“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.
XI
Thursday 15th August 1381
—iii—
Neville 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 Gabri
el’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.”
PART FIVE
Agincourt
Now shrinketh rose & lilye-flowre
That whilen ber that swete savoure, In somer, that swete tide.
Ne is no quene so stark ne stour,
Ne no levedy so bright in bour,
That ded ne shall byglid.
Now shrinketh rose and lily flower,
That once bore such sweet fragrance,
In summer, that sweet time.
There is no queen so mighty or strong,
Nor lady so bright in her bower,
That death shall not pass by.
Late thirteenth-century English lyric
I
Friday 16th August 1381
—i—
Astrong premonition of danger wakened Joan from her sleep. Why the arrival of such a premonition at this particular point she did not know, because it had been four days since she’d been abducted, bundled into a chest, and moved two days north of Paris on the tray of a jolting cart. Not even in those two days, when she’d been trapped in the dark chest, did Joan sense so much danger lurking about her.
But today, on this fine morning, and with no apparent reason, Joan woke with the sense that today would be one of extreme danger.
Her captors—Philip’s men, naturally—had brought her to the small and somewhat tumbledown castle of Beaurevoir some eighty miles north of Paris. Here they placed her into the care of several well-dressed and mannered ladies of the minor nobility, a goodly contingent of stern-faced men-at-arms, and several priests, who examined her twice daily for an hour to see if they could detect any heretical leanings.
Joan stirred on her comfortable bed, hearing the noise of her ladies rising when they realised she was awake. One of the women drew back the shutters, illuminating the chamber with the early morning sun. The chamber which formed her prison was very comfortably appointed, almost luxurious: the furniture was well made, tapestries hung from the walls, and Joan ate her meals from fine silver plates and drank well-seasoned wine from solid gold cups.
“Mademoiselle?” said one of the ladies, bending over Joan.
“I am awake,” said Joan, and sat up.
The woman offered Joan a bowl and flannel with which to wash the sleep from her eyes, which Joan accepted gratefully. But Joan’s face darkened as another lady
approached carrying a richly-wrought and embroidered crimson gown.
“I will not wear that abomination,” Joan said.
“But you will look so beautiful in it,” said the woman.
Joan sent her a scathing look, then reached for her usual garb, a man’s tunic and leggings, even though they were soiled and stained from their continual wear for some five days.
The women, all three of them, tried again to persuade Joan to accept the gown, but Joan steadfastly refused. Every morning that she had been at Beaurevoir the four of them had engaged in the same ritual: the women begged Joan to wear the rich gown, and Joan refused.
Having finally managed to garb herself in her tunic and leggings, Joan then sat at the table and allowed the women to serve her some bread and fruit, accompanied by watered wine. She waved her companions away as she ate, preferring to breakfast in some measure of loneliness.
As she ate (or, rather, pushed the bread about the plate and chewed with effort upon a single apple), Joan sank into thought, trying to discover the reason for her sudden sense of danger.
That she was going to die, she knew, but she felt very much as if today she would be forced into a premature death that would not in any measure serve to aid France or Charles.
Joan momentarily closed her eyes and shuddered. Dying she had accepted, but only because she knew it would serve France so well. To die purposeless? Nay, that she could not accept.
“Mademoiselle?” came the concerned voice of one of the women, who had left her stool in the corner of the chamber and now approached Joan.
“Nothing,” said Joan, waving the woman back. “Leave me.”
As the woman retreated, Joan took another mouthful of apple. Where could the danger come from? Was one of her female companions hiding a dagger with which she thought to assassinate Joan? Was one of the priests even now building a premature pile of faggots in the courtyard outside? Was Bolingbroke riding here as she sat eating her futile breakfast, thinking to run her through with his sword?