The Crippled Angel (35 page)

He did so, first poking at her with his boot, then leaning down to roll her over a little distance.

“She is consumed with fever,” he said.

They put Joan on a pallet in a small, windowless chamber off the main hall of the castle. Margaret, having heard of Joan’s collapse, came hurrying and was allowed to tend her. Bolingbroke, having also been informed of Joan’s collapse, sent for the physician Culpeper, then visited Joan himself.

The chamber was crowded, the lack of window, the closed door and the sputtering torches contributing to its airlessness.

“Well?” said Bolingbroke, as Culpeper finally stood back from the pallet.

Joan lay with her eyes closed, her face flushed and sweaty, her hands neatly folded across her breasts.

“She’s exhausted and malnourished,” Culpeper said. “She has been kept on her feet for twelve hours after spending many weeks imprisoned in poor conditions. Anyone might faint under such circumstances.”

“So she will live?”

“Why do you
want
me to live?” Joan rasped from the bed. Her eyes had opened, and now stared directly at Bolingbroke.

By her side, Margaret laid a soft hand on Joan’s arm.

Bolingbroke ignored Joan. “Take good care of her,” he said to Culpeper. “She must not die a natural death. The Church court has handed her to
my
care and for
my
judgement.” He choked a little on his last words, then coughed, short and harsh.

“Sire?” said Culpeper. “What ails you?”

“Nothing ails me,” Bolingbroke snapped. “I—” He stopped suddenly, his eyes staring, then he gagged, then retched.

Black mud, perhaps several handfuls’ worth, spewed forth from his mouth. He coughed, coughed again, then managed to control his retching.

Bolingbroke slowly straightened, wiping his mouth with the back of one trembling hand. “Witch,” he whispered, staring at Joan.

“This is not of my doing,” she said. “I am finished. Weak. Powerless. France eats you of its own accord.”

Margaret, for her part, stared at Bolingbroke with horrified eyes. “Hal? What is happening?”

“I have been ensorcelled,” he yelled, then cleared his throat and spat a globule of mud into a corner of the chamber.

Margaret blinked at him, remembering the words that Mary had spoken in her final hours:
France shall have you, and everything you hold dear.

“Get her well,” Bolingbroke said to Margaret. “For once she is in the pink of health I would have her burned.”

Then he turned on his heel and left the chamber. “I am well enough now to burn mightily well,” Joan said to the closed door. “Burn me soon, I beg you.”

“Why do you yearn for death so much?” Margaret whispered when Culpeper had left.

“Because I will succeed in death where I have failed in life.” Joan closed her eyes briefly. “I pray it will be soon. France will eat Bolingbroke, and it needs my death to do so.”

Then she rolled her head towards Margaret. “I have no one on this earth to live for. You have a husband and children. Do not mourn me, for so long as Thomas chooses a-right, then I shall be happy in death.”

Margaret’s eyes filled with tears, and she took Joan’s hand. “In the end,” she eventually said, “all of our fates rest with Tom, and his choice.”

Joan tried to smile. “He
will
choose rightly, for he is a man who loves.”

“But
who
is he to choose?” Her head bent, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “We were so foolish to think we could best the angels. We have all been but puppets in their hands. Fate had us in its grasp from the moment we drew breath.”

“Margaret has entirely missed her calling as a prophetess of doom,” said a voice from the doorway.

Both Joan and Margaret turned their heads, surprised, for they had not heard the door open.

Neville stood just inside the door, and now he closed it, nodding thanks for his entry to the guard stationed outside.

Joan sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bench on which lay her pallet.

Neville walked over and sat beside Joan. He smiled at both the women, but his eyes were too strained and tired to carry it off well. He let it fade, and reached out and took Margaret’s hand.

“There is
always
choice left,” he said, “even if it seems that all alternatives have been destroyed. I have to believe that.”

Joan nodded, happy that Neville still believed.

“But you cannot choose me,” Margaret said softly.

He looked her straight in the eye. “No, Margaret, I cannot choose you.”

She turned away from him, her hands brushing the tears from her cheeks. “I wish my children were here with me,” she said. “I wish I could hold them one last time. I wish—”

“Margaret…” Neville raised his hand to Margaret, then dropped it. He did not know what to say or do. James had told him there was a third option, a third choice,
but what was it?
Neville had spent every waking moment and much of his nightmarish sleeping time seeking the answer.

And yet there
was
no answer. There
was
no conveniently handy prostitute to whom Neville could unhesitatingly hand his soul…
beg
the woman to take his soul.

He was trapped by that damned curse, trapped by the Roman prostitute’s prophecy. Trapped by her hatred of him.

Trapped by his own hatred of all women that he nurtured for so long. Trapped by his uncaring soul.

“I have spent my life as a foolish man,” he whispered.

“You have spent your life as any angel would,” said Margaret, still not looking at him, and to that Neville could only laugh briefly, humourlessly.

“Then I swear before both of you,” he said, “that I will not choose as an angel would.”

Joan opened her mouth to speak, but just then the door opened, and there stood William Hawkins, captain of Bolingbroke’s castle guard.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, his face flushing with the horror of the news he bore, “I am here to inform you that His Grace the King has just signed your execution order.”

“When?” Joan said.

“Tomorrow noon,” replied Hawkins. He hesitated, then left the chamber.

“Tomorrow,” whispered Margaret. “We have less than a day.”

“Trust in Christ,” Joan said, staring at Neville. “If he said there was a third path, then he will make it plain to you.”

“Would that I had your faith, Joan,” Neville said. Then he stood, and kissed Margaret’s forehead. “I will see you in the morning,” he said. “There is something I must do tonight.”

He went straight to Bolingbroke, and was granted direct admittance.

“Why do you push this?” said Neville, striding up to Bolingbroke. “Do you not realise that the stake you build for Joan could just as easily hold all of mankind? You have forced the decision, damn you. All will be lost or won tomorrow…
how can you stand there so confident?
”

And even as he spoke the words, Neville remembered. He had not talked with Bolingbroke in weeks…and he had never told him what the angels had shown him.

The decision was already made. He would not give his soul to Margaret. He could not possibly give it to some unknown whore.

He must hand it to the angels.

But would telling Bolingbroke make any difference?

A slight movement out of the corner of his eye caught Neville’s attention.

Catherine. Sitting in a shadowy corner. She shook her head very slightly, her face a mask of sadness.
It is of no use.

“I have waited enough time,” Bolingbroke said. If Neville was agitated, and Catherine dispirited, then Bolingbroke was a study in calm confidence. He turned away from Neville, and walked about his chamber a little, as if inspecting its rich appointments.

He stopped, and looked back to Neville. “It
is
time the decision was made, Tom. Time for the angels to be rejected, time for us to take command.”

“Time for
you
to take command,” Neville whispered, appalled. “Time for hatred to reign supreme. Look at Catherine, Hal. Does she look the loving and loved wife? Think of Mary, dying broken and unloved, eaten by your contempt of her. You have ever lectured me about the power of love, the damn
need
for love…but you are a man so
consumed by hatred and ambition that you have become
every inch your father’s son!
”

Bolingbroke’s face darkened in fury. “How dare you—”

“How,
why
, should I choose in your favour, Hal?
Why?
Would I not condemn mankind to an even greater hell than that of the angels’?”

And suddenly, catastrophically, Neville slid into an even incomparably more vile damnation than that he’d been experiencing. He had thought he wanted to choose in the demons’ favour, choose for mankind, choose
Margaret
, but now he realised that choosing Margaret would condemn mankind to an even greater disaster at Hal’s hands than the one they would experience enslaved to the angels.

Choosing for the demons would not be choosing for mankind at all. They’d merely be passed from one enslavement to another.

Neville’s face was a mask of horror, his eyes wide and, staring, he took a step backwards. Then another. Then one more.

He dimly realised that Bolingbroke was raging at him, that Catherine had stood up from her chair, a hand held to her horrified face, but none of this mattered.

None of this mattered, because he now realised he was triply trapped into choosing for the angels. He could never choose Margaret: firstly, because of that single hesitancy in his love for her, and, secondly, because she was no whore. And finally he could never choose Margaret because she represented the demons’ path, and that path would condemn mankind to Hal’s ambition.

There was laughter ringing about them, ringing through the chamber, and it was the laughter of the angels.

Neville turned and fled.

Tuesday 10th September 1381

T
he crowd started to gather in the square just outside the castle from dawn. News of the Maid’s trial by the Church and the subsequent death sentence by the English king sat uneasily with them. Joan was the Maid of France—
surely not a witch, surely not a sorceress
—but their obedience to the Church, and their fear of what the Church might do to them should they make a fuss, kept their uneasiness to a sullen low murmur and the passing of uneasy looks between neighbours and friends.

Saints had been martyred before, it was almost the expected outcome for any saintly enterprise, and perhaps they should count themselves fortunate to be here to witness the passage of the Maid into the arms of God and His angels, where she surely belonged.

Carpenters and labourers had worked through the night to erect the scaffolding about the stake and to collect enough wood to ensure the Maid burned properly. The stake itself stood on a platform that had wood heaped beneath it and about it: a small space had been left clear so that Joan’s gaolers could tie her securely to the stake.

A wooden board had been fastened to the top of the stake. On it were written words in red paint:
Jeanne who
calls herself Maid of France, liar, pernicious deceiver of the people, sorceress, superstitious, blasphemer of God, presumptuous, boastful, idolatrous, cruel, dissolute, invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic.

The labourers had erected two stands a close but safe distance from the stake. In one would the English king, his entourage and the civilian notables of Rouen watch the proceedings, in the other the members of the Church who had gathered for the spectacle. Many of the clerics were already arriving, resplendent in newly laundered and brushed clerical robes of purple, crimson and black wool and silk, some of them wearing furs against the cool morning.

They fully expected to be able to discard them in the later warmth of the day.

The crowds were permitted to gather in the other two sides of the square, and in the spaces between the stands.

By nine of the clock there were some ten thousand gathered in the square. Among them was a scruffy, weary-faced English nobleman. He leaned against the supports of the stand where the king would shortly sit, his arms folded, his face staring at the stake. The skin beneath his black hair and above his unkempt beard was ashen, his eyes ringed with red, his mouth a thin-pressed white line.

Neville had spent the entire night roaming the streets of Rouen trying to find James. He’d shouted his name, he’d pounded on the doors of those carpenters’ workshops he could find. He’d wept and screamed and sobbed.

But he had not found James.

Christ had deserted him today, it seemed.

Neville’s eyes swung towards a movement in the crowd in front of the stake.

A man stood there, ethereal, exuding a faint unearthly aura. His features were all but hidden beneath a long, hooded, black cloak. All that Neville could see of him was a pale flash of a face deep under the hood, and the gleam of flat, black eyes.

The blackness of the cloak gave forth a faint, sickening
light. A darkness that hung over the man, cloaking him from most eyes.

All eyes save those of another angel, or of one of their children.

Another movement, slightly to the left of the first cloaked man, and Neville’s eyes flew that way.

There stood another black-cloaked and hooded man, exuding the same unearthly glimmer of darkness. On his hooded head sat a black obsidian crown, its points flickering in the light as if on dark fire.

An archangel.

Michael.

Neville stood up straight, letting his arms drop to his sides. His eyes moved about the crowd. There, there…there! The crowd was intermixed with a throng of angels, all blackly cloaked and hooded, some wearing the archangelic obsidian crowns.

All with pale faces under their hoods, all turned towards Neville, all with black eyes unblinking.

None among the human crowd realised their presence, or realised that every time they moved they bumped elbows or shoulders or hips with an angel come to gloat amid Neville’s misery.

Hundreds of angels, the entire throng of heaven, moving very slowly to the front of the crowd so that they lined the semi-circle of open space in the square.

Decision time, brother. Are you ready?

Neville briefly considered flight,
hungered
for the cowardice that would allow him to turn and flee.

But he could not.

“James,” he whispered. “Where are you? Help me, please. Oh, sweet Jesu, help me…
help
me…”

A clarion of horns sounded, and Neville jumped.

The castle gates opened, and through them rode Bolingbroke atop a black destrier—
as black as the angels’ cloaks
—Catherine riding a smaller palfrey at his side. She was dressed in crimson, and it did nothing to soften the lines about her eyes, or the strain about her mouth.

Behind them rode Isabeau de Bavière, clad in demure grey, but with such a gleam of triumph in her eyes and her bearing that her entire face had lost its fragile air of beauty to a hard mask of malice. Isabeau was certain that, if nothing else, the horror of being burned alive would surely dent Joan’s irritating composure.

Isabeau meant to enjoy Joan’s death.

Following Isabeau rode a score of nobles, all splendidly accoutred, and perhaps a hundred heavily weaponed menat-arms.

And behind them came a cart drawn by four great horses. On this cart sat a cage, and in this cage, clinging to its bars, stood Joan. She wore nothing but a simple unflattering sleeveless shift of undyed linen that came down to her calves; in places it clung in great patches to her skin where she had sweated. Joan’s hair had been rough-cut very short to an uncombed dark cap about her head. Her eyes were wide, staring, but strangely calm. She almost seemed to be in another place. Neville wondered what she saw with those eyes…the market square, or something far more strange?

About her neck someone had hung a sign which read, simply,
Sorceress.

Behind the cart walked Margaret, looking terrified rather than calm. Her clothing, while not quite so basic as Joan’s, was almost as simple: a pale grey woollen robe, a simple corded belt tied low about her hips, a white lawn veil holding back her hair.

Neville’s heart lurched within his chest, and his eyes filled with tears.
Poor Margaret. Did she think he had deserted her?

But perhaps he had, for the angels had left him no room to manoeuvre, no room to gift Margaret his soul.

“Jesu! Jesu!” Neville whispered, not caring that his staring eyes and ashen face drew concerned looks from those in the crowd close to him.
Where is this third path, James? Where my third option?

At that moment he saw Bolingbroke’s face harden, and the man’s hands jerk against his horse’s reins as they tightened.

He’d just seen the angels ringed about the square.

Bolingbroke stared, then his eyes darted about until they found Neville, still close to the stand where Bolingbroke would eventually sit. His lips moved soundlessly, but Neville could hear Bolingbroke’s voice in his head.

Do not fail me now, Neville. Do not fail Margaret.

Neville broke out into a sweat.
I
will
fail if I choose the path
you
point me at, Hal.

Bolingbroke’s face contorted, and Neville knew he struggled to contain his rage. If they’d been alone, if tens of thousands had not been watching, if the damned
angels
had not stood there gloating in their imminent victory, then Neville knew Bolingbroke would have been hard-pressed not to reach out and destroy him for that thought.

Far behind Bolingbroke, Margaret let out a soft cry of terror as she, too, caught a glimpse of the ranks of the angels about the square.

It drew Neville’s eyes back to her, and he began to cry for her and for mankind, whom this morning he would be forced to condemn into eternal enslavement.

He cried for himself, as well, knowing that his failure would doom him to an eternal hell clasped within the brotherhood of the angels. He moaned most pitifully, and bent over, his clenched fists at his forehead.
Why couldn’t he hand his soul to Margaret? Why? Sweet Jesu knew that he loved her. Oh, why? Why?

The black glimmering ranks of the angels shifted, almost as if they had no solid foothold on the ground, and they drifted in the slight breeze that blew through the square.

You cannot choose Margaret
, they whispered about Neville.
You know that…Beloved Brother among Us.

Bolingbroke and his entourage had now reached the stand while the cart bearing Joan, Margaret still walking behind it, drew into the open space in front of the stake.

Joan, lost in some strange world of her own, stared unseeing about her.

Margaret shrank closer to the cart, one hand gripping its backboard, her eyes staring, terrified, at the angels about her.

Many of them hissed at her:
Demon. Bitch. Heretic imp.

Bolingbroke dismounted from his horse, looked to make sure that Owen Tudor helped Catherine down from her mount, then shot Neville a smouldering glance of anger.
Choose Margaret. Hand her your soul. You have no choice.

“I have me no choice,” whispered Neville, “at that you are right…but I cannot choose Margaret.”

Bolingbroke’s face shifted, his rage almost breaking through, then he swung away, and climbed into the stand.

Catherine sent Neville one brief, despairing look, then she, too, climbed into the stand, Owen Tudor close behind her. As Isabeau followed her daughter into the stand she glanced at Neville curiously. A dishevelled noble the worse for drink, she thought, and dismissed him from her mind.

Shaking, a hand clutching one of the wooden supports of the stand almost as hard as Margaret clutched at the cart, Neville turned back to look into the square.

The angels were now, quite literally, shaking. Their forms jiggered and danced about, the rims of their tightly-drawn hoods fluttering and flapping, although they generally kept their places in the semi-circle at the front of the crowd.

They were having fun, and it showed.

Another clarion of horns, and again Neville jumped.

Bolingbroke was in the stand now, and he moved to its front. He pointed down at Joan, now kneeling in her cage, still clinging to its bars.

“Witch and sorceress,” he said in his clear, carrying voice. “Heretic and harlot, bloodletter and drinker…so has this Joan, so-called Maid of France, been condemned by our mother Church.” Bolingbroke glanced at the stand containing the clerics, and they all nodded solemnly.

“People of France,” Bolingbroke continued. “You think that Joan has worked for you, worked in your favour, but in reality she has been a harlot of the devil, working towards your eventual enslavement to the minions of hell. She is no earthly woman—for what earthly woman wears men’s clothes, and armour, and wields a lance? What earthly
woman refuses the embrace of a man, and refuses to bear his children? What earthly woman,” his voice had risen now to a shout, “can fly from the tops of towers and land a mile away? She is a witch, a sorceress, and her contamination can be erased only by the purifying caress of the flames.”

The crowd murmured, and shifted, disliking not so much Bolingbroke’s words, but the vile manner in which he spoke them.

“Men of France—” Bolingbroke called out again, but was prevented from continuing by one of the angels, who now stepped forth, throwing his arms out wide.

Instantly, a great stillness fell upon the crowd, and Neville knew that the angel—Archangel Michael—had ensorcelled the ordinary men and women into a dream state. They might see, and might even remember, but it would be as a dream, not a reality.

Michael threw back his hood, revealing a bald cavernous skull only barely covered with dead white skin.

As the hood of his cloak dropped, so the obsidian crown vanished, then reappeared about the archangel’s white-skinned skull as the hood folded about his shoulders.

Let us see who is the witch here
, he hissed.
And let us finally decide this battle, once and for all.

He turned slightly, holding out his hand, and Neville, sick to his stomach, his hands trembling with his dread, stumbled helplessly forth into the clear space.

Thomas Neville
, the archangel said, and the ranks of the angels about him took up the refrain.
Thomas Neville! Thomas Neville! Thomas Neville!

Neville wept, silent and despairing, not able to tear his eyes from Margaret, who was rigid with terror.

Beloved brother
, said Michael,
one among us, now is the day, the time, and the hour towards which for so many years all of us have walked.

Appalled, Neville realised that Michael was all but conducting a marriage ceremony: the marriage of Neville’s soul, as well as those of all mankind’s, back into the fold of the angels.

To whom will you present your soul, Beloved? To whom will you join forever and ever and for all eternity? Where is your whore, Thomas, who you love so deeply you will gift her your soul?

The archangel paused.
Not here?

Not here?
whispered the throng of angels.
Not anywhere?

Will you admit to inevitability, Thomas
, Michael continued,
and hand your soul back to us, to your brothers?

The archangel grinned, and it was a horrifying thing.
But perhaps you would like to try Margaret, Thomas. Just in case we’re wrong. Just in case there
is
a chance she’s the right girl for you…

One of the other Archangels stepped forth and grabbed Margaret, who cried out. The Archangel, Raphael, dragged her to stand close to where Michael and Neville stood.