Fallen Angels (41 page)

A new voice startled both of them, a voice of harsh ugliness and loud confidence. The voice was rude, sudden, and mysterious. 'Extraordinary indeed!'

The shouted words made Campion lean forward and she saw, at the library door, a man more ugly than she could imagine. An old man with a malevolent, leathery face beneath an ancient, filthy wig. A man with a small head that seemed to quest about the room on an unnaturally long neck. A man whose mouth seemed lipless and eyes lidless, a man of reptilian menace. He was wrapped in a great cloak. He pushed the helpless, protesting footman aside and walked further into the library. 'Cagliostro. Mesmer. Laclos. The Anarchasis Clootz, Restif de la Bretonne, and let us not forget the Count Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, now secretary of a Revolutionary Committee in Paris. All extraordinary!' He stopped. He glared at her. 'I presume you are the Lady Campion Lazender?'

She stood. Her voice was icy. 'I am. And you, sir?'

'Paunceley, of course.' He nodded to her in what she supposed was meant to be a bow. 'And who in Christ's name are you?' He pointed a finger at Stepper.

The bookseller smiled. 'Stepper, Simon, sir. Bookseller.'

'You stink, but you're right. They are extraordinary people. The
Illuminati
indeed! Cagliostro's a crook, Mesmer's a fraud, Laclos is a fool, Clootz is a clown, de la Bretonne a pornographer, and de Sade!' He pulled a chair from beneath the table and sat. His ugly face looked at Campion and his mouth twitched with amusement. 'De Sade, my Lady, requires his valet to sodomize him while he tups whores. I tell you not to cause offence, but to satisfy your evident curiosity. You have finished with this man Stepper Simon?'

She was offended, not by his words, but by his manner. She felt more than offence, she felt awed by him. He had come into the room as if he had a perfect right to dictate to her, and he took for granted that she would know his power and influence. Yet she would not be cowed by him. 'My business with Mr Stepper is not concluded, my Lord.'

'Then I shall wait for your attention.' He took a book from his pocket and Stepper, his professional interest aroused, leaned over the table.

Lord Paunceley gave the bookseller a ghastly smile. 'The
"Riche Heures de Madame la Dauphine".
Illustrated. Twenty-five guineas.'

Simon Stepper blushed.

Campion tried to ignore Lord Paunceley, smiling at the bookseller instead. 'You found out more, Mr Stepper?'

But Simon Stepper had been flustered by Lord Paunceley's sudden appearance. He shook his head nervously. 'Indeed not, my Lady'

Lord Paunceley laughed harshly. 'Then go, bookseller! I need her Ladyship's attention!'

She turned on him. 'My Lord! You have refused to answer any of my letters. You come here unannounced, and you presume to give orders where you have no authority. I would be obliged if you would desist!'

He looked at her with feigned astonishment. Slowly, his cloaked shoulders heaving, he began to chuckle. He pointed at her. 'That's it! Attack an old man! Would you like to hit me? Shall I get you a pistol to shoot me with? You!' He twisted round to the footman who still stood in the doorway. 'You!'

'Sir?' The footman was as terrified as the bookseller.

'Before her Ladyship slaughters me I would like some tea and a fire lit. Quick, man! I may not have long to live.' He looked back to Campion. 'I have taken the unpardonable liberty of ordering a fire in my bedroom. Christ in his insane heaven, but it's cold!'

'It's the warmest autumn for years!'

'That's it! Bully me! I'm just an old man so you can bully me! I prayed, I hoped, I begged for the winter of my years to be peaceful, but I must be insulted by mere children. You!' He pointed at Stepper. 'You're still here! Your stink offends me! Go!'

'Mr Stepper!' Campion checked the bookseller's flight. She was tempted to order him to stay, but something warned her that she should not oppose Lord Paunceley yet. Besides, it would be a relief to get the odorous bookseller safely into Lazen's open air. 'I shall see you from the Castle.'

She escorted him into the Entrance Hall where strange servants were piling Lord Paunceley's luggage. She smiled at Stepper. 'I do apologize, Mr Stepper. He is an old friend of my father, so perhaps he can take these liberties.'

Not at all, my Lady, not at all.' He was wrapping the scarf about his neck. 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, my Lady, but not mere words. Oh no!' He laughed to himself. 'And to say that I smell! Most amusing.' Now that he was out of Lord Paunceley's presence, the bookseller was regaining his usual optimism and jauntiness. 'I have some volumes that perhaps ought to be in the Castle's library, my Lady?'

She made a polite response. She was trying to edge him toward the door when, with a clatter of boots and laughter, it was thrown open and she was staring into Christopher Skavadale's smiling face.

The doubts evaporated. Every doubt that Achilles had put into her head, and which had festered during these last ten days, disappeared. She had remembered his face, but not the life of it, not the bright, vivid life that stabbed at her and made her smile to see him. She had missed him.

Another man came to the door and Campion used the stranger's presence to shake the bookseller loose. Skavadale bowed to her and gestured to the newcomer. 'May I present Mr Geraint Owen, His Lordship's secretary? This is the Lady Campion Lazender.'

Owen bowed. 'I trust you will forgive this intrusion, your Ladyship.'

'Owen!' Lord Paunceley's voice was plaintive from the library. 'I'm cold, Owen! I'm being insulted! I'm thirsty! Owen!'

The Welshman smiled at her. 'You will forgive me, my Lady?'

Campion nodded. She saw the bookseller to the door, telling him to bring whatever books he thought necessary for the library, and then she turned to the Gypsy. She could not hide her happiness. Achilles, she thought, could not be right. This man, this splendid, smiling, handsome man could not be her enemy. 'You came with Lord Paunceley?'

'Yes.'

She laughed. 'He's a monster!'

Skavadale nodded. 'True. And how's your own monster?'

She shrugged. Julius still lived in the old stable house, drunk for much of the time, guarded day and night by servants. Dr Fenner was treating his pox with mercury. 'He's alive.' She said it dubiously and looked up into the Gypsy's face, feeling the familiar pang that he gave her. 'Why has Lord Paunceley come?'

Let him tell you.'

'He wants me to go to France, doesn't he?' Skavadale nodded, and she shook her head. 'I'm not going!'

'I've already told him that.'

A servant went past with a tray of tea, another carried a basket of logs. Campion turned to the library.

It took ten minutes for Lord Paunceley to make himself comfortable. The tea was too weak, the fire too slow to start, and he querulously demanded that the windows be shut. Like a shaggy, bad tempered beast he arranged the library for his comfort as if, on this fine autumn day, he was settling for the winter. Only when the last footman had left, and when he was satisfied with the tea and oatcakes, did he turn his ugly face on Campion. 'You are privileged, my Lady!'

She thought he meant that she was fortunate to live in Lazen. She nodded. 'I know, my Lord.'

'I have not left London these three years, apart from visits to Tyburn! Yet here I am! I have come, at considerable inconvenience, to your very door! You are privileged indeed! Do you know why I have come?'

She said nothing. Paunceley sucked noisily at his dish of tea. He plucked the cloak over his knees. He looked slyly at her. 'Your uncle came to see me!'

'I know.'

He thought the Bastard didn't work for me! Ha!'

She frowned. 'You mean Mr Skavadale?'

'Mister!' The word delighted Lord Paunceley. 'You hear that, Bastard! She calls you "mister"! Ah! You cheer an old man up, dear Lady Campion, you lighten my old age. Mister indeed!'

Skavadale smiled at her. 'His Lordship does not believe that the Rom marry, my Lady.'

'Marry!' Lord Paunceley cackled. 'What do they do? Dance naked round a cauldron at a coven?'

The Gypsy smiled. 'We're not like your family, my Lord, we marry in church.'

Paunceley smiled. 'I suppose I shall have to call you "mister", then. Or would you prefer a knighthood, Bastard? Sir Christopher Skavadale? My God! They gave that dauber Reynolds a knighthood! Sir Joshua! I suppose anything can happen if you have a mad, fat, German King.' He looked at Campion. 'Which language do you prefer to use?'

'Whatever your Lordship prefers.'

'I prefer Russian. Speak Russian, do you?'

'No, my Lord.'

'God knows why Vavasour didn't educate you. Because you're a girl, I suppose. Waste of time educating girls. They only grow into mothers and think they're clever because they do what any cow can do. All right! French!' He sipped noisily at his tea. 'I was sorry about Vavasour. I liked him.' He grimaced at her. 'Pity about your brother, too.'

'Thank you, my Lord.'

'Can't say I was sorry about Culloden. A shooting accident?'

'So the Coroner said, my Lord.'

He laughed. He dipped an oatcake into his tea and then sucked at it. 'So your stinking bookseller, my Lady, has told you all about the
Illuminati?'

'He has told me what he could, my Lord.'

Paunceley looked at the Welshman. 'Tell her more, Owen. Illuminate thou her!'

She decided she liked Geraint Owen. He had a quick, nervous smile, expressive hands, and an easy manner. He confirmed all that Stepper had told her, and then added more. 'They have secrets within secrets, my Lady, small septs to perform specific tasks.' He pushed his long dark hair back from his pale face. 'We think one such sept was behind the massacres in Paris a year ago, almost certainly another is the guiding group for the politics of France.' He shrugged as though he hardly expected to be believed. And Mr Skavadale seems to have discovered another group, my Lady. The Fallen Angels.' He smiled.

She was sitting in the window seat. It seemed strange, with the Lazen valley golden behind her, to be hearing of these plots and secrets.

Paunceley scowled at her. 'So that's it! A group of toads who call themselves the Fallen Angels! They want Lazen, it seems.' He peered at her with his small, fierce eyes. 'And your uncle tells me that you won't go to France to destroy them!' He said it with evident astonishment.

'No, my Lord.'

'Why ever not? I thought you girls enjoyed jaunts to France! My sister always enjoyed jaunts to France. Why won't you go?'

'I have learned to value my life, my Lord.'

'Christ and His angels!' Paunceley guffawed. 'Value your life! You sound like a threadbare Wesleyan! Have you been born again, my Lady?' She said nothing and he plucked the fur-edged cloak tighter to his thin body. Do I have to explain it all to you as if to a child?'

'If you wish, my Lord.'

He scowled. 'Your uncle claims you are not a fool. So be intelligent now. The
Illuminati,
my Lady, seek to take over the fortune of Lazen. To do that they need to kill your brother and yourself. They have been successful with your brother. That leaves you. You have avoided one clumsy attempt, does that make you feel there will be no more? You are suddenly immune to attack?' She said nothing. He scratched beneath his wig. 'From this day on, my Lady, you are in danger. Every servant, every guest, every traveller on your roads may carry your death. Suppose that you marry? Suppose that, God help you, you spawn a child? Then that child is in danger, too!' He twisted his hands together as if wringing the neck of a baby, then waved dismissively at her. 'So you'll die! Your suckling infant will be dead, and Lazen will be lost! And all because you wouldn't go to France! Well! I couldn't care! I'm an old man! Soon they'll be burying me!' He twisted to look at the Welshman. 'Make sure it's in the Abbey, Owen! In the choir! I won't have a draughty grave!' He turned back to her. 'So? You'll go?'

'Go?' She frowned. 'My Lord, if I am in danger then I am perfectly capable of guarding myself.'

He groaned. 'Listen to her! You're saying what half the dead nobles of France said! Don't you understand, my Lady? They wish you dead! You will live in fear so long as Lucifer lives. Kill Lucifer, and you may rock your whining brat into slumber. But so long as Lucifer lives, you fear.'

'I do not understand, my Lord…'

'You're a girl, that's quite reasonable.'

'I do not understand, my Lord,' and she did not hide the anger in her voice, 'what purpose my going to France serves.'

'You don't understand?'

'No, my Lord.'

Paunceley stared at her. There was something malevolent about his reptilian face as he slowly smiled. 'Two weeks from now, Lady Campion, the Fallen Angels are going to gather at Auxigny. All of them. They will gather for one purpose.' Slowly his hand came from his fur robe and a thin finger jabbed at her. 'You are that purpose. But if you are not there, girl, then they will not gather, and if they do not gather then they will not be in one convenient place where my Bastard can kill them. Do you understand now?'

She looked at the Gypsy whose face showed nothing, then back to Lord Paunceley. 'No, I don't understand.'

Paunceley scowled. Tell her, Bastard.'

Skavadale smiled at her. His voice was soft. 'Bertrand Marchenoir has offered me a place among the Fallen Angels. The price is that I deliver you to Auxigny. They will think I have come to join them, but I will have come to kill them.'

'There!' Lord Paunceley leaned back in his chair. What could be simpler? A jaunt to France? A little betrayal, a little death, and you'll be back before the wheat's milled. In my youth I would have asked for nothing more!' He looked at Owen. 'You've got the Harvest Whore at Weymouth, yes?'

'The
Lily of Rye,
my Lord. Yes. She's waiting.'

The vile, dirty-wigged, ugly face came back to her. 'So what in Christ's name is so worrying? We provide the boat! The Bastard looks after you! He kills your enemies, and he's very skilled at that, and then you come home!'