The Crippled Angel

by Sara Douglass

  A demon crouched at the foot of his bed. Oh sweet Jesu, see his horns! His humped back! His claws!

  “Do you remember what you and Tresilian once discussed regarding Thomas Neville?” said the demon, rising to its full height of some seven feet.

  Thorseby, incapable of movement save to clutch his bed linens the tighter to his chest, gibbered something meaningless.

  “You thought to murder him by a means most foul,” said the demon, and suddenly sat down on Thorseby’s bed.

  His weight rested fully on Thorseby’s feet, and the Prior General could feel his bones crunching under the creature’s body.

  He whimpered in pain.

  The creature took no notice. “I know,” it said, “because Tresilian talked to me about it once. About how pleased you were that Neville was going to be…what was it…be drawn and quartered, and then have his cock sliced off and forced down his throat, followed after a lengthy interval by his balls and bowels.”

  The creature grinned, revealed small pointed teeth. “Of course, that didn’t eventuate, did it, because honest men saw to it that Neville was released from your custody. Even Tresilian, after his initial enthusiasm, realised that Neville was a far better man alive than dead.

  “But not you. Oh no, not you. You’ve spent these past months scheming and planning, and turning your ire against everyone Neville is connected to. We can’t have that, Thorseby. Not at all. I’m terribly afraid that you shall have to die.”

  Thorseby screeched, his eyes bulging, his shoulders twisting in the effort to free his legs from under the demon’s weight.

  It grinned, enjoying the man’s terror. “And what better fate for Prior General Richard Thorseby than a hanging and a quartering, followed by a good disembowelling and a stuffing of his mouth and throat with his privy parts.”

  Thorseby forgot his horror of the creature, and leaned forward to beat at it with his fists.

  The demon swatted aside his fists with ease. “Of course, hanging and quartering will be too tedious in this small chamber, so I’ll content myself with a mere disembowelling followed by a genital mutilation. You’ll bleed to death, Thorseby, in agony, before anyone thinks to come wake you from your oversleep. Will that suffice, do you think?”

  And then the demon leaned forward himself, and seized the Prior General in his clawed hands.

  “My Lord Mayor!” said the gateman at Ludgate, glancing at the dawn sky, “you are out and about early!”

  “Ah, my good man,” said Dick Whittington, passing the gateman a coin, “a Lord Mayor’s work is never done.”

  And so saying, he walked down Watling Street towards St Paul’s, whistling merrily despite the exhaustion that marked his face.

  XI

  Thursday 27th June 1381

  —i—

  Tom, Tom, why do you not free me?

  Neville twisted about, unable to tear his eyes away from the contorted, bleeding figure on the cross.

  Tom? Have I not suffered enough? Free me!

  “How, sweet lord?” Neville whispered. “How?”

  I am nailed to this cross, Tom. Nailed…

  “How? I cannot penetrate heaven!”

  Nailed to this cross, Tom, as I am nailed to ten thousand score crosses about Christendom.

  As he had many times previously, whenever Christ appeared before him, begging to be freed, Neville extended his hands. “How? How?”

  Nailed…nailed…take out the nails, Tom.

  “How?” Neville cried.

  Christ’s face twisted, and he gasped, as if the agony was finally about to consume him. Then he took a deep, ragged breath, and managed to speak again in a heavy rasp.

  Mary. Go to Mary. She prays before the answer.

  “Mary?”

  Nails, Tom. I am bound only by nails.

  And then the vision vanished, and Neville started, aware once more of his surroundings.

  He sat under a bower in the gardens of the Tower complex. They had returned to London some three days previously, Bolingbroke riding triumphant, if a little battered, at the head of his army, Hotspur’s staring, lifeless head on a pike in his hand.

  The London crowds had seethed about them, screaming their adulation. They’d ridden into London via Ludgate and, in the square before St Paul’s, Dick Whittington himself had met Bolingbroke. In his hands he’d held Bolingbroke’s crown.

  Bolingbroke’s throne was finally safe, from English hands, at least.

  Neville rose to his feet, his legs and hands trembling with the remaining emotions of his vision.

  Go to Mary? She prays before the answer?

  Neville took a deep breath, striding through the gardens to the gate in the wall surrounding the palace complex.

  Go to Mary? She prays before the answer?

  He went first to her chambers, thinking that Mary might be praying before the small altar she’d had erected in the corner of her bedroom. But she was not there, and, hearing that, Neville had no need to ask further of her ladies where she might be.

  He made his way to the Tower’s church, the Chapel of St John, situated against the eastern wall of the White Tower, where it sat sandwiched between it and the Wardrobe Tower.

  Neville reached the outer door, then hesitated. Margaret sat in the gardens to one side of the chapel, together with her maid Agnes, and her and Neville’s two children, Rosalind and Bohun. Jocelyn, daughter of the prostitute Emma, had also joined the group. It was almost midday, and the group sat in the shade of a small pear tree, tossing woollen balls for the younger children to play with, and scratching behind the ears and across the stomachs of two grey and white lapdogs, lolling on the lawns in delight at the caresses.

  “Tom,” Margaret said, half rising, then sinking down again at Neville’s gesture. “What do you here?”

  “I look for Mary. Is she within?” He nodded at the closed door of the chapel.

  Margaret and Agnes shared a glance. “Aye,” Margaret replied. “She is praying. Tom, she asked not to be disturbed.”

  “I—”

  “She most particularly asked me to—”

  “Keep me away?” Neville said softly, incredulously, and Margaret lowered her eyes.

  “Nay. She did not mention your name specifically.”

  “Then I shall go in,” Neville said. “Margaret, do not fret. I will not disturb Mary overlong.”

  He laid a hand to the old iron door handle, turned it, then slipped quietly into the chapel, closing the door behind him soundlessly.

  “Would that he sought me out so assiduously,” Margaret murmured.

  Why talk so much, and so often, with Mary, when he could so easily share with her?

  Rosalind looked up from her play with her woollen ball, and frowned at her mother. She scrambled the foot or two distance between them, and clambered into Margaret’s lap.

  Mama, said Rosalind’s childish voice in her mother’s mind, do not fret. I am sure that papa loves you.

  Margaret stared incredulously at her child, and breathed in a draught of pure panic.

  Ohsweetjesuohsweetjesuohsweetjesu!

  St John’s Chapel had been built some three hundred years previously, during the reigns of the early Norman kings. Its builders had constructed it in the usual heavy Norman style—small windows, heavy arches, thick walls—but had somehow nonetheless managed to give the chapel both warmth and intimacy. It was constructed in the round: an outer thick wall with narrow but tall stained glass windows, and an inner wall, pierced with two tiers of similarly narrow but tall stone arches. Light flooded in through the outer windows, through the arches and into the small space of the circular chapel within.

  Mary was on her knees on a cushion before a simple altar of stone. A linen had been thrown over the stone, and candles and incense placed upon it. Behind the altar, hanging from one of the stone columns supporting the arches, hung a life-sized statue of Jesus, attached, as always, to the cross.

  Free me. I am nailed.

  Neville trembled,
and the slight noise his movement made aroused Mary from her devotions. She looked over her shoulder.

  “Tom?” Her voice was cross. “What do you here?”

  Free me! I am nailed here, as I am nailed to ten thousand score crucifixes about Christendom.

  “Mary…” His voice had dried up, and he could go no further. All Neville could do was stare at the statue of Jesus on its cross.

  It was different, vastly different, to most representations of Christ on the cross. Generally, crucifixes were carved out of a single block of wood or stone, but this one was not. The craftsman had taken two pieces of wood and carved them separately: one piece formed the cross, one the body of Christ.

  Mary prays before the answer. Free me.

  And the craftsman had affixed the body of Christ to the cross by nailing it at wrists and through the crossed feet.

  Un-nail me, Tom.

  “Tom?” Mary was struggling to rise, and Neville moved forward to aid her, although he did not take his eyes from the cross.

  “Tom, what are you doing here?”

  “I have come to free Christ, Mary,” he whispered, and she gasped, and turned her head to follow his gaze.

  The eyes of Christ were open, staring at them, great pools of black agony.

  As they stared, a tear trickled down one cheek.

  Free me, Tom. Now.

  XII

  Thursday 27th June 1381

  —ii—

  The carved crucifix had been fastened into the stone wall with bolts behind the two arms of the cross, but Neville was lucky—

  Is this “luck”, Tom?

  —that the weight of the statuary rested almost entirely on a small stone shelf under the base of the cross, and not on the bolts. These were loose, and rusted, and when Neville climbed onto the base of the statue, grabbing onto Christ’s shoulder for support with one hand, he found that he could use his dagger to prise the bolts loose with little effort.

  One bolt fell free, and the entire crucifix shuddered, and shifted on the wall.

  Neville almost lost his grip. He hesitated, regained his balance, then turned his attention to the bolt holding the other arm of the cross. As he did so his gaze glanced across the face of the Christ figure, so close to his own.

  The eyes were still wide open, black with pain, staring into Neville’s.

  Alive.

  “Tom?”

  Neville dragged his eyes away from Christ’s, and looked behind him. “Mary! Stand back. This is going to fall at any moment.”

  “But, Tom—”

  “Do as I say!”

  Mary hesitated, then took several shuffling steps back, staring at Neville who was now working on the remaining bolt. The statue shuddered, and shifted again, far more violently this time, and Neville leaped clear just as the massive wooden cross and statue fell off the wall.

  It hit the altar, almost crushing it, then somersaulted forward, landing with a ringing crash…right at Mary’s feet.

  Christ’s head lay only some six inches from the tip of her soft leather shoe, and Mary moaned softly, for Christ’s eyes were open, full of life and agony, and staring right at her.

  She drew in a slow deep breath, hearing it rattle in her throat.

  Christ was alive, and looking at her as though…as though…

  “Are you hurt?”

  Mary looked up, blinking, feeling half frozen with shock.

  Christ’s eyes were alive, and staring at her.

  “No…no. I am unhurt. Tom…”

  “Wait, Mary. Wait.”

  Neville knelt at the base of the statue, using the hilt of his dagger to lever out the iron nail that had been used to fasten Christ’s feet to the lower portion of the cross.

  With a scream of protest, the nail came free.

  Mary wavered on her feet, then caught her balance, her mouth slightly open, her eyes wide above them.

  Neville shuffled forward to the top of the cross, bending over the nail driven into Christ’s right wrist.

  He slid the hilt of the dagger under the head of the nail and grunted as he leaned his shoulders into the effort of tearing out the nail.

  Mary heard a distant scream, of anger rather than of fright, and she looked about, but could see nothing.

  She looked back down.

  The nail was almost free, and with a final grunt of effort from Neville, it popped out.

  Neville stood, and stepped over Christ’s body to the left wrist and the last nail.

  Now several screams sounded, and the fury and threat within them made Mary cry out in fear. She half turned, expecting armed knights, perhaps, to come charging into the chapel to do her to death with their swords.

  But there was no one there. The chapel lay quiet and empty behind her.

  “Lady, do not fear,” said a soft voice, and Mary whipped about and looked down to where the voice had come from.

  She gasped, and stepped back.

  The wooden statue of Christ was now no longer quite wooden. Apart from the single limb still nailed to the left arm of the cross, the statue was living, breathing flesh. Pale flesh, wretched with pain and streaked with blood and sweat, but, nevertheless, flesh.

  Christ’s head and face twisted up and towards her, and he was smiling. Gently. Lovingly.

  “Do not fear, Mary,” he said again.

  Mary vacillated between her continuing shock and an intense emotion she could not immediately identify. She thought she should be frightened, fearful, but she was not. She was beyond movement, beyond speech. All she could do was stare into the gently smiling face of Christ.

  Then the face winced, and cried out in pain, and Mary heard the screech as the final nail popped free.

  Christ pushed the crown of thorns from his brow, then rolled over, away from the cross, revealing deep lash welts on his back. He curled his arms about his body briefly, holding his wrists tight against his chest as if to ease the throbbing pain within them, then very slowly managed to get to his feet, stumbling a little as he did so.

  Neither Mary nor Neville, now standing as well, moved to help him.

  Christ took a deep breath, then straightened his body. The wounds in his flesh—in his wrists, his feet, his side and across his brow and back—abruptly vanished, and as they faded so did the lines of pain in his face fade with them.

  He looked to Neville. “I do thank you, brother,” he said, “for you have ended my agony, and gone some way to ending another’s. Please, tell no one what you have done here today, for it would serve no purpose.”

  Then he looked to Mary and, if possible, his face softened even more. “Mary,” he said in a voice that was so full of longing that Neville’s eyes filled with unbidden tears. “Mary…”

  And then he was gone, and Neville and Mary were left staring at the space which he had inhabited.

  Before either could move, or speak, there came a soft unidentifiable sound, and the empty cross at their feet vanished.

  Neville turned to look at the altar: it was whole again, the cross and its carved figure once more attached to the stone pillar as if nothing had happened.

  And yet, the carving of Christ seemed somehow empty, as if it no longer held what once it had.

  Margaret somehow managed to drag her eyes away from Rosalind still staring at her from her lap, to Agnes who sat similarly shocked a pace away from her. Patently, Agnes had caught the mind thought as well.

  But how could this be? Rosalind was more mortal than angel-child. She had none of the abilities of her mother. Only angel children had those…only angel children had those…

  “Who fathered that child, Margaret?” Agnes said in a strange, rasping voice.

  “Tom, Tom, Tom only.”

  “But—”

  “Wait!” Margaret looked to where Bohun sat on the grass, tugging playfully at one of the lapdog’s ears.

  Bohun, she called.

  The boy twisted about, looking at her inquiringly.

  “Sweet Jesu,” Agnes muttered. She stared
at Margaret, eyes wide with fear.

  “Who is Tom, Margaret? What is Tom?”

  Margaret began slowly to shake her head back and forth. Not in answer, but in denial.

  No wonder the angels were so confident of him! Sweet Jesu in heaven, Hal, what are we going to do?

  Still utterly unable to speak, Mary very slowly turned her head to look at Neville. After a minute he met her eyes. He sheathed his dagger, needing three tries to do it, and made as if to speak, but whatever he wanted to say was stopped by a choral shriek of fury.

  What have you done? What have you done?

  Angels, a score of them, crowding the lower end of the chapel. They throbbed with light, a furious, vengeful light, and as Mary shrank in terror towards Neville, they advanced up the chapel towards the altar.

  Neville put an arm about Mary, holding her trembling form close to his. “I set him free,” he said in an even tone.

  Why? Why? He is the Master Trickster. Have you been tricked, Thomas? Is that why you did this?

  “You say you know beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Neville said, “that I will not give Margaret my soul. That your children, the demons, will not win. That being so, why are you so afraid?” He paused, long and meaningfully. “Surely you can trap him again?”

  The Archangel Michael stepped forward from the clutch of angels. You tread a dangerous path, Thomas. Be sure you know what you do.

  Then he turned very slowly, and regarded Mary. Bitch whore. I should have known that you would have been here. I suppose you imagine that the circle is complete now. And then, horrifically, the archangel spat at Mary.

  She flinched, and Neville’s hold about her tightened.

  “Michael—” he began, but the archangel turned on him in fury.

  What do you with your arm about her? Has she not caused enough pain?

  For a long moment Neville and the archangel stared at each other, then, suddenly, all the angels were gone, and Mary and Neville were left alone in the chapel.