The Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwell

  “We shall pray he does,” Lucifer said.

  “And when he does,” Marchenoir went on, “and after his father’s death, I shall kill him.”

  “After?” Chemosh asked.

  The silver cowl of Lucifer looked at him. “We do not want the earl to change his will. The father will die, and the son will follow. The son is a fool. He should be rearing a family already, but he cannot resist adventure. So he will die, and the earldom will pass to a cousin. Belial?”

  Chemosh knew who Belial was. He was another politician, a member of Britain’s House of Commons who was famous for his impassioned speeches against the French and their revolution. Valentine Larke preached war against France in public, while in private he worked for Britain’s defeat. Larke had sponsored Chemosh for the Fallen Angels and now he turned his hooded face toward his protégé. “The cousin is called Sir Julius Lazender. We have no problems with Sir Julius. Soon all that he will inherit will belong to us.”

  “How soon?” Lucifer asked.

  “Two months? Maybe three.”

  The silver cowl nodded. “You see, Chemosh, by how slender a thread the fortune hangs? The earl, his son, and then it is ours. All of it. Except for one problem, a problem that you,” and here a silver gloved finger stabbed at him, “will solve. Tell him, Belial.”

  Valentine Larke, MP, leaned back from the table. “There is a daughter. Her name is Campion.” He said the unusual name slowly and scornfully. “She is, for a girl, remarkably well educated. At present she has all the responsibility for Lazen. Her father is ill, her brother absent, and she governs. She does it, I am told, well.” He paused to sip wine. “Our problem, Chemosh, is simple. The earl knows how slender is the thread. He knows his son has no heir. He knows that Sir Julius might inherit and Sir Julius is a gambler. Lazen is in peril, and we believe that the girl is his answer. One. She might inherit, though I doubt it. Two, she might inherit part of the fortune, though I doubt that the earl will divide his inheritance. Three, and most likely, is that whoever inherits will find themselves still under her thumb. The estate, in short, will be entailed and she will have the governance of the entail.” She shrugged. “We can’t kill her now, because the earl will change his will, just as he would if the son died, so we must do something else.”

  “You must do something else.” Lucifer spoke, and again his finger stabbed at Chemosh. “Your task, Chemosh, is to ensure that the Lady Campion Lazender is no threat to us. Specifically she is not to marry.”

  Chemosh understood that. If she married, then her husband would take her property and would have the governance of the entail or the estate. Her children, if her brother and cousin died, might inherit. “I stop her marrying?”

  “You stop her marrying by any means short of death. Later she will die, but not until her father is buried.”

  Chemosh had his task now, he had earned it, and he was part of a conspiracy that would twist the history of the world into a new, clearer future. He felt privileged to be in this place where decisions were made which, like those which had led in secret council to the fall of France, would now lead to Britain’s downfall. He was Chemosh, the name of the Fallen Angel that demanded human sacrifice, and he had escaped death by inflicting death. He understood now why they had made him kill for this initiation, for only a man without pity and who understood that Reason’s servants are above man’s petty laws was worthy to be a Fallen Angel. Chemosh’s elation lasted as Lucifer gave his last instructions. He, Chemosh, was to take his orders from Valentine Larke, while Larke would communicate to France through Marchenoir’s messenger. Yet to Chemosh these were mere details that were swamped by his exhilaration at this privilege.

  Finally, Lucifer stood and the movement shifted the cowl for one second, and Chemosh saw again the glitter of eyes deep in the shadow. It seemed that even Lucifer’s eyes were silver, then the hood settled back and the dry, rustling voice spoke again. “We are done. I shall go, the rest of you will follow in ten minutes. I wish you all a safe journey. I do not need to wish you success, for we are followers of Reason and therefore cannot fail.”

  Then, with a shimmer of his robes, he turned and went down the passage at the back of the chamber.

  Marchenoir waited till their leader’s footsteps had faded to silence, then stood, stretched his massive arms, and went to the painted, curved doors and pulled them apart. Chemosh saw that the body of the girl was gone. The marble floor glistened.

  Marchenoir grinned. “Watch, Chemosh.”

  “Watch?”

  The Frenchman jerked his head toward the empty, circular chamber.

  There was silence. Chemosh gave a puzzled look to Valentine Larke who, now that Lucifer was gone, pushed his hood back from hair that, despite his fifty years, was still glossy black. It was rippled like the hard sand on a creek bed. Beneath the hair was a broad, flat, intelligent face, an impressive face even, a face of such judiciousness that any free-holder would think this man worthy of a vote with or without the election bribe. His eyes stopped his face from being handsome. They were of a blandness so unnatural as to be frightening; dark eyes in flattened sockets. They were the eyes of a quiet, watching man, but they were also eyes of horrid implacability. Valentine Larke did not forget or forgive his enemies. Now, though, he smiled and gestured toward the main room of the shrine. “Watch!”

  Chemosh turned to the brilliantly lit chamber where he had killed the girl.

  He saw nothing strange, but then, deep in the building, he heard the rattle of a chain, a creaking sound like the windlass of a well, and to his astonishment he saw that the brightness of the gleaming shrine was dimming. A shadow seemed to flow down the walls like blood, like an artificial twilight, a shadow that flicked over the statuary, became darker and then, with an awesome finality, extinguished the last flicker of candlelight with the huge room. In just seconds the brilliance of the shining room had been dimmed to darkness.

  Only the candles on the black stone table stayed lit. The shadow had swallowed the marble chamber.

  Marchenoir laughed at the newcomer’s expression. “The Mad Duke’s little palace of tricks!” He gestured toward the dark dome. “Just an iron shutter that drops in front of the candles. Dagon turned the handle downstairs. It was built so the mad bugger could shout ‘let there be light’ and a dozen peasants would haul on the chain!” He laughed and shook his head. “Our job was to worship the crazy bastard. There used to be a tunnel under here so he could suddenly appear in our astonished midst. They bricked that up when the bugger died. But I suppose we were impressed by it all.” He tossed his cigar onto the darkened marble floor, then turned his hard, brooding face to the newcomer. “I envy you, Chemosh.”

  “Envy me?”

  “I hear that the Lady Campion is a pearl of great price. She is said to be beautiful.” He walked to the black table and lit another cigar. The Gypsy, who was the messenger between Marchenoir and Larke, had told the French politician that the Lady Campion was more beautiful than a dream. Marchenoir blew smoke into the huge, dark chamber. “Very beautiful indeed.”

  “A pity,” Larke said dryly.

  “Pity?” Marchenoir asked.

  “Because the easiest way to stop her marrying,” the Englishman said quietly, “is to make her unmarriageable. If you scar her face, Chemosh, and scar her body, and scar her mind, who will want her?” He sipped wine. “Have her raped. Hire a poxed man to rape her and scar her and drive her wits a little mad.” He smiled. “You see how easy your task will be?”

  Marchenoir laughed. “Send her to me.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Larke smiled. “A virgin aristocrat at your mercy.”

  Marchenoir laughed. “I am the killer of aristocrats.” He said it simply, boastfully, then walked to the edge of the dark chamber and stared up at the dome where the iron shutter had dropped over the candles. “They’re different. They have white skins, soft skins, skins like silk. They squeal.” He laughed again, and the sound echoed back in the Mad Duke�
��s chamber. “I would like her. God, how I would like her.” He turned, and his broad, powerful face stared at the newcomer. “If it is possible, Chemosh, if in all this wide God-ridden world you find it possible, then bring her to me.” He paused, then the voice that had roused Paris against its King, and France against its civilization, roared in the marble emptiness. “Scarred or poxed, whole or savaged, Chemosh,” he paused and he shouted his next four words slowly and distinctly, so that the echo of one faded before the next was uttered. “Bring her to me!”

  4

  T he early winter weeks were hard for Lady Campion Lazender, harder than she dared admit to herself, and made so by the constant visits of the Gypsy to Lazen Castle.

  It was not that she saw much of the man called Gitan, yet she found that when her brother was in residence she would deliberately find a reason to visit the dairy or brewhouse, to see how the new wall of the kitchen garden was progressing, or to count the stock in the game larder; any excuse, indeed, for going close to the stable entrance. She made herself stop the subterfuge.

  Yet still she would glimpse him. Sometimes he would be a black, upright figure schooling a horse in the meadows to the east of the drive, and once she saw him leaning at the kitchen door drinking a glass of ale that had been fetched for him by one of the maids. The maid, a pudgy little girl with a hare lip, stared up devotedly at the tall, dark man, and Campion was astonished by the streak of jealousy that stabbed at her, wrenched at her, and she felt the humiliation of this attraction and the wretchedness of suppressing it.

  Yet suppress it she did. She threw herself into her work of which, the harvest having failed for two years running, there was plenty. The Castle, with all its estate and pensioners, had to be fed. The tenancies had to be managed. What harvest there was had to be eked out from the rickyard and storerooms.

  There was Christmas to prepare for, her father to care for, and estate decisions to be made. Campion chose which timber should be cut for winter fuel, which coppiced, and how many animals should be kept alive through what promised to be a hard, hungry, cold season.

  She had no need to work. The Castle had a steward, as it did the estate, and there were lawyers ever eager to charge fees for their services. Yet she hated idleness. She had begun to interest herself in the Castle’s management when, at eighteen years old, she made the chance discovery that the housekeeper was buying more sheets each autumn than existed in the whole Castle. That housekeeper was long gone, the accounts straightened, and even in the hardest winter Campion had cut the estate’s expenditure by a third. No one went hungry, nothing was skimped, yet the family was not robbed. She liked the work, she was good at it, yet this winter its best advantage was that it kept her from what she knew were humiliating, unfitting thoughts of the Gypsy.

  She even wondered whether it was her reluctance for the Gypsy to leave the Castle that made her so adamant in her opposition to Toby’s plans.

  He was returning to France.

  He had told her and she had exploded in sudden and unnatural anger, telling him his duty was to stay at Lazen, to look after Lazen, to marry and have children, and her words had whirled about his stubborn red head with as much force as snowflakes.

  He was not thinking of Lazen. He was thinking of scraps of ragged flesh tossed about a cell.

  She shook her head in bitterness. “Suppose you die?”

  “Then Julius gets what he’s always wanted.” He laughed at the thought of their cousin, Sir Julius Lazender, inheriting the earldom.

  She was too angry to speak.

  He tried to explain. He tried to tell her that there were men in France who prepared to fight against the revolution, men faithful to the church and to the King, and men who looked to Britain for help. He was not, he said, going alone, but going with the blessing of Lord Paunceley.

  “Then Lord Paunceley’s a fool!” she said.

  Toby laughed. “They call him the cleverest man in the kingdom.”

  “Then that makes all Englishmen fools!”

  He shrugged. Lord Paunceley, a mysterious man of immense power, ran Britain’s secret service. He had been a lifelong friend of their father, though the friendship was now conducted entirely by correspondence.

  Toby smiled. “I’m taking the rebels muskets, powder, and money. I shall be safe!”

  “You’ll be dead.”

  “Then I’ll be with Lucille.”

  And that had been the final straw for her, a reply of such stupidity and such an evasion of his responsibility, that they had parted on terms of strained affection. She did not want him to go, she could not stop him going, yet, in the end, there was a certain relief that the tall, black-dressed Gitan was leaving with him.

  She said farewell to Toby on a cold morning in November. She hugged her brother tight. They had always been close, always affectionate, and it seemed to Campion that only these last weeks had brought some barrier between them. “Be safe, Toby.”

  “I shall be safe.”

  She looked up at the mounted Gypsy, black cloaked, his blue eyes so unreadable. And on this last glimpse, as on her first, she felt the force of the man’s looks and personality strike into her soul with undiminished impact. She nodded coldly, wishing him a safe journey, keeping her voice as tight and controlled as ever when she was in his presence.

  He smiled and answered in his strongly accented English. “Thank you, my Lady.”

  Then she hugged Toby again, her eyes closed and her arms about him. He gently pulled away and climbed into the travelling coach. He went to his revenge, to his chosen work, and Campion watched the tall, black figure that rode beside the coach until the gatehouse hid him from view. They were gone, and there was the sense of a burden lifted.

  Yet sometimes, in the long evenings, when her father was lost in the solace of his liquor and the Castle was slowly closing itself for the night, she would find herself before a large, pagan portrait of Narcissus that hung in the castle’s Great Chamber and see, in that old painting, the same arrogant, competent, strong face that she missed. The Narcissus in the painting was naked, and she was ashamed that she should be drawn by the strong, sleek body. She was ashamed and she was astonished that she, who was so controlled, so sensible, so practical, should find her emotion so uncontrollably arrested by a common groom. He was the Gypsy, and he had ridden into her dreams to make them sad.

  Her father saw it. He looked at her from his bed one bright, cold morning at November’s end. “What’s troubling you?”

  “Nothing.” She smiled. She was dressed to go out, cloaked and furred and wrapped against the winter’s cold.

  “You look like a dog that’s lost its nose. Are you in love?”

  “No, father!” She laughed.

  “Happens to people, you know.” He grimaced as pain lanced through him. “One day they’re perfectly sensible, the next they’re mooning about like sick calves. It’s nothing that marriage won’t cure.”

  “I’m not in love, father.”

  “Well, you should be. It’s time you were married.”

  “You sound like Uncle Achilles.”

  He looked her up and down fondly. “There ought to be someone who’d marry you. You’re not entirely ugly. There’s Lord Camblett, of course. He’s blind, so he might have you.”

  She laughed. “There’s that curate in Dorchester who thought I was the new milliner in town.”

  “He wet himself when he found out,” her father laughed. “Poor booby. Why didn’t you tell him?”

  “He was being very sweet. He showed me over the church.” The curate, nervous and hopeful, had escorted her from the church to find a carriage and four waiting outside, postilions and grooms bowing to the girl he had thought a milliner. He would not be consoled for his mistake. Campion smiled. “If I’d have told him he’d only have been more nervous. It’s quite nice sometimes to be treated like everybody else.”

  “I could always throw you out of the castle,” her father said hopefully. She laughed, and he held her hand.
“You’re not sad?”

  “No, father.” How could she tell him about the Gypsy? He would think she was mad. “Except I wish Toby wasn’t in France.”

  He shrugged. “Wouldn’t be much of a man if he didn’t want adventure, would he?”

  “No, father. I suppose not.”

  Hooves and wheels sounded on the gravel and her father laboriously turned his head to look at the horses that stopped beneath his window. “They’re looking good.”

  “Marvellous.” She said it warmly.

  The bays were her joy. A matched pair that were harnessed to a carriage she had chosen for herself, a carriage that her father considered flighty, dangerous, and welcome evidence that his beautiful daughter was not entirely a sensible, practical and dutiful girl.

  She had bought herself a phaeton.

  Not just any phaeton, but one of the highest, swiftest phaetons in the country. The bays were as spirited as the carriage itself, and the earl, whenever he saw the equipage drawn up on the forecourt, felt a pang of fear for his daughter.

  The phaeton, her father thought, could hardly weigh more than she did! The earl had ordered ballast placed above each axle, but still the fragile assembly of steel, leather, and wood frightened him.

  He looked at her from his pillow. “Simon tells me you took the ballast off the axles.”

  “A bit.”

  “A bit!” He laughed. “I don’t know why you don’t just glue bloody feathers on it and try to fly.”

  “Perhaps I will.” She kissed him. “I’ll see you at lunch time.”