary now. The growth in her womb had clearly spread so deep into the woman’s bones that every movement threatened to break her apart. Already her left arm was broken, the bones refusing to heal, and every time Margaret aided Mary’s other ladies to turn her over, or to wash her, or to lift her, she feared they might snap Mary’s spine, or neck.

Mary weighed less than the eight-year-old Jocelyn now. Her body was virtually fleshless, her skin alternately yellow or grey, depending on whether it was morning light or evening light which bathed her. Her hair was dank and lifeless, falling out in great chunks.

The sweat that poured out of her during her night fevers stank of death.

Yet through all this, through all her pain and suffering, Mary’s temper was invariably sweet, her thankfulness for what Margaret and her other ladies did for her genuine.

Margaret picked up another piece of soiled linen, glancing at Mary as she did so. The queen’s bed was set against the window on the far wall of the chamber from where Mary could see into the gardens whenever she felt well enough to do so.

Right now, however, she appeared deeply asleep. Her head lolled to one side on the pillow, her hands rested open and relaxed on the light coverlet.

A small speck of dribble had dried and crusted in one corner of her mouth, and Margaret supposed she ought to wipe it away, but to do so would be to waken Mary, and that Margaret did not want.

She dipped the linen into the soapy water and began washing it. Mary’s other ladies were in the chamber next door, sleeping away some of their exhaustion, garnered while tending Mary through a sleepless night. Jocelyn lay with them. She’d sat by Mary’s bedside during the long night, singing sweet ballads in her youthful voice, keeping Mary’s mind blessedly detached from the agony of her flesh.

Jocelyn was a gift from whatever benign benevolency thought occasionally to watch over Mary, for her sunny temperament and honeyed voice kept Mary at peace through many a long hour.

Margaret sighed, slipping deeper into her fugue. She was tired, but these linens needed to be done, and their doing kept her from tossing restlessly on her pallet in the chamber with the other ladies.

Thoughts of Tom, and of what he was, had kept her awake for many a long night.

Those nights when Mary dismissed her from her service to lie beside Tom were agony, for she wondered at what point Tom would turn on her, and strike her down with angelic fury.

Christ Lord, they had thought they could turn Tom to their way of seeing and understanding. How foolish of them. How blind.

“Sweet Jesu,” she whispered, “I had loved him so much.”

“Then why cease?” whispered Neville’s voice, and strong arms wrapped themselves about her waist, pulling her back against his body.

Margaret stifled a shriek, but could not stop herself going rigid with fright.

“I have just come from Hal,” Neville continued in a low voice, his lips against her right ear. “Hal made me see myself for what I am.”

He stopped, and Margaret knew he expected her to say something. She tried to glance towards Mary to see if Tom’s entrance had wakened her, but Neville swung her to the right a fraction, towards the drying rack festooned with damp laundry, just enough that Margaret could not see Mary at all.

“An angel,” she said, her voice laced with venom.

“An angel,” he repeated, and she was stunned to hear the suppressed amusement in his voice. “Ah, Margaret, my love. I did not suddenly ‘become’ an angel, but have been one all my life. Unknowing—I only understood it just now when Hal, brimming with fury, told me—but an angel nevertheless.”

His arms tightened about her, pulling her very tight against his body. She could feel him, feel his warmth and strength through his clothes, feel him move against her.

“No wonder I was such a bigoted crusader as a Dominican friar.” Now he could not help a small laugh escaping—it felt like a soft brush against her ear and cheek. “No wonder Archangel Michael kept calling me ‘Beloved’.
No wonder he believed in me so much, even when it seemed as though I strayed into the path of the demons. But he should have been more concerned, because I strayed too far. You crippled me, Margaret. You corrupted me beyond knowing, when you made me love you.”

He began to move from leg to leg, slowly, gently, as if rocking to some silent tune. As he moved, he forced her to move with him until they both rocked from side to side, slowly, gently.

“I still don’t think that the angels have any idea. They think I remain pure. Untouched. Unloved.”

“But—” Margaret managed.

“But
what
? Margaret, do you remember what I said to you that night in Kenilworth? That night when I confessed my love to you.”

“You said many things to me that night.”

“Aye, that I did. Well, do you remember what I said when you taxed me with the contention that I could not afford to love you, because when the time came for the choice, I would choose mankind’s salvation before you.”

“I remember,” she said in a low voice.

“And what did I reply to that?”

“That when the time came, you would allow love to make the choice for you.”

“Aye,” he whispered, so softly that she had to strain to hear him, even though he was close. “Love killed the cold pious man I had been…that had been the angel within me.”

His arms about her waist relaxed, and he turned her about to face him. “Jesus is an angel, too, Margaret. But do you fear him? Nay, of course not. He has loved also, and that broke apart the angel within him.” Neville grinned, the expression on his face reminding Margaret very much of that sweet long ago night at Kenilworth. “We were both most vilely crippled. Perhaps because we were tainted from birth.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means,” came Mary’s weak voice from her bed, “that both Jesus and he were born of human mothers.”
Margaret swung towards Mary, pulling herself half free from Neville’s hold. “
You knew?
”

“Not of this last, no. But of many things.”

Margaret looked between Mary and Neville. “She
knew
?” she said to her husband.

“I told Mary during the time of the pestilence in London of the nature of the battle that consumes the angels and their children,” Neville said. “Mary has been my confidante in many things.”

“And I not?” Margaret said softly.

Neville led her stiff and unyielding towards Mary, where he sat down carefully on Mary’s bed, pulling Margaret against him.

“Mary has no stake in this matter,” he said. “She has not tried to pull me one way or the other. And,” he looked to Mary as if silently seeking her permission for what he was about to say next. He seemed to receive it, for he went on, “Mary’s mind and soul have the clarity of near death. I can say to her what I can say to no other.
But
,” his hands about Margaret’s waist pulled her tense body down to his lap, “I cannot say to her what I now say to you. That you are my love, and my wife, and the mother of my children, and that you come before all others in my life. I love Mary, but not as a man loves a woman. Although,” now he turned and winked mischievously at Mary, “had I not been so tied by love to my wife I might have been tempted to battle Hal to death in the tourneying field for her hand in marriage.”

To his relief both women laughed. Margaret, particularly, relaxed, finally allowing some of her jealousy for Mary to slip away.
He had told her he loved her in front of Mary, confirmed their bonds before Mary…But he confided in Mary when he has not confided in me.

“Margaret,” Neville said softly, “when it comes to the choice, and Christ knows it will be soon, I swear before you and on the lives of our children that I
will
allow love to make the decision for me, angel blood or no angel blood.
My loyalty and desires are with mankind, not the deformed, loveless beasts that inhabit heaven. I can give you no more assurance than that.”

“So you will choose in my favour?” Margaret asked.

Neville suppressed an irritated sigh. “I will allow love to make the decision for me, Meg. Love alone.”

And may Jesus aid me to rid myself of that dark irk which still clutters my conscience. Because if it does not go, Margaret, then I know not what I will do…

Margaret nodded, smiled a little, and rose. “I will fetch a damp cloth to wash your face, madam,” she said to Mary, and walked over to the drying rack.

Mary watched her go, then, once she was far enough away, whispered to Neville: “You have not told her Christ walks again on earth. That you freed him from the cross in the Chapel of St John.”

Neville shook his head. “He does not want her to know, Mary. You know that.”

She nodded, but said nothing, for then Margaret returned.

Thursday 15th August 1381

—iii—

N
eville lay, curled about Margaret, more asleep than awake. They’d made love this night, and it had gone well, even if Neville had sensed (and sensed that Margaret did, also) a distance between them. They’d embraced, and done what was needed to achieve their sexual union, and had then talked softly and tenderly, speaking words of love.

But still that distance.

Neville remembered the last time he and Margaret had attempted to make love, when Margaret had said bitterly that he would not have pulled away from her had she been Mary. He wondered if what she had said had any truth in it, and then dismissed the thought. He’d never thought of, nor regarded, Mary in sexual terms. He could not imagine making love to her, even if she had been healthy. Margaret was wrong to be so jealous of her. Mary had done no harm, and could not possibly do any.

Neville drifted further into sleep, only barely conscious of the darkened chamber about them. Then, just as he was about to tip over into the dark cup of unconsciousness, his nose twitched, as if irritated by some cloying scent.

He murmured, and shifted, rubbing at his nose briefly with the back of his hand.

He drifted back into sleep.

Again, the heavy, syrupy scent, and this time Neville had to stifle a sneeze.

He blinked, rubbing his nose again, and finally opened his eyes.

As he did so, the room exploded in golden light.

He stood, shuddering, naked, amid the brittle, false flowers of the Field of the Angels. About him circled the entire fraternity of the angels. Their bodies glowed a marbled silver, their eyes a hard obsidian black. They moved slowly, their circle some four or five angels deep, their eyes still on him, never leaving him, trapping him.

About their feet they had shattered the fragile multi-coloured flowers into a hard-trodden track of crystallised fragments.

“Hail, brother,” said one, stepping forward out of his circling comrades. It was Michael, the angels’ emissary to Neville.

Neville did not reply. He watched Michael carefully, his eyes occasionally flickering to the thick circle of angels moving about them.

“You have discovered the truth about your heritage,” Michael said. He shrugged slightly. “We thought you’d realise it sooner.”

Still Neville did not answer. He was freezing, his flesh dimpling, and he had to fight to keep his arms relaxed at his side rather than wrapping them about himself in an attempt to get warm.

Michael smiled, and as he did so the entire assembly of angels smiled: cold, malicious, and very, very certain.

“We have always been sure of you,” Michael said. “We did not make the same mistake with you as we did with Christ.”

“And what was that?” Neville said softly. He was shivering now, and feeling nauseated.

“We have always wanted to ensure the complete enslavement of mankind to our will,” said another archangel who stepped out of the ring of circling angels to stand at Michael’s shoulder, and Neville knew that it was Gabriel.

“We have been working towards this since the dawn of time itself,” Gabriel continued. He saw the question forming on Neville’s face, and answered it before he had a chance to voice it. “We have always been,” Gabriel said. “Always a part of creation, always gaining our sustenance from the adoration of lesser beings. But relying on adoration from such capricious creatures as mortal men has ever been a chancy thing. We need to enslave them completely. But completing the process of enslavement necessitated one of our kind physically being present on earth. It meant one of our number physically becoming a man.”

As one, the circling angels screwed their faces into expressions of utter disgust.

“Even had one of us
wanted
to do that,” and the expression on Gabriel’s face left no doubt that none of the angels had stepped forward to volunteer, “it would have been impossible. We cannot appear in physical form within the mortal sphere.”

“So we took the next best step of creating another of our kind within the womb of a woman,” said Michael. “Not an angel-
child
, of which horrors there were plenty enough, but a fully formed angel. He would then work his will—
our
will—and lead mankind into a complete enslavement to our wishes.”

“But it all went wrong,” Gabriel said, and as one, all the angels snarled, then hissed, and Neville had to use every measure of self-control he possessed to stop himself from trying to break through the circle and escape.

How could he be one such as these? One such as
these
horrors?

“Christ went berserk.” Yet another archangel stepped forth from the circle. Uriel, this time. “He tried to
free
mankind instead of enslaving them.”

“He was corrupted,” Gabriel said.

“Precisely,” said Uriel.

“Because he had a human mother,” Neville said softly, remembering what Mary had said.

For a moment the angels did not reply. The only sound was that of the circling horde’s shuffling feet through the shards of the flowers, the only existence the corral of their flat, black eyes.

“Because he had a human mother,” Michael repeated.

“
A bitch mother!
” the assembly of angels hissed as one.

“I have had a human mother,” Neville said softly. “I must be corrupted, too. Why so confident that I will choose in your favour?”

Michael smiled, and all the angels smiled with him.

The depth of cold suddenly increased two-fold, and now Neville could not stop himself from shivering.

“We know what you think and what you want,” Michael said. “You want to hand your soul to the bitch-whore Margaret, to free mankind from our chains forever.”

Total silence, save for the shuffling of feet.

“How sweet,” whispered Uriel.

“How foolish,” said another Archangel, Sariel, stepping forth into the circle. With him walked the Archangels Raguel and Raphael. Neville was now hemmed in by two circles: the outer one of angels, and the smaller inner core of Archangels.

“You see, dear corrupted brother of ours,” Michael said, “where you think is choice, is none at all. You
have
no choice.”

“I will
always
have choice,” hissed Neville, now truly frightened. He’d finally given up trying to keep his arms at his sides, and now he wrapped them about himself, trying to keep some of the cold of heaven at bay.

“No, no, no,” said Michael. “In your darkest moments you admit to yourself that you cannot hand your soul to Margaret. There is that slight hesitancy, that slight doubt. She used you, tricked you once—”

“Like all women,” hissed Gabriel and Uriel as one.

“And that single instance,” said Michael, “that single trickery—”

“That single, dark irk!” said Raguel.

“—means you cannot choose for her,” finished Michael.

“Then there are good women, true women, who I can—”

“Whom you love without reservation, Thomas?” Sariel said. “And who are
whores
?”

“Remember the prophecy as spoken by that whore in the street of Rome, Thomas?” said Michael. “Remember?
One day one of my sisters will seize your soul and condemn you to hell for eternity! A whore will steal your soul! Nay, I pray to the Virgin Mary, that you will
offer
her your soul on a platter! You will offer her your eternal damnation in return for her love!”

“A whore, Thomas,” said Uriel. “Not a good woman, nor a true woman. Not even a slightly wanton woman. A
whore.
A harlot who prostitutes her flesh for coin to any man who can pay. A whore whom you love so unreservedly that you would beg her to take your soul.”

“And that whore,” whispered the congregation of angels, “is not Margaret. Not Margaret twice over—you do not love her unreservedly, and she is no whore. She may not be truly virtuous, but she is no whore. Not Margaret…
not
Margaret.”

Not Margaret…not Margaret…
never
Margaret…

“Then who, Thomas?” said Michael. “How many filthy purveyors of carnality, who you love unreservedly and unhesitatingly,
do
you have in reserve?”

“Christ tells me to trust him,” Neville said, his voice panicked. “
Christ tells me to trust him.
He is my brother, and—”

Michael laughed. “How many whores does
he
have in reserve, Thomas? Freeing him from our prison has, in the end, done you no good at all. This choice will not be set before you in six years, or ten, but in a matter of weeks. Love, the kind of love that you need to be able to hand a woman your soul, takes months if not years to develop. Thomas,” and suddenly his voice became a roar, and the entire assembly of angels stopped, and turned into the circle, their mouths opened in silent screams. “Thomas! You have
no choice at all. You will choose in our favour,
because you have no choice in it.
”

The angels shrieked in hideous mirth, and Neville, terrified and hopeless, cowered on the ground of the field, his arms wrapped about his head.

You
will
choose in our favour because there is no choice at all.

“There is no choice,” Michael whispered through the screaming laughter. “
There has never been one.
This time we have made sure. If you cannot hand your soul to your bitch-whore, do you know what happens then, Thomas? Do you? Your soul reverts to our care, back to the angels, where it originated and where it belongs. Mankind is ensnared forever, and you get to spend eternity with
us.
”

A scream sounded, and Neville only dimly realised that it was his voice.

“Welcome back to the brotherhood, Thomas.”