Son of the Morning (96 page)
Cobham’s men came charging down the hill, banners streaming, and the French fled, but the battle was lost. Everything was burning. The Oriflamme shone, the angels poured fire, arrows only picked at the enemy. Disarray, everywhere.
‘Blind John’s ready to charge.’ That mad bastard, John of Bohemia, unable to see past the end of his nose.
‘You’re dead, uncle.’
‘What?’
Montagu looked into the prince’s eyes. They were an intense blue, more intense than he had ever seen them, as if the battle had drawn it forth.
The prince smiled and Montagu saw for the first time that his teeth were sharp and pointed, like a dog’s. He’d asked Isabella what she’d given to ensure the help of devils – now he knew. Her grandson. She’d allowed devils to corrupt the royal line.
‘A little needle has pricked your thumb’.
Montagu realised he had a spear straight through him. He would soon die.
‘Have you anything you’d like to say?’
‘My wife, my daughters, you know the sort of thing. Love and all that.’ Montagu had never been comfortable with overbearing expressions of emotion.
‘My grandmother?’
‘I have given her one gift she craved. Now I give another. I go to pay the price for loving such as her.’
Devils at the court. It should never be, not in such a position. A devil to serve, yes. To rule? What would become of England?
A high, melodious piping from the French side and the angels spoke as one.
‘God favours France. The English impostor is thrown back. God favours France! Great nobles of the great houses, aided by our fire, now sweep the rebel from the field.’
‘All over,’ said Montagu.
‘All over,’ said the prince, ‘though sooner for you.’ He took out his misericord. Then he thought better of it. ‘A longer death for you I think. No point in disguising my nature now. I will let the spell fall a little further.’
He stood and Montagu saw that the hands that grasped the sword were talons. A pointed tail flicked from underneath his hauberk and horns grew on his head.
Montagu looked around him, the smoking ruins of the English lines. John’s horsemen were gathering not one hundred yards away down the slope. It would be slaughter. He stood, forwarding the standard, intending to use it to dislodge a horseman if he could. The pain in his guts was immense but he knew it would be stupid to remove the spear. That could kill him. Leave it in and he could fight maybe for an hour – as plenty had done before him.
The shaking of mail, the drum of hooves, John’s line was coming to the trot. Prepare to die. Or don’t. Prepared or not, the outcome would be the same. Montagu found Arondight, took it up, the worn grip unfamiliar in his left hand. He asked forgiveness for his sins, called on St Anne – but St Anne wasn’t there.
The pipes of the angels sounded, fire was all around again and then the dragon struck.
The noise brought Dow round on the cart. In front of him, ten paces about, the grass was burned and the giant Despenser was dead on the floor. Dow felt cold and weak and remembered only the light leaving him.
Above him night had fallen, but the sky was fire from horizon to horizon, and full of sound, like the throat of a smith’s furnace but many, many times louder. He saw angels, spears shining, shields gleaming, gigantic things that now filled the sky, charging in to battle but caught in coils of fire that streamed up from the very bottom of the field. The heavens screamed and boomed and something turned above Dow – the head of a monstrous dragon, shaped in fire of gold and green, tearing an angel from the sky, crunching it and ripping it, the Heavenly creature dying in flashes of light. The Evertere, it had to be the Evertere! The banner had been released.
An angel wheeled in the east, turning its horse of glittering smoke towards the banner, its spear a shaft of light, its armour shining emerald. Michael was facing the banner.
Up above him on the ground the English archers were reforming, taking advantage of the hesitation of the French men-at-arms who sat on their horses open mouthed, gazing up at the burning sky. The French were no more than one hundred paces away, being driven down the hill by a bannerman who had a spear through him. Montagu, whom he’d seen on the boat. On the hill, the English reserve under the king’s flag waited. Dow saw the truth of it. The angels had burned the front lines of the English army but a substantial number of bowmen had survived, along with a number of leopard devils. One, an enormous grey thing with a clanking iron mane was roaring his devils into order. The English, if the French did not act soon, would counter attack, but all the French nobles seemed transfixed by the sky. One hundred paces to his left he saw the Oriflamme and under it the French king, utterly motionless. Even his devils stood crossing themselves as the angels were torn and died. Where was Nergal, who had taken his mother’s body? Nowhere. He had vanished in the light.
Dow needed the Evertere. If he could get his hands on it, he could summon all the demons of the earth to his side.
Next to him on the cart, the tail of the great dragon was still pouring like a column of fire from the chest up into the heavens. It had an angel in its jaws and bit down, shattering its body in a burst of golden light that seemed to flow into, rather than out of the body of the angel. The sky darkened and the French panicked, men streaming from the field.
The pardoner was next to the cart, sitting in the mud, a number of men-at-arms unconscious on the floor beside him, a fish-headed devil flat on its back and a man face down in the filth.
‘Sorry!’ said the pardoner, ‘Sorry! I didn’t think it was going to do that.’
‘What did you expect?’ said Dow.
‘That it wouldn’t work! Clearly, that it wouldn’t work!’
Dow saw now that the tail of the Evertere was not a tail nor a column of fire but, at its base, something like a torch holder. No angels were visible in the sky and the great dragon roared above the battlefield, belching fire into the unnatural darkness. Dow took up the holder and held it above his head, feeling the great flame body of the dragon writhing above him. He saw the French king along the line, under his Oriflamme, and a wave of hate sprang up in him.
‘Attack!’
The great dragon bent its head, snapping towards the king, but the king’s standard bearer fought back with the Oriflamme, keeping it at bay, a great dome of red light forcing the dragon back. The action brought the French men-at-arms out of their stupor.
‘Bohemia!’ Blind John roared and the cavalry charged but their devils did not go with them, still cowering in front of the Evertere. The sky was arrow black and Dow instinctively ducked. An arrow struck him in the cheek, spinning him around. Still he clung to the banner.
‘Get it back in the box!’ The pardoner was at his side.
‘Never!’
‘Get it back in the box. There are all sorts of sorcerers out there, and your good Luciferians are the ones sending down the arrows. They may kill you without knowing who you are. Get it back in the box and we will fight another day.’
Another arrow scratched Dow and the pardoner grabbed on to him.
‘Put it back. Do you want the high men to get this?’
‘God himself only just managed to contain it last time.’
‘That’s mine!’ a voice like a cat’s. It was an adolescent boy, six cats behind him.
‘Sod off, spotty,’ said the pardoner.
The boy leapt up on to the cart.
‘I, Charles of Navarre, claim that in the name of Hell!’ The creature made a grab for the Evertere. Another flight of arrows. The pardoner ducked behind the Sacred Heart shield, though one went through to his leg. It bounced away from the angelic hauberk. Dow, though, had been hit twice more. He sank to the base of the cart, grasping still at the Evertere.
‘You,’ said Charles to the pardoner, ‘would be more tolerable as a corpse.’
He went to seize Osbert but the pardoner brought up something from his side and flicked it at the boy – it was a piece of blood-soaked rag.
The boy screamed and fell back off the cart. The horses, though shielded by the cart, were panicking and stamping. Osbert put the shield up above Dow as more arrows rattled in.
‘See!’ said the pardoner, ‘they’ll have this from you and you’re about to die. Let me steal it away. The English are coming. You’ve either killed or driven off all the angels. Put the banner away!’
The English devils were surrounding the French king but could not penetrate the light of the Oriflamme. Instead a party of men-at-arms charged the banner. The Oriflamme went down, the blood light dimming, and the tendrils of the Drago, unleashed by Edward, shot out from the English line to engulf the devils of France.
Dow remembered what Sariel had said of Osbert, how she had seemed to find something good in him. ‘Shield me.’ Dow pulled down the banner, whirling it around and around, the fire dragon caught up in a whipping whirlwind, a great cone of fire, until it was a ball of intense green and red fire spitting and shimmering on the end of the torch holder.
The French cavalry had fallen under the arrows, the English were running in. Dow put the Evertere back in the chest and the pardoner snapped shut the lid.
‘If your lot want this banner, they can pay for it like everyone else! Here, never say I give you nothing! I nicked it off you when you cut the angel anyway!’ said Osbert. He pressed a small vial into Dow’s fingers.
‘Now, bye!’ Osbert put his boot into Dow’s side and kicked him from the cart. He prodded the horses forward and set off along the track crying out. ‘England! England! Edward conquers the land!’ as the French men-at-arms rushed in to make a last stand. Dow felt his life ebbing away. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘protect our cause.’
The angel led Montagu on. Around him the French knights were being killed, some dispatched by bowmen, some eaten by devils. He saw the hideous Lord Sloth, his hide hanging with arrows, devouring the corpse of Louis of Blois, the blue and white bells of the count’s surcoat soaked in his blood as the lion swallowed his head whole. Montagu was angry – Edward should not have allowed this. Prisoners should be taken. Many of these knights were personal friends of Edward’s and had shared the tournament field with him. This was no way to act after a battle – the vanquished should be tended to and fed in the king’s own tent. He wanted to stop the slaughter but he couldn’t. Dressed in rags as he was he’d never be taken seriously. The spear through him hurt terribly now and he knew he didn’t have long to live – the appearance of the angel was enough to tell him that. She was an odd sort of angel, her green dress torn, her hair dishevelled. Sariel!
She led him on through the slaughter field, out to the French lines. Philip had fled, it seemed, though his standard had been captured, and the Oriflamme lay on the ground. No one but a true king would be foolish enough to pick it up. The angels were all gone and Montagu was full of anguish at that. He had seen the dragon tear at them, seen Lucifer’s victory blazing in the heavens. And now what? England given over to devils. Even if Montagu accepted they were on God’s side, then they were gaolers, no more than guards. To think of such a low born thing on the throne of England filled him with disgust.
He staggered on, the angel leading him by his one good hand. There was devastation here. He found Greatbelly among the dead men and horses, holding a boy stuck through with a spear. Montagu could see by the pallor of the youth’s face that he was as good as dead. ‘You said you’d keep ’em safe!’ she said. He had no words for her.
The angel led him on, Greatbelly trailing behind.
Up on the hill Lord Sloth had finished his feast and gave a great roar of victory.
‘This is the cost of Eden,’ said Greatbelly. The boy was scarcely breathing, but he grasped at something in his fist that he fiercely defended when Greatbelly tried to take it away.
‘This was him, the sweet Antichrist. He is dying. Do our hopes die with him?’
‘Your hopes were the hopes of fools,’ said Montagu. ‘Do you really think you could defend your lands against the king of France?’
‘The king of France is beaten,’ said Greatbelly.
‘Not so. This is no more than a raid. Edward will dump you here and go home. You cannot defend this. Edward cannot defend this. He can burn the land a while longer, plunder and kill but there are no supply lines, no defence. Philip will come again.’
Montagu coughed blood. He sat down on the wet earth. The angel kneeled beside Dow.
‘Mother,’ said the boy, ‘is it you?’
‘You drove the devil from me,’ said Sariel.
‘My life is gone.’
‘No.’
Sariel took the vial from his fingers and worked the arrows free from his body. Then she undid the stopper and anointed his wounds with the angel’s blood. She turned to Montagu, put her hand to the haft of the lance.
‘Yes,’ said Montagu.
Sariel pulled and Montagu fainted. He was floating in some strange space, he was a light among other lights, a sparkle on a wet leaf, a glimmer of sunshine under a dark cloud. He saw Isabella, saw Prince Edward, a prince all in black, with the tail and the horns. England was in their grip now and, though hers was the only name on his lips in his delirium, he knew he must return, to live, to oppose her. The true Prince Edward was dead, very likely. But if not, he must be found and restored. As a lord he opposed usurpers and as Luciferian he opposed devils. He had a clear duty and he would do it.
When he came round, the arrow-struck boy was on his feet, the angel by his side. Montagu touched his belly. Healed – his hand too, though the fingers were a little crooked. The angel’s blood had done no good to his eye. Perhaps it was a punishment from God.
‘We need help,’ he said. ‘We will be sold short.’
The king was rallying his men-at-arms and his devils now, giving thanks to God. Bowmen stood apart from this, holding up the three fingers of Lucifer’s pitchfork, claiming the victory for the Lord of Light.
A party of scavenging bowmen came past them. ‘Who’s this? Are you a Frenchman?’
Dow pulled aside his tunic to reveal a scar in the shape of a pitchfork. The bowmen all put up three fingers – Lucifer’s sign. These were his enemies.