Son of the Night

by Mark Alder

  The falls stopped. Hell was silent and then the sky collapsed.

  Blood and bodies all around him, the walls of flesh tumbling. This was no key he had in his hand but an explosive charge, a thing to cast down the wall of living flesh. A noise like a great burning, wings about his head. Bodies crashed around him and he feared he would be buried in the fall. From above came Aude, riding the dragon banner, her shield and sword reclaimed. The dragon plucked him from the tumbling bodies, shooting him high into the sweltering air. The great devil had driven its foot down on him. It must have smashed the casket as its foot came down. The dragon must have done for the giants!

  The walls fell for what must have been a day and a night, the damned souls free of their torment but entering another, scrambling and climbing to be free. When the last body had fallen, the whole vast plain of the second layer of Hell was crammed as tight as a May Day market, stretching out to the horizon.

  At the centre of it all stood a garden, still untouched by the hands of the damned. On a long table squatted an ape with a crown on its head. The dragon swooped down towards it but the ape did not flinch or cower. In its hand it bore a wicked long lance of burnt wood, a shield of bones on its arm, and a helm of a thousand horns on its head.

  Dow and Aude stepped down from the dragon. Its long tail stretched up from Dow’s hand and the dragon expanded to fill the sky.

  ‘Oppressed and damned, tortured of God. Know I am here to lay siege to the walls of the fourth layer of Hell, to free the bright angel Lucifer from his prison in the city of Dis and restore Eden to earth !’

  A great cheer went up from all those around him and the message was conveyed throughout the great throng, the cheer echoing to the hills as it spread. It was a summer hour before it died.

  The ape scratched itself.

  ‘You have the third key,’ it said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the second and the first?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But not the fourth.’

  ‘We will not need the fourth, jailer. We will storm the fourth wall. See how mighty our army is! All those God has cast down, rising up to free themselves.’

  The ape looked up at the dragon. It stood up and was suddenly massive, itself stretching up to the sky. The dragon snapped and writhed but it did not strike. The ape stooped and was small again, standing on its table.

  ‘You will go nowhere and do nothing,’ it said.

  Aude drew her sword but the ape turned a lazy eye to her.

  ‘Do you think that I, who cast down the brightest angel, fear a tavern girl?’

  Aude screamed as the grass of the garden snared around her feet. ‘I can’t move, Dow, I can’t move!’

  ‘I know what you are seeking,’ said Dow. ‘Call your lords. Call Belphegor and Asmodeus, call Leviathan and all the infernal captains. God has abandoned the upper world. He is nowhere. Anarchy reigns. Step up into the light and order creation to your liking.’

  The ape smiled. ‘You would tempt the Devil!’

  ‘You need no tempting.’

  It showed its teeth again.

  ‘I will kill you,’ he said. ‘And you will be the foundation stone of my new wall. And then I will go to the upper world and set my order.’

  ‘Dow!’ shouted Aude, reaching for the table. She tossed him the holy lance that had pierced Christ Lucifer’s side.

  ‘Then come,’ said Dow. ‘For I am half angel myself and in my veins flows the blood of a king. Strike at me and hazard it all. Perhaps I will make you my foundation stone.’

  The ape scratched and gibbered.

  ‘Why should I let you pass?’

  ‘I have the second key, and the first. I will give them to you. You can go.’

  ‘And leave the fourth wall undefended?’

  ‘Yes. And I know this for true. You cannot pass the first gate unless you are called and in a way pleasing to God – His old way, the way of blood and sacrifice. So the Templar told me and so I believe.’

  ‘And who will call me?’

  ‘Once you are at the first gate, Edward of England will call you. He will spread the blood of the French kings on the earth to carpet the way for you.’

  ‘You swear this, by your faith in Lucifer?’

  ‘I swear it. Then you must swear to leave.’

  The ape smiled. ‘I swear it, on God’s bones.’

  ‘You must show me the way to the fourth wall.’

  ‘I swear it. On God’s teeth!’

  Dow threw the key pouches towards Satan and he caught them neatly.

  ‘You will be here for ever,’ he said.

  ‘We will release our friend Lucifer!’

  The ape let out a pealing shriek. Wings sprouted from his back. He called to the skies for the legions of Astaroth and Beelzebub, of Azazel and Belphegor, and they came on beating wings, on flying chariots of fire, on beetles’ backs and in wasps’ claws; they came stomping as giants, crushing the damned of the living plain, as water spirits evaporating and reforming in the heat of Hell, as burning men and maggot men, fly men and bird men, half-snake, half-cockerel, the boar men of Gehenna, the skull-faced legions of Drax, the copper rooster of Karth, the screaming women of Lady Sirlo’s banner, the dog men of Duke Morax, who brought with him thirty legions of other spirits, and the Croaking Devils of Pandemonium who rode under the Black Moon banner on blind horses with saddles of human pelts.

  For two days the horde of the damned parted as the lords of Hell flocked devils to their banners.

  ‘Sinners go unpunished!’ cried Asmodeus, his great fly eyes black in the shade of the dragon’s wings.

  ‘We go to do God’s work!’ said Satan. ‘Order will be brought to the realm of men. When Satan sits on the throne of the world, no sin shall go unchastised, in life or in death! To the light! I have the key!’

  ‘Show us the fourth gate!’ shouted Dow. ‘We will besiege it!’

  ‘You will be there for eternity,’ said Satan.

  ‘Our forces are legion. I have seen to that.’

  Satan spat and clutched his balls.

  ‘In the garden,’ said Satan, ‘look to the statue’s eye! Now my duty is discharged and I fly to bring God’s order to the realms of men !’

  16

  The great crowd overwhelmed the garden at the heart of Hell. It was hard to say where the table and the fountains and the statue had been beneath the smothering weight of the damned.

  Dow tugged on the dragon’s tail. It encircled him, lifting him up into the air.

  ‘Friends,’ he said. ‘We are so many. In front of the final gate we must prepare ourselves.’

  ‘God!’ shouted a voice. ‘We must have faith in Him!’

  Others in the multitude picked up the call.

  ‘God put you here!’ said Dow. ‘God punishes you. But any who wants to side with Him, leave with the devils! The second key will open the Lake of Fire, the first will open wide the first wall of Hell. Go out and leave if you want to seek forgiveness from a God who cannot forgive!’

  In the far distance, Dow saw the Lake of Fire, the vast army of devils streaming towards it. A darkness spread across its centre – a bridge building out from Satan’s key.

  ‘There,’ said Dow. ‘There is your half-freedom if you want it! Lucifer will come and heal you in the end.’

  His words were relayed through the throng again and, as they spread, many turned away and ran towards the spreading bridge, following their tormentors. But many stayed, ready to fight. The throng was still mightier than Dow had ever seen, more densely packed than a London market, wider by far than Crécy or the siege of Caffa.

  ‘Can we die again?’ said a voice.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Dow. ‘I tell you truthfully that I doubt it. But chewed up, mutilated, guts split or head cracked, reduced to nothing but bone and flesh, I think you will live. It will be unendurable, yet you must endure it. Know this before the siege begins!’

  ‘This man here is a murderer and should not be releas
ed,’ said a voice.

  ‘This one killed a child and said it was the mother,’ said another.

  Dow shivered. ‘I am not judge. When Lucifer comes we will all return to the light.’

  ‘This one deserves the darkness.’

  ‘He will be a bane to the world!’

  ‘Get away!’ shouted Dow. ‘I will not stand as God stands. Go!’

  More peeled away, the thick air of Hell deadening their steps. They marched away for a day but still a vast number remained. Dow felt glad so many had gone. A horrible thought had arisen when he had seen the living wall collapse, seen so many ready to fight.

  It’s all been for nothing. The Plague, the terrible deaths of fever and blood. Nothing.

  Yet now, the newly damned, the vast dead of the Plague, would be needed for the great reckoning. Some bore arms, some were nearly naked, but they were all beyond suffering, ready to stake it all on releasing Lucifer, friend of peace.

  Dow pulled on the dragon’s tail to hover above where the garden had been, calling out and gesturing for the damned to step back.

  They did so, retreating to make a vast circle of the dead looking in at the trampled grass, the broken table. Still, though, the statue stood at the centre, Aude beside it.

  Dow had not seen it before, or at least not registered it. Now he did and he felt his heart come to his mouth.

  It was the statue of a youth, tall and handsome, his arms outstretched to hold the globe of the earth. Dow stepped down from the tail and approached it. Yes, it was the earth. As he looked at it, it seemed to sparkle and shift. He saw the blue of the seas, the green and brown of the land, little flags of noble houses or the crescent of the Saracen, the lands of the headless men or those where the phoenix clatters its wings of gold.

  He recognised the youth’s face, its impossibly handsome features, the feeling of vast spaces that sprang up in him when he looked into its eyes. This was an image of God, bearing some of His power.

  He recalled the chapel of thorns, how God had begged him to remove the sword Lucifer had put inside Him, how God had offered to make him a king over men if he would only take out the sword and bow to Him. He had offered to free his Nan from Hell. Where was she now? Still pursued by the personal devil that God had set on her?

  At the centre of the great crowd, in the trampled and ruined hunger garden, the statue seemed vast, as big as the sky, and then it was small again, only the size of a man. He touched it and trembled. This was a thing of God, a being so powerful He had cast the creator Lucifer down into Hell. The wide spaces of the stars were in his mind, the planets moving in their circles, comets streaking across the heavens. He felt the depths of the oceans as a pressure in his mind, the heights of the mountains too. Cold winds streamed through him, giving way to the hot, gritty winds of the south. He was simultaneously at Caffa, in London, on the moor in Cornwall where he had lived when he was small. The sensations were exquisite, ecstatic. He tore himself away from them. One of the statue’s eyes was a glass marble and it swam with colours of blood and fire.

  Aude was beside him.

  ‘Is this the key?’

  ‘It must be. Satan said what we sought was here and he was under solemn oath to God!’

  He climbed up on to the statue and took out his knife to prise out the glass. It came out easily, but when it fell into his hand it was so impossibly heavy that he dropped it to the ground. It settled on the plinth of the statue. Dow tried to lift it again but he could not. His fingers clasped around it, but he could not shift it at all.

  A man approached him, his body swollen with Plague.

  ‘Our army stands ready for the siege, Lord.’

  ‘I am not your lord. Where is the fourth gate?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Ask the people.’

  A murmur went out among the crowd and the answers, when they came back, were many: ‘Beyond the Sinking Plains!’

  ‘On top of the Mountains of Despair!’

  ‘Near the Cliff Perilous!’

  Aude bent to the marble that had dropped from the statue’s eye and gave a little cry.

  ‘Dow, look !’

  He peered at the little orb but saw only its shifting colours of fire and blood.

  ‘Press your eye to it!’ she said.

  He did as he was bid and he too cried out.

  It was as if he looked through a crack in a wall. He saw a vast plain leading up to a city of brass. The city burst with greenery, leafy trees and bushes, the reds and golds of nameless flowers, but all around it a vast army of devils was camped, besieging it. From the top tower of the city shone a light of such beauty and perfection that Dow felt tears come to his eyes. A delicate prism of colours spread out over the land and he saw that no devil could approach within leagues of the city wall. The devils had built great shields or piled rocks into high mounds and dwelt in their shadows.

  ‘Dis!’ he said. ‘Lucifer’s stronghold in Hell. The free city of Dis!’

  ‘What does it mean?’ said Aude.

  Dow looked back at his huge, useless army.

  ‘This is not the fourth key, nor even the fourth gate. This . . .’ He pointed to the marble, ‘This is the fourth layer of Hell. It’s within this glass.’

  A scream arose from the army of the dead.

  ‘The bridge across the Lake of Fire has fallen!’ Far off he saw a wall of fire spring up from the lake, high into the sky, never ending, stretching up into invisibility.

  Dow made the three-fingered sign of Lucifer on his chest.

  Satan had trapped them. There was no way forward or back.

  ‘We need the fourth key,’ said Dow.

  ‘So where is it?’

  ‘Lucifer has communicated through the walls before,’ he said. ‘Let me try. He might tell us.’

  He pressed his eye again to the marble, as if to a lens. He saw the great city rising green from the red plain, the vast armies of devils around it and the light that shone from the highest tower – the light of a winter dawn.

  ‘Lucifer,’ he said. ‘Friend and guide.’

  He saw the devil armies stir. Could they tell he was watching them ?

  ‘Lucifer. You once were free. Tell me how to free you again.’

  The light shone from the stone like a sunbeam through a crack in a door and images and sounds poured into Dow’s mind.

  Dow saw how Lucifer had once before got free. He had shone through the fourth gate of Hell, through the marble in the statue’s eye, to talk to Satan, to tell him to open the gate and let him free, so that Lucifer might bend the knee to God, call Him Father and Lord if only He would forgive the sins of the world and release all the damned souls from Hell, take them to Heaven where they might dwell for ever. And Satan, who hated Hell himself, who longed to be free, had agreed and used the key to the fourth gate to allow Lucifer to be free, to travel as a beam of light to the upper world of men where he might be born as a man. Dow saw the key: it was an alchemist’s athanor – a furnace. Satan put the marble within and heated it until it was white-hot. Then the beam of light that was Lucifer shone forth into the world.

  But Lucifer would not remove the sword he had stuck in God when first cast into Hell, not until all the sins of man were forgiven. God – in His bitterness and spite – would rather suffer Himself than release the sinners, so He tricked Lucifer and nailed him to a tree, demanding his death and return to Hell for the forgiveness of sins.

  Dow saw the beam of light return to Hell and he heard God laugh, though the laughter caused Him to clutch at the sword in His side. He sealed the fourth gate and took up the athanor, the oven which baked the marble until the gate of Hell opened.

  ‘Here,’ He said to Satan. ‘So you might be more careful in the use of this fine oven in future, I set it where you will take good care of it.’ And God pushed the oven into Satan’s heart. ‘Pluck it out and die yourself. No longer the warder of Hell but its inmate. I shall set those you have tormented here as your guards. Guard this good oven
carefully.’

  Dow withdrew his eye from the stone.

  ‘We need to kill Satan,’ he said. ‘The Evertere will transport the army of the righteous dead!’

  He offered the tail of the serpent to a tall bowman, his face still swollen by Plague. He reached out his hand to touch it but, as he did so, he evaporated like a ball of water on a hot plate, a red mist swept away in the heat of Hell.

  ‘The damned cannot touch it,’ said Aude.

  Dow made the sign of the fork on his chest. It seemed his army was eternally stuck behind the Lake of Fire.

  ‘What do we do?’ said Aude.

  But Dow had no answers.

  17

  Throughout the night before the battle, Isabella prayed to her angels, asking them to respect the will of God, to allow men to settle the battle themselves, to prove their valour before Heaven. They towered above the camp in fantastic shapes – great warriors riding burning chariots, winged swans twisting their necks in seeming ecstasy, rainbows and snowfields – but they said nothing. Might they even be persuaded to join in on the English side? Too late for that, she thought, they would not even speak to her now. Did they sense what was coming through from Hell? Did they know that the final days were about to unfold, Heaven open, and she to see her Mortimer again? They towered above her and she tried not to hate them. With a gesture they could spill the blood of the French king, burst his whole huge family like berries upon the ground of Poitiers. But they would not.

  Things, creation, should learn to serve, she thought. If God had gone, if he would not return, then should it not be she – who had been raised to rule since her earliest days, in whose blood flowed the ancient blood of the kings of France – should it not be she who sat in judgement and command over creation?

  Did she stand here in the garb of a nun, only the Crown of Light to mark her status, for nothing, no more than a few ladiesin-waiting and the guard John had given her to accompany her, abased and in all humility? She moved among the men, watched as the priests blessed sword and lance, arrow and mace for the coming fight. Far off, in the English camp, devils chattered and squabbled. Songs in accents so thick that they may as well have been the songs of the Saracens floated across the night. She came eventually to the banner of Orléans – the royal fleur-de-lys marked with chads of red. The Duke, when she encountered him, was pissing outside his tent.