The Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwell

  He had come safely to England, brought by Lord Werlatton, but his true purposes were hidden, hidden as well as the naked swimming girl that he had seen in the great blue-green portrait in the gallery. He had almost laughed when he saw it, so lifelike did the image seem and so like the beautiful girl who was his master’s sister.

  He thought of fat Jean Brissot. He thought how the Parisians would like to have that girl in their hands. He patted his horse’s neck and smiled. Bertrand Marchenoir would like her most of all; the rabble-roaring ex-priest who had led Paris into blood and more blood was famous for his dealings with the daughters of the fallen aristocracy, and there would be added pleasure for Marchenoir in the fact that this lovely creature was, on her mother’s side, one of the hated d’Auxignys. Gitan laughed at the thought.

  The wind blew the rain cold from the west as man and horse rode through the brown, wet woods of an English autumn. He stopped in a clearing on the hill’s crest, turned in his saddle, and stared at the great house that was now beneath him. It was, he thought, a most beautiful house. It was also, though it did not yet know it, a house under siege. The Gypsy clicked his tongue and rode on.

  3

  “W hat is your name?”

  The answer came from a man who stood alone in the center of a sunken, marble floor. The man was naked.

  The room was brilliantly lit by a ring of candles, hundreds of flames reflected from polished marble, silver, and mirrors that threw the man’s shadow in a complex coronet radiating from his bare feet. The room was circular and, high above the naked man’s head, there was the gleam of gold mosaics that decorated the domed ceilings. It was a lavish room, fit for an Emperor or a great whore.

  The questioner spoke again. He could not be seen and his voice came as a hoarse whisper that seemed to fill the room, coming from no direction and every direction. “What is your desire?”

  “To join you.”

  “What gives light?”

  “Reason.”

  “What gives darkness?”

  “God.”

  “How do you apprehend this?”

  “With reason.”

  “What is your name?”

  The naked man answered again. His voice was strong in the room, echoing from the marble and from the magnificent gold mosaics of the dome.

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

  “The law.”

  “What is above the law?”

  “Reason.”

  “What is your name?”

  The man answered. He stood quite still. He was a tall man and well muscled. He did not seem uncomfortable with his nakedness.

  A third voice whispered. “What is death?”

  “Nothing.”

  Silence.

  Real silence. No windows opened to the outside world in this extraordinary place. The doors by which the naked man had entered were of bronze, doors so heavy that it had taken all his strength to close them on the night.

  It was October outside. In this room it could be any season, any hour, any year.

  One of the whispers sounded. “Kill him.”

  Silence again.

  The man expected this, yet he felt a crawling fear within him. He kept his face rigid. He was being judged.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “To serve you.”

  “Whom do we serve?”

  “Reason.”

  “What bounds does reason have?”

  “None.”

  “Kill him.”

  “Kill him.”

  The third voice did not sound.

  Europe was rife with secret societies, most imitating the Masons, all offering a man the secret pride of belonging to a privileged group. Some, like the Rosati, were harmless, devoted to poetry and wine. Others, like the Illuminati, had more sinister purposes. Yet this gathering, in this strange marble hall that was like a mausoleum awaiting its dead, was a secret society within a secret society. These were the Fallen Angels of the Illuminati.

  The Illuminati had come from Germany where the princes and dukes had persecuted the movement and driven it south to France where, in the ferment of revolution, the “Illuminated Ones” had found a home. It was said that more than half the leaders of the revolution belonged to the Illuminati, that the achievements of the revolution had been planned, not in political meetings, but in the secret halls of the society. It was rumored that the Illuminati were spreading like an unseen stain throughout the civilized world.

  They had been given the light of reason. They were above the law. They were the future. They would take the world from the dark splendors of superstition into the brilliance of a planet governed by the intellect. The society of the Illuminated Ones existed to establish a new religion that worshipped reason, and to forge a universal republic. France had lit the way; France had proved that the old monarchies and the old gods could be destroyed.

  The naked man had been Illuminati for five years. Now he had been offered a greater honor. He could join the Fallen Angels.

  The Fallen Angels were not the only secret group within the Illuminati. Each group, like this one, had a task to fulfill. Just as cavalry rode ahead of an army to spy out the land and confuse the enemy with short, sharp raids, so did the secret groups of the Illuminati prepare the way for the coming age of reason. The Fallen Angels planned one such raid now and the naked man, standing on the echoing marble, was needed for a specific task. First, though, he must pass this trial.

  The naked man, if he failed this test, would die. Simply by coming to this place he had learned too much about the Fallen Angels. If he passed the test then he would be given a new name, the name of a fallen angel; one of those bright creatures who had rebelled against God, who had fought the war in heaven, and who had fallen with Satan into the bottomless pit of defeat. The Fallen Angels took the names of those who had dared to fight God as symbols of their own rebellion against religion, superstition, and government.

  A whisper sounded again. “What is your name?”

  He told them.

  “What do the Fallen have?”

  “Reason.”

  “Do they obey the law?”

  “They make the law.”

  “Do they obey the law?” The whisper had a suggestion of irritation.

  “No.”

  Silence. The candle flames were still and bright. A few, their wicks untrimmed, shivered and raised thin streaks of smoke that darkened the ceiling of the circular alcove within which all the candles burned. The alcove, its rear wall mirrored, ran like a recessed shelf clear around the base of the dome.

  The whispers seemed to sigh about the circular room. Then one voice rose above the others. “What is evil?”

  “Weakness.” The naked man had not been rehearsed in his answers, but his sponsor, one of the three men who questioned him, had talked of what he might expect. He might expect death.

  “What is the punishment for weakness?”

  “Death.”

  “What is your name?”

  He told them. There was silence.

  He felt the shiver of fear again, but he kept his head high and he stared at the veined sheen of the curved marble walls and tried to see from where the voices came.

  The sigh came again, like a wind half heard far away. It died into silence.

  The floor on which he stood was of green and blue marble. It was some forty feet in diameter and surrounded by white marble steps, four in all, that climbed to a mosaic pavement. The walls were decorated with columns, sculpted wreaths, and intricate bas-reliefs, any of which could hide the openings from which the voices must come. The chamber, though lavish and bright, seemed to be missing something, as though a throne or a great catafalque should stand within its barren splendor.

  “What is your name?”

  He told them.

  “Kill him.”

  “Kill him.”

  The third voice, instead of confirming his doom, whispe
red that he should close his eyes.

  The naked man obeyed. He could hear nothing, but there was a sudden shivering of colder air on his body as though a tomb had been opened.

  Then he heard footsteps.

  He heard naked feet on the marble floor. The feet approached him, walking slowly, and he had to fight the desire to open his eyes. He was shivering. He wanted to break away from the center of the floor and run from the slow, soft feet that came closer and closer to him. He imagined a blade reaching for him and he had to steel himself to stand still and keep his eyes closed.

  Something touched his shrinking, crawling flesh and he almost jumped and shouted in alarm.

  Fingers stroked his chest. Fingers that were soft and warm and gentle. The fingers traced down his ribs, over his belly, down to his loins. The relief was coursing through him. He had expected death.

  “Open your eyes.” The whisper echoed about the high chamber.

  The naked man obeyed and, in front of him, smiling up at him, was a girl. She was pretty. She had a round, freckled face with red hair that had been tied back with a red ribbon. Her hair was full and springy because it had been washed. She smelled of soap because she had bathed before this ceremony. Like him she was naked. Her skin was pink, freckled, young and clean.

  She smiled at him and her hands stroked him.

  “Do you like her?” one of the whisperers asked.

  “Yes.” He felt embarrassed. Her hands were soft and shameless. They flickered and stroked, touched and kneaded his flesh.

  The naked man guessed the girl was nineteen or twenty. She had big, firm breasts and the wide hips of a girl who would be strong in childbirth. She leaned forward and licked the sweat on his chest, then reached up to pull his head down to hers.

  He kissed her. Her salty tongue was quick between his lips. She hooked a leg behind his legs and her strong thigh was warm on his skin.

  “Take her,” the whisper commanded.

  She was pulling him down to the cold marble and he knelt, laid her down, and ran his right hand down her body.

  The girl closed her eyes. The gentlemen who had hired her from the Dijon brothel had promised her a huge sum for this night’s work. Half of it was already in her purse downstairs, the other half would be given to her after she had made this man happy. It was silly, of course, but what girl could refuse such a sum for such a small task?

  She opened her legs, thinking what an uncomfortable bed cold marble made, and opened her eyes and smiled into the man’s face. “Come, come.”

  The naked man ran his hands from her thighs to her breasts and she arched her back, moaned, and closed her eyes again. “You’re so good! Come to me.”

  “Take her,” the whisperer ordered.

  He took her, and with a whore’s skill she made him feel that he was a lover greater than any in history. Her head turned from side to side in false pleasure, she moaned softly, she reached for him to pull him down, she pushed up with her hips, and the man, propped on his hands that were either side of her shoulders, smiled down on her as she locked her ankles behind his thighs.

  Each whisper so far had been in French. Now, suddenly, one of the hidden men spoke in English. “Kill her.”

  He froze, then knew that this was the test, that hesitation was failure and failure was death and he fell on her, his hands moving from the floor to her neck and he gripped her throat with his big hands, squeezed, and her eyes opened in terror as she still thrust at him, and then she twisted beneath him, tried to wrench her body free and she rolled on top of him, thrashing, kicking, clawing at him and he shook her head with his hands and forced her back to the floor again.

  Her fingers pulled at his wrists, but her strength was nothing like his and he had her beneath him and he beat her head on the floor.

  Still he squeezed. He could feel her pulse beneath his thumbs. Her legs beat on the floor. He knelt up, his knee slipping in liquid, and beat her head again. His teeth were gritted.

  She took a long time to die. When he took his fingers from her throat, he thought they would never straighten again. He was panting.

  Slowly he stood up. He stepped away from the body.

  As he stood one part of the marble wall of the circular chamber suddenly moved. Two wooden doors, cunningly painted in the manner of poor church interiors to look like marble, opened before his astonished eyes to reveal a hidden room.

  There was a table of black stone within the room. Candles stood on the table about which three figures sat. On either side of the table sat men in robes of black and gold, with great stiff cowls like monks’ hoods over their heads. At the table’s head, facing the naked man, sat a figure robed and hooded in silver. He was Lucifer, the day star, the prince of darkness, the leader of the Fallen Angels and, with due ceremony and courtesy, he welcomed the new member who henceforth, he said, could wear the black and gold habit of a Fallen Angel. The robe waited for him on a vacant chair. Then Lucifer gave the newcomer his name. From henceforth, he said, he would be known as Chemosh.

  The Fallen Ones met in the shrine built by the Mad Duke who had thought he was God. The shrine was behind the splendid Chateau of Auxigny. The Mad Duke was long dead, gone to meet the God he had failed to be, and his eldest son, the present Duke, was imprisoned with his King in Paris.

  One of the Fallen Angels did not sit at the black table, for he was a deaf mute. Lucifer had given him the name Dagon. He was a huge, shambling creature with the face of an idiot. The black and gold robe sat on his shoulders like a royal cloak draped on a dancing bear. His task was to care for the Chateau of Auxigny and its strange shrine, a task he did to the terror of the local children who spoke of strange things in the woods behind the castle.

  When Chemosh had been admitted to the chamber, and the doors had been closed again, Dagon took the body of the girl downstairs. He stroked it, and from his throat came strange noises. Later, when the Fallen Angels had gone, and when Dagon was again alone in the Chateau of Auxigny, he would take the body to the dark woods behind the shrine and he would leave it for the ravens and the night creatures and her body would be flensed and the bones scattered and the remnants covered by the falling pine needles. She was not the first girl to die in this place, for every new Fallen Angel was initiated with death, and Dagon, as he ran his huge hands down her still warm flesh, hoped she would not be the last.

  Lucifer gestured with a silver-gloved hand at the wine. “Drink, Chemosh. You need some wine after that nonsense.”

  Chemosh smiled. “Nonsense?”

  “Of course. Superstition! Yet we have to know if you believe what you say, that you believe reason is above the law, that you believe a reasonable man can do no evil. So we frighten you a little and give you a trifling test. Now you can forget it.” He shrugged beneath the robes. His face was entirely hidden by the dipping cowl of his hood that made a black shadow from which his voice came so hoarse and low. It seemed to Chemosh to be an old voice, a voice that spoke from long and bitter knowledge. Once only, as the cowl was raised toward Chemosh, did the newcomer see the glitter of eyes that themselves seemed to be like two hard silver lights in the darkness.

  Lucifer, his voice as dry as dead leaves in a cold wind, spoke of the purpose of the Fallen Angels.

  He spoke of a war that would soon be declared between France and Britain. He spoke of the decision, by the Illuminati, to work for Britain’s defeat.

  His business, he said, was not with armies. France would fight, and France would win, and France would take republicanism and reason to Britain. But first the Illuminati would rot Britain from within.

  He spoke of the British Corresponding Societies that supported the revolution. They would need money, help, and arms.

  He spoke of the British journals and their writers, the scribblers who would take any bribe and spread any rumor.

  He spoke of that “mad, fat King” who would be dethroned, of the scandals that would be spread in high places, of the foulness that would be smeared over Britain’s leader
s and aristocrats, until the people of Britain had no trust in their government and would welcome the cleansing flood of republicanism.

  And all this, Lucifer said, would take money. “More money than you can dream of, Chemosh. The task of the Fallen Angels is to provide the Illuminati with that money.”

  The new silk robe was cold on Chemosh’s thighs. He was still shaking from the effort of killing the girl. Her eyes, wide and bulging, still stared in his brain.

  Lucifer drank water, then the silvery cowl turned to the newcomer again. Neither of the other two hooded men had spoken yet. Like Chemosh, they listened to their master’s voice. “We are going to take a fortune in Britain, Chemosh, and your task is to help us.” His voice was bitter and dry, soft and sibilant, yet even Lucifer could not hide the pleasure of his next words. “We are going to take the Lazen fortune.”

  Lazen! Chemosh knew of Lazen. Did anyone not know of the richest earldom in England? Lazen, with its sprawling great house and its London property and its estates in every shire, was rumored to have a greater income than that of most kingdoms. Lazen! He said nothing, but he wondered how, in Reason’s name, these few men would take the fortune of Lazen.

  Lucifer, his hands gloved in silver, told him how.

  The Earl of Lazen was sick. He was dying. It was said he could not live another winter, that, indeed, he had almost died a few weeks before when the stump of his amputated leg began bleeding in the night. He would die, Lucifer said, and when he died the fortune of Lazen, with the title, would pass to his son, Viscount Werlatton. Lucifer turned to his left. “Moloch?”

  The robed man opposite Chemosh pushed back his hood. He smiled at the newcomer.

  Chemosh was suddenly frightened. He was staring at a face that had been lampooned by half the caricaturists of Europe. He was staring at a heavy, powerful, brooding, knowing face that was the very symbol of the French revolution. Moloch was Bertrand Marchenoir, the ex-priest who now preached his gospel of blood.

  Marchenoir leaned forward, lit a cigar from one of the candles, then took up the tale. “Werlatton was in the British Embassy in Paris. He’s an adventurer and up to his bloody neck in spying.” Marchenoir blew smoke over the table. Chemosh saw how his black and gold robe was filthy with wine stains. The Frenchman gave a grim smile. “He was due to get married; you might remember the fuss the London papers made? We killed his bride and stopped him spawning more heirs. I now hear that he wishes to return to France, seek me out, and take his revenge.” He laughed.