The Crippled Angel (30 page)

Tuesday 20th August 1381

—iii—

F
or days, Neville had existed in a state so melancholic, so despondent, so appalled, that he found it a wonder he could still draw breath.

He started fully awake from his vision of the Field of Angels, almost falling out of the bed he shared with Margaret.

He’d stared at her, wondering why she did not wake when it was so obvious that mankind only had a few more days, perhaps a few more weeks, of any measure of free will left.

Nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be…

How foolish he had been, how proudful, to ever think that there
would
be a choice. The angels had come close to stumbling once before with Christ; they were not going to make the same mistake with him. They had allowed both the demons and Thomas himself to think that Margaret was the woman to whom he could gift his soul.

They had allowed both the demons and Thomas to trap themselves into a hopelessness.

That was all the events of the past few years had been—an opportunity to fall into a trap.

And Thomas had fallen…

From Margaret’s bed, and then from their quarters in the castle, Neville had run into the night. His fear and his horror darkened his vision, and even where the way was well lit he crashed into pillars and corners and door frames until bruises matted the surface of his body and blood ran from a dozen cuts on his face and hands. The dawn still found him stumbling through narrow, dim alleys in the back quarters of Rouen, where small boys out collecting donkey dung at dawn laughed at him, and pinched at his flesh, and wondered whether this strange, naked man was crazed by drink, or women, or perhaps the moon, hanging so low and heavy in the sky.

Neville eventually found shelter of a kind in the low overhang of a stable roof. Damp, mouldy hay had been piled up under the eaves and, as morning finally dawned, he crawled deep inside the stinking mass, burying himself as deep as he could, wondering if the angels would ever find him here.

But he could not escape the words of the archangel:
There is no choice. There has never been one. This time we have made sure. Welcome to the brotherhood, Thomas.

Those words never left Thomas’ thoughts. The knowledge that he would be the one to damn mankind into eternal enslavement and that, having performed such an appalling task, he would then spend eternity locked in brotherhood with the foul creatures that inhabited heaven drove him so deep into despair that for hours that turned into days he was unable to leave his nasty burrow within the rotting hay. He sucked moisture from the loathsome mess whenever thirst drove him to the very edge of insanity (not that he was far from it in any case), scrabbled about hunting and squashing between his fingers the biting fleas and other insects that attacked his vulnerable flesh, and relieved himself into his bedding as needed, but
nothing
intruded on his sensibilities so much as to even come close to suggesting that it might be
a good thing to escape this composting hideaway and find himself something a little more comfortable.

During the day the sounds of the city moving about him washed over him without making any impression on his misery. At night roaming dogs and pigs nuzzled and scraped at his covering layers of muck, trying to dig him out, but their efforts went ignored.

Thomas Neville just wanted to hide—hide from what the angels were going to force him to do.

There was no choice. There never had been. Everything that had gone before had been a jest, a jest on him and a jest on mankind.

There was no choice. The angels screamed in joy, capering about heaven. This time was their time.

There was no choice.

There never had been.

On the fifth night, trapped in his misery, a sound very gradually trespassed upon Neville’s despair. It sounded for hours before Neville became aware of it, and then he listened to it for another hour or two more before he managed to emerge from his despair long enough to become even mildly curious about it.

It was the sound of a plane being drawn back and forth over a piece of wood. Back and forth, back and forth: an ever-patient carpenter in his workshop somewhere close to Neville’s hideaway.

Neville grew to hate the sound. It angered him. It intruded upon his grief, his solitary despair, his selfish sorrow. Who was this Christ to so disturb him? Who was this Christ to set up shop so close to Neville’s misery?
Didn’t he know that all was lost? Would the man never give up? Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!

Neville howled, so furious that he flung hay in every direction as he struggled out of his self-imposed imprisonment.
Didn’t Christ know that all was lost?

“I’ll tell him,” Neville mumbled, spitting out a bit of mouldy horse shit that had wedged itself between his front
teeth. “I’ll tell him, damn him. Why so cheerful? Why so cursed
hopeful
?
Doesn’t he realise
?”

He fell out of the muck heap onto the damp cobbles of the street, rolling some seven or eight paces down the slight slope until he managed to stop himself and rise to legs shaking from days of no food or use.

Neville stumbled a few paces down the alley. It was deep night, perhaps two or three in the morning, and the city was quiet.

Save for that cursed carpenter, still planing his wood somewhere close by.

Neville managed to walk further, ignoring the cramps that beset his calves and thighs. His face and body ran with sweat, his hands clenched at his sides.

The carpenter planed on, slowly, methodically, every stroke an obvious joy.

Why work wood, when there was no hope left? Didn’t he know that within days, weeks at the most, he’d be back on his cross, hanging in agony?

Neville came to the end of the alley, leaning on the stone wall of a house for support as he heaved air in and out of his lungs.

There! There he was, the fool!

A faint light filtered from behind the shutters of a ground floor workshop three houses down the street. Neville, furious without being able to put a meaning to his fury, staggered towards the door of the workshop.

It was ajar, just very slightly, but enough for the hateful noise of the carpenter’s efforts to seep out into the night air and wake Neville.

He reached the door and, without any of the hesitation that had characterised his visit to Christ’s London workshop, burst in.

And tumbled down the three steep steps to the floor. Neville hit the stone flagging heavily, his breath grunting out in a curse. He rolled over several times, his arms flailing, before he managed to stop himself.

He scrambled to his knees, then, awkwardly, to his feet, his hands held out to steady himself.

James the carpenter continued to steadily plane the large piece of wood on his work table.

“What is it this time?” snarled Neville. “A casket? A breakfast table? Perhaps the axle of a cart?”

“A stake,” said James, then nodded towards the far corner of the workshop. “I’ve set out a tub for you. Its water is warm, and comforting. There are some clothes on the stool to the side. I think you will find they will fit you well.”

Then James’ hands abruptly fell still, and he turned his face so he could stare at Neville, standing hostile and rigid in the centre of the workshop space. “We are brothers, you and I. What fits me, fits you.”

Neville raised a hand, his face twisting with the strength of the emotion inside of him.

“I do not want to hear it,” James said, turning back to his woodwork. “Not until you have washed, and clothed yourself.”

“I do not—”

“What think you?” James yelled, now stepping away from his work table altogether. “What think you, Thomas Neville, to so wallow in such self-absorbed misery?”

Neville blinked, unable to speak, completely stunned by James’ sudden anger.

“I—”

“Are there no others in pain?” James continued, now standing directly before Neville. “Did you not think that your selfish despair might deepen their pain? Do you think yourself
alone
in this matter, isolated in your grandeur?”

James folded his arms, looking up and down Neville’s naked body. “You are filthy,” he said, both his eyes and tone flat. “The filthiness of your flesh reflects the state of your mind. You disgust me, Thomas. Wash yourself, for until then I cannot speak with you.”

And with that he turned his back, and returned to his work table where he ran one hand softly up and down the length of wood he’d been smoothing. “Wash yourself,” he whispered.

Neville stared at James’ back, then his head dropped, and his shoulders slumped. He looked to the side, and saw the tub.

Steam rose from the water within.

Silently, abjectly, hating what his pride had brought him to, Neville walked over to the tub and lowered himself in.

“They brought me again to the Field of Angels,” Neville said. He had washed, and dressed in the clothes James had set out for him, and now sat with James at a small table under the still-shuttered window.

He smelled sweet, and for no other reason that lifted his spirits.

“And?” James said, biting into a hunk of bread and cheese he had taken from the platter he had laid on the table between them. Ale stood in a jug to one side, and Neville sighed, and poured himself a beaker-full of the rich, foaming liquid.

“The decision is soon,” he said, sipping the ale.

“Of course,” said James. “Else I would not be here. And? What did they say or do to drive you into such self-absorbed—”

“Yes, yes, I know…such self-absorbed misery. James,” Neville put the beaker down with a thump, spilling a little of the ale, “you told me to trust you, and I have tried to do that. But what the angels showed me…”

“What?” James snapped, then smiled at the look in Neville’s eyes. “I am allowed to have a temper,” he said. He reached out a hand and poked Neville in the centre of his chest. “It is one of the many things we share.”

Neville half smiled, but his dejection would not allow it to flower fully. “The Archangels, all of them, ringed about me, trapped me, showed me that I have no choice but to choose in their favour when it comes to the decision.”

“Ah,” said James. “And what exactly did they say?”

Neville told James that the only way he could save mankind from an eternal enslavement to the angels was to hand his soul on a platter to a whore, to beg her to love him, to accept his soul.

“I had thought Margaret, but even if I could overcome my hesitancy in loving her I
still
could not hand her my soul because she is no whore. She may not be the epitome of saintly virtue, but Margaret is no whore, no street harlot. James, I thought I
had
a choice, but there is none. None. We have all been trapped, and we are all struggling useless in that trap.”

James lowered his head, staring at his tanned forearms where they crossed on the table before him. Finally, he looked up with eyes gone very strange.

“In any apparent two-way fork in the path ahead,” he said very quietly, his eyes locking into Neville’s, “there is
always
a third way, a third path, a third potential choice that those who seek to control you do
not
want you to see, or to understand. Do not allow the angels to blind you, Thomas. Do not let your own anger and despair blind you. There
is
a third path, beyond Margaret, beyond the angels. Make sure that when the time comes, you are able to see it.”

“But the angels said…the whore on the street of Rome said, that I must give my soul to a whore. A prostitute who I love and trust before all others. Who else but—”

“You are blind, Thomas. I pray that the shutters shall be lifted from your eyes before it is too late. Now…”

James’ voice stopped abruptly. He sat, his head cocked as if listening, then suddenly his entire body jerked and went rigid. His brown eyes widened, appalled.

“Mary. Oh, in the name of all love…
Mary
!” James leapt to his feet, leaned across the table and dragged Neville up as well. “I have said too much. Thomas, you must get to Mary now. She needs you.
She needs you!
Go.
Go!
”

Neville took one more look at James’ face, then ran for the door.

Tuesday 20th August 1381

—iii—

M
ary and Margaret stayed many hours with Joan, sometimes talking, sometimes just sharing a companionable silence. By dawn, Mary was exhausted, and her pain too difficult to control, even for Margaret’s use of her powers, and so she and Margaret called for the guards and said their farewells to Joan, promising more aid once Hal had gone to his war.

The two men with their thick blanket sling returned, gently positioning Mary between them, and returning her once more into the grim narrow windings of the passageways leading from the dungeons into the higher levels of the castle. Margaret walked a step or two behind, one hand constantly raised and hovering behind Mary’s back, as if she might be able with that one hand to prevent a disaster if the two men should slip and lose their grip on their precious bundle.

She felt exhausted, drained, her muscles aching and her head throbbing. But if she felt this weary and aching, then how much pain must Mary be enduring? Margaret prayed they reached the upper levels in good time, and that when
they entered Mary’s chamber it would be to find that Culpeper had managed to discover an even stronger mixture of his dark, dangerous herbs that might serve to ease Mary’s agony.

They ascended the narrow, winding stairs—the men stepping carefully, and with the utmost slowness, lest they slip on the damp stones and dislodge Mary from their care. The journey seemed to be taking hours, although Margaret knew they’d really only taken a few minutes to reach this point. Mary tried to keep quiet, but Margaret heard her sharp intakes of breath every time the men inadvertently jostled her, and could only imagine the pain she endured.

“Mary…” she said as they reached the top of the stairwell.

“I am well enough, Margaret,” came the reply, but Mary’s voice was tight and strained.

We should not have come
, thought Margaret.
This was too much.

But now that they’d reached the main levels of the castle the men made good and smooth time. They hastened through the main hall, populated at the moment by only a few sleeping men-at-arms and hunting hounds, then up yet another winding, but mercifully not so steep, stairwell. Mary’s chamber was at the top of this stairwell.

Another few minutes only
, thought Margaret,
and then we shall be well.

Yet her hand hovered closer than ever to Mary’s back.

Just as they reached the final few steps before the top of the stairwell, both of the men exclaimed softly, slowing to a complete halt.

“What is it?” said Margaret, her voice harsh with concern.

“My lady…” said one of the men…and then he screamed, flattening himself against the wall of the stairwell.

As he did so an explosion of golden light filled the space before the group. Margaret had time for only one, brief, appalled look at what stood there—
an archangel, his arms raised above his head, his hands clawed, his face misshapen
with hate, his entire being hurtling down the stairs towards the group
—before the man who had screamed fell against her, knocking her against the wall and momentarily stunning her as her head hit stone.

Bitch-whore!
the archangel screamed.
Do not think that
this
time you will thwart our will!

And then the archangel’s scream was subsumed by something far more horrifying—Mary’s shriek of terror as the archangel enveloped her and her two bearers in his heavenly anger.

Both the men dropped the blanket in an instinctive action to shield their faces with their arms.

The archangel pushed them to one side, reaching for Mary.

Whore-bitch!
he screamed again.

“Mary,” Margaret cried, reaching out through the confusion of falling bodies, trying to move herself so that as Mary fell Margaret might serve as some protection against the sharp edges of the stairs.

Mary shrieked, a formless plea for mercy.

The archangel roared, grabbed Mary by the hair and by the shoulder of her gown…and hurled her down the stairwell.

Now too horrified to even cry out, Margaret grabbed for Mary, but the archangel had tossed her high above her head, and all Margaret could do was turn and watch…

…as Mary’s body bounced down the stone stairwell, disappearing around the gentle curve of the interior supporting wall.

Each time Mary bounced, Margaret could hear bones snap and break.

There was a sudden, stunning stillness. Margaret glanced above her—the two men were moaning, half unconscious, slouched on the steps, and the archangel had vanished—then whipped her head downwards again as a thin wail of the most horrifying suffering came from the base of the stairwell.

“Mary,” Margaret whispered, sliding and stumbling down the stairs. Her vision kept blinking in and out—her
head throbbed abominably from the blow it had taken—and on at least two occasions Margaret blacked out momentarily as she slid downwards, but eventually she did make it to the foot of the stairs…and when she did, when she reached the final steps above the bottom of the stairwell, she came to a complete halt, blinking her eyes, trying desperately to believe that what she saw lying before her did not exist.

It could not exist, because for this degree of suffering to exist must surely mean the world was at an end.

Mary lay in a twisted nightmare on the flagging about two paces distant from the final step. Her head was contorted to one side, almost as if her neck had been wrung; her arms and legs lay at unnatural angles; her body was twisted back upon itself in a manner that suggested her back was snapped in two in more than one place.

Her body, as the floor beneath her, was wet with blood, and her robe, once such a pristine smooth silkiness, had peculiar little bumps in it.

Horrified, Margaret realised jagged bits of bone poking through Mary’s flesh had raised those otherwise innocuous bumps.

One gleaming, white piece had actually punctured both Mary’s flesh and her robe, jutting out a half-finger’s length from her left shoulder.

But the most appalling thing of all was that Mary was completely conscious, completely aware of what had happened, and of the lingering torment in which she had been doomed to die.

Her eyes, wide and tortured, stared directly into Margaret’s.

“Margaret,” she whispered, and in that one word managed to convey both her suffering and her plea for Margaret to somehow, impossibly, make it all better.

Her mouth agape, her face white with horror, Margaret crawled forward on her hands and knees until she reached Mary’s side.

She kneeled in a pool of Mary’s blood, and held out shaking hands before her.

She did not know what to do with them. She wanted to touch Mary, but could not, for any touch would double her suffering.

Lord Christ, how were they going to move her?

Margaret’s mouth worked, and her eyes filled with tears. The tremor in her hands increased so dramatically she had to hold them against her chest in an effort to keep them still.

“Mary…” she managed, then lifted her head and stared uselessly about the hall as people in their ones and twos began to walk towards Mary and Margaret. They approached slowly, hesitatingly, their steps leaden with horror.

“Help us,” Margaret whispered, her tears overflowing her eyes and streaming down her cheeks. “Help us!”

Mary, still conscious, whimpering in both shock and the horrifying knowledge of her condition, had not once taken her eyes from Margaret’s face.

“Help us,” whispered Margaret one last, hopeless, time.