Son of the Morning (40 page)
‘Oh. Errrr …’ stammered Osbert. ‘So Satan wants him dead. God may or may not. But Satan is God’s servant. So why doesn’t he want what God wants?’
Despenser laughed at this – for quite some time. It was one of those laughs that makes you anticipate the person laughing is going to suddenly stop and cut off your head with a sword.
‘Do servants always want what their masters want? Some servants would become masters.’
‘This is all conjecture,’ said Pole.
‘Indeed it is,’ said Despenser. ‘The fact is that you please the master you have. Ours is Satan. He wants the boy dead. The boy must die. That requires an angel to distract the thing that protects him. We need to find Sariel.’
Ah, finally the conversation had turned to a subject where Osbert had at least half a clue as to what it was about. ‘The woman? The priest asked me about her. Is she a demon?’
‘A fallen angel,’ said Despenser. ‘And the boy’s mother, it appears.’
‘Why would she be distracted by an angel? What would happen if she met one?’
‘I had a little business I needed sorting out with an angel, and I discovered through my magicians that Sariel might be of use to me. She enraptures them and calls them to flesh. They descend to couple with her. Quite a sight seeing something condense from the light – darkens the sky for a couple of hours and puts the fear of God into the lower sort – very amusing. When they’re in the flesh you can kill them if you have the right weapons and balls of stone. Their big weakness is that they’re very easily distracted.’
‘Who is the child’s father?’
‘You’ll like this,’ said Pole, ‘quite an eye opener.’
‘My dear old Edward,’ said Despenser, ‘appointed by God, handsome as a destrier, with his familial love of the pleasures of the flesh. The fallen angel was with me at Carnarvon for a while and the amour blossomed there.’
‘So this angel is quite a slut,’ said the pardoner, ‘if it’s coupling with kings and angels.’
‘They all are, to an extent,’ said Despenser. ‘They hanker after what they’ve lost. Even if they do give themselves to Lucifer completely it’s only because they think he’s the quickest way back to the light. Some pester God, some just moon about. They’re in love with beauty, and with God. Kings and angels are the nearest thing to God on earth, so they love them, when they meet them. They’re passionate things. Damned thing wouldn’t go anywhere near me.’ He smiled, as if he regarded that fact as very much to his credit.
‘She returned to the king with the baby,’ said Pole, ‘but he wouldn’t take it. She wouldn’t raise it herself.’
‘You weren’t there!’ said Despenser. ‘Get your own stories.’
Pole suddenly found the hole in his chest interesting.
‘Why didn’t she want the child?’
‘When I killed the angel, she went mad. I would have done for her too, but she fled screaming from the hall. She was a torn and tattered thing when she surprised us on the road near Corfe. I wish I could have killed her too. One day I’ll get out of this backwater and come back to earth. If I can work this properly then my chances are good. I’m not a man to let being dead stop me ruling. Then maybe I will kill her. And take my time about it.’
The pardoner struggled to take in what he was hearing. There was something childish about Despenser and the way he revelled in being shocking. He was doing his best to appal but would be outraged should anyone declare him appalling. Osbert could think of little worse than being under the sway of such a fool for eternity.
‘You don’t fear mad angels?’
‘No. I had the means to dispose of them, and protection from her.’
‘What protection?’
‘An angel’s feather from the one she killed. She couldn’t bear to look at it.’
‘So what do I do?’
‘Get the boy to Paris – to the court of King Philip. There Nergal will meet you. We have whispered at the gates of Hell to alert him. You will summon six devils, which he will direct. Do not allow him to see the details of the summoning spell.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because these devils need know only enough to do their job and no more. If devils learn summoning, who knows where it could end.’
‘Why Paris?’
‘Well, there’s the thing that makes it worth the £10,’ said Despenser. ‘You’re going to have to do all this under the nose of the fallen angel. Sariel will be on hand to protect the boy. She needs to have some sort of distraction while the devils kill him. Do you have the art to persuade him to Paris?’
The pardoner let out a long breath. ‘I have the art to persuade many men of many things. But I think we need to talk about the fee,’ he said.
In the year that John, fourth son of Edward, was born in Gaunt, that the great water battle of Sluys was fought and that Montagu was captured by the French.
On the day the pardoner returned from Hell, Dow sat reading the Bible, annotating it for the priest’s benefit. He was marking passages he understood to be true, changing others to fit with what he had been taught on the moor. He was marking the passage concerning Mary Magdalene, from whom the Bible said Jesus cast out seven devils. She had, indeed, been sorely oppressed by devils, but that was because she was a fallen angel, newly escaped from Hell, weakened by her ordeal and pursued by the devils. Lucifer, known then by the humble and conciliatory name of Jesus, meaning God saves, had slain the devils and taken her as his partner in spreading the message of peace.
Edwin eyed Dow with suspicion. The priest gave him less trouble now. Dow had spent a long time studying, but a long time with Orsino in the garden too. He could jump directly onto the blind horse’s back, fight with sword and spear, wrestle and punch. When Dow had come to Edwin he had been a half a head shorter than the little priest. Now he was half a head taller, and thick of arm and sinew. A tailor so minded might make two Edwins from one Dow. Edwin, a small man, light as a ghost, had to be careful around the boy.
In truth, their relationship had changed from that moment two years before, when Edwin had wept to find his circle empty. He had pulled at his ears and beaten the floor. The devil was gone, only a vague smell of ashes in the air.
‘Where have you sent it? What have you done with it?’
‘He’s gone to get what I want,’ said Dow.
‘What?’
‘He’s going to find the banner I seek. Or where it is.’
‘The banner
I
seek. Your job is to help locate it. Your involvement will end when it is found.’
Dow said nothing, just gave Edwin a simmering glare.
‘You took it on yourself to dismiss him?’ said Edwin.
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘You want to be careful where you leave your keys.’ Dow held up the pouch with the key to Hell in it.
The priest snapped into fury. He grabbed Dow by the shirt, forcing him back across the bench.
‘Give me that! What do you know that I don’t? What have you discovered? I’ve seen it since the first day I saw you – you would be greater than me, greater by far, with your heresies and your deceits. You have known all along how to control this thing. Teach me, I beg you. Teach me.’
The priest had taken Dow by surprise to shove him back across the bench. Now the youth reacted. He lifted the little man off the floor and carried him backward, tripping him in a wrestling throw Orsino had shown him, but lowering him quite gently, not slamming him as the Florentine advised.
He held him by the scruff of his cassock, so the priest dangled just a few inches off the floor. ‘That priest who came for me before –’ he said, ‘– we caught and killed him after he put my dear nan in the ground and cut me so bad. I got the taste for priest killing then. Shall I throw you down the stairs and we can say it was a fall?’
Edwin stared back into his face. ‘Kill me and you will hang.’
‘But I, sir, don’t fear to die. For I am one of the poor and downtrodden and Hell has no furies I have not faced in this life. Hell is home for the likes of me. Gentlemen like you, I suspect might have a harder time.’
The priest trembled in Dow’s hands; the boy was almost surprised by how delicate the old man felt, how fragile. He had wanted him to be tougher, worth breaking.
‘I want to know,’ said Edwin. ‘I
need
to know what you know. My curiosity is a raging fire and only knowledge will douse it.’
Dow thought to kill him, this snatcher, this violent, screaming, obsessed little man who had ordered him torn from his home. But he had brought him to knowledge of Free Hell’s intent, educated him, put tools of wisdom and swordsmanship into his hands.
He thought of the moor, all those years ago, the kestrel poised so still in the air, a spirit, a divine thing. And what had it been after the kill? Just a bird with its dinner, flapping home against the evening sky.
‘Come to Lucifer,’ Dow said.
‘I will not.’ Edwin shook his head so violently he nearly fell from Dow’s grasp.
‘You have the knowledge, priest. I told you all I knew, as you told me what you knew. Only one of us was listening. So now your devil skips to my command. And you are a foolish man who will not hear, in the power of a boy you despise. Remember this day, for this – me, your slave, with you at my mercy – is an image of things to come. Now we need to set a watch, for the devil will return by the by, I guess.’
‘Your rebellion is against all nature,’ said Edwin. He lay on the floor, his eyes on the ceiling.
‘It’s not against my nature, priest,’ said Dow.
‘I think you are a devil. Or a demon, if you prefer.’
‘No. I am a man. One who disagrees with you and opposes you. That doesn’t make me evil or diabolic. But it does make me your enemy. For the moment we have common cause. I want to find this Drago as much as you do.’
‘You would save England?’ The priest could not disguise his contempt.
‘Yes,’ said Dow, ‘exactly that. But not from the French. From the high born and the noble, from the clergy who grow fat on the labours of others.’
‘You are a heretic. You should be punished for such talk.’
‘I talk in such a way because I have been punished – all the poor are punished by the thieving rich.’
‘I won’t debate the rights and wrongs of God’s ordained order of men with anyone. Why are you so sure the creature will return?’
‘Because I forced his promise,’ said Dow, ‘and besides, he isn’t a devil, or a demon either.’
‘What is he?’
‘You need to learn to listen, priest. It’s the weakness of your sort. He told you what he was. He’s a man. And not the sort to enjoy his stay in Hell, I think.’
So two years passed and Dow waited by the circle. He never doubted the pardoner would return, not through any thoughtful deduction but because he did not want to doubt it. When he was not at his practice of arms then he slept in the cellar. More and more he took on the domestic duties of the house too. Orsino was often gone, wandering the city. Dow knew Orsino had been so struck by the beauty of the demon who had saved Dow, that the mercenary must search endlessly for her. The Florentine had admitted as much. Good luck, in such a teeming city, thought Dow.
It was spring when Dow heard the whispers – creaking and groaning from inside the circle, voices and chants. Fighting too – something was trying to break through and something else was trying to stop it.
‘Let me from Hell.’
‘Your form is bound to Hell, Lord Despenser.’
‘Then find me another.’
‘Go back to Henochia, my lord.’
‘Let my servant through. He does not belong here. He is a living man.’
The smell of sulphur was in the air, night and day, and of smoke and noxious fumes.
Dow sat stroking the pouch that held the key with his thumb. Edwin had never dared ask for it back. Should he open the gate?
‘Let me out! Let me out! In the name of God’s blood, let me out.’ Dow recognised the voice. It was Osbert’s.
Dow turned to climb the stairs, but Edwin was coming down. He had heard the noise.
‘He is back?’ said the priest.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll send for my master,’ said Edwin.
Montagu met Bardi at Windsor – in the chapel of Edward the Confessor. It was one of his favourites, not large, but with a wonderful rose light from the windows, windows that seemed to float in the dark of the interior, rich with the presence of God. Just another place that she was not.
Isabella
. He said her name under his breath as he waited for the Florentine. An angel had dwelt in the chapel once. Not any more.
A candle burned on the altar and monks sang masses for the souls of the dead. It was Vespers and the evening mass was about to begin. It was well attended. The latest army was ready to sail to join the king in Flanders and many other men knelt there too – all the best and noblest of England, bowing the knee to their creator, knowing that without his favour they would surely perish before the might of the French. The talk was that old Philip had his angel, and he wouldn’t run this time. They all came in to pray: the nervous, the braggarts, the nervous braggarts, the greedy and the plunder hounds, the pious and the chivalrous, raw boys and the grim-eyed men who’d been and fought before.