Son of the Morning (67 page)
‘Then why not trust me to be sensible? It doesn’t work anyway. Old Loose Top here lied.’
‘It will work,’ said Nergal. ‘It just needs the light. Let the stars or the moon shine on it.’
‘Please mama, open the window.’
‘Very well,’ said Joan, ‘but I am trusting you, Charles. You are not to do anything rash.’
‘I will be careful.’
‘How does it work, Nergal?’
‘It should lift you with the light. You will be light.’
‘Have you seen this done before?’
‘No, but I have heard tell of it in Hell. There are great men of theory there, for it was their theories that sent them to the pit.’
Joan opened the window to a big crescent moon that sat like a sideways smile in the sky. The summer night was clear and bright with stars.
Charles went to the window and looked out. The feathers caught the moonlight and shone bright and silver as fish in a sunny pool.
‘Fly,’ said Charles. Nothing happened. He hopped up and down on the spot. ‘You
did
lie Nergal!’ he pouted. He stared out of the window. ‘Fly, fly, fly!’
‘Perhaps it’s for the best,’ said Joan.
‘Is that a fire on the horizon?’ said Charles.
‘A fire?’ said Nergal. ‘Is a house ablaze? Some chance to drink a heavy draft of flame?’
‘I see nothing,’ said Joan.
‘There is a pillar of flame. It touches the sky. I …’
Charles would later try to recall what had happened to him but it seemed that one moment he was standing in the solar, gazing out of the window, the next he was far above the earth, looking down. France stretched out beneath him but he could see the great sleeve of sea separating it from England too, the hills of the south rolling on towards the tiny flickering lights of London. The pillar of flame, though, rose up from the east. Was it flame? A red light, shining up into the dark.
He thought he would like to see it closer and willed himself forward. The speed of his flight left him breathless. One moment he was streaking through the clear skies of France, the next floating above a thunderhead in England, the pillar of red light stretching up through it, as if the mass of heavy cloud was a stopper and the light the bottle. He fell through the clouds with delight, revelling as he tumbled. He fell from moonlight to rain and stretched his hand to the cloud to shoot back into it, fast as a comet.
Elation filled him as he saw the spuming clouds below lit up by the moon – but more than the moon. The light was intense. It was him, he realised – light shone out of him, out of the cloak of feathers. He held up his hand. It shone, almost unbearable to look at.
He laughed to think that he was an angel himself. He tasted iron in his mouth and a sourness came into his stomach. This was not right. His head pounded and a horrid tickle came into his throat. He dropped back down into the cloud, sucking in its cool vapours to try to calm the dirty itch that prickled his tongue. He wanted to be sick but he couldn’t make himself retch. The light hurt his eyes and his ears rang like he’d stood too close to a pot-de-fer.
Get down, get down.
He plunged back down through the brumous air, the world swirling to grey as he dropped out of the cloud, rain spattering his face, soaking his skin. He felt very cold now and a deep, wracking shiver took him as he fell.
Everything became red, the clouds outside racing like blooms of blood in water. He had fallen into that strange pillar of light and hurtled down through it as if through a twisting banner of blood. This was not light, he realised but cloth – cloth such as he had never known, finer than silk, stronger than chains, billowing folds of something that was not of the earth, twines of scarlet reaching up to ensnare him and pull him in. The cloth was all around him as he fell, wrapping up the angel cloak, blocking out the light, muffling the light that Charles himself had become. He was human as he plummeted, solid and whole – breakable.
He landed in a tumble of cloth and feathers, thumping down heavily, though much less heavily than he had feared.
He tried to stand but he was entwined. He was in a room all panelled in dark wood and gold, behind him a window, its shutters open, its parchment taken down, just big enough for him to have come through. Above him a woman was winding in the cloth, pulling him towards her. She was very richly dressed and she looked very like his mother – slightly older, perhaps.
‘Well it’s taken me long enough to catch you,’ said the woman in beautiful French. ‘Name yourself, spirit. Are you of God, of Satan or Lucifer.’
‘I am of Navarre,’ said Charles. He stood and staggered to the window where he was heavily sick.
‘Come in,’ she said, ‘I don’t want my guards seeing you.’
Charles sat down. A tendril of cloth was still wrapped around his leg, he tried to remove it and looked for his knife but he hadn’t the strength to grab it.
‘Who are you?’ There was some curiosity but also hauteur in her question, intimating that Charles was pushing the limits of civility by arriving in her chamber without an introduction. Charles instantly recognised her great breeding and refinement and guessed who she was.
‘Aunt Isabella?’ he said. He tried to stand but his legs would not support him.
‘Aunt?’
‘I am Charles, prince of Navarre, royal on both sides.’ He felt so weak, so ill. Tears came into his eyes and he wiped them away, not wishing to appear weak in front of this woman.
‘How do I know you’re not some sprite of the air?’ she demanded. ‘This banner doesn’t work on ordinary men as it exists half in this world and half in Heaven. It catches devils and demons. Which are you?’
‘I swear I am neither. My mother Joan sends greetings and wishes you good health. I did have gifts for you but they fell from my grasp as I travelled.’ A lie, of course, but he couldn’t bear to be thought remiss in courtesy.
Isabella bent to the boy and pinched his arm.
‘You should have been more careful. It’s important to bring gifts when approaching a queen and an excuse is no replacement for a diamond. Hmm, you look like a true Capetian but looks are nothing. Will you be enchanted? Will you sit in a magic circle so I might test your claim to be human?’
‘Gladly, aunt, but I am weak. Has that banner sapped my strength?’
‘No, it ensnares, that is all,’ said Isabella, ‘and it ensnares devils. Let me make you a circle so I might question you more.’
‘Gladly, but you will need to carry me.’
‘I can draw it around you.’
‘As you wish.’
Isabella pursed her lips as she looked at the little boy. ‘No demon or devil would allow that,’ she said, ‘so perhaps you are not lying after all.’
Charles could hardly keep his eyes open.
‘I am so sleepy. Let me sleep, while you draw your circle, and we can talk after I have rested.’
Isabella wound up the banner. Charles was surprised to see that, as she wound, it got smaller and smaller until it was no more than a strip of white cloth with a single red cross on it.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
‘The Drago,’ she said, ‘St George carried it. It is an anathema and a snare to infernal creatures, which is why I am suspicious of you.’
Charles lay back on a cushion his aunt set down for him, so comfortable … In moments, the little boy was asleep and his aunt drew a circle around him.
When he awoke she stood before him. ‘Cross the chalk line,’ she instructed.
He rose and took a step forward but a great uncertainty gripped him. It was as if he stood on a very high and precarious place and that any movement might see him dashed to the rocks.
‘I cannot. But I am not a devil. I am Charles, your sister’s son, truly.’
Isabella smiled. ‘I think you are telling the truth,’ she said, ‘for no devil would have allowed himself to have been trapped in there so easily. And yet a devil you are, or you would be able to leave. I think you have some questions to ask your mother.’
Nothing happened. The pardoner was sweating like a cheese. He had made his circles in exact imitation of the one on his belly, dotted the angel’s blood where it should be dotted, mixed the names of demons and angels, shouted his commands – twice – and spoken to the spirits of the east, west, north and south winds. He invoked Despenser by name as a well-known and notorious consorter with devils, a fallen angel who fell again, more devilish than the devils, favourite of Satan, despised of Lucifer, servant of God.
King Philip sat in his chair, his eyes never leaving Osbert. The gold of the altar shone in the candlelight, the carved faces of gargoyles and devils looked down on the pardoner, the smell of a fish oil lamp brought a faint tickle of nausea to his throat. The angel’s body lay on the altar inside a magic circle, perfect in repose, give or take a toe, some wings, all its hair and its teeth. Its body caught the colours of the chapel and glowed with a golden light.
Osbert had a strong urge just to run for it but where to? The markets, selling penny indulgences again? Osbert stroked the velvet of the fraying remains of Montagu’s tunic, ran his fingers over the shining gold thread that picked out shapes of finches and sparrows. It would be a great thing to return to his father – who had insisted on the monastery – dressed like a gentleman, riding a fine horse, money in the purse and under the patronage of a king. Even a French king. He wouldn’t have to go into too many details. But what to do?
‘Right,’ said Osbert, ‘this particular ceremony sometimes takes slightly longer than we would ideally like.’
‘How much longer?’
‘A day. A week. Hell is difficult to predict. The gates between this world and that are, well, rusty at best. And remember, we’re only using a tiny, postern gate – massively well guarded, easy to defend and with devilish bureaucracy to contend with. Heh, heh. They’re rusty too – they need a little back and forth to open them so to speak. I should say they …’
The Hospitaller with the golden clasp at his cloak spoke. ‘The Caesar’s Tower manuscripts say you need to invite the devil to inhabit the body of a homunculus. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Waking the dead, or bringing life to dead flesh. If an angel can be said to be dead.’
The man had the frame of a woodcutter, muscular, great hands, great log-splitting beefy hands, great pardoner-splitting hands. Those knights could whump a man like him, wivel him, squamp and skwek him. In his panic he was inventing new words for the historically unique beating he was anticipating, should the spell fail.
‘Isn’t it dead?’ said the pardoner.
‘Depends what you mean by “dead”,’ said the Hospitaller.
‘You’ve lost me,’ said the pardoner, ‘philosophy isn’t my strong suit.’
‘It could be alive still, just healing while it recovers from being stabbed. Or incorporeal. Angels don’t just exist in the physical state. Who is to say the holy lance killed its Heavenly self too? I’d say the threat of devils turning up might reawaken it.’
‘Good God!’ said Osbert, putting his hand to the toe in his neck pouch. He had a fair idea angels were quicker than he was, even at the hobble. He’d known it would contain an irreducible spark of life but not that it might wake up and start ripping bits off him. Or sticking things to him, Despenser wasn’t beyond that.
‘It’s entirely possible that even the body of the angel is putting off the spirits who are trying to come through.’
‘Since when were you an expert on magic?’ said Osbert.
‘Since when were you? This looks like no magic at all to me,’ said Philip.
‘Maybe more angel’s blood,’ said Osbert.
‘Maybe more liar’s blood,’ said the Hospitaller. He put his hand to the hilt of his sword.
‘I’m doing my best,’ said Osbert.
‘We were looking for results, not effort,’ said the Hospitaller.
Osbert walked across the floor and into the circle with the angel. No voices, no smell of sulphur, no nothing. The ceremony had failed.
‘My lords. I …’
A tightness at his chest and Osbert flew up into the air. The chapel was below him, Philip, the Hospitallers, the men-at-arms all staring up, though not at him. He saw as he began to fall, that the angel had stood up. It had risen, quick as a stoat, and flung him up to the vault of the church.
‘Catch me!’ was all he could shout as he tumbled. The angel did, one of its hands grabbing Osbert’s arm, all but wrenching it from the socket.
‘Right, you bastard, now we’ll have some bargaining! Let me go or I kill this idiot,’ said the angel. Osbert couldn’t help feeling that the angel could do with a lesson in bargaining. ‘Indispensable sorcerer’ would be a better description than idiot.
The angel shook Osbert as if it thought he might shower coins from his pocket if given a good enough ragging and the pardoner moaned and shrieked.
‘My God!’ Philip upset his chair as he stood. He stepped backward and fell over it, landing on his arse on the cobbles. His knights both drew swords and the Hospitaller put forward a cross.
The angel’s face was worse than ugly, it was beauty defiled, the remnants of what it
had been
making what it
had become
so much more hideous by comparison. Still the blue eyes remained, still the fine features but there were no teeth, the hair was in patches and the angel’s distant smile had been replaced by a gummy snarl.
Osbert bucked and kicked but the angel gave him a back handed swipe that made him think better of doing that again.
‘Name yourself, spirit!’ shouted the Templar.
‘I’m an English baron and favourite of the king!’ said the angel, ‘and I’ll not answer questions from French knaves.’
‘I am Philip, king of France, name yourself.’
The angel nodded and dropped the pardoner heavily to the floor. ‘At last, a man on my level. I’m Hugh Despenser, lately of the Welsh Borders, now of Hell. And I’ve got your magician here who called me and is the only one who can send me back, so unless you want me stuck in your chapel for the foreseeable future I’d start driving some bargains.’
‘What sort of bargains?’
‘Release me, and then make me king of England!’
Philip put his finger to his lip in thought as Osbert scrambled to get out of the circle. The angel trod on his leg, pinning him where he was.