‘Neither am I. The one we’re about to see is particularly troublesome to me. I think you have something about you that could prove useful. A knife? Obtained from a fellow who breathes fire?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Well, if you could stick it in the angel if you get the chance, then I’d be awfully grateful.’

  ‘I am here to ask it a question.’

  ‘Wouldn’t your lord, Lucifer, favour you if you killed one of his enemy’s servants?’

  ‘I am not looking for favour with Lucifer. Only to serve his cause.’

  The boy craned his head, as if not quite understanding Dow. ‘Amounts to the same thing, I think you’ll find. Look, let me put it another way. You kill the angel when it appears or I’ll have you and your companions killed in the most brutal way imaginable. Take my word for it, I have a rich imagination and have spent some time pondering how to best inflict pain on my enemies. The captain over there, the one who attends the lady, should I start with him?’

  Dow shoved the boy hard on the shoulder and grabbed him by the hair as he staggered backward. ‘Best start with me,’ he said in Cornish, though he could see the little prince took his meaning well enough.

  Immediately three polearms were on Dow, one jabbing into his side hard enough for him to take a pace back. The Navarrese men-at-arms had responded instantly to a threat to their lord.

  The queen cried out, but the boy held up his hand and spoke in a language Dow didn’t understand. The men lowered their polearms and Dow released the boy’s hair.

  ‘Have you gone mad, Dow?’ Orsino asked him in English.

  ‘He threatened me,’ said Dow. ‘He threatened you too.’

  ‘Do you want him to come good on that threat?’ said Orsino. ‘This must be a tolerant prince, because any I’ve ever met would have had you dead on these flagstones by now.’

  Of all the people on the stairs, the little boy seemed the least concerned. ‘High-spirited foreigners,’ he said, ‘a misunderstanding, that’s all. Let’s proceed to the chapel.’

  They headed up the stairs to the great doors in front of them. Queen Joan told the two guards barring their way to step aside, and they instantly obeyed. Philip had seen no need to protect access to the angel since receiving the good news that Charles would never be king.

  The doors were opened and Dow felt all breath leave his body. The glorious sun of the Parisian June was split into a hundred colours here, leaving its memory dull by comparison, as the ore is dull compared to the tin the fire pulls from it.

  The windows were immense, the gold deeper, the gems brighter than anything he had seen in the palace so far. Light, light – everything wrought from light.

  Sariel stepped into the chapel, gazing around her. She seemed transformed by the light, her appearance beyond mere beauty, more akin to a star or the moon, a dawn over the hills.

  She went further in. At one end of the chapel something seemed to shine – itself a small dawn. Dow walked in, his head giddy. On a plinth was a twisted garland of thorns, shining even in the brilliance of that room. Behind it was a cloth imprinted with a man’s face, it too leaking light. Dow knew instinctively that this was the crown of thorns with which the horror, Îthekter, had tormented Lucifer; the image was the face of the Lord of Light.

  ‘Can you not see?’ said Sariel.

  ‘See what?’ said Charles.

  ‘How it shines, how the crown shines.’

  ‘I see nothing but a bit of dusty bush,’ said the boy, ‘sold in generations past by charlatans to credulous kings.’

  ‘It shines!’ said Sariel, ‘it shines!’

  All along the walls of the chapel stood statues of the twelve apostles that now began to babble. Dow didn’t understand their language, but somehow he knew what they meant. A king has come. A mighty king. Half human, half divine. He is the enemy of the true king of Heaven.

  There was a disturbance from behind them, men crying out in panic.

  ‘Call the angel,’ said Charles.

  ‘Angels can’t be called,’ said Sariel, ‘or not by any earthly power. They choose to come or they choose not to come, to allow the part of themselves that is here to come to the light or to remain in darkness.’

  ‘What’s that noise?’ said the little boy.

  ‘Enemies!’ shouted Queen Joan.

  ‘I was told angels could be called by her!’ said Charles. ‘I’ve been lied to!’

  The commotion grew louder – the sound of battle, steel on steel. A smell drifted up the stairs – brimstone, smoke and sal ammoniac.

  First around the corner came the monstrous blackbird, tall as a man and gripping a sword in the talons that sprouted under its wings.

  ‘Devils!’ shouted Dow, but Sariel wasn’t listening – she was lost to the light.

  Orsino drew his sword and kissed the cloth of St John, while Charles and his mother ran to end of the chapel furthest from the door. All their men-at-arms drew to face the devils.

  The boy desperately tugged at a lance that was mounted on the altar. Dow saw that it too glowed. The lance that had pierced Christ’s side. All these relics, all these things endowed with Îthekter’s power, were things used to harm Lucifer – whom they called Christ. These were the enemy’s implements, the enemy that had fooled the angels, fooled the saints.

  Dow drew his knife.

  ‘We come for Dowzabel,’ chirped the blackbird. ‘No other man need fear us.’

  ‘Ask not who need fear you but whom you need to fear,’ said Orsino.

  ‘Give him the youth!’ shrieked Joan.

  A man-at-arms grabbed Dow by the shoulder but little Charles cried out, ‘Give it a moment, men. I want to see if the angel appears.’

  Dow felt giddy. It was as if his eyes not only drank in the light of the chapel but radiated it too. The mark on his chest flared, burning white light in the shape of the fork through his tunic. But what was happening to Sariel? She was dancing in the chapel, her arms loose, her dark hair like a living thing as it swung about her, fell forward and was tossed back behind her; she moaned and called out in a voice that had all the beauty of the bird-bright dawn, of a clear river singing at a weir.

  The bird-devil leapt up the stairs, cleaving a man-at-arms, shearing through the sword he put up to block and hacking into his side. Orsino got a good blow at the creature but its head retracted into its neck just before his sword struck. The blade bit the door frame and the bird backhanded Orsino down the stairs. Other frightful figures were emerging – a man with the face of a decomposing dog, a mule with a steel peacock fan tail.

  With all the devils up the stairs the men-at-arms fell like barley in the harvest.

  The blackbird hopped forward at Dow, knocking him down. It turned its head this way and that trying to avoid being blinded by the light that poured from the fork on Dow’s chest but still slashed with its sword. Its strength was enormous, its body heavy and solid and Dow had to writhe and dodge to avoid its blows. He pulled out his dagger and stabbed at the creature but it just brushed his arm away, sending the dagger sliding across the floor. Then it had him by the neck and lifted its sword to strike.

  Hot blood pulsed over Dow’s chest; the creature dropped its sword.

  The boy prince had run the length of the chapel with the holy lance to spear the bird through the heart.

  ‘Not until the angel is here. He’s going to kill it, isn’t he? And drive his guardian mad? It’s your blasted plan!’

  Something odd was happening to the light in the chapel: its beautiful colours were splitting into shining rays, each one itself a rainbow.

  The cardinal was at the door. ‘Back! Back!’ he shouted to his devils. ‘Let the boy do his work and then we’ll be on him.’

  A sound was in the air, a beautiful song, high and clear. Sariel joined it in counterpoint and Dow felt it doing something very strange to him. He was light, not flesh, a thing born of the light.

  The light in the chamber was full of memories. It was the light in the wine they’d stolen from a merchant’s house, the light breaking from behind a cloud over the moor, the shimmer on an eel’s back, the flash on a kingfisher’s wing.

  Dow found the sensation overwhelming. He heard a voice like the boom of the sea.

  ‘Jegudiel.’

  The devils outside began to twitter and squawk, two running back out of the palace, the cardinal diving to the side of the door to be out of the burning light.

  Dow felt the light pouring out of him, from his mouth, from his eyes, from the mark on his chest and he knew the angel was there, stripping away all pretence and illusion. He was light. Everything was light, the chapel a shattered gem spawning rainbows, the windows shimmering veils of blue.

  ‘Jegudiel. Such beauty.’

  ‘None such beauty as you, radiant and shining one.’ Sariel stretched out her hands to the light.

  ‘Who are these?’

  Dow could see a figure in the light – a perfect man, winged and haloed, a dancing aura of violet and green around his head.

  He had to ask it. ‘Where do we find the king in the east?’

  No reply.

  Sariel was calling to the creature. ‘Take me to the light, give me forgiveness.’

  More shouting down the stairs as the devils engaged more men-at-arms. There was a roar and a flash, screams and shouting.

  ‘You have beauty beyond compare. What would it be like to touch you? Sariel, is it sweet to fall? What it would be to dwell in the world of flesh. I am lonely sometimes in the light.’

  ‘Take me to the light.’

  ‘You are perfection. No glass, no gold holds the lustre of your skin. Your eyes make the jewels of this place seem dull indeed.’

  ‘Take me to the light!’

  ‘Is it sweet to fall? What sour pleasures you must feel, embodied and vulnerable. What it must be to scrape a knee, to feel hot porridge burn the mouth, to lie with one such as you in sweat and secretion.’

  ‘I will join you! I will join you in the light.’

  The man, the perfect man who had only been a multitude of glistening crystal sparkles now started to take shape. His hair was like wrought gold, his skin like ivory, his eyes blue sapphires, yet it was a man who took shape in front of Dow, not a statue – impossibly tall, with enormous wings of shining white feathers, armour of plates like a mirror, a sword at his side, a shield on his arm that bore a flaming heart. He sat down on the altar as if it were a chair.

  ‘Kill him!’ shouted the little boy. ‘That’s your job isn’t it, Antichrist? Kill him!’

  But Dow could not move. The light still poured from him.

  Sariel ran to the angel and it gathered her into its arms as she sobbed, ‘You fell, you fell! You were not meant to fall. I wanted to come back to the light!’

  ‘There is light enough,’ said the angel, cradling her to him.

  He held up his hand and the colours in Dow stopped their flow. The little boy pressed something into Dow’s hand. The devil’s knife.

  Dow gripped it but the angel stretched its hand towards Dow.

  ‘Brother,’ it said and Dow knew that it spoke the truth. He had been born of light and born of woman.

  ‘Mother?’ he said to Sariel. In the presence of the French angel, he knew now who she was – he felt it in his heart.

  The devils came whooping and clattering into the hall. A dog-headed man on a great horse charged for Dow who gripped the knife and swung it, but to no avail. The horse charged him down, battering him to the floor.

  ‘Never mind the angel. Take the boy!’ The horrid cardinal took a candle from a votary and put it into his mouth. The dog-headed man jumped down from his horse, stabbing at Dow with his spear. But the cardinal never got to breathe. Orsino had picked up the blackbird’s sword – a big, heavy-bladed falchion – and struck the cardinal hard across the back of the neck. His head came clean off at the shoulders and a pillar of flame burst up to the ceiling.

  The trident on Dow’s chest shone as he rolled aside from the dogman’s spear. The dog thing stabbed and stabbed again, but Dow ducked and rolled as Orsino had told him to do. The ceiling of the chapel was now on fire thanks to the exploding cardinal.

  ‘Fetch more guards! More guards!’ shouted Joan of Navarre. She tried to pull little Charles with her but the boy would not go.

  ‘Fetch the guards if you must,’ he said. ‘This is the moment of our victory and I want to see it.’

  ‘You will die.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come, son! The place is burning.’

  ‘I’ll wait a while yet, mother. I fancy the angel will not let the fire consume such beauty. Fetch the guards.’

  Joan pulled at her son hard but found she could not move him. She crossed herself twice and ran from the chapel.

  Jegudiel was rapt, staring into Sariel’s eyes. ‘Your beauty is enchanting. On the river Swin, in the setting sun, ships are burning as men fight for the honour of the Lord. It is a wonderful sight and yet nothing compared to the glory of your eyes,’ said Jegudiel. His voice was all beauty, like the sucking and drawing of the tides, like the wind in a forest.

  The horse creature with the peacock fan had taken up the holy lance and now rounded on Orsino, shrieking. The mercenary was quick, though, twisting and turning, not bothering to parry, cutting at the devil’s head so it had to look to defence rather than attack. It goaded him as they fought. ‘Here’s one who cursed the Lord’s name when he should have prayed in grief. Here’s a killer and a thief!’

  The flames above filled the chapel with a noxious smoke, hazing the light of the windows. For the first time, Jegudiel looked up. He held out his hand and the flames just weren’t there any more. The unicorn devil leapt at him, his daggers whirling, but Jegudiel simply turned his hand to the devil. A flash of unbearable intensity and the devil had vanished.

  Again, the dog-faced man came for Dow, but the flash had given Dow time to recover his feet. He knocked the spear aside, just enough to make it miss, and then he was on the devil, the dagger stabbing down into its chest and shoulders.

  A clinging black ichor burst from its wounds, covering Dow’s face, but the dogman seemed unaffected, punching and kicking at Dow so hard the boy retched. It seized him by the throat, driving him back onto the floor.

  Dow felt something humming inside him; his head was a blister ready to pop. The devil couldn’t focus on Dow, the burning light from the fork on his chest blinding its eyes and forcing it to turn its head. Dow’s hand went to the fork and, without thinking what he was doing, he lifted it from his chest. In his hand was a trident of searing light and he thrust it into the dog creature. It screamed and shrivelled in on itself like parchment in a fire, reducing to nothing.

  The angel was watching him now, though Sariel just gazed up at Jegudiel in bliss.

  The peacock creature leapt back from Orsino’s flashing sword. Then it threw the holy lance. Orsino tried to swat it aside but it was thrown too hard, too quickly, and took him straight through the chest.

  The mercenary fell back, grasping the shaft of the spear, trying to pull it out, but it was no good, the lance had gone through him to protrude a foot behind. He fell heavily, gasping.

  Dow ran at the peacock devil which, unarmed, turned to face him, claws raised. It cried out in alarm as it saw the fork of light and put out its hands to grasp it. The fork struck the creature, which collapsed in on itself and disappeared.

  All the devils were now gone and Dow dropped to his knees, the trident blinking and fading in his hand.

  The angels still sat on the altar, holding hands, their eyes locked. Jegudiel lifted Sariel’s hand to his and kissed it.

  Montagu came running into the hall.

  ‘An angel!’ he cried. ‘As Lord Marschall of England, appointed by Edward, appointed by God, standing in his place as Edward stands in the place of God, I charge you to tell me, does the old King Edward live? If alive, where is he?’

  Jegudiel looked up from his rapture. ‘Kings,’ said the angel, its voice like the crash of many cymbals.

  ‘Where are the angels? Where is Barachiel who dwelled in the abbey? Where is the seraph who lived at Walsingham? Where the Elohim who lived in the light at Canterbury?’

  ‘Where they always are.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘Where God wants them to be. With the king.’

  ‘Does old Edward live?’

  ‘His angels attend him. God still waits for him.’

  ‘Proof!’ shouted Montagu.

  ‘Where is the king? Where is old Edward?’ he said.

  ‘I cannot tell. The snake eats the man. There he lies.’

  ‘Where is old Edward?’ begged Montagu, but the angel said nothing, just returned to gazing at Sariel. He held her and kissed her and she was rapt.

  Dow got to his feet and went to Orsino. The mercenary had heaved the lance from his chest but his breath was rasping and his mouth bubbled with blood.

  ‘Sariel, help him!’ begged Dow but she was lost to the angel’s beauty.

  Orsino got to his feet, the lance in his hand. He staggered forward in a weaving line, up towards the altar where the angels sat. He spoke directly to Sariel. ‘You are the light and I love you,’ he said.

  Neither of the angels replied; both just sat as if entranced, staring into each other’s eyes, Jegudiel’s arm on Sariel’s shoulder.

  Dow ran to support Orsino, knowing he might fall. Orsino coughed and hacked, blood on his lips. ‘Darkness, then,’ he said. He stabbed the holy lance up into Jegudiel’s armpit, where the mail did not protect him, and collapsed against him.

  The angel looked down at the lance. Then its beautiful eyes settled on Dow.

  ‘You,’ it said. It reached out its hand to touch him but Dow struck him at the neck with the dagger and the angel collapsed.

  18

  Edwin sweated, giddy at the edge of his bed, holding back from the life time’s habit of morning prayer.

  ‘You must break this practice. You have chosen now.’ Know-Much sat at the corner of the room, her little legs poking out from her fat belly, her arms resting on top of it.

  The priest almost felt like crying when he looked at the little demon. In one moment he felt elation, he could learn so much about the inner workings of Heaven and Hell. In another, despair – as he felt certain he was destined for the latter as soon as he died.

 

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