Son of the Morning, page 8
part #1 of Banners of Blood Series
‘God tests his kings in battle.’
‘I give rings and gold. I build great churches. I …’
‘The three fleurs-de-lys are withered. Hugh Capet’s line is cut?’
So it did know. The three fleurs-de-lys formed the Capetian arms, but Philip knew it also referred to the three sons of Philip the Handsome, all of whom had very short reigns and died without sons, opening the way to the throne for him. The king knew the rumours about him – his nickname ‘The Lucky’ was said with a great deal of courtier’s irony. It was apt.
‘That was the work of the Templars, heretics and worshippers of Lucifer.’ This was true. Although their work had needed a sponsor.
Philip felt the angel’s displeasure as a tightening in his chest, a ringing in his ears, a thumping in his head. ‘I …’
Philip could not lie even if he wanted to. It was as if the light had opened his head and his thoughts themselves were now light, mingling with the beams of the dying sun, with those of the angel whose presence was light.
He remembered that dirty shack by the river where he’d met the Templars – the candles fluttering as if caught in the breath of a ghost, the stink of fish, the hollow eyes of the Templar grandmaster, Jacques De Molay, evaluating him, seeing if he could be trusted. He was only a boy then, thirteen, uncertain and scared. His father had taken him there. The poverty of the knights had struck him – their coats worn, their shoes broken. It disgusted him to be among such men, though his father assured him their war gear would be the envy of any duke’s son. The Templars were heretics, he said, whatever face they presented to the world, but they were useful men.
De Molay had been straightforward in his demands – the Templars wanted their own state in France, a place of the ‘Free Fallen’. It had been gibberish to Philip. Philip’s father the count only knew he wanted to be king and promised them whatever they wanted if they worked their magic. They said the risk was great, that if God discovered their purpose He would move against them and undo them. Many in their number opposed the idea. But De Molay, that cold, thoughtful man had agreed – after demanding proof of good intention from the count. So they’d set him a task – bring them a twig from the crown of thorns. Had it been necessary for their ritual, or a test of faith? Philip had volunteered for the task himself – so it might be passed off as childish mischief if he was discovered. He’d stolen into the chapel at night, heard the cries and sighs of the stone saints as he’d broken it off. Regret had swamped him the moment the twig snapped. It cut his finger and it seemed as if Christ was mocking him, comparing his selfless sacrifice to Philip’s selfish one. He returned with the twig to the Templars. They’d cast their spell, but the ritual was a long and difficult one and it had attracted the attention of a Capetian spy. Philip had watched the Templars hang, knowing they had not completed their curse before they died. All their assets had been taken. Then Philip’s father had died, that dark day at Nogent-le-Roi and the task of finding someone to complete the magic had fallen to him. It had not been easy and had cost him far more than money but he had done it – contacting the ragged remains of the Templars who had gone over to their rivals, the Hospitallers, out of desperation or because of threat. The crown had been put on to his head in the great light of Notre Dame. From that moment on, he had promised to serve God truly, but his relationship with the angels remained poor. They distrusted him, he could tell, and he could not rely on them in his wars. That left him very vulnerable when it came to dealing with other kings.
‘England. Angels have died there. I heard their screams.’
Philip crossed himself. He was sweating greatly. ‘Does God still favour Edward?’
‘Edward, favoured by God. Gone. Not there. There. Yes.’
Philip wished greatly the angel would be less oblique. Why couldn’t divine power be linked to the power of plain speaking? He knew from long experience it was useless to press the creature. Only God was all-knowing and he half suspected the angels descended into cryptic speech when they simply didn’t know what they were talking about.
‘We will invade. Give me your assurances you will deal with their remaining angels.’
‘The English king’s angels labour at God’s task night and day. Lucifer. He was once and may yet be.’
‘What of Lucifer?’
‘Yes.’
Philip put his head into his hands momentarily. He could not make sense of anything the angel said.
‘We will strike the English,’ said Philip, ‘if you will sparkle on our spear tips and give our men heart.’
‘Faith, first,’ said the angel. ‘Faith, that parted the seas and led God’s people out of Goshen.’
‘You cannot ask an angel for guarantees,’ said Joan.
‘I have laboured for God.’
‘What of your crusade?’ The angel’s voice was like the whisper of rain on a dry land.
‘It has been cancelled.’
‘Why?’
‘Because …’
‘Rings, churches, wealth, you give and you give but still you have more than any man in the world. Little is the loss. You were haughty and not prepared to weep, you were not prepared to see sons slaughtered, to lie wounded in some foreign dusty land, your armour full of grit, your mouth thick with sand. You would not give your suffering, as Christ gave you His.’
Philip had noticed before that angels could be very exact in their criticism, while remaining entirely impenetrable when you asked them for anything useful.
‘The Pope himself ordered me not to go.’
‘England’s hand is in that!’ said Joan, ‘he wishes to keep us from favour with God.’
‘And yet you refused to crusade with him five years ago,’ said the angel, ‘you could have done great service to God.’
Philip crossed himself again. The truth was that he had not wanted Edward to win favour with God. Philip had been pleased to help Edward overthrow his father and been glad when the old man died. He had turned young Edward into a usurper, alienating the English angels. All good. But through his mother, it might be argued that Edward had a better claim to the throne of France than he did. What if Edward proved himself more courageous, more holy, won back God’s favour? The man was a prodigy of arms. Would he topple Philip?
‘What do you want? I invaded Gascony to take the cathedrals at Bazas and Auch so you might dwell in the light there and be worshipped as you are worshipped here.’
‘Give me the head of God’s enemy.’
‘What?’
‘He is born. The arch-usurper.’
‘Who is he?’
‘A boy, born to tear the world. I see him and half see him. All Hell is behind him. He has been brought to his beginning.’
The light shifted and swam, splintered and shone. Philip felt sick. ‘What is his name?’
‘God as yet only glimpses him. He is known and not known. Should he live or die?’
‘If he’s the Antichrist he should die.’
‘God sees wider purposes. Angels cannot know them.’
‘So you’ll go against God?’
‘I will express that part of God that wants him dead. Others may express the part that would let him live.’
‘What is his name?’
‘God does not reveal it.’
‘Ask him.’
‘You do not ask things of God. You are told.’
‘Is it Charles of Navarre?’
‘He is young.’
‘How shall I act? What shall I do? I would take the Oriflamme, lead the angels, repel England!’
‘Consider what you can give me. Now return to the dark.’
Suddenly it was night. The sun had gone down and the chapel – its candles unlit – was quite dark, the scant moonlight draining the splendid windows, the jewels and the gold of all colour. Philip felt lumpen, solid, fleshy.
Philip put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. ‘It’s gone. What of that?’
Her face was pale. ‘It will be back when it gets what it wants from you,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘What God always wants of the faithful. What He wanted of His son on the cross.’
‘What?’
‘Blood,’ she said, ‘and plenty of it. Prepare to invade England. And kill the boy.’
Philip nodded. ‘The angel was plain. Charles is a servant of the Devil and must die.’
9
The demon flew out of the circle like a blast of sparks from the mouth of a furnace. Many things came out of the circle, things of light and smoke, things with wings that rustled like paper or ground like stone, there and gone in an instant, things that crawled and crept, serpents, frogs, five-headed, scuttling, a boy with eyes burned to nothing. A woman, her head plumed with feathers as if she were some sort of bird ran shrieking into the night.
‘Tell me how to find this banner!’ shouted Pole. He was up on his feet, clenching his fists like a two-year-old in a fit.
The demon, its coals burning, turned to him. ‘Look into your heart.’
His hand reached forward into Pole’s chest, tearing through the rib cage, pulling out the pulsing heart. He put it to his mouth, and squeezed its juice from it as easily as from a ripe orange. Arigo was on the fiend from behind, stuffing the hair of the saint into its mouth, stabbing at the creature’s back with his knife. He fell away from it screaming, his body consumed by fire.
Edwin jumped towards Dowzabel. He dribbled powder from his pouch, recompleting the circle from the inside, grabbing the parchments and putting them at the edge. Bardi leapt over the powder to cling to the boy.
‘You can command him – you send him back,’ said Bardi, pricking his knife into the back of Dow’s neck. All around their feet creatures seemed to pour from the earth, hemmed in by the circle.
The demon turned to face them. ‘I would leave the circle if I were you, my friends, for what comes inside will not look on you kindly.’
The priest made the sign of the cross. Bardi held up a piece of bloodied cloth. Orsino, outside the circle and without its protection from the demon, displayed his piece of sacking.
‘Send them back, boy, send them now or I will kill you!’ said Bardi.
As the knife jabbed at his neck, Dowzabel felt weak, faint. Little demons, things in the form of cockroaches and rats but monstrously deformed, many-legged, many-headed, were crawling all over him. A little girl, her face eaten by leprosy, stroked his hair.
It was unbearable, even for someone who believed in the salvation that Hell had to offer. He had to keep his faith, he had to believe. He remembered Abbadon, next to him on the moor, holding him by the fire, tending Dowzabel in his agony after they’d cut his tongue. ‘Let me tell you about Hell,’ he’d said.
So Dowzabel knew what was coming out of the first gate – demons, lesser angels chained to an earthly form, taking what they could from ashes and coals or the insects that crawled in the earth or the bodies of devils they had killed in war. Coming too were the lost, Dow’s own people, the souls of the poor and downtrodden. Still, he could not bear to look at them, their fly-eaten eyes, their diseased lips. Worms were all around his feet, spiders, crawling things, a baby starved to nothing but pulling at his leg. He thought he would go mad but he had to endure. If Hell’s gate was open then salvation was near; this was the army of liberation, seething from the floor, pushing against the invisible barrier of the holy dust. He had to bear it. The fallen angels would liberate them, fight God, break His curse, throw off their twisted bodies and return to the world of light.
Then there was the sense of something else, something terrible. Smoke was all around him. He had a feeling of a great weight on his chest, his ears were dull as if he had plunged to the bottom of a pool. His nose began to bleed once more, and his mouth was full of the taste of iron.
‘It is here. It is here. The gate has been open long enough. Close the gate now, Dow. Close the gate!’ The fire demon was reaching towards him.
Dow was finding it difficult to think. His thoughts seemed unwieldy things and he had that sensation from a dream where a simple action seems impossible to complete.
‘Close the gate. The worst of Hell is close. Do not risk freeing him!’ The demon spoke again, its voice hissing like a smith’s iron plunging white hot into water.
All the little creatures in the circle chirped and shrieked in agitation.
Dow still had the key in his hand as creatures swarmed all over him, all over Bardi and Edwin. He saw a monstrous cockroach on his arm, a head at either end. He pitied it, the poor soul forced to take its form from the offcuts of creation.
‘Forbid these things from harming us!’ Bardi’s knife was drawing blood. ‘Tell them to go back!’ Dowzabel’s fist was curled tight around the key but Edwin’s fingers prised his hand open and took it.
Orsino stood in front of the demon, waving his sword, screaming that it had killed his friend. The demon ignored him, so Orsino swung a blow at its head. The sword went straight through it and emerged the other side in a burst of ashes, as if the demon’s body had no substance at all.
‘Fight me! Fight me!’ shouted Orsino, ‘you who killed Arigo!’
‘I will not fight you.’
‘Why not?’
‘You are not of God. Lucifer heard your curse echoing across all Hell when your family died and now Free Hell has claimed you. We have uses for you, Condottiere.’
The words seemed to stun the man. He sank to his knees, crossing himself, shouting out that he hadn’t meant what he had said, that his mind had been disordered by grief, that he would do penance and go on crusade.
Dow spoke to the demon with his mind. What am I to do? Don’t leave me with these men. Stay and talk to me, soft demon.
‘Do what they say and you will have nothing to fear from them. Find the banner. Free Hell charges you with that.’
Where shall I look?
‘I cannot tell, but there is a phrase on the wind. Can you not hear it?’
A wind was springing up, stirring the ashes, stirring the parchments.
I hear nothing.
The demon put his hand to his ear. ‘The king in the east.’
Dow sank to his knees. Looming before him through the smoke was a man, richly dressed but his face flayed. His coat was torn away at one arm and Dow saw he had writing of some sort down it. His neck bore an ugly wound all around it and a strange lacing through the wound. It looked as though he had his head tied on by twine. Bardi screamed when he saw the man, his legs doing a little back and forth as he tried to decide whether to leap out of the circle and face the fire demon or remain in the circle and face the bizarre figure that was materialising in front of him. Dow choked and spat. The demons in the circle scrabbled and screamed to be free. ‘A devil! A devil. He comes for us! Let us fly!’ A hand groped from the smoke to grab at Bardi. The rich man let Dow go and frantically stabbed at the creature’s arm with his dagger.
‘You!’ said the devil. ‘You played me most false, banker!’ It grabbed the dagger arm.
‘It’s trying to drag me to Hell! It’s trying to drag me to Hell!’ screamed Bardi.
‘Quickly!’ said the fire demon, ‘He cannot be allowed through! Close the gate!’
Another devil appeared – a monstrous head on a pair of legs, stuffing the tiny demons into its mouth. Dow recognised the face – it was that of the priest who had cut his tongue. Dow was stiff with fear. He remembered that so clearly – the bleak summer, so far from home, the Plymouth sea front, grey on grey, and the shears on his tongue. He’d thought he would die, drown on his own blood. That priest’s face was in front of him now, leering through darkness. ‘You speak like a serpent, so you shall have a serpent’s tongue,’ he’d said.
They’d let him go then and he’d gone – back to the Devil’s Men, back to find Nan’s body on that sparse hill, to call the others to it to make a fire of heather and gorse and return her to the light of which she was made. He’d vowed as he’d watched her burn that the priest would come to regret letting him go. The Devil’s Men had finally got him coming back from Lostwithiel. He’d died too quick for Dow’s liking.
Dow felt faint at the memories. He had a sense of a gate or a door through which the devil who had grabbed Bardi was summoning the courage to pass. He could not let it. Bardi howled and screamed.
‘Release me! Release me! I never played you false!’
I close the gate! thought Dow.
‘In whose name?’ A voice in his mind.
He could think of no demon’s name, his thoughts drowned by an inner scream.
In mine. In Dowzabel’s. I close the gate to Hell.
The scraping, that terrible noise. The devil released its grip on the rich man. Everyone put their hands to their ears but Dowzabel, hands still tied, was forced to bear it.
Bardi fell to the floor, clutching his arm and howling.
‘When the gate opens again, I will be waiting!’ The voice was tormented, distant.
‘Give me the boy!’ the demon bellowed.
Edwin all but threw Dow over the powder of the circle. Dowzabel could not stand, he was so exhausted, so cold and so frightened and his ankle would not support his weight.
Help me! Dow screamed with his mind.
The demon stretched forward a burning finger to the wound on Dow’s chest. Dow felt a searing pain and flinched away, howling in agony. Exactly where the priest had branded him, the demon had burned him again.
‘You will help yourself. We who are now free have work to do.’
You have betrayed me! You have burned me. You are the same as the men of Îthekter!
But the demon didn’t seem to hear him. It folded its arms over its chest. ‘I go to pursue Free Hell’s destiny; I have places to go, bad men to see.’
The wind stirred the ashes of the demon’s body and it began to blow away, stripping him to nothing until he was no more than a trail of sparks flying into the night sky.
Bardi kicked a gap in the circle of powder and the remaining little creatures that surrounded them blew out, flowing up towards the black sky like so much smoke.
Edwin collapsed, sitting back on the rim of the crater.
Bardi stumbled over to the ravaged bodies of Pole and Arigo. His arm was a tattered mess and he held it close against his body, wincing with pain even as he spoke.
