The Crippled Angel (31 page)

Tuesday 20th August 1381

—iv—

“     hilip is gathering an army together above Paris,” said Thomas Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick. “There can be no doubt that he will move soon.”

“Philip is not a man to be underestimated,” the Earl of Nottingham said, watching Bolingbroke’s face carefully.

Bolingbroke heard the note of caution in Nottingham’s voice, and raised his head from the map he was studying. He nodded an agreeance at Nottingham, observing the young man’s slight shoulder-slump of relief.

“He has much experience,” Bolingbroke said, once again studying the map, and tapping it with his fingers. He had gathered his commanders together at dawn in order to discuss their next move…which Philip looked like forcing on them.

He stood up and moved away from the map table. “Culpeper,” he said, summoning the physician forward from where he stood by the door. “How goes this flux? The latest reports I had were that the flux had virtually run its course. Is this true?”

“The scourge is indeed almost gone, your grace,” Culpeper said. “There are a few men suffering still, but not badly. Only two score men were newly infected once we left Harfleur. In a few days those that are still abed will have recovered enough to fight.”

“We may not have a few days,” Bolingbroke muttered, then waved a dismissal at Culpeper. “Thank you, Master Culpeper. Without you and your brigade of physicians I would not have an army left.”

He waited until the physician had gone, then looked about at his three senior war commanders. “And exactly how many men
do
we have left?”

Warwick, Suffolk and Nottingham shared a quick glance, trying to decide who should speak the poor news. Finally, Warwick, the eldest, spoke.

“Less than eight thousand, your grace. But if you take into account the nine hundred you left at Harfleur to garrison the town and secure our retreat, and the similar number you’ll need to leave here at Rouen…”

“I have an army of six thousand men only,” Bolingbroke said. His face was bland, showing none of the emotion he must have been feeling. He waited a silent moment, then said, “And Philip?”

“The best intelligence we have,” said Nottingham, “puts the total number at some twenty-five thousand. Almost all mounted men-at-arms and knights, and only perhaps some thousand archers.”

“And our force?” Bolingbroke said.

“Of the six thousand you’ll take to meet Philip, nine hundred are mounted men-at-arms and knights, and just over five thousand are archers.”

Bolingbroke managed a smile. Stunningly, it looked genuine. “Then if we find a mud hole for Philip’s heavy armoured cavalry to sink into, our archers will win the day, my friends. What say you?”

Suffolk laughed. “Shall I have a scout find us a suitable mud hole, your grace, then send them on to Philip requesting that he meet us there?”

Now all the men in the room laughed, glad to find a jest with which to relieve the tension.

Bolingbroke moved back to the map table, beckoning his war commanders over. “So, where will Philip go? Will he attack us direct…or…?”

“He’ll try to cut off our retreat and attack us from behind,” said Warwick. “Lay siege to Rouen, if he has to. But he
will
make every effort to cut our retreat line back to Harfleur.”

Bolingbroke nodded. “I agree. And his best route?”

Warwick hesitated, then let his finger trace a shallow arc through the country north of Paris. “He’ll head far enough north in the hope that we might not realise his movements. Then, once he has moved west far enough, he’ll swing south.”

Suffolk had been watching Bolingbroke’s face carefully. “Are you thinking of attacking him on his march, your grace?”

“Aye.” Bolingbroke looked up from the map, and caught the uneasiness in Suffolk’s eyes. “And you are thinking, my lord, that six thousand against twenty-five thousand are not good odds?”

“Your grace, I did not mean to imply that—”

“You only spoke the truth, Suffolk. Six thousand against twenty-five is
not
good odds. But,” Bolingbroke flashed his boyish grin, “of those six thousand, we have five thousand of England’s best longbowmen, hand-picked, battle-hardened. What does Philip have? A motley collection of shiny-armoured knights whose only battle experience in recent years has been of monumental failure. Suffolk…my friends…when those men ride into battle all they will be thinking of is Poitiers. They will be remembering their rout there. They will quaver and shake, and they shall be ours.”

“Are you sure they won’t be remembering Orleans?” Nottingham said softly.

Now Bolingbroke did look annoyed. “They no longer have their precious Maid, Nottingham. They have lost her. She will not be able to aid them this time.”

None of the three other men present thought it prudent to remind Bolingbroke that Philip was using Joan’s kidnap as a means by which to drive French nationalistic feeling to fever point. Whether with the French or not, the Maid was going to be a factor.

“We will march within forty-eight hours, or sooner if we have word of Philip’s movements. We travel light, we take no cannon. The men carry eight days worth of provisions only. We march…” Bolingbroke studied the map, his finger tracing a route north from Rouen, “here, to this village. I travelled through there some years ago. There is an open space just to the west of the village where, if I get there in time and position my six thousand, we will stand a good chance against Philip’s twenty-five thousand.”

Bolingbroke paused, his eyes on the map. Again, his finger tapped. “Here. Agincourt.”

Then, before anyone could comment, the door burst open and a valet, wide-eyed with horror, ran in.

Tuesday 20th August 1381

—v—

D
anting heavily, filled with dread, Neville crashed through the twin doors of the hall. There was a group of people huddled at the far end of the hall, gathered at the foot of the stairwell, and he sped towards them.

As he did so a scream of pure agony tore through the hall.

“Mary,” Neville shouted, doubling his efforts to reach the group. Some ten paces away both his exhaustion and his apprehension caused one of his feet to slip out from under him, and he slid the last few paces on his hip, only managing to stop himself before he crashed into the group with the mightiest of efforts.

“Mary,” he cried again, and the outer ring of people parted, and let him see what lay on the floor.

“Mary,” he whispered, and rose to his knees, shuffling forward until he was at her side.

On Mary’s other side, a pale and distraught Margaret stared at him. “What can we do?” she said. “What can we do?”

Neville leaned down to take one of Mary’s hands…then saw how it was disfigured. It seemed as though her skin contained, not a hand, but a shapeless mess of broken bone and tissue.
Lord Christ, every one of her bones must be shattered.

“What…how…?” he murmured, unable to tear his eyes away from Mary, who had now swivelled her eyes to stare at him.

“The archangel,” Margaret whispered, and those two words contained all that Neville needed to know.

For a moment he remained silent, then he tipped back his head and roared, the sound filled both with anger and with an agony of sorrow.

He took a deep breath, and it appeared as though he would roar again, but Neville contained himself with a mighty effort, the muscles in his neck visibly tightening. Then, after another breath, he looked down at Mary, and smiled.

“May I help you?” he said. “Will you accept my aid?”

Mary was now clearly incapable of speech, but her lips moved, and she lowered her eyelids slowly at him.

Neville reached out a hand and gently stroked her forehead—the only part of her that he could see was not broken.

I am an angel
, he thought,
and if I am ever going to use my heritage then it must be now.

But when he tried to summon his heritage, nothing came. He strained, seeking within himself for the power that
must
be there…

He was an angel for Christ’s sake! An angel!

…but the only thing he managed was to continue to stroke Mary’s forehead, hopelessly, trying to keep that hopelessness out of his face.

“Mary,” he said again, his voice infused with the utmost gentleness, “I am going to lift you, and carry you to your chamber.”

Her eyes widened in horror.
Let me die here. Don’t touch me. Let me die here.

Neville flinched. “Mary, I must. You cannot lie here.”

A small mewling sound escaped her lips, and her eyes rounded in sheer terror.

Neville looked about. “Does anyone have a cloak, or a blanket, we could lie Mary on?”

What happened next was a nightmare that Neville knew he would remember all the days he would be permitted to live. Someone fetched a thin blanket, and as gently as possible they edged Mary on to it.

Nothing could have prepared them for the agony she endured, nor for the shrieks of sheer torment that escaped her mouth. Her bones crackled, shifting every which way within her body, spearing into flesh that had thus far escaped major hurt, poking even further from the rents they’d already made in other parts of her body. She convulsed, just as they had managed to slide her to the blanket, her body arching off the floor. Then, to the thankfulness of everyone about her, she lost consciousness, her body sagging in a dead weight.

By that time, though, all about her were sobbing.

“I can do nothing more for her beyond what I have done already,” said Culpeper, his ashen face staring down at the form lying on the bed. He had reached Mary’s chamber at the same time that Neville, a mercifully unconscious Mary in his arms, had been carefully laying her down atop her bed.

“There must be
more
you can do,” Neville said, sitting to one side of the bed. His face was haggard, his eyes almost terrifying in their intensity. He’d thought he would be able to do more himself—
had not Christ routinely managed miracles of regeneration?
—but he’d been able to do nothing more for Mary than torture her into a coma, and then physically lift her broken form in its blanket and carry her up those same stairs she’d been pushed down. He would let no one else help him; he would carry Mary, alone.

Culpeper gave a disheartened shrug of his shoulders. “I have set those bones of hers that I could, and wrapped others. I have given her an infusion which will ease
some
of her pain
when she reawakens. I have applied herbal poultices to her abrasions and open wounds. But, my lord…she has been so cruelly damaged…she cannot live through this. No one could. The best we can do for her now is to prepare her as gently for death as we can.”

“
There must be more
,” Neville said, rising to his feet. About them Mary’s ladies murmured and shifted. Margaret stood still, one of her arms about Jocelyn’s shoulders, hugging the girl tight into her own body.

“Tom,” said a very gentle voice, and Bolingbroke stepped up behind Neville’s shoulder. Everyone had been too distracted by Mary to notice his entrance.

Bolingbroke put a hand on Neville’s shoulder, but stared down at his wife.

His face was expressionless, as that of a man who fights to control his emotions.

“What do
you
here?” Neville said, and several of the ladies gasped at his audacity and the venom in his tone.

“I cannot attend my own wife’s death bed?” Bolingbroke said, now lifting his eyes to stare at Neville.

“Mary should have about her only those who love her,” Neville said.

“You forget yourself,” Bolingbroke snapped.

“Do you think to play the part of the grieving husband?” Neville said, jerking his shoulder out from under Bolingbroke’s hands. “Mary’s ‘accident’ could not have come at a better time for you, could it?”

“Tom!” Margaret said. “Not here. Not now.”

Neville stared at her, then forced himself to relax. “I beg forgiveness,” he said to no one in particular, although his eyes shifted to Mary as he spoke. “This is not the time for ill-spoken words or angry thoughts. Not when we have the death watch of such a wondrous woman.”

And, so saying, he sank back to his stool, his eyes still on Mary.

After a moment, Bolingbroke pulled up a stool and sat down beside him.

“I have time to watch,” he said, “before I must to war.”

Wednesday 22nd August 1381

(Night)

C
atherine wondered if she should have gone with her brother south to whatever safety he could find for himself, then, her every thought cynical, decided safety wouldn’t be worth the constant company of Charles. So, desolate, she wandered the palace, her feet scuffing the bare stone flagging, her eyes downcast, the fingers of her hands tracing along walls as if she thought to find a way out of a maze. There were few people within the palace left to keep her company. Most servants had left at the same time as Charles, and the majority of the men-at-arms had taken themselves to the walls, ready to repel any attempt by Bolingbroke to lay siege to the city. Isabeau was one of Catherine’s few remaining companions, but her mother’s company made Catherine nervous. Whenever they were together, Catherine could feel Isabeau’s calculating eyes upon her, and she knew Isabeau expected (
planned
) that Bolingbroke would emerge victorious against Philip. Catherine had no illusions left; Isabeau would use Catherine however she needed to, so she might assure her own place in the new order.

And so Catherine avoided Isabeau, preferring to leave her mother in solitary contemplation of her ambitions.

The strange carpenter who had appeared in her doorway telling her to pack Charles’ crown had not returned, and the few people she’d asked about him had blinked at her in confusion.

There was no carpenter in the palace, she was told. Perhaps he had been a vagrant? An impostor? An English spy?

Well, vagrant or not, he had spoken of her child, and so Catherine had done as he had asked. She had derived a strange satisfaction from slipping the cloth-wrapped bundle of be-gemmed monarchy into the cart containing Charles’ personal belongings. Hal would find the crown just that little harder to achieve now that he would have to chase around France for it. No doubt he had thought that Charles would have left it awaiting him in Paris.

Catherine sighed, and settled into a chair by a window overlooking the palace courtyard. She had little enough to do with her time. An hour ago a servant had brought her some food, which Catherine had dutifully eaten. Now there were several hours before she could disrobe and slip under the covers of her bed for the night.

An empty bed. A lonely night.

Catherine almost wept again, but she sniffed, held her breath, and managed to control her tears. She had cried too much this past day, and she would not cry again.

“Not for any man,” she whispered. She would become hard and bitter like her mother. Manipulate men and thrones before her supper, and entire nations after. She would not love again. That was too hard, and too dangerous.

Catherine sat before the window, her eyes unfocused as dusk threw long shadows across the cobbled court below, and did not care at all that soon Thomas Neville would make his choice between her kind and their angelic fathers.

In fact, she vaguely hoped that Neville would choose whichever path led to assured destruction, because then it meant that she would not have to think, or to grieve, at all.

Then she would not have to exist in a world where Philip had died, and she was a prisoner of Hal’s ambition.

“How could I ever have loved him?” she whispered, her eyes still fixed unseeing on the dim courtyard, her mind now on Hal exclusively. She was quiet a very long time, thinking over her few meetings with Hal. Mostly they had been when she was very young, ten or eleven, when Hal had been eighteen or nineteen and as cocksure as any young prince of the blood was (and even more cocksure than most, knowing he was also the Demon-Prince with a potential world throne within his grasp). She had gloried in his attention to her, gloried in the secrets that they shared, believed him when he said that if she waited for him, wed him, then together they would unite the nations of England and France.

And after that…the world.

Catherine smiled dully. People thought Hal was only after the French throne. They did not know that his ambitions encompassed even greater glories than England and France combined.

Well, as a young girl, feeling the first flush of womanhood coursing through her veins, Catherine had been enthralled with both man and ambition. She would be Hal’s mate, the keeper of his dreams, his one love before all others, his partner in the great battle against the angels, his
soul.

But then Hal had sidestepped and married Mary Bohun—a small matter of money only, she’d been assured—but that had hurt and disillusioned.

And then, in her disillusionment, Catherine had taken Philip as a lover, and discovered…love.

But to what purpose? Philip would die at the point of Hal’s ambition. Had she, Catherine, as good as killed him? Should she not have become his lover only? Not have married him?

Not have conceived his child?

Her hand slid to her belly. A week or so only. No mortal woman would know, but she did. A son. Philip’s son. Poor boy, to have lost a father before either had ever held each other…

Catherine’s entire being suddenly stilled. For a long moment she held her stillness, then she blinked, refocusing her eyes on the world about her, her lips parting in a gasp of wonderment.

And then she smiled. Then laughed. And found joy in her heart again. Philip might be riding to his death, and she would always mourn him, but there was a revenge to be had here, and Catherine would take it.

Her entire body relaxed, and Catherine realised how tensely she had been holding herself. For no reason at all she thought of the carpenter again, his deep brown eyes, the quietude he had projected, and she smiled anew. He had been right, there was no need for her to fret about the child at all.

And every reason to rejoice.

Her eyes clouded again. Save for the loss of his father, of course.

But then she squared her shoulders, and shook away her doubts. No one had forced Philip to war; this was as much his decision as Hal’s. She should not hold herself responsible for Philip’s own ambition.

Catherine began to rise from her chair, then froze in the act.

There was movement below in the courtyard. She finished rising then moved closer to the glass, resting her hands and forehead against its coolness.

A cart, and some three or four men, dressed as pedlars.

She almost smiled. They had come to collect their wares to peddle. Then Catherine
did
smile, for if these men snatched her away successfully, then Isabeau would be left alone in this empty palace, furious and frustrated that Catherine was with Bolingbroke and she, Isabeau, was left far distant from the machinations of power.

Her smile fading, Catherine turned aside. She walked over to the larger of the two bedside coffers, raising its lid and lifting out her cloak.

Lord Owen Tudor pulled the hood of the cloak more tightly about his face. He couldn’t believe they had come this far this easily. The guards at the city gates had acted as if
enchanted, merely nodding to the group of disguised men who had asked entry, and signalling for the gate to be opened.

No one had questioned them in the streets as they’d wound their silent way towards the palace.

And now, here they were in the palace courtyard itself—and it was deserted.

He looked over at Norbury, and found that Norbury was looking at him with the same kind of expression that Tudor expected was on his face.

This was too easy.

“It will get easier yet, my lords,” said a soft feminine voice, and Tudor’s eyes jerked forward.

A woman had walked out from a doorway and now approached them. She wore a russet cloak about her slim figure. The hood lay across her shoulders, revealing a darkhaired woman of some particular beauty.

“You are English?” she said as she halted a few paces away.

“My companions are English,” said Tudor, half bowing. “But I am Welsh. Lord Owen Tudor, my lady.”

She raised an eyebrow. From what she could see of him under his hood, the man was of considerable comeliness. Perhaps in his late thirties, tall, greying reddish-blond hair and clipped beard, a weary, kind face with grey eyes. “A Welshman? But I thought all Welshmen were uncivilised dogs. And you, sir, do not look like a dog.”

“And I,” said Tudor without an instant’s hesitation, his eyes steady on Catherine’s face, “thought all French women gutter-bred harpies.” He pointedly did not continue.

She gave a startled half smile. “Forgive me, my Lord Tudor. I spoke poorly.”

“You did that. You are Catherine, Lady of France?”

“Aye.”

“My lady…” Tudor hesitated, not sure how to continue. They’d thought they’d have to sling the woman screaming over their shoulders, but he, at least, had not thought out how to announce politely to her the fact of her abduction.

Now Catherine smiled fully, taken with the Welshman. “I am at your disposal, my Lord Tudor.” She paused. “And I do not hold you responsible for what your lord has asked you to do on his behalf.”

Tudor nodded, then stepped forward and held out his hand. “The cart is clean, my lady, and piled with pillows and comforts.”

She held his eyes a long moment, then raised her arm and took his hand. “Then I entrust myself into your keeping, Lord Owen Tudor.”