The Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwell

  For a few steps he said nothing, then he shrugged. “It exists. It’s there. You can’t ignore it.”

  She wasn’t sure that the answer was satisfactory. “But you made me watch!”

  He stopped. He looked into her eyes and Parisians, passing by, were struck by the man and girl and thought it a miracle that such love and beauty still lived in a city crouching beneath the stench of blood. He smiled at her. “Does your uncle ever go into the kitchens at Lazen?”

  She was used to his apparently irrelevant questions by now. She shook her head. “No.”

  “Does he ever visit the smithy?”

  “No.”

  “The cottages?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You do.”

  She shrugged. “So?”

  “So who knows more about Lazen? You, who see it all? Or your Uncle Achilles, who never leaves the gilt and plasterwork.”

  She smiled. “I live there.”

  “And you see it all. You can’t go through life and pretend that it doesn’t have bits that reek of foulness. It must be wonderful to sit at a great dinner, but is your enjoyment spoiled because you know of grease in the kitchen or blood in the slaughterhouse?”

  She frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  He gestured at the machine. “It exists! It’s as real as Lazen!”

  She shivered despite the sunshine that warmed Paris. “Are you telling me that’s the alternative to Lazen?”

  He smiled. “No, my Lady. Auxigny is the alternative to Lazen. Shall we go?”

  She walked through Paris with him and it seemed like a dream, an adventure, love’s madness that was leading her to the heart of evil, to the Mad Duke’s shrine, and to whatever lay beyond the road’s ending at Auxigny.

  21

  “Y ou know where you are?”

  She nodded. Dusk was touching the trees of the valley dark, filling the spaces between the trunks with mysterious shadow. Beyond the hill was Auxigny, her mother’s childhood home, the lair of the Fallen Ones.

  Skavadale led her between small ricks of drying hay. She could smell the pines ahead. A colony of rooks were noisy to her left, screeching like harpies as they fought and tumbled in the air above their black nests.

  They crossed a plank bridge over a small stream, and went into the woods.

  They climbed toward the high crest that would reveal Auxigny. Once or twice, where rocks cropped up on the hillside to bar their way, he would give her his hand and the touch of his warm skin was comforting.

  The slope became steeper and he stopped more frequently to help her. They were climbing in dark pine woods. She passed the fragile, white lattice of a dead raven, the fox-scattered black feathers still lying on the pine needles.

  Skavadale was weighed down with two big leather bags, both of them roped to his left shoulder. He wore a sword. He carried two pistols and an ammunition pouch, yet he moved as easily as if he carried nothing. It had been a sharp, bright autumn day, but the effort of climbing the hill made her as hot and sticky as if it was summer.

  The sky, glimpsed between the tall pines, was darkening to the east, while above her, spreading westward beyond the ridgeline, the sun reddened the thin, high clouds. Skavadale led her quickly, wanting to reach the crest before the sun disappeared.

  His hand pulled her up one last barrier of tumbled stone, the sun shone huge and red into her eyes, and below her was Auxigny.

  Like a secret jewel cradled by dark hills, the chateau of Auxigny stood in the center of its deep valley.

  The light touched red on the two moats and slashed crimson on the windows of the south front. The white walls rose to the blue-black slates of the pointed turrets. She had half expected to see the chateau burned, to see the windows as black, empty holes, but it looked as it had always looked, beautiful and serene, the proud home of the Lords of Auxigny out of which armed men had ridden, laws had been issued, and justice had come like vengeance on the lesser mortals below.

  It was beautiful and intricate, but seeing it now from this high crest above the tops of the pines beneath her, it seemed so very different to Lazen. Lazen sprawled, it was part of the town, it opened on to every part of the estate, while Auxigny, proud Auxigny, was secretive and aloof. There were two entrances only; the southern bridge that crossed the moat and led to the great facade, and, at the north, the bridge which led to the shrine.

  The shrine, to the north of the chateau, was surrounded by its own, smaller moat.

  The Mad Duke had come close to bankrupting the family to build his shrine. It reared like a grotesque fantasy on its artificial island, with walls of green marble and turrets of polished black stone that jutted about the copper-lined dome. There were no windows.

  The bridge which crossed the smaller moat, the bridge leading directly to the windowless shrine, was not built of stone. It was a wooden drawbridge.

  The Mad Duke had ordered the drawbridge built. The first miracle of his shrine was the order for his servants and tenants to go to worship while he ostentatiously stayed on the chateau side of the moats. The drawbridge would be drawn up and, minutes later, he would appear in the shrine. The peasants and servants would dutifully applaud his walking on the water despite their memory of digging the tunnel that led beneath both moats. The village curé, knowing the Duke’s madness, had indulged the harmless lunacy.

  Campion stared from the high crest. The chateau, this night of autumn clarity, looked splendid and unchanged, as though the machine which beat in the heart of Paris had not stained this beauty with its splashing blood.

  She looked beyond the chateau, following the line of the stream to where the valley opened to the west. The small town of Auxigny guarded the valley’s head. Its roofs were touched red by the setting sun so that it seemed, from their place on the mountain, as though the town glowed like great embers where the river ran past the hills.

  Skavadale watched her, a half smile on his sun darkened face. “How long since you’ve seen it?”

  She smiled. “Five years?”

  “It hasn’t changed.”

  Except that it was owned by the government now, confiscated from the d’Auxignys. Uncle Achilles, she realized with surprise, was now the Lord of Auxigny, except there were no more Lords in France. She thought sadly how much he would have loved to live here. He would have filled its elegant, high rooms and wide, moat-edged lawns with music. He would have liked to be the precious jewel within the jewel of Auxigny.

  Skavadale picked up the two leather bags. “We must go on, my Lady.”

  He led her left, striking obliquely down the steep slope which faced Auxigny and the setting sun. They had come from Paris by the public stage, leaving the vehicle at Bellechasse and taking this long, hidden approach across the hills. To her left reared the high peaks, rocks touched crimson above the pines, while to her right was the valley where the chateau, glimpsed between the tips of the trees, seemed like a precious doll’s house far beneath her.

  She could hear water ahead and knew they came close to the waterfall that glinted high over the chateau. She had never been this high in these hills. She had sometimes stared from the windows of the chateau at the high, bright fall of water and wondered where the stream came from. Her mother had told her that there was always a rainbow at Auxigny’s waterfall, that whenever the sun shone the colors would dance above the spray. In her child’s mind she would think of the waterfall as a far-off, magic place, like a glimpse of heaven above her head.

  She came to the waterfall now, to where the water seethed into a pool carved from the stone by the force of its fall, then split into a rock-strewn course that foamed down the hillside to feed the moats of Auxigny.

  Beside the pool was a grassy clearing. There was a long, low hut built against the rock face, an affair of pine branches roofed with turf. It was a summer shelter for shepherds, a refuge from the wolves and the weather. Skavadale smiled. “Your home tonight.” She noticed the care with which he chose his words. Her home, not his. H
e would sleep outside, as he had guarded her door each night since they had left the Rom.

  He had brought food, water and wine. Within the hut was old bracken for a mattress. Outside, where the grass gave way to a rock ledge that overlooked the valley, Skavadale lit a fire, working as ever with economy and skill, teasing the flames, feeding them, so that as the sun spilled its last glorious light on the far rim of the world they sat by the burning pine-cones and watched the darkness cover the land beneath.

  She smiled at his profile. “Should we have a fire?”

  “They’ll think we’re shepherds bringing a herd from the summer pastures.”

  There was a rabbit to eat, with bread, cheese and wine. They sat at the edge of the clearing, where the slab of rock still held the heat of the sun. Behind them the water roared in its endless, seething fall.

  Auxigny had disappeared. No lights came from the building that had once blazed with light, no fires warmed the magnificent rooms of gold and white.

  The town was lit. Campion could see the small, wavering points of flame that showed where torches burned. One small light crept achingly slow along the hidden fine of a road, a coach coming late into Auxigny.

  They had been oddly silent as they ate.

  She knew why. They had travelled across France and, in all that time, it had been as if their meeting in Lazen’s Temple had never happened. Yet this silence proclaimed that it was not forgotten. As slowly, as inexorably as that light crawled along the dark road toward the town below, she knew that they had waited for this moment.

  She knew it, and because she knew it, she made her voice casual. “Tell me what happens tomorrow.”

  “Again?” He smiled.

  She gestured toward the hidden chateau. “It seems more real now.”

  “You’re frightened?”

  She smiled. “No, Mr. Skavadale. I come to France so often these days. I quite frequently act as a lure for a mad pack of killers.”

  He laughed softly. He lit one of his small cigars and the light touched red on his strong face. Tomorrow, he said, they would go down from the mountain and she would wait in the woods while he found Toby. Toby was hiding in Auxigny, waiting for their arrival.

  She thought how polite they had been for these days. It was as if they had silently agreed not to talk of that night in Lazen’s park. Only once, as the guillotine rose and fell behind her, had he obliquely made any mention of it. They had been polite, treating each other with a delicate formality.

  And by now, he said, Toby should have unblocked the old tunnel by which the Mad Duke walked on water. And tomorrow night, while the Fallen Ones watched Campion in the lit shrine, Toby would come from the gloom of the crypt to kill from behind while Skavadale killed from in front.

  “Will there be soldiers?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He drew on his cigar and she watched the smoke fade in the air over the valley. He shrugged. “A few, maybe.”

  “A few?”

  “Marchenoir’s an important man. He’ll want to impress his home town with an escort, but they won’t trouble us. They won’t know about the Fallen Ones, and they won’t be allowed into the shrine.”

  “And how do we leave?”

  He laughed. “We walk out, of course. We show our papers and we simply walk out.”

  She stared at him. He was so confident, so utterly confident. She remembered the guillotine, the commonplace machine of death that soaked blood onto the cobbles, and she knew that he had made her watch so that she would see the horror and not be afraid. He walked through terror and he was confident.

  Yet Ababina had talked of his fear. Like the men and women who climbed the steps of the machine he had learned to hide his fear. That, she thought, was the secret of fear.

  She looked back to the lights of the town. The carriage lamps had crept closer now.

  She was frightened of the next day. She knew she must hide that fear.

  She drank wine. She sat with her knees drawn up and she looked into the darkness beneath her. “Mr. Skavadale?”

  “My Lady?”

  She paused before asking her question. They had waited so long and now she would start to lead them toward that private, secret place. But first he must tell her a truth. She looked at him. “Did I really need to come?”

  The wind stirred the pines. He did not look at her. “You had to come for Lucifer to come.”

  She frowned. He was evading her. “We’d beaten them already, hadn’t we? Toby’s alive, I’m alive, Lazen is safe!” She stared at him. “Lucifer’s beaten, Mr. Skavadale!”

  “He still lives.” He looked at her, seeing the taut expression on her face, and he knew that she was demanding the truth from him and that without the truth there could be nothing between them. He had told her half truths and now he must go further. He spoke gently. “You need not have come, my Lady. We could have protected you. We could have killed Larke, and that would have been sufficient.”

  She said nothing. She had known all along, she supposed, that she had come, not for Lord Paunceley, and not to defeat the Fallen Angels, but to be with this man.

  He smiled. “But we do want Lucifer.”

  “Of course.”

  They had said the words as if to reassure each other that their purpose was not to go to that mysterious place of love where only the truth would do. They were being polite still, fearful of the trembling moment.

  The carriage lights crept into Auxigny. She heard, above the water’s sound, the hiss of air on an owl’s wings. She thought she saw the bird slide menacingly across the dark sky, a night-hunter seeking blood in the valley.

  The silence stretched. She was staring at one small, yellowish light in the town that twinkled faintly like a star, sometimes seeming to disappear, then becoming bright again.

  She turned to him in the silence and saw that he was looking at her. Neither spoke.

  She had known this moment would come, and, now that it was upon them, there was an embarrassment in her. For one year she had dreamed of this man, dreams as forbidden as lust, and now she was with him, high over the world, in a private place to which, she knew, he had purposefully brought her.

  She turned away from him. She stared at the tiny, flickering light in the town and she thought how she had been used by men in this affair. By Lucifer, by Culloden, by Paunceley, even by this man who sat beside her. The thought made her frown. She had come into a world of deceit and shadow, a world where the Gypsy hunted just as the owl did that swooped into the great chasm of darkness. He had brought her to this place of rock and water and solitude for a hunter’s purpose.

  She touched the rock with her fingers. “Did you ever hunt foxes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I remember my first hunt. I was frightened.” She stopped, and the Gypsy, knowing better than to say anything, said nothing. She stared, huge eyed, over the valley. “I was only a child and they took me to where the fox had been killed. They blooded me.” She turned and looked at him almost defiantly. “My father cut off the fox’s brush,” she said, “dipped it in blood, and smeared it on my cheeks. I should have been excited. Every child wants to be blooded, but I hated it. I felt sorry for the fox.” His hand made a gesture in the darkness, but what the gesture meant she could not tell. “Do you know what I’m saying?” she asked.

  He smiled at her, his teeth white against his dark skin. “I know that you still hunt.”

  “Yes.” She paused. “I like it. I don’t know why. It’s the horses, I suppose. Foxes have to be killed,” she shrugged, “but it’s the horses. It’s the excitement. You can gallop a horse in exercise, but it’s to no purpose, is it? Not really. But in a hunt!” She shook her head. “In a hunt it’s different. You don’t care about the obstacles, you ride for the life of it, for the sheer life of it! But then comes the end, and I never go close.”

  “Never?”

  She shook her head. “Never.”

  The water fell and seethed in the pool. A sickle moon of brilliant clarity
was rising in the north, its light silvering the pines beneath them. Campion was looking at the stars, tracing the sword of Orion’s belt. “I think you told me a lie once.”

  “I did?”

  She looked at him. “So I’ll ask you again.” She could feel the heavy, golden seals of Lazen trembling against her skin. She paused, because she knew she was going into a place of dreadful mystery. “What happens at the end of your story? When man finds his creature?”

  “The last creature that God made?” His voice was as soft as the small wind in the pines, as soft as the air on an owl’s wing.

  “Yes.” She was remembering him standing on the steps of Lazen’s small temple. “You said you didn’t know the end.”

  He smiled. He was staring into the great empty night above Auxigny. “She will be fairer than the dawn, and in her eyes, stars. At her feet grow lilies, and in her hands, love.” He stopped, and though it was not a cold night, it seemed to Campion that her skin crawled with chilliness. He looked at her. “We make our own endings, my Lady.”

  She shook her head. “You know better, don’t you?”

  “I do?”

  “Because there isn’t an ending, is there?” She was staring at him with a frown. “The hunt is everything, isn’t it? There’s no joy in an ending. Do you find your creature, discard it, and hunt another? Is that the story’s ending, Mr. Skavadale? That there is no ending, just another hunt, another chase?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “You enjoy this, don’t you? You’re a clever man among clever men and you’re playing a game. Lucifer hunts Paunceley and Paunceley hunts Lucifer, and if either did not exist then they would find another enemy. And Toby!” She looked down into the dark valley. “He likes the hunt, doesn’t he? Do you all hope that it will never end?”

  “You need not have come,” he said simply.

  “I know.” She would not look at him.

  “And you need not go to Auxigny tomorrow.”

  “I know that.”