“Lady,” Neville whispered, “I beg of you, will you accept my soul?”
“Gladly,” she whispered.
Hesitating an instant, but only because at this moment his love seemed too overwhelming, Neville slowly bent his head to Mary’s face, and kissed her.
Deeply and passionately, the kiss of a lover.
Her arms entwined about his shoulders, her hands buried deep in his hair, her body pressed tight against his, Mary took his kiss deep into her being.
And Thomas Neville’s soul slid easily, gratefully, lovingly and with the utmost joy into her keeping.
He ended the kiss, and leaned back his head, and laughed with the sense of total freedom that enveloped him. Mary, still clinging tight to him, joined in his laughter, and together they spun about the cobbled square, laughing and dancing, surrounded by the throng of horrified black robed angels.
Finally, panting with both breathlessness and joy, they came to a halt.
“I had thought that my being would collapse when I gifted my soul,” Neville said. “Why is it then that I still breathe, and feel, and move?”
“Because,” said Mary, “when you gift something wholly and completely and unhesitatingly it returns to you doublefold.”
Then she leaned up to his face and kissed him again, softly, but not lingeringly. “Thank you, Tom. For your friendship, for your love, and, above all, for your gift.”
Neville’s smile suddenly dimmed. “Will I lose you?”
“I must return to my husband, and you to your wife,” she said. “But we will not lose each other.”
And with that she pulled out of his arms, paused, almost regretfully, then turned away and walked slowly back to where James waited for her.
Neville watched her go, his being equal parts of sadness and joy.
Mary reached James, kissed him, then took his hand and turned back to face Neville.
She nodded.
Neville himself turned back to those staring at him.
The angels, their entire beings still and silent as they watched.
Their eyes flat. Unbelieving.
Margaret, on her knees now, her own eyes wide, but with disbelief and relief combined.
Bolingbroke, still furious, his fists clenched at his sides.
Catherine, watching from her chair beside Bolingbroke, weeping with joy.
Neville looked back to Archangel Michael. “Enjoy your cold, bitter flowers for eternity, Michael,” he said, “but enjoy them without me, and without mankind. I have made my choice, and I deny you.”
And at that instant of denial, Neville felt the power of the angels flood through him.
I deny you, he whispered with his mind, and more power filled him.
Is this how Christ managed his miracles? he wondered in a tiny, distant part of his mind as he stared unblinkingly, coldly, at Archangel Michael. Because in denying the angels he gained their power?
But now was not the time to ponder such things, for Neville understood that this power might not last long.
And so Thomas Neville smiled, cold and hard, knowing the vengeance he would exact on the angels.
On his brothers.
He opened his mouth, hesitated, then spoke the incantation of Opening, the incantation that all Keepers spoke when they wanted to open the cleft into Hell.
Michael’s face opened in an horrific, but completely soundless, scream. He tried to tear himself away from Neville’s smile, but he could not, for he was trapped by the incantation.
“I deny you, and all yours,” Neville said. “Go forth to your own creation, Michael, the bitter fields of hell, and never trouble this mortal realm again.”
There was a terrible grinding sound, and a fifty-foot-long rent appeared in the centre of the square. Steam and sulphur rose from it in great loathsome gouts, and flames flickered high into the air.
The angels screeched, twisting this way and that, but Thomas Neville, brother angel, was speaking again, completing the incantation.
When it was done, he spoke each of the angel’s names, knowing them as part of their shared knowledge, and as he spoke each angel’s name, so a tongue of flame twisted out of the Cleft and enveloped the shrieking angel, dragging him down into hell.
Neville left Michael to last. “Farewell brother,” Neville said. “I embrace mortality—may you embrace your new eternity. Farewell…Michael.”
Michael surged forward towards Neville, his face twisting in his hatred and fury…but just as his hands reached for Neville, so the flame enveloped him, dragging Michael screaming into hell.
There was a moment left, only a moment, and Neville knew what he had to do in that moment. He spoke one more word, and Wynkyn de Worde’s Book of Incantations appeared in his hands.
Neville stepped forward, and, as the Cleft started to grind closed, threw the book down into hell.
There was a sudden surge of sulphurous flame, a shriek from beyond the Cleft as if this was, indeed, the final indignity, and then the ground closed, and there was nothing left to remind the watchers of what had just occurred save a faint odour of sulphur in the air.
There was a long moment, a long drawn-out gasp, an instant of silence, and in that instant several things happened.
All power seeped away from Neville, and he felt himself mortal, and vulnerable, and felt joyous in that mortality and vulnerability.
Freed from the angels.
Bolingbroke strode to the front of the stand, shouting: “I will still have France, Neville. Nothing you have done here this morning can stop that.”
And after France, the world, Neville thought. He began to say something, but was stopped by Mary, who had again walked forward.
This time, however, she did not look at Neville. She walked slowly and confidently to within ten or fifteen paces of the stand where Bolingbroke stood, looking furiously down.
“You did not love me,” she said, “when that would have been the easiest thing in the world to have done.” Her face softened into regret as she saw shock spread across Bolingbroke’s face.
In that moment he had realised who she was and who she had been.
“France will eat you,” she said, her voice soft yet carrying easily, then she swung about, and walked a little more slowly towards the cart which held the iron-caged Joan. Mary climbed agilely onto the large wheel, and from there took a firm grip on the iron bars of the cage.
“Joan?” she said. “Joan?”
Joan, whom everyone had forgotten in the past extraordinary minutes, crept forward towards the woman clinging to the side of her cage.
“I know you,” she said. “You were the woman at the foot of Christ’s cross. You were kind to me. And you were the Queen Mary, who was kind to me also.”
“Aye,” said Mary, “I was both those women. Come here, Joan, and kiss me.”
Wondering that she should be so blessed, Joan moved to the side of the cage, and leaned close enough to Mary that their lips could briefly brush.
“Go home, Joan,” said Mary, and smiled, suddenly and brilliantly.
Joan stared in amazement, and then her face went blank, and her eyes lifeless.
Her breast might still rise and fall with breath, but Joan was no longer there.
She had gone home to her father’s sheep.
Mary smiled once more, soft and sad, then climbed down from the cart. She walked back to James, took his hand, and without a backward glance both of them faded into the crowd.
And everything woke up, and returned to the moment.
“Burn her,” screamed Bolingbroke, beside himself with rage and frustration. “Burn her.”
The crowd murmured and shifted, knowing in their souls if not their minds that something extraordinary had just passed. A company of men-at-arms moved forward to drag an unresisting Joan from the cage.
No one noticed that the placard that hung about her neck had changed. No longer did it read Sorceress.
Now it simply read Shepherdess.
Neville leane
d down and took Margaret’s hands, helping her to her feet. She stared wordlessly at him, and he smiled, and pulled her gently against him.
“I have had enough of great doings, my love,” he said. “Shall we go home, and watch over our children?”
“Mary…” she said.
Neville laughed, his hands circling Margaret’s waist and lifting her high in the air in the full joy of the moment.
“Mary has given us back to each other,” he said. “It is a precious gift that we should not waste.”
Margaret’s mouth trembled, and the tears in her eyes spilled over, but she finally managed a smile. “I had not known—”
“None of us did,” Neville whispered, lowering her so he could kiss her. “None of us knew that Mary was our salvation.” Then he grinned, and hugged her to him before gently moving her away from the square.
Behind them flames started to lick at the still figure tied to the stake.
“Let us go home,” Neville said, “and to our lives.”
Isabeau de Bavière savoured each lick of the flames, each spreading scorch of Joan’s flesh. She watched as the flames enveloped Joan’s feet and ankles, and shuddered in pleasure as the girl’s skin bubbled and burst before it caught aflame. She leaned forward, her eyes bright, as the flesh of the girl’s calves rippled then dissolved into blackened agony as they charred. She gasped with delight as Joan’s shift suddenly roared into flame, obscuring the girl’s face and turning her hair into a roaring inferno.
She moaned, triumphant, as the dying girl’s tendons snapped in the heat and her limbs jerked as they cooked.
And finally, Isabeau de Bavière sighed, replete, as Joan’s chains melted in the heat and her charred and unrecognisable body fell into the cauldron of flames in a scattering of sparks and a sudden, surprising, sizzle of melting body fat.
Isabeau’s only disappointment—and it was indeed a profound one—was that the girl had not made one sound, not one moan, not one cry, not a single screech, as she had died her agonising death.
Joan’s composure had not faltered for one instant.
Joan sat in the thick grass of the mountain meadow, half dreaming in the warm embrace of the sunlight falling about her. Sheep ranged in a thick creamy crowd in every direction, and Joan thought she had never seen sheep looking so fat and so healthy.
She sighed, contented, although she knew there was yet one thing she needed to do. She rose, cast her eyes about the sheep once more to satisfy herself as to their safety, then walked down the meadow.
PART SEVEN
Christ Among Us
Saturday-night my wife did die,
I buried her on the Sunday,
I courted another a coming from church,
And married her on the Monday.
On Tuesday night I stole a horse,
On Wednesday was apprehended,
On Thursday I was tried and cast,
And on Friday I was hanged.
Version two of a traditional English nursery rhyme
I
Tuesday 10th September 1381
continued…
Tharles slouched in his chair, listening to the lacklustre minstrel warble on and on and on about the beauty of the sun and the sky and the cursed green shaded meadows. The minstrel’s playing was execrable, his voice worse, and the manner in which his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as though it were a ball on a string was quite repulsive.
But if the minstrel didn’t sing and play, then Charles would be left alone with his thoughts. Worse would be the rising memory of his mother’s twisted, bitter voice, reminding him of his constant failures. None of that did Charles want to think about at all. So he stared as if entranced at the damned minstrel, concentrating on the man’s pitiful music, and using it to keep thoughts of his failures at bay.
He’d travelled with his entourage far enough south to reach one of Isabeau’s castle outposts. It was a wretched place, full of draughts and crumbling walls and damp bedding and narrow, dark windows. Charles could not wait to move on to…to…well, to anywhere, most probably Avignon which was far enough away from everything nasty and problematical to be a safe haven. Charles was certain that Pope Clement would give him a sweet palace to live in, and trumpet mightily about how the dark English king had stolen Charles’ throne (without actually making any move to force Charles to try to regain his lost realm), and entertain Charles once or twice a month at the papal table; more frequently, perhaps, if Clement entertained ambassadors or diplomats from far-flung places.
If Avignon proved too close to France for comfort (what if Bolingbroke decided Avignon was worth invading for its rich array of papal jewels and gold?), then there was always Constantinople. Charles had heard great stories of Constantinople’s wealth and sophistication—even the streets were paved with gold and gems—and the quality of the minstrels and scholars there…
Bolingbroke would never, ever, surely, try to pursue Charles as far as Constantinople.
But even as hope waxed in Charles’ thoughts, a niggling horror buried that hope so deep it brought instant tears to Charles’ eyes.
Wasn’t Constantinople packed, not only with wealth and sophistication, but also with the most fearful and skilled of assassins? Could not Bolingbroke—or his own mother, more like!—ensure with a hefty payment Charles’ own death from poison? Or a well-placed knife? Or from the fangs of one of the hideous serpents that Charles had heard about?
He sobbed out loud, covering his mouth with a lace-trimmed neckerchief, and waved the minstrel away.
For some minutes Charles sat in pathetic despondency, weeping into his piece of lace, and wondering what terrifying end awaited him. Whatever it was, Charles knew it would be both painful and humiliating, and would be bound to involve his mother curling her lip in disgust at his inability to even die gracefully and courageously.
Then something—a noise, a movement—disturbed him, and Charles slowly raised his head.
Joan—impossible, impossible—stood in the doorway of his solar, wearing nothing but a simple robe and light hooded cloak…and, remarkably, carrying in her hands the crown of France.
Except this wasn’t Joan, was it? It couldn’t be, for the girl glowed with a gentle radiance and, as she stepped forward, Charles realised that Joan was diaphanous to the degree he could see straight through her.
Charles hiccupped in terror. This vision of Joan was most apparently a spectre—Joan’s spirit come to torment him for abandoning her.
His sobbing increased as he cowered deeper into his chair. Would the bitch never leave him alone?
Was she going to pursue him into and beyond both their graves?
Joan glided forward, her expression becoming more gentle, more loving the nearer she came to the cowering, sobbing figure in the chair.
Strength, Charles, she said, her lips barely moving, and courage and daring. These I finally bequeath you.
And her spectral hands lowered the crown onto Charles’ trembling head.
Isabeau had just begun her descent of the steps to dismount the stand, the scent of charred flesh still lingering enjoyably in her nostrils, when the first agonising pain gripped her.
It felt as if a great hand had seized her heart and was slowly, inexorably, squeezing.
She stopped, one hand gripping the handrail of the steps, one hand buried deep in the folds of her gown above her chest, and stared goggle-eyed into the distance, as if her pain had opened to her a vision other than that of the rapidly emptying castle square of Rouen.
“No,” she whispered, her hand twisting within the folds of her gown as another, stronger, pain tore through her. “No.”
“No,” he screamed.
Her hands let it go, and Charles felt the full weight of the crown rest on his head.
And something happened.
He blinked, and very slowly straightened in his chair. He blinked again, and stared into Joan’s loving face. “What have I done?” he whispered, his tone completely altered from its normal,
fretful whine.
It is not what you have done that matters, Joan replied, her lips again barely moving, but what you will do. Gather your sheep, your grace, and make your meadow strong and safe.
And then she was gone, in less than the blink of an eye. One second she was there, the next Charles was once more alone in the chamber, the only reminder of Joan’s spectral visit the crown on his head.
“No,” Isabeau said, her knees buckling, her chest and shoulders afire with the agony coursing through her, and she did not hear her daughter’s anxious voice behind her, nor feel Catherine’s hand on her arm.
“No,” Isabeau said again, still staring before her at a scene that no one among her companions could see. “You are a peasant-born bastard…a bastard. You have no right to that crown. Take it off! Take it off!”
Charles suddenly stopped just as he reached the door of the chamber. He stared back into the apparently empty room, and his face was terrifying in its might and purpose and utter contempt.
“I am the son of my father, Louis,” he said. “But even were I the son of some peasantish fellow, I would still do what I shall do now, and win back this kingdom from the foul grip of the English. Madam, your day is done, and I have done with your lies and curses. Begone.”
And he turned and, striding from the chamber, slammed the door shut behind him.
Isabeau jerked in one last, dying breath, and twisted about on the steps to stare into Catherine’s and Bolingbroke’s faces directly behind her.
“Do you think to have killed her?” she gasped, and, crumpling into an untidy pile of grey silk and pale, bitter flesh, died.
II
Monday 16th September 1381
“ oly Father,” the secretary said, bowing deeply, “a man claiming to be the King of France awaits in the antechamber. He demands to see you. I have told him that—”