The Crippled Angel Read online

  Culpeper rose hurriedly, taking a step back as the man’s bowels voided themselves in a violent spasm, his face screwing up in distaste at the foul stench that rose from the bed.

  “Find someone to clean him up,” he said to Cooper.

  Will Cooper, a young man of twenty-two or -three years and with a remarkable stoicism of expression given the circumstances of the moment, silently said a quick prayer of gratefulness that at least Culpeper hadn’t asked him to clean the soldier up. But finding someone else to do it wasn’t going to be easy. The sick numbered three hundred in this market hall alone, stretched out in rows on thin pallets, and there were only some ten or twelve assorted servants and as yet unaffected soldiers available to aid them.

  And every one of the sick squirted at least five or six times an hour. The problem was not only in the lack of helpers, but also in the ever-increasing number of rags, linens and herbal preparations needed to clean and treat the sick.

  “First the pestilence, and now this,” Cooper said.

  Culpeper looked at him sharply. “And what do you mean by that?”

  Cooper gave a small shrug. “Many mutter between their spasms that King Hal is a singularly unlucky man,” he said. “Rebellion, pestilence, and now this bloody flux. It is like the seven plagues that God rained down on the Pharaoh for daring to keep Moses and the Israelites enslaved. What else shall we endure?”

  Culpeper blew his breath out in exasperation, fighting the urge to slap Cooper’s face. “This bloody flux was caused by the men gorging themselves on unripe apples,” he said.

  “But so many men, and not all of them apple eaters,” Cooper murmured.

  “And caused by the unhealthy air of the salt marshes about Harfleur,” Culpeper said. “And who knows how it continues to spread among the soldiers. All these men, living in such close, unsanitary quarters…Now, get moving, Cooper, or I’ll set you to washing the rags the servants use to wipe the men’s arses. Move!”

  Cooper scurried off.

  Bolingbroke stood at the window of his main day chamber of Rouen’s castle, staring at the city spread out before him. Rouen was a particularly beautiful city, with majestic spires and towers, gilded roofs, marbled balconies and intricatelycarved wooden fretwork on most buildings. Beautiful it remained after the English had occupied it two days ago, but only superficially, for now those gilded roofs and intricate fretwork hid requisitioned halls and the larger houses, all filled with the cries and the stench of the sick and dying.

  Bolingbroke’s army was already decimated by thirty percent, and only the Lord Christ knew how many more would die before this sickness had passed.

  To lose his chance at the French crown because his men were squirting their lives down the sewers. He hit the window frame in sheer frustration, turning back into the room.

  As usual, most of his commanders were present (although three, including Hungerford, were themselves so ill with the flux they looked like being able to leave their beds only in caskets), as also was Neville, standing in a corner, his arms folded, watching Bolingbroke intently.

  Bolingbroke sent him a hard, suspicious look, then addressed the Earl of Suffolk, newly returned from his mission to Paris.

  “Twenty thousand gold pieces! Where shall I get that from? I should send him twenty thousand carts laden with the effluent my men have voided. That should be his due.”

  “Your grace—” Suffolk began.

  “There was never mention of monetary payment in the bargain he and I made,” Bolingbroke continued, picking up an empty goblet from a table, then throwing it across the room in frustration and anger. Damn the angels for the affliction they’d sent!

  Bolingbroke shot Neville another foul look.

  Suffolk shifted uncomfortably on his feet, trading looks with several of the other commanders. He wished Raby was here, rather than in England keeping watch over the realm, for Ralph Neville always had a calming effect on Bolingbroke.

  And more than a damn shame that Lancaster himself was dead, for more than anyone he could have prevailed upon Bolingbroke to keep a cool head.

  “Philip is playing games,” Warwick said. No one present made the mistake of believing they were dealing with Charles in this matter. “This morning’s intelligence reports that he’s jumping up and down, crying foul; that the English have stolen away his beloved Maid of France, and that all good Frenchmen must come to their nation’s aid.”

  Bolingbroke, now fiddling with a tassel on a wall hanging, snorted in disgust. “At least we know he’s taken her,” he said. “And has her hidden away somewhere.” He turned away from the tassel and regarded the roomful of men once more. “He will give her to us, never fear.”

  “That may work against us, much as we might want to get our hands on the heretic whore,” Suffolk said, again trading looks with Warwick and the other commander in the room, the Earl of Nottingham.

  “And in what manner might that be?” Bolingbroke snapped.

  “It is sometimes better not to give one’s enemy a martyr to inspire them,” Nottingham said softly, moving forward. For a young man, he was unusually perceptive. “Better, perhaps, that we allow this Joan to lead France to defeat in battle. Her power over her people will then be lost.”

  “Better,” Bolingbroke all but shouted, “to burn her and show them she is normal flesh and blood than to risk her winning the damn battle.”

  There was an utter silence in the room as eyes dropped away from Bolingbroke. Never before had he spoken of defeat.

  “Our men are dying,” Bolingbroke continued in a far more reasonable tone. “We had a moderately sized but fine army when we left England. Now we have a tiny army racked with disease. If you don’t think that leaves us vulnerable to defeat on the battlefield…then think again.

  “Joan is our bitter enemy,” he continued, now even more softly. “Perhaps even the witch who has sent this plague upon us. She needs to die.”

  “Your grace,” said Neville, unfolding his arms and standing off the wall on which he’d been leaning. “My Lord of Nottingham has spoken sense. The Maid’s power is fading anyway…how many battles has she won recently? Better, perhaps, to—”

  “Better that I should burn you instead, traitor,” Bolingbroke yelled, striding forward and poking Neville in the chest with a stabbing forefinger. “Better that you die before the last of my men empties his bowels out in the gutters of France.”

  Bolingbroke’s outburst caused a commotion within the chamber.

  “Your grace!” Suffolk said, coming to stand beside an obviously shocked Neville. “My Lord Neville is hardly a traitor. What has he done that you so accuse him?”

  Bolingbroke’s eyes shifted about the murmuring group, and he abruptly backed down. “You must excuse me,” he said. “I’ve had so little sleep, and am riven with concern for my wife.” He waved his hand, hinting at other vague problems.

  “Perhaps you need to rest, your grace,” said Sir John Norbury, who’d been standing silent with Owen Tudor to this point.

  “Yes, you’re right, I do need to rest,” Bolingbroke said, stretching his face in an unconvincing attempt at a smile. “If perhaps you could excuse me for the moment.”

  The group bowed, murmuring their farewells, but just as they started to move away, Bolingbroke spoke again. “Tom, stay, if you will. I should apologise for my unfortunate words.”

  “I am a traitor?” Neville said quietly when the last man to leave the room had closed the door behind him. “In what manner am I ‘traitor’?” Neville knew that Bolingbroke had no intention at all of apologising for his attack…he’d just wanted to be able to continue it in private.

  “In what manner ‘traitor’, Tom? Oh, what pretty words!” Bolingbroke’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

  “What is this?” Neville said, walking to within a pace of Bolingbroke and staring belligerently into his face. “You and Margaret have these past weeks treated me as if I were a pariah. For what reason? Do you think to manipulate my guilt again as on
ce you did? Think you to force me into tossing my soul into Margaret’s manipulative care? Christ, Hal, how better to turn me against you?”

  “You have never had any intention of choosing in my, Margaret’s, or mankind’s favour.”

  “I have every intention of doing so, but you make it too difficult for me. Damn you, Hal! Damn you!”

  “Damning me has always been your intention, hasn’t it, Tom?” Bolingbroke said very quietly, his eyes unflinching as they stared into Neville’s furious brown ones. “You have ever pretended to be my friend while always remaining my secret enemy.”

  “Ah!” Frustrated, Neville turned away. “For the sweet Lord’s sake, Hal, what do you mean?”

  “Rosalind,” Bolingbroke said, watching Neville’s back carefully. “Bohun.”

  Neville turned around again, his face creased in puzzlement. “What?”

  “Your children have betrayed you, Tom.”

  “Of what do you speak, Hal?”

  “Seven weeks ago, Tom, seven weeks ago, Rosalind spoke into Margaret’s mind. When Margaret tested Bohun, she found that he, too, had the same ability. No mortal has that power. None.”

  “But Rosalind and Bohun have as their mother an angel-child, Hal. Surely…” Neville’s voice drifted off as he remembered what Margaret had once told him…that the children of the angel-children, if one parent was a mere mortal, were as all mortal children. They had no powers at all: no shape-shifting, no mind-reading, no witchery of any sort.

  Neville suddenly realised his mouth was hanging open, and he snapped it shut.

  “Yes.” Bolingbroke was walking (stalking) very slowly closer to him. “Rosalind and Bohun should be as mortals, shouldn’t they? But they have the full range of abilities as do all angel-children, Tom. As do all angel-children!”

  “You cannot mean…” Again Neville drifted into a silence as he remembered what the Archangel Michael had said to him when they were standing before Christ’s cross in the Field of Angels. There was no God save the combined will of the angels…Jesus was the child of the combined will of the angels…Jesus had proved himself a frightful burden to the angels, trying to free mankind from their grip, therefore the angels had imprisoned him on the cross…but he was “Not like our next effort. He works our will as if an extension of our own thoughts. There will be no mistake this time…Beloved.”

  “Beloved?” Neville whispered, staring at the whorls in the grain of the floor planking. Rosalind and Bohun were fullbred angel-children?

  He looked up at Bolingbroke, now so very close, his eyes the piercing murder of the plunging hawk.

  “I am an angel?” Neville whispered. Jesus was an angel, too?

  Brother, he had called me.

  Bolingbroke’s mouth opened, twisting with the full measure of his rage and hate, and he reached for Neville with hands hooked into claws.

  X

  Thursday 15th August 1381

  —ii—

  Neville sidestepped, and began to laugh. It was weak at first, but then it turned into the full-blown hilarity of true humour.

  “An angel!” he said, now laughing so hard he had to rest his hands on his thighs. “An angel! An angel!”

  Bolingbroke had stopped, his hands slowly lowering to his sides, his face wreathed in confusion at Neville’s reaction. “You did not know?”

  Neville lifted one hand to wipe tears of laughter from his eyes. “No, I did not know, although I think the signs had been there for me to see for months, if not years. An angel. Oh, Lord Jesus Christ…an angel!’

  He went off into another gale of laughter, then abruptly sank down into a chair that, fortuitously, sat right behind him. “An angel, an angel…” he muttered, trying to bring his laughter under control.

  He finally managed to regain some measure of sobriety, and looked up at Bolingbroke, still standing, regarding him with absolute bewilderment.

  “It changes nothing,” Neville said. “Nothing.”

  “But…”

  “I am not your enemy, Hal. I have never been. And if I am an angel…well, then I am a most crippled one.”

  “Crippled?”

  “Crippled by love, Hal, as Jesus is.”

  Bolingbroke’s face creased even more. “Jesus is…”

  “Sweet Jesu is an angel as well. Engendered by the combined will of the angels.” Neville paused. “Sweet Lord,” he murmured, “what my poor mother must have gone through, to have been visited by the combined will of the angels.”

  Then he stood up. “You must excuse me, Hal. I have some words to pass with my wife, I think.”

  And then he was gone, leaving Bolingbroke still standing, still bewildered, staring after him.

  Margaret stood in a trancelike fugue, staring at her hands as they dipped in and out of the soapy water in the large basin on the table before her…in and out…in and out. All she had been doing this morning was wash out linens dirtied during the care of Mary. Bedgowns, flannels, small linen squares to drape dampened over Mary’s brow, pillow covers, sheets, undergarments, towels…

  In and out…in and out…wring and drape over the drying rack. Pick up next piece to wash. In and out…in and out…

  Mary, she hoped, was asleep in her bed. Margaret had given her an extra dose of Culpeper’s liquor an hour ago when she’d heard Mary wake moaning from a nap. Margaret had followed up Culpeper’s herbal with a little of her own power, rubbed gently into Margaret’s hands.

  She hoped it helped…but little seemed to help Mary now. The growth in her womb had clearly spread so deep into the woman’s bones that every movement threatened to break her apart. Already her left arm was broken, the bones refusing to heal, and every time Margaret aided Mary’s other ladies to turn her over, or to wash her, or to lift her, she feared they might snap Mary’s spine, or neck.

  Mary weighed less than the eight-year-old Jocelyn now. Her body was virtually fleshless, her skin alternately yellow or grey, depending on whether it was morning light or evening light which bathed her. Her hair was dank and lifeless, falling out in great chunks.

  The sweat that poured out of her during her night fevers stank of death.

  Yet through all this, through all her pain and suffering, Mary’s temper was invariably sweet, her thankfulness for what Margaret and her other ladies did for her genuine.

  Margaret picked up another piece of soiled linen, glancing at Mary as she did so. The queen’s bed was set against the window on the far wall of the chamber from where Mary could see into the gardens whenever she felt well enough to do so.

  Right now, however, she appeared deeply asleep. Her head lolled to one side on the pillow, her hands rested open and relaxed on the light coverlet.

  A small speck of dribble had dried and crusted in one corner of her mouth, and Margaret supposed she ought to wipe it away, but to do so would be to waken Mary, and that Margaret did not want.

  She dipped the linen into the soapy water and began washing it. Mary’s other ladies were in the chamber next door, sleeping away some of their exhaustion, garnered while tending Mary through a sleepless night. Jocelyn lay with them. She’d sat by Mary’s bedside during the long night, singing sweet ballads in her youthful voice, keeping Mary’s mind blessedly detached from the agony of her flesh.

  Jocelyn was a gift from whatever benign benevolency thought occasionally to watch over Mary, for her sunny temperament and honeyed voice kept Mary at peace through many a long hour.

  Margaret sighed, slipping deeper into her fugue. She was tired, but these linens needed to be done, and their doing kept her from tossing restlessly on her pallet in the chamber with the other ladies.

  Thoughts of Tom, and of what he was, had kept her awake for many a long night.

  Those nights when Mary dismissed her from her service to lie beside Tom were agony, for she wondered at what point Tom would turn on her, and strike her down with angelic fury.

  Christ Lord, they had thought they could turn Tom to their way of seeing and understanding. How foolish
of them. How blind.

  “Sweet Jesu,” she whispered, “I had loved him so much.”

  “Then why cease?” whispered Neville’s voice, and strong arms wrapped themselves about her waist, pulling her back against his body.

  Margaret stifled a shriek, but could not stop herself going rigid with fright.

  “I have just come from Hal,” Neville continued in a low voice, his lips against her right ear. “Hal made me see myself for what I am.”

  He stopped, and Margaret knew he expected her to say something. She tried to glance towards Mary to see if Tom’s entrance had wakened her, but Neville swung her to the right a fraction, towards the drying rack festooned with damp laundry, just enough that Margaret could not see Mary at all.

  “An angel,” she said, her voice laced with venom.

  “An angel,” he repeated, and she was stunned to hear the suppressed amusement in his voice. “Ah, Margaret, my love. I did not suddenly ‘become’ an angel, but have been one all my life. Unknowing—I only understood it just now when Hal, brimming with fury, told me—but an angel nevertheless.”

  His arms tightened about her, pulling her very tight against his body. She could feel him, feel his warmth and strength through his clothes, feel him move against her.

  “No wonder I was such a bigoted crusader as a Dominican friar.” Now he could not help a small laugh escaping—it felt like a soft brush against her ear and cheek. “No wonder Archangel Michael kept calling me ‘Beloved’. No wonder he believed in me so much, even when it seemed as though I strayed into the path of the demons. But he should have been more concerned, because I strayed too far. You crippled me, Margaret. You corrupted me beyond knowing, when you made me love you.”

  He began to move from leg to leg, slowly, gently, as if rocking to some silent tune. As he moved, he forced her to move with him until they both rocked from side to side, slowly, gently.

  “I still don’t think that the angels have any idea. They think I remain pure. Untouched. Unloved.”