Son of the Night

by Mark Alder

  Osbert’s stomach kicked. He had done nothing but drink for so long.

  ‘Why are you so bold, to hunt in the king’s forest?’ Through his hangover, another more important thought occurred to him. ‘Why am I here, talking to you? If we’re discovered, I’ll be tarred with the same brush as you.’

  ‘What king?’ said the man. ‘Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘No,’ said Osbert. ‘I’ve been pretty much rolling around in the street, drunk as an owl, recently.’

  ‘The king is captured. Satan has come to earth, struck a pact with the English and carried him off to London.’

  ‘Well, that is a surprise,’ said Osbert, feeling that he might collapse.

  ‘Hell is open, and God is nowhere,’ said the man. ‘We’re all dead. All of us. The damned are spilling from Hell in a great army – murderers, thieves, all reborn and swarming all over the land. They won’t follow even Satan.’

  ‘If Hell is open, won’t we just pop back out again if we’re dead?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. My brother came up from the south, he says there’s a great army of them, all falling to bits. I wouldn’t want to come back like that.’

  ‘I have seen them,’ Osbert said. ‘The cemeteries are emptying. They are walking the streets. Are these the last days, do you think? Is God on His way?’

  ‘I wish He’d hurry up. Satan has come, that is sure.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Everyone says so.’

  ‘How did we lose?’

  ‘Orléans ran for it and the angels scarpered.’

  ‘They ran ?’

  ‘Disappeared to contemplate their own arseholes. One of them – one – could stop this tide of dead, but do they? Do they my fat bollocks !’

  ‘Are all the royals captured?’

  ‘Who am I? Herald? I don’t know. John is taken to London, Satan with him.’

  Osbert thought. Satan must still be banned from France or the English would be marching on Paris with him at the head. So John was alive and maintaining the ban. Or his son was king, or one of his sons. But the damned, the dead, were traitors to God, not His servants. They could not be commanded. But they might be led. Satan was free. That meant he had fulfilled the bargain, however indirectly, that Simon Pastus had struck with him. He was free from Hell for ever. But so were the rotting dead all around him. Was that his destiny? Such, he thought, were the bargains of devils.

  He looked about him, the trees of the wood falling, fires in the streets of Paris, anarchy. When the great army of the damned arrived, he feared for the people. At that moment the dead seemed quite harmless, but who knew what might happen if they were allowed to roam ungoverned? The thought surprised him. He had habitually thought only of himself but he was beginning to see that his own prosperity and calm of mind depended rather on that of others – under the order of a king, of course; he was no Luciferian.

  His head was raw. What he needed was a ruler and an angel. As far as he recalled, there was one of each in Paris at that moment.

  He ran back into the city, to the first church he could find – a little chapel with one small blue glass window showing the mother Mary and the infant Jesus. The dead surrounded it, sitting among the burst graves, hugging and holding each other, looking around at a world free of fire and devils.

  The door of the church was locked but he hammered on it, calling out to be admitted, saying he was a living man come to return the dead to their graves. The door opened a crack and a timorous, pale priest looked out.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Osbert of Everywhere,’ he said. ‘Sorcerer to the king. Come to end this plague. Let me in.’

  The man, who could see that – whatever Osbert’s dilapidated state – he was at least alive, opened the door and Osbert slid within.

  Already the inside of the church was lit with candles, the fish stink almost unbearable. Ten or so people knelt before the altar in prayer.

  ‘What is happening?’ a woman said.

  ‘The Devil has come to earth,’ said Osbert. ‘The dead are walking the streets, the king is captured, the Dauphin is I know not where and all the angels are fled.’

  A great wail went up.

  ‘Let us not despair!’ said Osbert. ‘There may still be a way. Empty the font. Bring me the holy water. Any jewellery you have, pile it on the altar.’

  ‘You are a thief!’

  ‘I am your salvation!’

  Such was their terror that people did as he said. Of course, before they had fled to the church, the people had taken up their most valuable things and a good pile of rings and necklaces was deposited on the altar, along with a jewelled communion cup.

  ‘What are you trying to do?’

  ‘Call an angel.’

  ‘Only kings can do that!’

  ‘Not if it’s already here,’ said Osbert.

  He made a magic circle on the floor, inscribing it with the most secret names of God in the sacred alphabet of the Hebrews, delivered by God, sprinkling the circumference with holy water and holy oil.

  ‘Have you better candles than these?’ he asked the priest.

  ‘Only for the most special occasions.’

  ‘Well, what in the name of Christ’s hot spunk is this?’

  The priest, his hair fairly ruffled by Osbert’s outburst, went to a side cupboard and produced two tall honeycomb candles. Osbert lit them in his circle and began his invocation.

  ‘First angel of God, Iao, and you, Michael, who rule Heaven’s realm, hear me, archangels of Olympus, Abraxas delighting in the dawn, hear me, gracious ones who view sunset from the dawn.’

  ‘By the fire and the water.’ He rattled the jug of holy water. ‘By the air and the earth, I command you. By God who is called by His ineffable name, Adonai El Elyom, who is Jah, Yod, He, Waw, He. Speak to your sister Asbeel and let her attend us here.’

  Osbert felt sick and desperate. He had slept, drunk, for more than a month and in that time the world had fallen further than he imagined possible. He felt oddly responsible. Should he not have clung on to the keys? If Hell was open, then it was his fault.

  He repeated the words, uttered the nonsense phrases he had learned when a captive of the mad Edwin, phrases incomprehensible to the sorcerer but heard by angels. Hour after hour he kept going, his voice hoarse. A woman called him a fraud and told him to stop but another woman asked what other hope they had.

  The candles burned low and the church was full of smoke, the dead scraping at the door, Osbert imagined, for something to do.

  ‘Asbeel, angel who was trapped in Hell when the bright one fell. Asbeel, who inhabits the body of Blanche of Navarre, Abseel, who . . .’ He was running out of things that he knew this angel did.

  The light. The light in the jewels was brightening. Though most of what was on the altar was cheap stuff, the communion cup sparkled with rubies and now they lit up bright as fires on a dark hill.

  ‘By the secret names of God, by the . . .’

  The light in the church was bright now, lit by a powerful glow behind the church door that streamed through its cracks, around and beneath it.

  ‘Open it!’ said Osbert.

  The door was opened and there she was – Blanche of Navarre, the light shining from her.

  ‘Lady, angel,’ he said, ‘I have called you to save creation.’

  ‘You killed a king,’ she said.

  ‘And now I intend to make one in atonement. We will need to find your brother.’

  19

  Charles of Navarre had not been attended by his jailers for a number of days and was beginning to wonder why. Starving the king to death was hardly an option. A man with the capacity to catch and eat – and at least half enjoy – mice and rats could banquet himself well anywhere. Water was not a problem either, as there had been an amount of rain and he could lean out to one of Le Châtelet’s stone gargoyles to catch a good mouthful from its spout. In his former shape, of course, escape would have been no problem at all.
He would have shinned out of the window and climbed over the roof of the prison to go down to the ground.

  Now, however, only one half of his body was nimble and lithe. The other half, human, hardly co-ordinated with it at all. He was sure he would fall if he tried to climb.

  After a week or two, however, the attraction of throwing his shit out of the window began to wane and he considered at least trying to escape. He craned his head out of the window. Above him was a ledge. If he just shuffled out then he was sure he could pull himself up onto it. Then half of him could leap . . . No, there was a problem with that. He gazed out over the courtyard of Le Châtelet.

  A number of people were sitting around doing nothing much in particular. They looked like paupers – ragged clothes – but he was too far away to see much more about them.

  ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Hey!’

  Some of them looked up, others just stared ahead. ‘I am the king of Navarre. What is happening here?’ No reply.

  ‘Hello! Answer me! I will give you a coin!’

  He had only three left – sous, of little worth. He had been cut off from his men, his nobles, everyone, and had to pay all he had on him just to obtain a cell fit for no more than an earl.

  ‘I need no coins, sir.’ A voice came up, wet and rattly. ‘Well, what would you like?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  That was an answer Charles had never expected. Everyone knew what they wanted. Peasants, bread; everyone else, power and gold. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  ‘My needs have been few since I have been dead.’

  ‘You are dead?’

  ‘Yes. And newly returned from Hell with Satan.’

  Well, thought Charles, there is a development indeed. ‘Would you come and release me from this tower?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not ?’

  ‘If a king is in a tower, he is there because God wants him to be. I do not want to sit in this rotten body for ever. I want a way back to God. Out of Hell is not the same as in Heaven.’

  This , Charles said to himself, was the peasant attitude entire. You give and you give and you give more and still they want and want and want. Out of Hell not good enough. He lifted up his filthy tunic and looked at the stitches running up the middle of him. He poked his head back out of the window.

  ‘We’ve all got rotten bodies! Some of us don’t use it as an excuse for sitting on our arses expecting the world to hand them a living!’

  ‘I was a busy merchant,’ said the man. ‘But I loaned money to another at interest. For that they cut off my grasping hands and sewed them into my mouth every day and every night for ever.’

  ‘They should have left them there, you prattling dogscock!’

  He went back inside. Hell open, all law in Paris gone, no guards, the dead in the street. John had lost, he could see that. But had Edward really won? If so, where was he?

  All he had to do was to get out of the most secure jail in the kingdom.

  There was a knock at his door.

  ‘I am at prayer!’ he said. The last thing he wanted to look was desperate.

  ‘My Lord, it is me.’

  ‘Who ?’

  ‘Osbert, who sewed you up.’

  Charles put his human hand to his face, where the angel’s blood had burned him. His cat’s paw snicked out its claws.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I have a deal for you! Just open the door and I will give you the details.’

  ‘It’s a prison, you shit-brained tit! I can’t open the door. If I could, you would be drowning in your own blood.’

  ‘Gentle, My Lord, I pray you,’ said Osbert. ‘I will open this door and I have brought you a rare gift.’

  ‘I’ll give you a rare gift as soon as this is open,’ said Charles under his breath.

  ‘Stand back, My Lord.’

  Osbert did so. At the crack of the door a strong white light shone. It was torture to his cat’s eye and painful enough to his human one. He ducked down, fearing an explosion or the entrance of some sort of battering ram. Instead the door just blackened and glowed like a log in a fire, then it turned ash white and fell away to nothing. Before him stood his sister, radiant as the dawn; behind her, the cursed sorcerer. Charles went for him, claws drawn, but it was as if he hit another wall, just beyond the door.

  ‘Calm, good lord, calm,’ Osbert said. ‘I had anticipated such a reaction and so have used some of this good angel’s blood to form a circle. I would strike a bargain with you. A traditional, binding bargain between devil and sorcerer. Or rather a bargain with half of you. The other half can do what it likes.’

  Blanche stood smiling at him.

  ‘Sister, strike him,’ he said.

  ‘I cannot. He has called me and bound me by the names of God. He has offered me a return to the light.’

  ‘He can’t offer that!’

  ‘You can,’ said Osbert. ‘I want you to restore order to this world. Command the dead – let them live at peace with the living. Find a way to return them to God.’

  ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘Satan is in England, most sacrilegiously free from Hell. Return him, My Lord, or oppose and destroy him, thereby calling in the final days. Restore God and order to the land.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do, you miserable goat-headed, pig-dicked poltroon! I’ll rip out your guts and tie a bow around your neck with them!’

  ‘Then I will leave you here, devil.’ Osbert held up his hand. ‘I bind thee. In the name of God who made the world, in the name of Jehovah and in the presence of this angel, I bind thee.’

  Charles felt very strange indeed. His head spun and he wanted to be sick.

  ‘I bind thee by all the angels of the earth, by the holy blood of the martyrs, by the three names of God that are . . .’

  Osbert’s voice became indistinct.

  ‘This is an outrage,’ said Charles. ‘You cannot bind a king!’

  ‘But I can a cat!’ said Osbert.

  Blanche shone, beautiful and bright, the light of the summer sunset pouring over Charles.

  ‘Done?’ said Osbert.

  ‘Done,’ said Blanche.

  Osbert rubbed out the circle he had drawn by the door. Charles sprang at him, or at least his human hand did. His cat’s paw, however, came across to slash at it, forcing him to withdraw.

  Osbert smiled and bowed.

  ‘King of Navarre!’ he said. ‘Lord of the living and of the dead, let me escort you to your new kingdom.’

  He went out of the prison, up a flight of stairs.

  Charles followed him, fighting himself as he tried to punch the sorcerer. Blanche walked up beside, divine, floating almost.

  Osbert leant across the parapet of Le Châtelet, looking out over Paris.

  ‘See?’ he said. ‘See how the vast nations of the masterless dead await your command?’

  Charles peered out. The streets were teeming but the way that people walked was odd, purposeless. Some sat down for no good reason, others stood for no good reason.

  ‘This is your angel,’ said Osbert. ‘Yours to command as you will. Well, through me after I have bound her like I bound half of you with subtle magics and the names of God.’

  Charles looked at his sister.

  ‘How has she not enchanted you?’ he said.

  ‘My Lord, I don’t know. I knew one such half-angel before. She too liked me well enough, but did not enspell me. Use her to address your people.’

  Charles ran his tongue across the split in his lip.

  ‘Do you have the magic to renew me?’

  ‘I might. When you are king of France, you can command what you will. Saints’ bones, angels’ tears. We will find a way.’

  ‘Say what you must,’ said Charles to Blanche.

  She stood on top of a crenellation, perfectly balanced, her arms spread wide over the city far below her, and she shone, her light pouring out over the city like a dawn, like enormous wings that spread out to embrace
the whole world. When she spoke her voice was quiet but it sounded close by Charles’s ear.

  ‘Nation of the dead. Delivered from Hell and seeking God, know that a king has risen up, blessed of God and ready to lead you to him. Free from Hell, we will lead you to the Lord your master.’

  From all over the town they came, from all over the countryside too, running in on good legs, limping in on bad, bones rattling, flesh dripping: dead mothers carrying dead children, dead warriors clutching sharp spears, dead knights and priests and farmers, all coming to heed the angel’s call.

  Charles and Osbert watched them coming for a day. When they were assembled, packing the Île de la Cité in mighty array, Charles turned to Osbert.

  ‘This return to God. It can take as long as I like?’

  ‘The last days go on for thousands of years according to the Bible.’

  ‘Good. Because in the meantime . . .’

  Osbert bowed indulgently. ‘You have a rare army at your disposal.’

  ‘There is none other in the land?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  Charles went to the parapet.

  ‘I am king of France!’ he said. ‘King of the Dead! King of the Dead!’ The mighty host saluted him, bathed in the angel light.

  ‘I’ve won!’ said Charles. ‘I’m last man standing, I’ve won! Carry me to the Palace of the Louvre. I will make my enemies quake!’

  Osbert bowed, though it was a different sort of bow to the one he would normally have offered to a king. This was not that of a low subject, but more the kind of indulgent bow you might offer to a child to humour it.

  ‘Make way for the King of the Dead!’ shouted Osbert. Somehow he could not but help feel he was talking about himself.

  20

  Philippa made the church at Gâtinais under the heavy guard of thirty knights. No devil could accompany her, still excluded by the banishment of the king of France. The lands here had paid a terrible price for the blue sickness and the years of English looting. They were empty of people, empty of livestock, returning to how the earth must have looked when new and only Adam and Eve stood upon it.