The crowds were permitted to gather in the other two sides of the square, and in the spaces between the stands.
By nine of the clock there were some ten thousand gathered in the square. Among them was a scruffy, weary-faced English nobleman. He leaned against the supports of the stand where the king would shortly sit, his arms folded, his face staring at the stake. The skin beneath his black hair and above his unkempt beard was ashen, his eyes ringed with red, his mouth a thin-pressed white line.
Neville had spent the entire night roaming the streets of Rouen trying to find James. He’d shouted his name, he’d pounded on the doors of those carpenters’ workshops he could find. He’d wept and screamed and sobbed.
But he had not found James.
Christ had deserted him today, it seemed.
Neville’s eyes swung towards a movement in the crowd in front of the stake.
A man stood there, ethereal, exuding a faint unearthly aura. His features were all but hidden beneath a long, hooded, black cloak. All that Neville could see of him was a pale flash of a face deep under the hood, and the gleam of flat, black eyes.
The blackness of the cloak gave forth a faint, sickening light. A darkness that hung over the man, cloaking him from most eyes.
All eyes save those of another angel, or of one of their children.
Another movement, slightly to the left of the first cloaked man, and Neville’s eyes flew that way.
There stood another black-cloaked and hooded man, exuding the same unearthly glimmer of darkness. On his hooded head sat a black obsidian crown, its points flickering in the light as if on dark fire.
An archangel.
Michael.
Neville stood up straight, letting his arms drop to his sides. His eyes moved about the crowd. There, there…there! The crowd was intermixed with a throng of angels, all blackly cloaked and hooded, some wearing the archangelic obsidian crowns.
All with pale faces under their hoods, all turned towards Neville, all with black eyes unblinking.
None among the human crowd realised their presence, or realised that every time they moved they bumped elbows or shoulders or hips with an angel come to gloat amid Neville’s misery.
Hundreds of angels, the entire throng of heaven, moving very slowly to the front of the crowd so that they lined the semi-circle of open space in the square.
Decision time, brother. Are you ready?
Neville briefly considered flight, hungered for the cowardice that would allow him to turn and flee.
But he could not.
“James,” he whispered. “Where are you? Help me, please. Oh, sweet Jesu, help me…help me…”
A clarion of horns sounded, and Neville jumped.
The castle gates opened, and through them rode Bolingbroke atop a black destrier—as black as the angels’ cloaks—Catherine riding a smaller palfrey at his side. She was dressed in crimson, and it did nothing to soften the lines about her eyes, or the strain about her mouth.
Behind them rode Isabeau de Bavière, clad in demure grey, but with such a gleam of triumph in her eyes and her bearing that her entire face had lost its fragile air of beauty to a hard mask of malice. Isabeau was certain that, if nothing else, the horror of being burned alive would surely dent Joan’s irritating composure.
Isabeau meant to enjoy Joan’s death.
Following Isabeau rode a score of nobles, all splendidly accoutred, and perhaps a hundred heavily weaponed menat-arms.
And behind them came a cart drawn by four great horses. On this cart sat a cage, and in this cage, clinging to its bars, stood Joan. She wore nothing but a simple unflattering sleeveless shift of undyed linen that came down to her calves; in places it clung in great patches to her skin where she had sweated. Joan’s hair had been rough-cut very short to an uncombed dark cap about her head. Her eyes were wide, staring, but strangely calm. She almost seemed to be in another place. Neville wondered what she saw with those eyes…the market square, or something far more strange?
About her neck someone had hung a sign which read, simply, Sorceress.
Behind the cart walked Margaret, looking terrified rather than calm. Her clothing, while not quite so basic as Joan’s, was almost as simple: a pale grey woollen robe, a simple corded belt tied low about her hips, a white lawn veil holding back her hair.
Neville’s heart lurched within his chest, and his eyes filled with tears. Poor Margaret. Did she think he had deserted her?
But perhaps he had, for the angels had left him no room to manoeuvre, no room to gift Margaret his soul.
“Jesu! Jesu!” Neville whispered, not caring that his staring eyes and ashen face drew concerned looks from those in the crowd close to him. Where is this third path, James? Where my third option?
At that moment he saw Bolingbroke’s face harden, and the man’s hands jerk against his horse’s reins as they tightened.
He’d just seen the angels ringed about the square.
Bolingbroke stared, then his eyes darted about until they found Neville, still close to the stand where Bolingbroke would eventually sit. His lips moved soundlessly, but Neville could hear Bolingbroke’s voice in his head.
Do not fail me now, Neville. Do not fail Margaret.
Neville broke out into a sweat. I will fail if I choose the path you point me at, Hal.
Bolingbroke’s face contorted, and Neville knew he struggled to contain his rage. If they’d been alone, if tens of thousands had not been watching, if the damned angels had not stood there gloating in their imminent victory, then Neville knew Bolingbroke would have been hard-pressed not to reach out and destroy him for that thought.
Far behind Bolingbroke, Margaret let out a soft cry of terror as she, too, caught a glimpse of the ranks of the angels about the square.
It drew Neville’s eyes back to her, and he began to cry for her and for mankind, whom this morning he would be forced to condemn into eternal enslavement.
He cried for himself, as well, knowing that his failure would doom him to an eternal hell clasped within the brotherhood of the angels. He moaned most pitifully, and bent over, his clenched fists at his forehead. Why couldn’t he hand his soul to Margaret? Why? Sweet Jesu knew that he loved her. Oh, why? Why?
The black glimmering ranks of the angels shifted, almost as if they had no solid foothold on the ground, and they drifted in the slight breeze that blew through the square.
You cannot choose Margaret, they whispered about Neville. You know that…Beloved Brother among Us.
Bolingbroke and his entourage had now reached the stand while the cart bearing Joan, Margaret still walking behind it, drew into the open space in front of the stake.
Joan, lost in some strange world of her own, stared unseeing about her.
Margaret shrank closer to the cart, one hand gripping its backboard, her eyes staring, terrified, at the angels about her.
Many of them hissed at her: Demon. Bitch. Heretic imp.
Bolingbroke dismounted from his horse, looked to make sure that Owen Tudor helped Catherine down from her mount, then shot Neville a smouldering glance of anger. Choose Margaret. Hand her your soul. You have no choice.
“I have me no choice,” whispered Neville, “at that you are right…but I cannot choose Margaret.”
Bolingbroke’s face shifted, his rage almost breaking through, then he swung away, and climbed into the stand.
Catherine sent Neville one brief, despairing look, then she, too, climbed into the stand, Owen Tudor close behind her. As Isabeau followed her daughter into the stand she glanced at Neville curiously. A dishevelled noble the worse for drink, she thought, and dismissed him from her mind.
Shaking, a hand clutching one of the wooden supports of the stand almost as hard as Margaret clutched at the cart, Neville turned back to look into the square.
The angels were now, quite literally, shaking. Their forms jiggered and danced about, the rims of their tightly-drawn hoods fluttering and flapping, although they generally kept their places in
the semi-circle at the front of the crowd.
They were having fun, and it showed.
Another clarion of horns, and again Neville jumped.
Bolingbroke was in the stand now, and he moved to its front. He pointed down at Joan, now kneeling in her cage, still clinging to its bars.
“Witch and sorceress,” he said in his clear, carrying voice. “Heretic and harlot, bloodletter and drinker…so has this Joan, so-called Maid of France, been condemned by our mother Church.” Bolingbroke glanced at the stand containing the clerics, and they all nodded solemnly.
“People of France,” Bolingbroke continued. “You think that Joan has worked for you, worked in your favour, but in reality she has been a harlot of the devil, working towards your eventual enslavement to the minions of hell. She is no earthly woman—for what earthly woman wears men’s clothes, and armour, and wields a lance? What earthly woman refuses the embrace of a man, and refuses to bear his children? What earthly woman,” his voice had risen now to a shout, “can fly from the tops of towers and land a mile away? She is a witch, a sorceress, and her contamination can be erased only by the purifying caress of the flames.”
The crowd murmured, and shifted, disliking not so much Bolingbroke’s words, but the vile manner in which he spoke them.
“Men of France—” Bolingbroke called out again, but was prevented from continuing by one of the angels, who now stepped forth, throwing his arms out wide.
Instantly, a great stillness fell upon the crowd, and Neville knew that the angel—Archangel Michael—had ensorcelled the ordinary men and women into a dream state. They might see, and might even remember, but it would be as a dream, not a reality.
Michael threw back his hood, revealing a bald cavernous skull only barely covered with dead white skin.
As the hood of his cloak dropped, so the obsidian crown vanished, then reappeared about the archangel’s white-skinned skull as the hood folded about his shoulders.
Let us see who is the witch here, he hissed. And let us finally decide this battle, once and for all.
He turned slightly, holding out his hand, and Neville, sick to his stomach, his hands trembling with his dread, stumbled helplessly forth into the clear space.
Thomas Neville, the archangel said, and the ranks of the angels about him took up the refrain. Thomas Neville! Thomas Neville! Thomas Neville!
Neville wept, silent and despairing, not able to tear his eyes from Margaret, who was rigid with terror.
Beloved brother, said Michael, one among us, now is the day, the time, and the hour towards which for so many years all of us have walked.
Appalled, Neville realised that Michael was all but conducting a marriage ceremony: the marriage of Neville’s soul, as well as those of all mankind’s, back into the fold of the angels.
To whom will you present your soul, Beloved? To whom will you join forever and ever and for all eternity? Where is your whore, Thomas, who you love so deeply you will gift her your soul?
The archangel paused. Not here?
Not here? whispered the throng of angels. Not anywhere?
Will you admit to inevitability, Thomas, Michael continued, and hand your soul back to us, to your brothers?
The archangel grinned, and it was a horrifying thing. But perhaps you would like to try Margaret, Thomas. Just in case we’re wrong. Just in case there is a chance she’s the right girl for you…
One of the other Archangels stepped forth and grabbed Margaret, who cried out. The Archangel, Raphael, dragged her to stand close to where Michael and Neville stood.
Neville shuddered, feeling the weight of the angels about him, and the terrified eyes of Margaret upon him.
So, Thomas, Michael said, whither goest your soul? To this Margaret—being all you have to hand—or to us?
He stepped forward, so close now that Neville could feel the angel’s cold breath on his cheek.
Michael leaned closer yet, and lifted a hand to stroke softly at Neville’s cheek. You are one of us, Beloved. Fight it no longer. Accept it. Join your soul with ours.
“No,” cried Neville, wrenching away from the archangel’s touch.
You have no choice, Thomas. You are one of us, one with us—
“No!”
—and you must hand us your soul, and mankind with it.
He paused, and the ghastly rictus of a smile re-formed on his face. But you want to try, don’t you? Go on, then. Try and give Margaret your soul. Try it. Try and give this falsity your soul.
Neville stared at Margaret, and took two stumbling paces towards her. She held out her arms, her face—her entire being—beseeching him, and he ran to her, and grabbed her from Raphael’s grip, hoping that in touching her, something within him would give.
Give enough to enable him to hand her his soul.
She clung to him, wrapping her arms about him, sobbing almost uncontrollably, and Neville’s heart broke.
“Margaret…” he whispered.
She lifted her tear-stained face to his, and he bent to kiss her, and as he kissed her he tried, he tried with every part of him, every fibre of his being, every piece of want and desperation within him, to hand to her his soul…
And it would not budge. Every time he tried he felt as if he were being flung against a rockface, and that rockface was the dark irk that had grown within him ever since he’d learned of her trickery in making him love her.
He tried to shove it aside, tried to move about it, but he could not…he could not…he could not…again and again he dashed against it.
He broke down, weeping, and Margaret cried out again in terror, and slumped to the ground.
Neville was dimly aware that Bolingbroke was on his feet in the stand, his face horrified. He was shouting at Neville, but Neville could not make out the words.
About him the angels were closing in, laughing, gloating, knowing they had won.
You cannot deny our will, said Michael, nor the path destined for you. Come join with us, Thomas, join the brotherhood. It is so easy…after all, you only have to do…nothing.
Neville could feel their words pulling at him, feel their effect within him. Michael was calling him home, and his soul was responding.
Michael screamed, and all the angels screamed with him, and Neville’s soul screamed, too, terrified and jubilant at the same moment.
“No,” Neville shouted, dropping to the ground beside Margaret and covering his ears with his hands. “No!”
There is no choice, Thomas. There never has been. Come home. Gift us your soul—
He could feel it within him, tearing loose, responding to the calls of the angels.
He screamed, but that only jerked his soul looser.
One more moment, and it would fly home…
“Tom.”
Everything stopped, even, so it felt to Neville, the beating of his heart within his chest.
“Tom.”
The voice came again. Deep. Calm. Loving.
And the voice of a woman.
Neville jerked, pressing his hands tighter to his ears, wondering what new trick this was.
“Tom.”
The angels screamed, and it was the anger and fright contained in that sound that finally made Neville lower his hands from his ears and look about.
A woman stood at the edge of the crowd.
NO, roared Archangel Michael, and all the angels roared with him. NO! NO! NO!
A woman, James standing a pace behind her, looking tenderly at where both Margaret and Neville sat slumped on the ground.
Neville slowly rose to his feet, his eyes unable to move from this strange, compelling woman. She was tall, and wondrously striking in appearance. Her hair was very dark, bound in a crown about her brow. Her eyes were the deepest blue he had ever seen, almost violet, their colour accentuated by her pale, fine skin. Her body was exquisitely formed, slim and graceful, and with the round bulge of a five- or six-month pregnancy straining the front of her white robe. A sky-blue robe sat about her shoulders.
Her face…Neville blinked, knowing her face from…from…he gasped.
It was Mary. Mary Bohun…and yet not Mary Bohun. She was too tall, her hair and eye colour too wrong, her health too startlingly good.
And yet it was Mary. The Mary who should have been.
She smiled, her face full of pity, and Neville suddenly remembered where he had seen this face before.
It was the face of the woman who had knelt at the foot of the cross when Neville, on his way from Kenilworth to London, had been graced with a vision of Christ.
And then, suddenly, the third option, the third path, opened up before Thomas Neville.
No wonder the angels had attacked her. No wonder they had called her whore.
No wonder they were so afraid of her.
Neville took a slow step forwards, his eyes riveted on Mary’s face.
She smiled, and moved a little, almost suggestively, as if she knew the power of her own body.
Mary…not Mary Bohun, but Mary Magdalene, the prostitute that Jesus had pitied, then befriended, and then loved.
The woman the angels feared before all others.
Mary Bohun…Mary Magdalene…one and the same woman.
The third path, the third choice. Mary, who he had loved and respected without reservation. Mary, who represented neither the angels nor the demons, for she was of neither, but mankind.
The woman who represented mankind’s salvation and freedom…freedom both from the angels, and from the demons. Freedom for mankind…into their own destiny, whatever they might make of that.
The whore to whom he could hand his soul on a platter.
Neville took another step forward, then another, and then Mary laughed and she ran lightly to meet Neville. They met halfway across the square, their arms wrapping tight about each other, their bodies hugging close, and Neville spun her about, laughing and crying at the same time.
“Mary,” he cried. “Mary.”
About them the world erupted. The angels were screaming, Bolingbroke was screaming, and a sobbing Margaret still sprawled on the ground stared at Neville and Mary—but of none of this did either Neville or Mary take any note.