A Crowning Mercy 02 Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwall

  Gitan smiled. He had never seen Bertrand Marchenoir in such high spirits, so playful. 'Extraordinary.'

  'Let there be light!' Marchenoir declaimed. 'Though in truth it's nothing more than a giant hooded lantern.' He slapped Gitan's shoulder. 'Come on, my friend, time for you to get ready.'

  He took him to a small room that opened from the entrance hall. The room had a table, but no other furniture. A small window opened into the shrine and Marchenoir said it was here that the trumpeters used to hide so that, when the doors opened to reveal the Duc d'Auxigny in his finery, the men could play a hidden fanfare to their unlikely deity. Marchenoir laughed in derision, then said he would come back in five minutes.

  Gitan shrugged. 'What do I do?'

  'Undress!' Marchenoir smiled. 'I'll collect your clothes. The girl will have to wait in here. We don't want her ruining your coat or coming out swinging your sword!' He laughed at the thought, then smiled at the Gypsy. 'We've come a long way, Gitan.'

  The Gypsy remembered this time a year ago when Marchenoir had come to the stinking prison cell in Paris and offered him the traitor's path. He nodded. 'A long way.'

  'Yet the best is to come.' Marchenoir smiled. 'Forward, ever forward.'

  In the crypt beneath the room where the Gypsy took off his clothes Dagon was cradling his brass-mounted blunderbuss. He breathed heavily. In his head he was singing, crooning to himself, for he knew that his master was coming this night. He rocked the great gun and wondered what would happen to the golden-haired girl. She must die, of course, for they always died when they came here, and her body would be clawed by the beasts and torn by the ravens. He laughed to himself and he waited for Lucifer.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  A coach came from the town. The windows of the coach were curtained. The glass flashed red as the coach turned over the stone bridge. The soldiers watched as a cloaked man, a hat pulled low over his face, stepped slowly from its interior.

  The man stared up at the facade of the chateau, turned, then walked through the overgrown gardens. He walked slowly. He ignored the soldiers and, perhaps because of his slow, purposeful walk, or perhaps because of the extraordinary aura of authority that he radiated, the troops no longer thought this night a mere piece of useless lunacy. There was menace in Auxigny.

  Bertrand Marchenoir stood at the shrine's entrance, the Gypsy's clothes and sword still in his hands. The cloaked man looked at him. 'All is prepared, Moloch?'

  'Yes, Lucifer.'

  Lucifer turned to look at the sunset then, abruptly, led Moloch into the shrine.

  The Fallen Ones had gathered.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  The sun sank in molten glory. The blue-black tiles of the chateau's turrets were the last part of the buildings to be touched by the gilding sun. A hawk, that nested on the roof, slid black against the darkening sky.

  One by one the torches were lit. They flamed smokily, red and black, a line of fire from the castle to the shrine. The wind snatched at the flames and drove the smoke towards the dark mountains.

  The soldiers prepared. The drummers rammed the leather loops down the side ropes to tighten the skins of their instruments.

  Colonel Tours, who did not understand any of it, knew only that to disobey was to die. He waited till the sky was dark, till the day of Lucifer was night, then nodded. 'Begin.'

  The end had come.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  She was shivering with fear. She had tugged at the handles of the doors to the Music Room till her hands were sore, but they were firmly locked. She did not know how long she had waited. She had groped her way around the walls and tried each door, then sat on the steps of the cloistered arcade and the fear seeped into her soul as the chill of the huge, empty chateau crept into her bones. She had known she would be frightened, but not with this slow, dark terror. She feared her brother dead, and she feared betrayal.

  She fought the fear by imagining what happened in Lazen this night. The harvest should be in, the rickyard full and the long storerooms ripe with the smell of racked apples. She thought of the dairy with its light walls, clanging pails, and the white painted steps where the girls liked to sit in the evening to watch the men come back from the fields. The thoughts of home made her want to cry.

  The drumming began.

  She was thinking of the Long Gallery, imagining being back there with Christopher Skavadale beside her, when suddenly the noise came muffled from the Entrance Hall. She backed away from the war sound, the insistent, unending rattle of the sticks on tight skins.

  Then light came. She heard the noise first, the crashing of the great doors at the other end of the ballroom and she turned, crying out in panic, to see the locked doors of the Music Room had been thrown back to show the red brightness of the torches that led from the north front of the Castle to the shrine.

  The drumming was closer.

  The rhythm was insistent and dreadful and then it seemed to swell, to grow like thunder, as if clubs beat on the doors to the entrance hall. She backed away. She touched, through her blouse, the seals at her breasts. The world was flame and noise, horror and menace, and the panic was beating like black wings in her.

  She touched the seals again, the jewels of Lazen. She would not show her fear, she would not give them that pleasure. They might kill her, but they would not see her defeated.

  The resolve almost went as the doors to the entrance hall were hurled back, forced by heaving soldiers to crash with a deafening echo against the walls.

  She had to stop herself from screaming.

  This was the enemy and they had come for her. She could see, silhouetted by the flames of torches behind, the drummers who kept up their insistent rhythm of death. Behind them were men with muskets who flooded into the ballroom, made a line, and came towards her. Each man was a black shape. Before them, on the littered floor, their shadows stretched monstrously. Their boots crashed on the floor in the rhythm of the drums.

  They came slowly, like soldiers of a burial party, drummed on by the unrelenting noise, the slow beat of death that forced her towards the passage of flame.

  She was being driven like a deer. She remembered, from when she was a small child, the terrible hunts of this chateau, hunts that would make her hide in her room, refusing to watch the wasteful cruelty. The peasants would go into the hills with their drums and horns, their clubs and bells, and drive the deer down to the valley's head. There more peasants waited, forming a great corridor that forced the deer to run past the chateau. They galloped in panic on the meadow that faced the moat, where, on the bridge, the Duke and his party waited with loaded guns. The slaughter would soak the meadow red while panicked deer, terrified by the noise and smell, stampeded into the moat to be shot as they swam.

  She stumbled on the far steps, caught her balance, and went through the opened doors into the Music Room.

  The doors in the side walls were barred shut. She could only go towards the corridor of light that led to the shrine.

  The drums slammed behind her. The feet of the soldiers, in ragged, slow tread, pressed close on her.

  She went where they wanted her to go, into the garden. There was nowhere else to go, she was being driven like the deer into the corridor of death.

  Now there were more soldiers. Soldiers who stood with the flamelight on their fixed bayonets. They stood behind the twin lines of torches, stopping her from running into the darkness of the gardens. Their faces seemed blank.

  She had no choice. She must go on, down the passage of fire to the great shrine built by the Mad Duke who had thought he was God.

  She walked.

  She thought of the men and women who had climbed the wooden steps in Paris. They had gone with dignity. She would do the same. She would not run like a frightened beast. She would walk.

  Love had filled her and love had changed her and love had led her here and she had to fight the insidious certainty that she was in a trap, that she was betrayed. Death felt close, as if
it brooded for her in the window-less shrine, and she was glad that, before she had walked into this web of steel and fire, she had been loved. The wind drove the heat of the torches into her face, drew the acrid smell of tar smoke into her nostrils.

  She climbed the first bridge. The torches flickered on the dark water. Soldiers lined the narrow neck of land between the chateau's moat and the moat of the shrine.

  She crossed the second bridge. The firelight glinted on the wooden uprights. The tread of the soldiers was close behind her. She stared at the shrine and remembered Lord Culloden babbling of the girl's death. This was the place of death, and there was nowhere to go, but inside.

  The drumming behind her stopped.

  She turned to her pursuers. The cordon of soldiers had contracted, leaving the chateau behind, surrounding only the shrine and its moat. They watched her in silence, the flames reflecting on their bayonets. Three men stood on the drawbridge to close the doors of the shrine behind her. Other men stood by its chains to maroon her within the building when the doors were shut.

  She would not show them fear.

  She turned, climbed the steps, and went where her enemies had wanted her to be. She went into the shrine of the Fallen Ones.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  She was alone.

  The doors crashed shut behind her, the echo deafening.

  It was almost pitch dark in the lobby, the only light came faint through an open door to her left.

  When the echo of the great crash of the closing doors had faded she heard, as if from far away, the sound of voices. They seemed to come from the dimly lit room and she climbed two steps to look inside.

  The room was empty except for a heavy table. There was a small aperture on the opposite wall. The light came from that unglazed window.

  The voices rose and fell.

  She went into the room. She went cautiously, as if expecting to be hurt, but the room had no surprises. She looked through the window into the marble shrine.

  Skavadale stood with his back to her. He was naked. His black hair was tied back and the earring glinted in the brilliant light which cast an intricate coronet of shadows about his tall, muscular body. He stood in the centre of the marble floor.

  'What is your name?' The voice, a hoarse whisper seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere.

  'Gitan.'

  'And what is your desire?'

  'To join you.'

  Silence.

  She watched. The light was brilliant on marble and mosaics, on gold and whiteness, on the superb, tall, naked man who had loved her.

  'What is your name?'

  'Gitan.'

  'What gives light?'

  'Reason.'

  'What gives darkness?'

  'God.'

  'How do you know this?'

  'Reason.'

  She told herself that this was what she had expected, but she knew she deceived herself. She had not expected so many soldiers, she had not expected the drums, the torches, the flames on bayonets, and nor had she expected to feel these terrible uncertainties about the man who stood so splendid before her. Toby had not been in the chateau. Toby had not come to her. Nothing that Skavadale had said about Toby had come true.

  Another voice, also a whisper, echoed mysteriously about the great chamber. 'What protects the weak?'

  'The law.'

  'What is above the law?'

  'Reason.'

  A third voice whispered. 'What is death?'

  'Nothing.'

  'Why did you come here?'

  'To serve you.' He spoke boldly.

  'Whom do we serve?'

  'Reason.'

  'What bounds does reason have?'

  'It can have none!' He said it triumphantly, and his voice echoed in the marble chamber and lingered like the voice of a conqueror.

  She felt cold tendrils of horror. She had the sudden agony of betrayal, not the betrayal of an ally who is revealed as an enemy, but the infinitely worse betrayal of love. She had loved this man, but the sudden triumph in his voice put terror into her soul.

  'What is your name?'

  There was something familiar about the whisper, something in the grating, hoarse voice that echoed in her mind, echoes of a voice heard in Lazen, a mocking voice.

  'Gitan.'

  'Henceforth, Gitan, you will be Thammuz.'

  There was silence.

  He stood naked and tall in the candlelight. Never, she thought, could such a man have existed before; so strong, so vividly beautiful. In action, she thought, how like an angel, a Fallen Angel.

  She thought of his touch on her body, his gentleness, his legs by hers, his smile, and she bent her head and rested her forehead on the sill of the aperture and thought she would cry. Toby was not here, she was alone with her enemies, and she no longer knew who was her friend. Yet, when he had loved her in the mountains, when he had stroked her and soothed her and filled her with a shudder of love, had he been lying? If that was a pretence, she told herself, then nothing was real.

  'Come forward, Thammuz.'

  She looked again. She was in the utter despair of love betrayed. He was joining her enemies, he was picking up from the white marble steps a folded garment of black and gold silk.

  'You may wear the robe of a Fallen One, Thammuz.'

  She felt a sudden angry scorn of the mummery. She wanted to laugh at them, to mock them, to scream derision at these fools who cloaked their evil in such tawdry trumpery.

  Thammuz unfolded the robe, opened it, and pulled it over his head. The sleeves hung loose. He pulled the cowl over his head. The robe, that she wanted to find so derisory, looked magnificent on him.

  The voice, that nagged her with its echoes, whispered again. 'You are one of us, Thammuz, but you must prove your worth.' The Gypsy stood unmoving. The voice spoke again, so low that Campion could scarce catch the words. 'You brought us the girl, Thammuz?'

  'Yes, master.'

  'Call me Lucifer.' The sibilance seemed to hang in the chamber that was like a tomb.

  'Yes, Lucifer.'

  Another voice spoke, a louder voice, a voice that had a note of mocking triumph in it. 'Why did you bring her, Thammuz?'

  He replied with a similar triumph, with a laugh of confidence in his voice, and Campion almost cried out in fear as she heard him. 'I have brought her for you!'

  'Fetch her!' The words echoed in the chamber.

  Thammuz turned. Campion saw the glitter of his eyes deep under the black and gold cowl, and she went back in the room, back to the heavy table, knowing that she could not fight, could not resist, could only wait for the victory of reason and the end of Lazen. Panic beat inside her and she waited for the man who had loved and brought her here.

  Until this moment she had thought that her life was so blessed, so charmed by love, that she could not be hurt. She had come to France for love, but she had come to Auxigny because she believed in that love. Now, suddenly, as she heard the inner doors of the shrine open, that belief seemed childish. She was in terror.

  She gripped the seals of Lazen as if they could give her strength. She saw light flood the lobby, and then the robed man with the blue, glittering eyes came into the room.

  Thammuz had come for her.

  Chapter 24

  A scream sounded in the shrine.

  The silver cowl of Lucifer tilted up. His voice was mild. 'He's a fine looking man.'

  The scream came again and faded into sobbing. Valentine Larke smiled. 'She's putting up a fight!'

  'Poor thing.' Marchenoir opened the box of scalpels and stroked one of the handles. His voice was mocking. 'Waiting for her dear brother!'

  Lucifer's silver cowl turned towards the knives. 'How you do enjoy death, Moloch.'

  'I got used to it quickly enough, didn't I?' Marchenoir said. 'It was common enough in this valley, except in the chateau, of course. We could die of hunger and there were fat dogs up here.'

  Lucifer laughed his dry laugh. 'Your father, Moloch, was a duke
. Belial's father was an earl. You both hate what gave you life.'

  There was silence. The candles were bright on the polished black table.

  The girl screamed again and Lucifer's cowl moved impatiently. 'What's keeping him?'

  'A farewell rogering?' Marchenoir made his voice light. Somehow the mention of his and Larke's aristocratic fathers had been chilling. He lifted one of the knives. 'Skins like white silk, they have. They must bathe once a bloody month.'

  'Once a day,' Lucifer said drily.

  'In milk,' Larke added.

  'Christ in his heaven!' Marchenoir laughed. 'That would stop you pissing in the bath.'

  Their laughter was cut off by a new scream, by the sound of feet dragging on the great chamber's floor. Lucifer spoke softly. 'Progress, I do believe.'

  They stood. They moved in a susurration of silk robes, each man going back to his small observation hole in the wooden doors. They waited for Thammuz to bring his sacrifice for their victory. Behind them, on the stone table, the candles shone on the gleaming steel of Marchenoir's blades. They waited.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  Skavadale dragged her through the inner doors, into the splendour of the candle-lit chamber that seemed so oddly empty as though the marble and porphyry and mosaics waited for a great tomb in the circular floor.

  She fought him. She beat at him with fists, but his strength was huge and he half carried, half dragged her down the steps to the centre of the room.

  He wrenched her about, facing her towards the far wall, and forced her hands up behind her back so she could not move.

  She waited. She could hear her own breath as the loudest thing in the room. She sensed she was being watched.

  'Thammuz?' The voice was a sinister whisper.

  'Lucifer?' Skavadale's voice was strong in her ear. Her hair had half fallen about her face. The gypsy clothes had been tugged ragged on her. The ring of candles made their shadows spread and mingle about their feet.

  The whisper sounded again. 'Tell her what you are, Thammuz.'

  His voice was strong. 'I am Illuminati!'

  'Tell her where her brother is, Thammuz.'

  'In a common grave.'