Son of the Morning (81 page)

‘You drew me out, why not others with the same talent?’ said Despenser. ‘Why can we only summon scum. Why these weaklings?’ A bull-headed devil, no taller than Osbert’s knee, ran for cover, being well used to Despenser’s love of casual and arbitrary cruelty.

‘It is a matter of the right ingredients, the right timing,’ said Osbert.

He had used up the angel’s blood on Despenser’s summoning and several attempts to cure Despenser by dripping the blood onto his wounds. Well, used up was putting it strongly. ‘Opted to keep the rest of his stash to himself’ was perhaps a better description.

It did Despenser no good, anyway. Despenser’s view was that an angel’s body could not be cured by angel blood. Osbert’s was that there was something inimical to the angelic body in Despenser’s personality. This was based on the observation that Jegudiel’s body was rotting with Despenser possessing it while Sariel’s had remained untouched by time. Also, Despenser’s personality was inimical to absolutely everything else, so why not angel flesh?

Before the Hospitallers had been expelled Osbert and Despenser had benefited from servants bringing them drinks and food in the crypt as they worked – until Despenser had crushed the heads of two – one for the sin of spilling some wine and the other for bringing chicken that was inadequately seasoned.

In the four years he and Despenser had been working, at least five hundred devils had come through – until a rival faction in Hell had moved to seal his postern gate. Despenser had no doubts who was behind it.

‘That bitch Isabella! I should swim across the ocean and drown her now.’

‘Except you seem unaccountably scared of her,’ Osbert definitely didn’t say.

News of Isabella’s release had done for the last of the Hospitallers in the Temple. Despenser went on a rampage with his gang of devils, smashing the chapel windows, tearing down a wall of the refectory, killing three Hospitallers before Philip had come in and commanded him to stop.

One thing Osbert was grateful for was that kings seemed to be able to command devils. What happened when one king commanded devils to do one thing and another commanded them to do another, Osbert couldn’t say. Pretty much what happened with angels, he guessed – the supernatural beings sorted things out among themselves.

Despenser turned his back to attend to some aspect of the circle. Then Osbert scuttled up the stairs, shouting: ‘I’m going outside for some air’.

‘You’ll stay here until the job is done!’

‘I am mortal, lord, and cannot work like you. I will serve you better after a break,’ said Osbert. He doubted that Despenser would bother to follow him – largely because it was something of a squeeze for him to get out of the crypt. He’d probably beat him when he returned, but Despenser’s beatings were losing their passion. He was despairing and had a marked tendency to sulk.

Osbert went out into the smashed church – Despenser hadn’t wanted so much as a sniff of an angel in there. He steeled himself to face the courtyard. Spider devils had strung webs from all the towers. There were none at ground level, thank God, but he hated to see their thready legs and translucent bodies hovering above him. Only Despenser’s crown sigil prevented them swinging down to eat him. Despenser had adopted the crown as his sign to demonstrate his ambition. He had made it known that he would be king of England and do the homage to Philip that Edward had refused. The pardoner wasn’t too sure that any homage would appear should Despenser be successful. Nor was he that sure Philip would be entirely happy to welcome in a King Hugh. Still, thought Osbert, I’m all right, so that’s what counts.

He went out through the postern gate, lighting a lantern as he did. It was normally considered dangerous to sit outside in that quarter but the presence of the devils had driven any potential roughnecks away.

He sat against the wall. It was cold and sleet was in the air, but the stone was pleasantly cool after the close heat of the crypt. The branding devils gave off quite a lot of warmth and Despenser had insisted on having them in the crypt – probably because he was insensible to heat and Osbert suffered in it, suspected the pardoner.

He pulled his cloak around him and, despite the cold, began to doze.

A creak at his side.

Osbert opened his eyes. In his half-asleep state the candle seemed to float in front of him. Then he realised someone had it in their hand.
Gulp
! The candle went out. The moon was strong enough for him to see a tattered and torn face peering at him. The man opened his mouth and breathed hard at Osbert. Clouds of steam issued forth.

‘Still not working,’ said the strange figure.

‘Jesus Christ, is it you?’ said the pardoner.

‘Not a mistake many people make,’ said the devil glumly.

Osbert got up. ‘You, you bastard, locked me in a magic circle for God knows how long and put me in the power of madmen and then pulled devils from my belly!’

‘I saved you from being murdered, I seem to recall.’

‘Well, you did do
that
. I never got the chance to ask you: what happened to all those people who were chasing me?’

‘I ate one of them and the rest I sent outside. The smoke makes them quite suggestible. Or it did. Where is my flame? Where is my smoke? Oh, the days of my glory are gone.’

‘Do you mean you don’t possess your former power?’ said Osbert, who was thinking of giving the devil the benefit of the rough end of his boot.

‘I am a shadow, the shadow of a flame,’ said the devil, and then catching a look he didn’t much like in Osbert’s eye, said ‘but I’d still do for you any day of the week.’ He opened his mouth and a weak puff of smoke came forth.

The pardoner was a spectacular physical coward and the smoke was enough to deter him from attacking Nergal.

The last time Osbert had seen Nergal, their conversation had been a little rushed. Now he had the chance to question the devil. ‘Why did you lock me in there?’

‘Oh, it’s just we devils’ sense of humour,’ said Nergal. ‘It was more to get at the priest than you, sorry.’

‘How did you end up in there?’

‘He summoned me.’

‘From Hell?’

‘From Shoreditch. I was walking the earth looking for someone to use to get at the boy Dowzabel. It had taken me forever to locate him and then I discovered that demons had managed to get a magic circle constructed around the whole of Bodmin Moor. I couldn’t get near him. I heard this priest’s chanting and spell making on the breeze and hopped up to see if I could enlist his help. Satan’s a mysterious chap but he does put you in situations where you can be useful or rather where he expects you to work out how you can be useful. So I disappear walking through the Shoreditch market and appear in that cellar, confined to a circle and being asked endless questions about the nature of the universe. What do I know about that? I’m a devil – good at my job – but we have very narrow horizons. As long as I’ve got something to burn and candles to eat I’m a happy fiend.’

‘You used to be able to change shape. Can you still do that?’ The pardoner had a vague feeling Nergal might be useful to him.

‘Appearance,’ said the devil, ‘but my encounter with the angel knocked that out of me. I would have stabbed her if she hadn’t shone in time. That’s fallen angels for you. Dozy as you like, no idea what day of the week it is, who they are, what they’re doing. Show ’em a knife and they suddenly remember a few of their old tricks.’

‘And then – didn’t you lose your head in the chapel?’

‘Yes,’ said Nergal, ‘and I wish it had stayed off.’

‘It’d be a show stealer in the begging stakes,’ said Osbert, who was warming to the devil, despite the injustices he had visited upon him. Life hadn’t treated him kindly either. They had a lot in common. ‘You’d go a long way to beat that for pity, but there would be significant drawbacks.’

‘A devil like me shouldn’t beg,’ said Nergal. ‘I should be put to good use serving kings and God. I heard there might be some of that sort of work going here.’

‘Might be,’ said the pardoner, who by now had become quite used to devils. Several years in Despenser’s presence – though Despenser was not technically a devil but a fallen, fallen, risen angel – had inured him to most things. ‘What can you do?’

‘Steam a bit,’ said Nergal. ‘I used to be able to breathe fire in the days of my flame but now that’s gone.’ Again he breathed out a disconsolate puff of smoke.

‘You can make a mask from a man’s face,’ said Osbert, prodding at the ragged flesh around Nergal’s cheeks.

‘Yes,’ said Nergal.

‘How do you do that?’

‘Just tear the face off and stick it on,’ said Nergal, ‘not difficult. I still have sharp nails and the power of bonding. That didn’t disappear when they cut off my head.’ He held up his hands so Osbert could see the filthy, claw-like nails on the end.

‘So why not take the whole body?’ said Osbert.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why not make a more convincing disguise by bonding with the whole body?’

‘It might be possible,’ said Nergal, ‘but it’s a big step. I might never de-bond. I might be stuck in human flesh for good. And human bodies are weak and feeble.’

‘You don’t look too strong to me.’

‘How strong would you look after being beheaded?’

‘Fair point,’ said the pardoner.

He eyed Nergal up and down. No other devil he knew had been able to strip faces. It was a peculiar talent. When he’d first seen Nergal the illusion of a human face was very good – a little frozen, a little waxy, but no more than a lot of soused up old churchmen.

Now the face was torn and slack and the raw flesh clear underneath. Could he, though, take over Sariel’s body? She was some sort of divine being – would that make it easier or harder? He certainly wasn’t going to allow Nergal to tear her face off.

‘So, if you wanted to, so to speak, transplant your soul into another body, could you?’

Nergal hemmed and hawed. ‘I’ve never thought about it,’ he said.

‘But it might be possible.’

‘I like being me,’ said Nergal.

‘Doesn’t look like it from where I’m sitting,’ said Osbert. ‘Come inside and have a candle on me.’

‘Is it warm in there?’

‘There are six branding devils from the lake of fire. It’s as warm as you like it and a good deal warmer than I do.’

‘Then lead on,’ said Nergal, ‘for I have been cold too long.’

3

Bardi told his tale as he, Dow and Orsino rode north, clearly proud of his cleverness in tracking down the king. Dow knew it well, but Bardi could not be prevented from reliving it, his one substantial success in life in the years Dow had known him.

Bardi had searched for years for the expenditure that would give Edward away. He had looked for thousands spent, rich clothes ordered, fine foods, even tournaments, organised. A king living however modestly would require a retinue to be paid and old Edward must have left England without a penny to his name. Nothing. Although his access to the books was always tantalisingly restricted, every revenue stream was accounted for, every expenditure logged. Nothing, nothing, nothing. The accounts from twenty years before – when Edward would have arrived – were not in the Lombard archive. They’d been sent up to Rome as all records were when they were older than five years. So Bardi had waited, built his trust and his connections and then had himself sent on a mission to Rome. It wasn’t difficult to request to see his order’s books. But there was nothing there. At all.

But one morning, four years after he had come to the Hospitallers, he realised he had been looking for the wrong thing – a something. He was looking for nothing, literally – a hole in the accounts. Edward’s keep would be covered up. He would need to seek an overpayment here, a tithe recorded but never paid there. It took him all his skill and wiles to get access to the right accounts but he did it. Still nothing.

In the fourth year he found what he was looking for right in front of him – or rather one hundred paces through the woods. He had been taking the air in the benefactors’ graveyard. Those who were particularly generous to the Hospitallers were allowed to be buried in the graveyards in the woods where the monks prayed daily for the repose of their souls. Even those who preferred to be buried in their own lands were allowed monuments there.

On a cold day in March he went to sit and clear his head there among the cedars. He read the great names of the holy rich of Milan. He had seen them all on the accounts, the Guelphs and the Visconti, the Grimaldi and the Gattilusio. It was then that the idea of tracing their money occurred to him. The Doge’s office kept records of bequests quite independently of the Hospitallers. If Bardi himself had been going to hide the money to pay for a king, reducing the recorded level of money left in wills would be where
he
would do it. It could even be done with sleight of hand on the valuation of jewels, paintings or houses. He spent a year going through every grave in the yard and chasing it up at the Doge’s office. Nothing. It tallied absolutely. All but one name. Twenty years earlier the Ambrosini estate in the north had been left to the order. That was recorded at the Doge’s office and in the Hospitallers’ books along with some minor upkeep. So far unremarkable. The only unusual thing, on the surface, about the whole transaction was that the name of the donor – Ambrosini – was recorded on a slab half a yard high by a yard wide in the graveyard. One word only – the family name – Ambrosini. ‘A very big slab for a bequest that hardly featured on the books,’ said Bardi to himself.

A visit to the graveyard manager told Bardi what he needed to know.

‘I’d like to be buried here one day,’ he’d told the man – a surprisingly young and cheerful monk.

‘For your name a span wide you’ll need to leave us seven hundred acres,’ said the monk, ‘and I guess if you had that you wouldn’t be a monk.’

‘Some of us are called to serve,’ said Bardi.
Seven hundred acres for a span. How much then for such a large plaque?
he wondered.

Orsino was engaged to make the enquiries in the north. The answer staggered Bardi. A chapel, more than a chapel, a whole huge estate of forests, lakes and islands to the north of Milan with a splendid monastery at the centre had been bequeathed to the Hospitallers and then vanished – from the books at least. No income, no maintenance costs, no tithes, no works commissioned or requested. It was as if the estate had ceased to exist as a financial entity on the day the Hospitallers inherited it.