Son of the Morning (2 page)
Nan’s arm was around him and he didn’t mind anymore, his nose in the peaty smell of her shawl.
‘Shall I tell you a story?’ He watched the bird, it was impossibly still against the thin moon.
‘Tell me about the making of the world,’ he said.
‘Again?’
‘I like the story.’
Nan squeezed him to her.
‘In the beginning was the void and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit was borne upon the waters. And the spirit said, “let light be made”. And light was made and the spirit’s name was the light’s name, which was was Lucifer, who is rightly called Son of the Morning.’
‘How is he the morning’s son if he made the morning? Doesn’t that make him the morning’s dad’?’
‘The questions you ask! He’s called the son of the morning because he made himself. I suppose he’s father and son.’
‘How can someone make themselves?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Well I don’t know, it’s a mystery isn’t it? Do you want the rest of the story, or don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Lucifer gave life to everything, to the angels who are made of light, to the clay he called from the waters and moulded into men, women and animals. When Lucifer saw the joy he had created he went out into the world he had made as a sunbeam, delighting in the beauty of his creation. Chief among the angels was Îthekter, who had three faces and a heart of iron. He had not joined Lucifer in his rapture.’
‘Did Lucifer make Îthekter evil?’
‘No. He made him to choose to be as he wished to be. But Lucifer is so good, he could not imagine anyone would want to be evil. Îthekter had a weakness – he wanted to be worshipped, to set himself over other beings and to see them bend the knee. While Lucifer played in the sunbeams, Îthekter told men and angels he would put them above their fellows as kings in great palaces if they would pray and sacrifice to him and call him God. He would build a world of his own where he might rule and set it aside from Heaven, the home of Lucifer’s angels, or Earth, the realm of men. Worship made him mighty and he tried to build this world of his own. But he could not create any new life. Nothing would grow in the world’s desolate plains and gleaming cities of burning brass that he called Hell, meaning the hidden place.
‘So in his anger Îthekter took the offcuts of creation, the arms and legs, the heads and the tails that Lucifer had cast aside and stuck them together, and with his breath he kindled the life that was in them and shaped it to make creatures of bile and hate. These creatures he called Devils and they were twisted in mind as well as body. Chief among them Satan, a being of great evil who was made to hate the light. Îthekter put them in Hell while Lucifer and his angels played in the haze of a raincloud or sparkled on a trout’s back.’
‘If Îthekter made devils and we hate Îthekter, why do they call us the Devil’s Men?’ said Dow.
‘That’s because we rob them and torment them and will not stand to take their orders,’ said Nan, ‘and the priests of Îthekter do not know the truth of creation. They think Îthekter made the world and they call him God. They see no difference between demons and devils.’
‘And there is a difference?’
‘There is only difference. Our lord Lucifer is a downthrown angel – a demon – not a creature created from spite and envy like a devil.’
‘What do devils do? Do they eat people?’
‘They are gaolers and magistrates.’
‘How so?’
‘You know this story well enough.’
‘Tell it, though.’
‘Îthekter rallied the angels and surprised Lucifer and his angels at play on a cloud, forced them into the imperfect forms he had created. Îthekter watched as his creation Satan cast Lucifer down into Hell, to its inmost lands, locking him within walls within walls, making Hell a prison overseen by devils – who are the dungeon keepers of Hell and battling with them. Take your elbow out of my knee.’
The boy shifted, eyes still on the bird that hovered with the moon on its wingtip.
‘But Lucifer was not beaten. There is a war in Hell between the fallen angels of Lucifer and the dark creatures of Satan and in parts Lucifer is winning. There are cities in Hell where Lucifer rules and, though the land is arid and filled with fire, and the cities are under constant siege, the demons and the souls of the dead who can find their way to them live free and in peace. This is known as Free Hell.
‘But Free Hell is itself a prison because all Hell’s lands are bounded by four great walls which have four great gates where Satan has set his devils to guard. God rewarded his gaoler well for this service, giving him dominion over men. And so evil entered the world. Then men trod each other down, killed and maimed, some rising as lords, others sinking as paupers. When the dispossessed men died, the starved, the murdered, the victims of disease – which had never been seen on earth before – their souls tried to ascend to heaven. Îthekter cannot bear to look at them and will not have them in there. So he locks them in Hell too, to keep their forms or find what forms they can.’
‘Lucifer is clever isn’t he, Nan, he got out!’
‘Who’s telling this story? Yes he did. There are cracks in the walls of Hell and postern gates. If the devils don’t watch it, the crafty demons can sneak through. Lucifer took the form of an ordinary man who spread the word that all men were equal and that violence should not be on the face of the earth. He wanted to reconcile with Îthekter and was even prepared to call him father if it would return the world to peace and set men as equals as he had made them, for Lucifer is not proud. Îthekter sent him a false friend called Judas who tricked him and deceived him and nailed him to a tree to die. The dark god took the bones of the man who had tricked him and made them into keys for new locks for the gates of Hell. And Îthekter so warped men’s minds that they thought Lucifer was his son and called him Jesus which means “God Saves”. So they worshipped Lucifer also, something the Son of the Morning hates and does not want of them.
‘But one day the man of perdition will come and open all those gates and the fallen angels will break free and cast off their twisted shapes. Lucifer now knows that Îthekter cannot be appeased and he will fight him and beat him and all the earth will be returned to the light. Nothing will be worshipped, not man nor god but all creation will sing songs rejoicing that they are part of that light.’
‘How will they know the man of perdition? What’s perdition?’
‘Perdition is loss. Perhaps it is you.’ She smiled and stroked his hair. ‘You were lost, weren’t you, when we found you?’
‘How can we fight Îthekter, Nan? The king and all his men are on his side.’
‘Don’t be so sure. Here in the west we have many men and further up in Wales too. Wherever there are moors and wild places the true religion spreads, though it spreads quietly. And one day it will spread to the towns and great cities and then all the high men will come tumbling from their thrones, and their priests will see the truth of their crucified god and surrender their high offices for shame.’
‘What’s crucified?’
She pointed to the kestrel.
‘Like him with his arms out, but nailed on to a cross.’
‘Who would want to nail a bird to a cross?’
‘Anyone, if they take their hens.’
Suddenly the kestrel tumbled from the sky and struck the floor. ‘Oh!’ Dow gave a little cry and Nan laughed at his surprise. The kestrel rose up, something limp in its claws and cut a lazy, lolloping curve back up to the hill. It was just a bird now, thought Dow, going home with its prey. Its grip on the evening was gone and night was falling.
He snuggled against Nan. He wished they could have a fire but they were too near the edge of the moor and could not risk giving away their position.
‘Keep me safe, Nana.’
‘I shall, my darling. You were given to me and, though I cursed the day your mother came here with you, I have grown to love you well enough. And you will be a great man. You will carry our hopes forward.’
‘I am only a boy.’
‘You cured the baby at Belstone. That is a sign of a great soul.’
‘I just held him and wished him well. He might have got better anyway.’
‘Babies don’t get better from the King’s Evil. And he was well a summer hour after you’d left him. You cured him, Dow.’
‘I don’t want to be great.’
‘What do you want?’
The light was dim now, the men up on the hill just hunched spectres, only the shine of the moon to see by. Dow felt very young and a little scared. He put his arms around Nan.
‘Just to be here with you.’
‘Well, then you’re lucky, because you are.’
She stroked his hair and sang to him, putting the shawl about him. He began to sleep.
A cry. A scream. He was awake. The light was stark, the ghost moon turning the bare land to iron. Beliar was lying on the ground, not moving. Danjal howled and ran up the hill towards the mass of men who were pouring down it, his spear before him. His body twisted and leapt and he sprouted arrows, still for a second like a pin dolly dangling from a magistrate’s door knocker for the fear it brings. Then he fell.
‘Dow, run! Dow run!’
Nan shoved him on down the hillside, frantic. He got twenty paces before the men overwhelmed them. They had hold of Nan, tugging at her, pushing her but they couldn’t silence her. He saw her face, warped with fear as she tried to get to him. He was lifted from his feet by a hard, strong arm. He struggled, bit and screamed, his heart kicking like a hare in a bag, but the man who had him was strong as the sea.
‘Dow I bless you! In the name of all the fallen angels, in the name of Araqiel and Jetriel and Sariel. In the name of dear Sariel who protected you I bless you and I love you!’
They were all around her with their clubs and their staves. He called out to her, tried to go to her, but the priest had hold of him, the big man with the stone face.
‘I know what you did,’ he said, ‘and, in the name of Christ Jesus, I know how you are going to pay.’
He heard Nan’s voice cry out. ‘Dow, my love!’ He caught a glimpse of her face, desperate before she was swamped. He never saw her alive again.
In the year that young King Edward defied the French King Philip’s claim to the fief of Aquitaine. Sometime between Lammas and Michaelmas. The beginning of the great war against France.
The torchlight flickered against the ruins of the church, like the ghost of the flame that had burned it. The knights sat mounted outside as if they too smouldered, their horses steaming in the cold coastal air. It was a flat, grey, English September of rain and cloud and fogs.
The enemy was gone, but the nobles, far too late to face them, had put on their war gear to reassure the people. The horses stamped and blew, metal clicked against metal where a mailed hand re-adjusted a coat of plates or loosened a helmet strap, but the great body of warriors, two hundred strong, were otherwise silent. Even the young pages behind the knights, looking after the spare horses, said nothing. Not a joke, not a cough. The cooks, armourers, smiths and chandlers who made up the ragged tail of the column caught the mood and were quiet around their wagons and carts.
At the front of the column a man-at-arms, his pig-face visor pulled down, held up a standard – the three sprawling leopards that announced the riders as the personal bodyguard of Edward III – king of England. This standard bearer was flanked by two others who held the red and white banner of St George.
In the church a bareheaded young man knelt before the charred altar. His surcoat bore the same motif as the standard, and the helmet that sat beside him was encircled by a metal crown.
A respectful distance away, across the debris of the floor, were four armoured knights, standing around a brazier. Closer to the altar stood another knight, in a surcoat of red diamonds. This man was much older than the king, in his mid thirties, and his face was as worn as a campaign saddle. An eyepatch hid his right eye, a deep scar emerging above it on the brow and below it on the cheek.
Beside him was a small boy of no more than seven. The child had pattens on his feet – wooden overshoes that raised him above the filth and mud of the floor. He wore a full hooded tunic in the Italian style, its rich red cloth trimmed with gold and pearls, but when he spoke it was in the ragged French of the English court.
‘How shall we repay the French for this, father?’
The king stood up in a jingle of armour. He walked over to the boy and put his hand on his head. Then he turned to the scarred knight.
‘Salisbury. Montagu, cousin. Advise me.’ The king’s voice was low and confidential, and he spoke in English.
The knight shifted from foot to foot. He glanced into the shadows. There were other men in that church, beside the higher nobles – the banker Bardi and the merchant-knight Pole, huge creditors of the king’s, travelling west under his protection. In the church they kept well away from the men of better sort, shunning the torchlight, standing in the darkness by the side of the ruined door. Montagu’s eyes were on them and his voice was a murmur. ‘Our dear Gascony is under attack by the French king. The war in Scotland is as pressing as it ever was, with the French reinforcing the natives. The French send Genoese mercenaries to raid our shores and we can scarcely muster the men to defend them. Buying off the Genoese is out of the question. Our money has been spent in Scotland. I have given the accounts my closest scrutiny. And now this. We are fighting on too many fronts.’