The Crippled Angel (14 page)

Michael stopped suddenly and swung about to face Neville. “You have learned a great deal in the past two years,” he said. “You know
why
mankind cannot be allowed his freedom, don’t you?’

“He would destroy himself.” Neville was now concentrating so hard on the figure on the cross that he found conversation with the devil at his side much easier. He knew what to say, for he knew what Michael wanted to hear.

After all, had he not been a good and devoted student of the Church?

“Yes.” The archangel’s voice was relieved. “Mankind cannot handle its own destiny. Too dangerous a toy. We must do it for them. Guide them as children need to be guided. Now, you see what we approach?”

“Yes.” Neville could see very well. They were climbing the hill now, approaching the cross at its summit. Neville slipped a little here and there on the loose gravel, but Michael moved effortlessly, as if he glided over cold marble.

They reached the top, halting.

“Behold the Master Trickster,” Archangel Michael said.

Hesitantly, almost too scared to dare to look into Christ’s face, Thomas Neville lifted his head.

The cross itself was of twisted, blackened wood, as though the tree it had been cut from had died in a forest fire. It was rough, splintery, desolate, and marked in places by dark stains: sweat, perhaps, or blood.

Finally, Neville allowed himself to look at Christ.

In this cold, barren, malicious landscape of heaven, there was only one warm, living thing, and that was Christ on his cross.

Christ had been nailed to his torment through his wrists and his feet, and Neville could see that, in order to breathe, Christ had to constantly use the muscles of his shoulders and chest to lift himself up so his lungs could draw breath. His muscles were trembling with the exertion of continually supporting himself against suffocation, his chest shuddering with the effort of drawing breath into lungs torn and bleeding.

Yet even so, even despite the trails of blood and sweat that ran down flesh grimy and stained, Christ’s body was as beautiful—
far more so
—than those of the angels. He was well- but finely-muscled, his shoulders broad, his hips lean, his arms and legs shapely. Where not covered with either grime or blood, his skin was pale, marked in places with traces of fine dark body hair.

It was a beautiful body, the body both of the warrior and of the lover.

But nothing caught at Neville’s heart and mind and soul so much as Christ’s face. His hair was black, like Neville’s own, and his light beard was stiff with the sweat and blood that trickled down from where the crown of thorns pierced his forehead. His face was composed of hard angles and planes with a hooked nose over a well-shaped mouth, yet despite its angularity, his face radiated nothing but warmth and compassion. It was as knowing as that of the angels, yet its knowing consisted of generosity, not judgement.

His eyes were black, like the angels’, but loving, so very much unlike the angels’.

He was in physical torment, but Neville could see that Christ cared for only one thing, and that thing was Neville.

“How does God allow His Son to suffer so?” whispered Neville.

“God?” said Archangel Michael, then laughed uproariously.

Christ turned his head, flinching with the pain of the effort, and looked at Michael. His expression was sad.

Then he looked back at Neville, intensely, curiously, as if wondering what the man would make of what Michael said next.

“There is no God,” said Michael, and laughed even further at the shock on Neville’s face. “God is nothing more than the collective will and endeavour of the angels.”

“No God?” whispered Neville. He’d sunk to his knees, staring unbelievingly at Michael.

“No God,” agreed Michael. “God as a single entity is a phantasm. It is easier for the simple souls of mankind to worship a single entity than a collective grouping.”

“So Christ is the son of…” Neville now looked up at Christ, drawing all the comfort he could from the sympathy in the man’s eyes.

“All of us,” said Michael. “A collective effort. We thought he was to be one of us, the one to finally consolidate our grip on mankind. But,” his voice hardened into absolute hatred, “he betrayed us, seeking instead to free mankind from our will.”

I almost succeeded.
Christ spoke into Neville’s mind, and
somehow Neville understood that Michael was not aware of Christ’s words.
I almost succeeded
…
Now it is up to you. You are mankind’s final chance. You alone.

But how?
Neville thought.
How? There is but the one test, and I cannot choose the way I want.

Christ’s face suffused with love and comfort.
You
will
choose the way your heart directs you, Thomas. Trust me. Trust me. Trust your own heart.

“And now we have him trapped,” Michael continued, his eyes on Christ. “Trapped, where he can no longer wreak his havoc.”

Then the archangel lowered his head and looked Neville straight in the eye. “Not like our next effort.
He
works our will as if an extension of our own thoughts. There will be no mistake this time.” His mouth twisted, frightful and unloving. “Beloved.”

Neville stumbled through the guildhall, its occupants still under the thrall of the archangel. He almost fell over in his dash to his clothes, feeling the cold of heaven penetrating to his bones. He grabbed at his clothes and boots, pulling them on as fast as his shaking muscles would allow, then rebuckled his sword belt about his hips.

His hands were trembling so badly he cut two fingers on the buckle, and when he tried to put his boots on he dropped one of them three times before it finally consented to slide on his foot.

Clothed, he felt only very slightly more in control—how could clothes comfort the turmoil in his mind?

He turned, looking back to the door. Silvery light still shone through, and Neville could see the faint outline of Archangel Michael, standing watching him.

Then the archangel turned, and walked into the light, and the doors slammed behind him, and the hall woke.

Hands grabbed at Neville: the dying, seeking some last hope of succour. He pulled away, and walked as steadily as he could back to the alcove where Mary, Margaret and Jocelyn still slept.

There he sank to the floor, his back against the wall, staring at the sleeping forms of the two women and the girl.

There was no God save the collective will of the angels? God was nothing but the ultimate sum of those cold, heartless creatures? And if Jesus was the product of their collective effort, what had Archangel Michael meant when he said that their latest effort acted only as an extension of their will?

Neville wrapped his arms about himself, shivering, driving away that last thought, concentrating instead on what he had seen in the Field of the Angels.

Desolate, malicious.
Heaven!

If nothing else, Neville now knew exactly what choice he wanted to take when the time came for him to choose. Freedom for mankind, freedom from the chains of the angels. The mission that Christ had started but had failed to accomplish.

But to do that, Neville would have to hand his soul to Margaret, and that he knew he could not do, however much he
wanted
to do it.

Just that single niggle. That single doubt. That single piece of knowledge that she had abused his trust, and if she had done that once, then she might do it again—even if unwillingly or unknowingly.

Just one single hesitancy, but one that would damn mankind forever.

“Damn you, Margaret,” he whispered, then winced, wishing he could take back the words. Her actions had allowed him to love, to see that love saved, not damned.

Yet in the doing, Margaret had sabotaged her own cause.

“Please, sweet Jesu,” Neville whispered. “Tell me what to do.”

But there was no answer, and Neville felt very alone and very unsure.

For a long time he sat, staring at the wall, loathing the angels and what they were going to force him to do.

Sunday 26th May 1381

—iii—

“
D
id I not say the Lord our God would send an omen?” said Thorseby. “What further sign do you need than this pestilence? If you do not move, and soon, then the pestilence shall envelop all England.”

Sign of God or not, Hotspur well knew the advantages the sudden eruption of the pestilence had given him. First Exeter’s revolt. Nasty, but not deadly enough to Bolingbroke’s reputation for Hotspur to be sure of any chance of success if
he
then moved.

But now this. A clear sign of God’s ill will. The rumours of what had happened in St Paul’s with the supernatural appearance of the black Dog of Pestilence while Bolingbroke had been viewing Richard’s murdered corpse would almost certainly ensure England would rise up against Bolingbroke should an alternative present itself.

And Hotspur meant that alternative to be himself. The golden hero from the north, untainted by any association with Bolingbroke—Hotspur had not kept himself apart from Bolingbroke since his landing at Ravenspur for nothing—who could restore England to godly rule and a golden age.

Lord God, what that would mean in terms of power for the Percy family!
Both the Lancasters and the Nevilles would lose all
—
there would be no one and no thing left to challenge Hotspur’s claim to the throne.

“
Good King Harry! Good King Harry!
”

Aye, Hotspur could hear it now.

“I am going to need your help,” Hotspur said to Thorseby.

“You have it, my lord.”

“Good.” Hotspur paused, thinking. Thorseby was good for much of the Church…but he would need more than whispering friars and monks to aid his cause. Hotspur needed swords, and many of them.

And allies…men that Bolingbroke would never suspect to throw in their lot with Hotspur.

“Thorseby,” Hotspur said, all doubt now gone from his mind. “I will need some of your friars, well horsed and able to move swiftly down the roads of England, to carry messages for me.”
Great black crows, nurturing murderous intents.

“You have them, my lord.”

Hotspur nodded, then smiled. The crown would feel good on his brow. “Then you are my man, Thorseby.”

Monday 27th May 1381

—i—

T
he 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.