The Crippled Angel Read online

  —i—

  The cold eventually grew unbearable, so bad that not only was Neville’s shaking verging on the painful, but his hopeless thoughts had grown disordered and uncontrolled. He could see nuns, monks and physicians moving about the guildhall, could see the sick writhing about their beds, and yet none of them appeared beset by such cold. Mary, Margaret and Jocelyn slept close to him with nothing but thin blankets about them, and yet neither did they shiver.

  Perhaps the cold was heaven sent to remind him of his purpose. To control him, perhaps.

  Neville tried to concentrate his thoughts, but they were scattering all over the place. No God but the collective will of the angels…the cries and screams of the dying…Mary, trying not to cry in pain as she tended those only marginally sicker than her…the black Dog of Pestilence, stalking through London…the cold, cold hell of heaven…Margaret nursing their son…Jesus Christ in agony on his cross for fourteen hundred years…himself, forced into a decision that he loathed beyond anything he could imagine…

  Neville lowered his head into his arms and concentrated on the memory of the suffering Christ, driving away all other thoughts. He remembered Jesus’ dark eyes settling on him, their compassion, their love…and all the time he struggled to raise his shoulders and torso so that he could draw great, painful bubbling breaths into his tortured body.

  Dangerous, malicious, destructive, Archangel Michael had said.

  Christ, who died for love so that mankind could be saved, freed from the chains of the angels.

  “Dangerous? Malicious? Destructive?” Neville whispered. “I cannot believe that to be so. No, no. You are the dangerous and malicious one, Michael!”

  He raised his head, intending to meditate on the small crucifix that hung on the wall of the alcove. Hoping to drive away the more painful of his thoughts.

  But instead of meditating or praying, Neville found himself staring at it with wide, disbelieving eyes.

  The crucifix was small, no taller than the length of Neville’s forearm, and carved from a block of solid wood. It was good English workmanship, for despite its smallness the form of Christ was lifelike in the extreme.

  Too lifelike perhaps, for, as Neville watched, the body of Jesus Christ contorted in agony on the cross. His head turned, and seemed to stare directly at Neville.

  Do not despair, Thomas.

  “Why not?” he whispered. “Sweet Lord Christ, I want to free mankind from the grip of the angels, but I cannot. I cannot! I cannot freely hand my soul to Margaret—”

  Thomas, do you not remember what I said to you as you stood beneath my dying body?

  Neville fought to remember. “You told me to trust you. But what can you do, what can anyone do? How will trust help me?”

  Trust me, Thomas. That is all that I ask.

  Neville laughed bitterly. Trust. It was a terrible thing to ask when he knew the angels had him trapped. He could never give Margaret his soul. Not freely. Not completely.

  Free me. Trust me.

  “Free you? How?”

  Free me.

  “How?”

  The figure of Christ twisted and writhed in agony. I am nailed to the cross—

  “How? How do I free you?”

  I am nailed to the cross…

  Neville sobbed, inching forward on his hands and knees towards the crucifix. Christ’s body now twisted in such agony that rivulets of blood seeped down the wall. “How?” he whispered. “Sweet Jesu, tell me how to free you!”

  I am nailed…

  “Sweet Jesu!”

  I am nailed…

  I am nailed…

  …nailed…

  And then Neville blinked, and the blood had gone, and the body nailed to the crucifix was gone, and Neville was left crying softly, his hand still outstretched in silent supplication.

  How? How could he free the Lord Jesus Christ?

  He slowly lowered his hand, resting his head on the cold stone floor, and wept.

  XII

  Monday 27th May 1381

  —ii—

  “Tom?”

  Startled, Neville raised his head. Mary had risen and was sitting on the edge of her bed. She put a finger to her lips, indicating Margaret and Jocelyn, then gestured for Neville to aid her.

  Nothing in her expression indicated she had seen or heard any of the exchange between Christ and Neville.

  He rose, walked over to her—hobbling slightly with his cold, stiff muscles—and took her arm.

  “The chapel,” she whispered. “I would like to pray a while, I think, and perhaps talk with you.”

  Neville felt her tremble slightly, and she leaned more heavily upon him.

  “You need to eat something,” he said, “before we can talk.”

  He led her first to the area where a nun was ladling broth into bowls, where he sat her down and forced her to drink a half bowl of broth and several pieces of milk-soaked bread, then into the cool dimness of the guildhall’s chapel. Flickering red light lit the chapel, a combination both of the continually burning fires and of the dawn.

  “Madam, may we speak?” Neville said, sitting down beside Mary on a bench.

  If she was irritated at his forgetfulness of her wish to pray first, she did not show it. “Only if you call me Mary, Tom. I am too tired and weary to cope with the continual ‘madams’.”

  He hesitated, and, seeing his uncertainty, Mary reached to him and took his hand between hers.

  Neville looked down at her hands, and saw that they were so thin that the bones appeared ready to break through her fragile skin.

  “Mary,” he said, “you are so ill…”

  “Aye,” she said, “and you have known that for so long now there is no reason to remark further upon it.”

  He smiled a little at the tartness in her tone, and she coloured at the expression in his eyes. Her entire body stiffened, and Neville’s smile grew wider.

  “And you have known for so long now how greatly I adore you,” he said with a light teasing tone, grateful that, unknowingly, she was giving him a reason to jest away some of his troubles, “that you should not now be acting the coy virgin with me.”

  Mary relaxed, and laughed softly. “Aye. We have both seen too much to hide behind coy exteriors. Tom, what is on your mind? Your eyes are clouded with such pain that I can hardly bear it.”

  Neville looked at the altar, his eyes fixed on the crucifix behind it.

  How, Lord Christ? How do I free you?

  He faced Mary again. “I have been given a problem, Mary,” he said. “Actually, several problems, but there is one that perhaps I shall concentrate on first. First this solution presents itself, then that, and then I find I cannot choose between them for worry that I might pick the wrong one.”

  “And you would ask my advice?”

  “Aye.” He paused, thinking, then spoke again. “A man begs me to free him. To me he appears as if love incarnate, for he speaks of nothing but love, and thinks that love is the highest thing a man or a woman can aspire to.”

  “Yes…?”

  “Yet others, beings of power and majesty, tell me that this man is evil incarnate…that if he is freed to walk earth malevolence and disaster will follow in his footsteps.”

  “Beings of power and majesty?”

  Neville hesitated, then decided to tell Mary the truth. “Angels, Mary. You have heard, surely, that the Archangel Michael has appeared to me?”

  Mary nodded. She’d heard the gossip about why Thomas Neville had left the Dominican Order. “You claimed to be following the archangel’s orders in discovering some evil.” She frowned. “This man? This man you think is love, but the angels claim is evil?”

  “Aye. He is the embodiment of the evil the angels have sent me to destroy.”

  “But now you want to free him? Not to destroy him?”

  “Aye.”

  “Tom…to go against the wishes of God’s messengers. Surely you must have misunderstood this man? Surely he only presents a chimera of love
and goodness to hide the evil within?”

  Again Neville glanced at the crucifix. “No. I believe that he does truly represent love, Mary. The angels…the angels are cruel creatures…”

  “But they must be cruel, surely? Tom, I do not understand…why…how can you go against the wishes of the angels? I cannot think that you could possibly want to let this man free at all.”

  And yet again Neville glanced at the crucifix, and this time Mary did not miss his look.

  “Have you prayed to Jesus Christ our Lord, Tom? Have you sought His guidance in this matter?”

  “Mary.” Neville took both her hands between his own, holding them with the utmost gentleness. “Mary, it is Jesus Christ who the angels say is the embodiment of all that is evil.”

  “What? Tom, I do not understand. How can sweet Jesu embody evil?” Unbidden, a memory surfaced in Mary’s mind. A memory of…a dream, perhaps? A strange dream…a dream of great grief, of loss. She frowned.

  “Mary?”

  “Ah!” She jerked her head, as if waking herself out of some stupor. “It is nothing. Tom…I cannot believe that Jesus Christ our Lord embodies evil. I simply cannot. I will not. No, it can’t be.“

  Again Neville looked at her strangely, and Mary knew it was because of the slight note of hysteria that had tinged her last words. Why so upset? It was not simply because the notion that Christ embodied evil upset her genuine piety…it was almost as if the charge struck to the heart of her being.

  “Aye, how can he indeed…” Neville bowed his head, staring at Mary’s hands between his, thinking deeply.

  Who could he trust, if not this woman?

  “Mary,” he said finally, raising his face to hers, “I have taken this single problem out of a much larger one, and, as much as I am loath to trouble you with my burden, I think I will go mad if I do not talk with someone about it. Mary, this will be difficult, unbelievable, and it will shatter much of what you believe. Mary, I do not…I cannot…”

  She pulled one of her hands free, and lifted it to his face. “Tom, so often I am left untold, and left out of people’s plans and schemes and secrets. I do not care if what you have to tell me shatters everything I hold dear, for to know that you hold me beloved enough to tell me…well, that is recompense enough.” She smiled. “I am dying, Tom. Who better to confess to than a dying woman?”

  “Mary, I shouldn’t have spoken…this is too great a burden…”

  “You are tormented, Tom.” Her finger stroked gently up and down his cheek. “And I have already lived through such torment that to hear a little more will do me no injury at all.”

  She hesitated, and frowned slightly, as if wondering what she herself meant by that. Then her expression cleared, and she leaned forward and kissed Neville’s cheek exceedingly gently.

  “Confess all, Tom, and I shall take your secrets nowhere but to my grave.”

  On his cross in heaven, Christ writhed in torment.

  But, strangely, his face was suffused with joy. “Thank you, Mary,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

  XIII

  Monday 27th May 1381

  —iii—

  Margaret hovered in a half-sleep, too exhausted to take the final step to wakefulness. The past few days had been appalling; a never-ending nightmare of tending the hopeless, of sponging down corpses befouled with pus and blood and black faeces, of wondering how much longer she could continue without retching out every morsel of food she had ever consumed, of praying endlessly, over and over in desperate rote, that Rosalind and Bohun would remain safe in Windsor. Every hour she would have to find a bucket of water and scrub her face and hands and arms, trying to get the odour of death out of her skin. But it was a hopeless task. Margaret thought that the stench of the dying and of their foul fluids had so impregnated her flesh that she would never, never be rid of their stink.

  And her clothes. Her gown and under tunic were stiff with dried blood…and worse. Her hair was hopeless: so solid with sweat that Margaret thought it was permanently matted. Perhaps she would have to take shears to it and cut the tangled, dried mess off. It would be easier than trying to clean and comb it.

  As she slept Margaret had dreamed of tearing herself free of her clothes, throwing them on a fire, and jumping into a delightfully cool pond of spring water. There she would scrub and scrub at flesh and hair until everything—the encrustations, the stains, the lice and fleas, the terrible, terrible stench—were gone and she was pale and clean once more.

  To drift into wakefulness, realising that she still stank and that her soiled clothes still clung to her, was a wretched experience.

  Margaret lay a few minutes, eyes shut, trying to control her despair. She could hear the moans and wails of the dying beyond the alcove, she could smell their stink, and she could hear the shuffling, exhausted feet of their carers.

  Nothing had changed since she lay down to sleep, nothing had improved for the better, and there was no hope that this day would bring anything but a continuation, and perhaps even a worsening, of the horrible dying about her.

  She moved very slightly, and winced. Every muscle ached—her neck, shoulders and hips were especially painful.

  “Sweet Jesu,” she murmured, then made a supreme effort and opened her eyes. If she were feeling so sore and exhausted, then how was Mary coping? The woman had not complained once during these past days, even though Margaret knew there were times when she had to bite her lip to stop herself crying out with the pain coursing through her body. Mary permitted herself to take enough of Culpeper’s liquor to dull the pain, but never enough to completely dissipate it, for that would fog her mind and send her to sleep. “And how can I sleep,” she would say to Margaret or Neville whenever they pleaded with her to rest, “when so many need me?”

  Margaret could not deny that Mary’s very presence did some good. Mary might not have had the power to heal, or to ease pain, but she eased spirits and minds with her very presence. That the Queen of England cared enough to spend her days and nights tending the ill gave more comfort than almost anything else could have done—save the sudden and miraculous discovery of a cure for the pestilence.

  Finally, late last night, Mary had agreed to rest. Only for a few hours, but she would rest.

  Once she’d settled Mary on her bed, Margaret had almost collapsed with her own exhaustion. Now she slowly blinked, accustoming her eyes to the light in the hall beyond the alcove.

  Sweet Jesu! It was mid-morning. She’d slept for over ten hours.

  And Mary hadn’t woken? Margaret swung her legs over the side of her bed and sat up, twisting about to check Mary. Please, sweet Jesu, that she hadn’t died during the night…

  Margaret stared for a long moment at the tangled, empty blankets of Mary’s bed before she actually realised that Mary wasn’t there.

  Sighing, Margaret struggled to her feet. Mary was undoubtedly already back at the bedsides of the ill while she, Margaret, had overslept by hours.

  She glanced at Jocelyn, wrapped in her blanket and breathing deeply in sleep. She did not wake her: the girl had seen and done enough already.

  Sighing yet again, and running her hands over her hair in a useless attempt to restore it to some order, Margaret walked into the hall and the stench of death.

  Mary’s face was very still. She’d listened for over two hours as Neville had talked. What she’d heard left her cold and numb…but not disbelieving, for so much of it fitted with what she had seen of both Bolingbroke and Margaret, and with some of the strange dreams she’d had when she’d imbibed too much of Culpeper’s liquor.

  Strange dreams…sent to her by Jesus?

  Neville held Mary’s hand, watching her face carefully. “It took me many months to come to terms with this knowledge,” he said in a very gentle voice, “and I had not had to deal with it all in one indigestible lump as you must now do. But, Mary, I am glad I have told you. I need so much to have someone I can trust to talk to.”

  “I needed to know much earlier than thi
s,” Mary said, her eyes downcast, ignoring Neville’s final remark. Of all the things that Neville had told her—demons, angels, and an eventual decision that would either damn mankind or free it—Mary caught onto the one that was closest to her own life. “My husband…the Demon-King? How could you not have told me?”

  “Mary—”

  She waved her free hand dismissively. “No, no, I know why you did not tell me. I thank you that you have now…”

  She lapsed into silence. “I cannot believe that our Lord Jesus Christ can be evil,” she whispered finally. “But I do believe that what you have told me of the angels, and this strange-flowered place they inhabit, is evil. They are so cruel.”

  “In all of this,” Neville said, “Christ’s love and compassion has proved the rock that I can cling to. When Margaret betrayed me, when I think of what Hal has done to gain the throne, and of what he might do, when I discovered what was in that casket, and its import, then thought of Christ comforted me. Even though,” his mouth quirked, “he is indeed ‘demonry’ personified…at least as the angels define it.”

  Mary drew in a deep breath. “There is a strange road before you, Tom. Before all of us. Before England.”

  “Aye, that there is.”

  A silence fell between them. It was a comforting, companionable silence, both adrift in their thoughts, yet glad of the other’s presence.

  “You wish to free Jesus?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then you must do it,” Mary said firmly, patting Neville’s hand.

  Neville looked at her carefully. “But perhaps I have been misled by Jesus. Perhaps I do not see the danger—”

  “No. There is no danger. Tom, there is something I must tell you.”

  Neville smiled, and raised an eyebrow slightly. “Do not tell me that the angels have confided in you as well!”

  Mary laughed softly. “Nay. But…Tom, I had a dream one night, just before we left Windsor to come to London. I had dismissed it as a phantasm of Culpeper’s liquor, but now…”