The Crippled Angel (38 page)

Thursday 17th October 1381

B
olingbroke took a breath, gasped, choked, then hacked a glob of black mucus—he refused to name it mud—into a cloth before bundling the stained material out of sight under the table where he sat with his commanders.

“The autumn is chill,” he said by way of explanation, “and uncommonly damp.”

The men grouped about the table—Warwick, Northumberland, Suffolk, Norbury and Tudor—all looked away: at their hands, at the maps and reports scattered before them on the table or at some distant anonymous point on a wall or through a window. None wanted to look at Bolingbroke.

In the past six weeks nothing had gone well, and much had gone decidedly ill. Bolingbroke had regrouped his forces in Rouen, but awaited reinforcements to arrive from England before he marched on Paris—which city had announced its loyalty to the ever-damned Charles and its intention to repel the English with everything they had. Bolingbroke hoped to be crowned king of France in Notre Dame by Christmastide, but this was now looking increasingly unlikely.

Not only was Paris loudly proclaiming its intention to be as difficult as possible, and the reinforcing troops taking an
inordinate time to arrive from England, but Bolingbroke’s health had deteriorated alarmingly in the past weeks. His strange, hacking cough was taking such a hold within his lungs that scarcely a moment passed without him spitting or otherwise expelling the horrifying black substance from his lungs. His breath rattled and bubbled—anyone within ten paces could
hear
the mud of Agincourt welling within his lungs—and his entire face had sunken in upon itself. Bolingbroke’s skin had turned ashen, his nose and eyebrows were gaunt ridges, his cheeks hollowed caricatures of health, his mouth a thin humourless line, and his eyes red-veined and swollen with both a constant fever and the effort of coughing.

In the past week his hands had taken to shaking ceaselessly.

Philip the Bad’s curse had taken a fatal hold. Bolingbroke was a king dying, not a king about to insist on his right to take the French throne.

And on top of all this were the reports that had landed on the table this morning.

Disaster.

“I think we need not concern ourselves overmuch about these,” Bolingbroke said, one trembling hand touching the parchments that lay before him.

“I think,” Northumberland said, staring at the table, his own youthful, robust cheeks flushing, “that we need to concern ourselves
very
much about them.”

“Charles is a walking jest,” Bolingbroke shouted, shifting his chair backwards as if he meant to stand, and then subsiding, as if thinking better of it.

“If Charles is a walking jest,” Warwick said, staring at Bolingbroke, “then he is a strange jest indeed. He heads an army of over thirty thousand men—”

“Where?” said Bolingbroke, thumping the table with a fist. “Where has he got these men?”

Warwick shrugged. “He’s sold jewels, castles and lands, or promised them to those who aid him. He’s managed to arrange a massive loan from Pope Clement in Avignon on the guarantee he’ll push us out of France and then support
Clement against Urban in Rome. He’s called in favours and sent out threats. And with all this he has hired ten thousand of the best Swiss pikemen, five thousand of the best German mercenaries, and rounded up every knight and man-at-arms skulking about in central and southern France.”

“As well,” Norbury put in, “every city in France,
every one
, has promised him archers or the money to buy archers. By the time Charles draws near to us he will have close to fifty thousand behind him.”

There was a silence.

“Fifty thousand,” Suffolk whispered, “all led by a king who claims to have the support of the martyred Joan of Arc, returned from the dead with an army of ghosts to aid him.” He hesitated, then made the sign against evil. “He carries before him a banner with her face and name on it, and it is said that her ghost rides a spectral horse in the clouds above him. With every murmur that ripples through Rouen, more of our men desert—none want to stand against such an ethereal army. We have barely two thousand men left, your grace. We hardly have an
escort
left to see us home, let alone an army.”

“Charles is a jest,” Bolingbroke said again. “A
jest
, I say. He cannot piss in a straight line, let alone lead an army into battle. You
know
this.”

Every man who stood watching Bolingbroke thought the same thing.
If he cannot even piss in a straight line, then how is it he has overrun Aquitaine?

Eventually Owen Tudor spoke into the long embarrassed silence. “Some say that this is not the same man,” he said. “Some say that when Joan burned, her last action was to infuse his soul—and spine—with her courage and determination.”

“These are the words of a fool,” Bolingbroke said, finally managing to push back his chair and stand. He swayed, grabbing at the back of the chair to steady himself.

The eyes of all the other men in the room turned away, and Bolingbroke’s temper finally snapped. “I am the King of France, and none can gainsay it.”

“France gainsays it,” Tudor said softly. “Philip cursed you, and now Joan’s ghost haunts you. I think you will never be King of France.”

“Get out of my presence,” Bolingbroke shouted, his face mottling a dark red.

Tudor stood, but he did not immediately move off. “Let me repeat my Lord of Suffolk’s words,” he said, his eyes holding steady on Bolingbroke’s furious glare. “We have two thousand men
only
, scattered in a line from Rouen to Harfleur, and every night more and more of those men desert, thinking it better to end their days before home fires and hearths than spitted on a saintly lance. You have an army of some fifty thousand marching towards you through a land that loathes you and which has cursed you. If you do not retreat to England, you will surely die, either on the point of the sword of France, or coughing your lungs out in your sickbed.”

And with that he turned and left the room.

“He—” Bolingbroke began.

“Speaks nothing but sense,” Warwick said. “We need to go home, your grace. You are too ill, and your army too small, to stay. And your queen, you tell us, is newly pregnant. You cannot risk either yourself or her or any one of your precious few remaining men in this hell hole of a country any longer. For Christ’s sake, sire, think with your head, not your pride or your ambition.”

“For Christ’s sake?” Bolingbroke whispered, his face now white. “For
Christ’s
sake? I think Christ has abandoned me.”

He stared at his commanders a moment longer, then suddenly his shoulders slumped, and he sat down in the chair again.

“We will go home for the winter,” he said. “Allow Charles his petty moment of triumph. But we will be back. Next summer.” He looked up, his eyes bright with fever. “We will finish the job next summer.”

If France has not eaten you first
, Warwick thought, but he nodded agreeably enough, relieved that Bolingbroke had seen sense at last.

Friday 18th October 1381

“     adam?” Catherine turned, smiling gently at Owen Tudor as he walked to join her at the window. Then she returned her gaze to the hustle and bustle of the courtyard. “Will you be happy to be going home, my lord?” she said.

“I will be happy to see you safer,” he said, looking not at the preparations below them but at her face. It was pale and thin, her eyes strained, her mouth humourless. Her black hair, so lustrous when Owen Tudor had brought her from Paris to Rouen, was now dull and lifeless, scraped back from her face without care to adornment.

“But,” he added, dropping his voice lower so that the chamberlain directing the packing of Catherine and Bolingbroke’s belongings in the chamber behind them could not hear, “that happiness will be tempered with sadness…knowing your sadness. England is a strange place to you. It is not your home.”

“I have no home,” she whispered, without self-pity. “The new man who rides at the head of a French army, and who once was my brother, will not want me—not pregnant. My mother has never wanted me. My husband…”

“Catherine, I—”

“You address me too familiarly, my lord. I am your king’s wife.”

“My king is dying,” Tudor said, “and soon his wife will be widowed.”

There was a long silence as Catherine stared unseeing through the window. Her mind pondered the fact that so much could be said with so few words. Eventually, she turned her eyes, and studied Tudor standing watching her.

He had such a kindly face. Gentle, but also strong. He was a courageous man. She remembered how he had chosen to stay and support her when, on her arrival in Rouen, Bolingbroke had ordered him from their chamber.

“Where is your home estate, my lord?”

“In eastern Wales, Catherine. It is a gentle and mild place. Peaceful.”

As are you
, she thought.

“Once I have given birth to my son,” her hand strayed to cover her still-flat abdomen, “and once my husband is dead, I shall be more homeless than ever. My son shall be surrounded with regents, and I shall be a mere relic of glory now dead. Who shall want me?”

Tudor smiled, very slightly, his eyes warm.

Her own mouth curved in response, and she felt easier within herself than she had for…well, for years. Tudor might not be the great love of her life, but Catherine was tired of great loves.

“I think I should like to see this gentle and mild home of yours, my lord.”

Saturday 31st May 1381

(8 months later)

E
ord Thomas Neville stood in the prow of the boat as it sailed up the Thames, his eyes half closed against both the sun and the breeze. He thought of the last time he and Margaret had come this way to London—then, Archangel Michael had appeared to them, spitting out his hatred.

Now? Now there was nothing but the sun and the lap of the waves and the scented breeze. Nothing but Margaret sitting further back in the boat, five months pregnant with what were apparently twins, and playing with Rosalind and Bohun, as Agnes, Robert Courtenay and Jocelyn Hawkins—now a part of Neville’s household—chatted happily to one side.

The master of the boat shouted a curse at one of the men manning the sails, jerking Neville from his reverie. He turned from his spot at the front of the boat and made his way back to Margaret.

“You do not feel ill?” he asked, sitting down beside her and taking her hand.

“Nay. I shouldn’t have worried about the water voyage so much.” She smiled, and patted her abdomen with her free hand. “I think the gentle motion of the river has sent these two to sleep.”

At that moment Rosalind shrieked as Bohun pulled at her plait.

“More’s the pity,” Margaret continued, her mouth twisting wryly, “that it hasn’t subdued our older children in the same manner.”

Neville smiled, but said nothing. He lifted a hand and tucked away a tendril of Margaret’s hair that had escaped from beneath her simple lawn headdress. These past months since their return from France had been good for them.

The peace of Halstow Hall had been good for them.

They had settled down to a contented country life—overseeing the harvests and their tenants (Neville had freed every one of his peasants from the last vestiges of their feudal bonds on his return), listening to Thomas Tusser’s increasingly execrable rhymes and Robert Courtenay’s gentle laughter, watching their children grow in the sun and wind, making new children.

Making a life and a marriage for themselves without the ambitions and uncertainties and hatreds that had previously consumed them.

They never talked about what had happened in the square that day Joan had burned. They never talked of Mary, or of what Neville had given her.

To do that would have been to destroy everything they had managed to build over the past eight months.

Within half an hour their boat had passed under London Bridge and was heading for the southern curve in the Thames that would take them to Westminster and the purpose of their visit to London.

Both a life and a death awaited them.

Catherine was due to give birth within the next week or so, and she had asked that Margaret be present. At that
Neville was not surprised—this would be the birthing of a new English monarch unlike any before.

And yet…yet…Neville had the faintest suspicion that since the events in the castle courtyard of Rouen the unusual powers and abilities of the angel-children were fading. A week or so ago Margaret had mentioned, so very casually as if it were of no matter, that she thought she would use the services of a local midwife to birth the twins.

A local midwife. A very normal, human woman.

It meant that Margaret was considering giving birth in her human form, not her angel form. Was she now more human than angel? Had the angel-children lost almost as badly as the angels on that day Neville had handed his soul to Mary, to mankind, rather than to either Margaret or the demons?

Was the cause of the angel-children dying with their king…dying with Hal Bolingbroke?

Bolingbroke’s deteriorating condition was the other reason for Neville and Margaret’s trip to London. As Catherine prepared to give birth, so Bolingbroke prepared to die, and Neville had come to see his once-friend for the last time. This was something he both wanted and had to do, and Neville suspected that Bolingbroke had been clinging to life for months waiting for Neville’s visit.

Now, it was time to let go.

Hal and Catherine had taken up residence in the guest quarters of the monastery attached to Westminster Abbey. This was due less to personal preference than to the wishes of the Privy Council and great lords of England. A king was dying, his heir was about to be born, and both events were to be conducted under the watchful eyes of those men who would make up the Council of Regents once Bolingbroke was dead.

At their head, virtual ruler of England ever since Bolingbroke’s return from France, was Ralph Neville, Baron of Raby and Earl of Westmorland, and now the most powerful man in the country.

He had done well indeed from his connections with, and loyalty to, the Lancastrian faction.

But, most powerful man in England or not, Raby was still a family man, and when Neville’s boat docked at Westminster’s wharf Raby was there to greet his nephew. He stepped into the boat, too impatient even for Neville to disembark, and embraced him warmly.

Then he turned to Margaret, smiled, took her hand, and kissed her in a brotherly fashion on her mouth. “The queen has been asking for you, Margaret, desperate to hear of news of your arrival. She went into labour early this morning.”

Margaret’s eyes widened, and she allowed Neville to help her from the boat where the palace chamberlain was waiting to escort her to Catherine’s side.

As she walked away, Raby turned back to Neville, his eyes dark and sad. “And Hal has been asking for you, Tom. He has not long to live.”

The chamber was dark and cold, and stank of death even though servants had set up sweet-scented braziers and burners about the room.

Neville made his way slowly to the great bed, and to the gaunt and wheezing shape that lay upon it.

“Tom? Tom, is that you?”

Neville found it difficult to reply. Hal—or what had once been Hal (
fair Prince Hal
)—had wasted to such an extent he was now little more than skin-covered bone. His hair, once so beautiful, lay patchy and grey across his skull. His eyes had dulled so badly they were now virtually colourless. His skin was papery, so thin Neville could see the irregular beating of the blood vessels beneath.

His condition, appallingly, reminded Neville of how Mary had died.

“Tom?” A note of panic crept into Hal’s voice. “Tom,
is that you?
”

“Aye, Hal, it is me.” Neville sat down on a stool by the bed and, with only the barest hesitation, laid his warm hand on Hal’s cold fingers as they lay on the coverlet.

“You came.” Tears slipped over Hal’s lower eyelids and down his cheeks.

There was a long silence. Neville did not know what to say. All he could see, all he could remember, was how glorious Hal had been in his prime. How godlike he’d been when he seized power from Richard.

How beautiful…

“It has all come to this, then,” Hal whispered, then jerked as he coughed.

Black mud ran from a corner of his mouth, and Neville took a cloth that lay by a bowl of rosewater on a table to one side and wiped it away.

Neville said nothing.

“I had not realised about Mary,” Hal said once he had caught his breath. “I had not known.”

“None of us did,” Neville said.

“But you loved her.”

“Aye. I loved her.”

“Why? What was so special about Mary?”

You fool
, thought Neville.
If you wanted an answer for why you now die, then it lies in that you still ask that question.
He did not speak.

“I should have loved,” Hal said after a very long silence.

Neville’s eyes filled with tears. “Aye. You should have loved.”

There was another lengthy quiet between them, the only sound that of Hal’s harsh breathing.

Then, eventually, Hal coughed again, cleared his throat of his accumulation of mud, and spoke once more. “Tom…is Christ among us?”

“Yes.”

“Where? Why do I not see him? Why has he not come to me?”

“Because you did not love,” Neville said, hating the fact that he had to say it.

Hal began to cry, great broken sobs that racked his weak body. “I tried so hard,” he said.

“I know,” Neville said, crying himself now.

“I wish I had loved.”

“I know,” Neville said…and then realised there was no one listening.

He sat there in the silence of death for what seemed a very long time.

The door to the chamber opened, and the palace chamberlain came in.

“My lord,” he whispered, and Neville turned about.

“Yes?”

“The king has a son. Will you tell him?”

Neville hesitated a long moment. “The king is dead,” he said eventually. “He no longer cares.”

Then he stood, took one long look at the husk of the man he had once loved lying on the bed, then turned and left the room.

He walked from Westminster to Cheapside in London—the distance taking him well over an hour.

By the time he’d walked past St Paul’s the bells of the parish churches in London had begun to peal in mourning.

The city quietened under its pall of bells, and many shops closed for the day as working men and their wives thought to take themselves to church to pray for the dead king’s soul.

But Neville knew that the door to one workshop at least would still be open.

He found the carpenter’s workshop on the same laneway off Cheapside in which he had found it that day before they had left for Harfleur. The doorway stood open, as it had then, although now it opened under a newly painted sign:
James Emery, Carpenter.

James had settled down, it seemed.

And, as the last time, a shadow lingered in the cool dimness of the shop.

Except this time the shadow was Mary, not the carpenter.

She smiled, a little sadly, as Neville hesitated under the lintel of the doorway.

“Hal is dead,” she said, adjusting the weight of the infant wriggling in her arms.

“Aye,” Neville said. He paused. “What happens now?” he whispered.

She walked forward, allowing some of the light from the doorway to spill over her face. Her black hair was wound about her head in a heavy rope under a trailing lawn veil, framing the translucent skin of her face and her deep blue eyes.

Neville’s breath caught in his throat: this beautiful woman, this Mary.

How he loved her.

“I should not have come,” he said.

“You are wrong,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss him briefly on the mouth, “for it is good that you have come. James is waiting for us in the courtyard, and I have set out some bread and cheese and a jug of cider. Will you join us?”

Then she looked down to the child in her arms. “See my son? James and I have named him Christopher.”

Neville glanced at the child, but the baby did not interest him.

“Mary—”

“Come to the courtyard, Tom.” She turned, her movement lithe and unknowingly seductive, and led him through the workshop, the kitchen and storerooms behind it, and into the small, sunlit courtyard.

James was waiting there, and he stepped forward and embraced Neville.

Neville surprised himself at how fiercely he returned James’ embrace. “I should have come earlier,” he said as James finally stood back.

James nodded. “Aye, that you should have.” His eyes, still as dark as Neville remembered them, were nonetheless very different. It took Neville a moment to realise what it was: James’ eyes were soft and humorous, unburdened by the cares that had once tortured him.

“You are happy,” Neville said.

“Aye, I am happy,” James said, indicating that Neville should sit on the bench on the opposite side of the trestle table covered with food and drink. As James sat himself, Mary put their son into his arms, and James smiled at the baby, finally lifting his eyes back to Neville.

“How could I not be happy? I have my wife, and my son. Home with me. Finally.”

Mary poured both her husband and Neville some cider, then sat herself and picked up a cup that she was already halfway through.

“No one hunts us now,” she said softly. “Not the angels. Not the Roman soldiers. Not the priests. We can pick up our lives where once they had been interrupted.”

Neville took a sip of cider, then allowed himself to relax in the sun, watching James play with the baby, and Mary watch her husband and son.

“You were killed, too,” Neville suddenly said to Mary. “Soon after your husband died on the cross.”

“Aye.” Mary’s face and body went very still as she remembered. “The soldiers, driven along by the hatred of the priests, came for me in the hour after they took down my husband’s body.”

She stopped, and Neville suddenly, horribly, knew what she was going to say.

“They stoned me to death, shattering every bone in my body.”

“Mercy,” whispered Neville, and looked down unseeing at the rough wood of the table as he remembered Mary Bohun’s shattered, dying body.
They stoned her? They stoned the most wondrous woman the world had ever known? And then…then they
dared
to build a Church of lies about both Christ and his wife?

“It is why Hal’s Mary could not carry a child past six months,” she continued. “I was six months gone with Christopher,” she nodded and smiled at the baby squirming happily in his father’s arms, “when I died.”

She turned her glorious eyes back to Neville. “And then my husband existed in torment within heaven, and I existed
in torment without him,” her eyes filled with tears, “until this most remarkable of men loved me, and was my friend, and freed my husband.”

“And now I think Tom more than half wishes he had not freed the husband,” James said, his eyes crinkling humorously and his voice filled with laughter.

Neville stared at James, then at Mary, and then burst into laughter himself, all his sadness and regret gone.

“And you and Mary?” he said. “What now?”

They glanced at each other, and it was Mary who answered. “What now, Tom? Why, we raise our son, and any other children which bless us, and my husband works at his craft.”

“We live and die as any, Tom,” said James. “We are a husband and a wife, and that is
all
that we are.”