Son of the Night

by Mark Alder

  It was late summer and should have been harvest time, but the fields were overgrown with poppies, red among the barley like the flames of Hell spouting up through the fields. Even the roads were difficult going, the pilgrim ways having fallen into disuse – too many bandits, too few people left to travel them.

  Would the earth ever recover? Would one day a noble sit beneath the shade of his castle, watching his sons tilt, hearing Mass sung from his chapel, watching his peasants collect the harvest, all as it should be, under God?

  She flew the Three Lions of England, along with the Cross of St George, but she would not allow the whip banner. The first two insignia were enough to terrify anyone who might stand in their way; she needed no more.

  Through broken villages, through fields of hives thick with bees fat on their own honey. Some of her men smoked out and split a hive and they dined well on honey that night, but the land seemed alien and strange to her. This is what war does, this is what pestilence does. Even at the height of the Plague there was still human noise in such places – church bells, funeral drums, lamentation, drunkenness, even. Here, nothing. The buzz of the bee in the meadow, the song of the thrush and, at night, the chirping of numberless insects.

  They followed the River Loing and, having passed through many deserted villages, they came to one that they thought must be Gâtinais. They were wrong. The church records showed it to be the village of Moret. Death had hollowed this place out, Philippa could see by the number of dead, and it had never regenerated. From the burnt houses and the looted church she saw that routiers had come through here too.

  She felt ashamed of what had been done under the name of England and put her hand on the altar of the church to vow: ‘I will make this right. I will restore and heal this land.’

  A few more days of fruitless searching and then they came upon the town of Grez. It had more people in it, though it quickly drew its gates to prevent access. A parley and the inhabitants directed them to Gâtinais, but not before extracting an oath that the knights would not try to break in. They followed the Loing, running its slow green course. Kingfishers flashed on the bank, a blink of orange flame that flipped blue in the flap of a wing. A hawk worked the fields above her, turning lazy circles.

  At her side, the young knights knew better than to ask what they were doing.

  It was nearly dusk when she came to the village – just in the crook of the river, as the townsmen of Grez had said. It had been a pretty place, once, she guessed, though now the streets were overgrown with brambles. It had escaped the attentions of the routiers, apparently, for nothing was burnt or broken in, beyond what the weather had done to the odd piece of thatch or strawbuilt house. The fields were alive with hare, rabbits and fowl; fig trees lined the avenues. An orchard shone with ripening apples and pears, and vines were heavy with grapes. The whole earth, waiting for man to be born, she thought.

  A pretty church sat at the centre of the village. She crossed herself. This was where it was said to have begun, where the Plantagenet line’s connection to the devil was first revealed. The old count of Anjou, ancestor of all the Plantagenets, had forced his wife to Mass. She had revealed herself as a devil and flown off through the church window, carrying her children with her.

  The sun dipped low over the golden fields that shone like a rich cloth. From inside the church she heard the Vespers bells ringing. Someone was in there. Her knights forced a way down the overgrown street towards the church and she followed. There were signs that someone had come and gone from the church, at least occasionally – a track through the deep grass, the bones of animals and birds at the door, a burnt patch with an improvised spit next to it.

  The bells stopped ringing and a knight led her into the church. The man gasped as he stepped inside. So did she.

  At the opposite end was the most magnificent window she had ever seen, lit by the falling sun. The altar was at the wrong end, she thought – the west. What kind of odd place was this? They had never had such a thing in England nor in Hainault.

  The window showed a knight rendered in the most vibrant colours of stained glass. He held his sword aloft, his other hand pointing to Heaven to show from where he took his authority and inspiration. His face was dark and handsome and, as she recognised it, she crossed herself.

  ‘Mortimer!’ she said.

  Once he would have been her hated enemy. He had killed old King Edward and tried to use her husband, his son, as a puppet ruler. She would have called him usurper, overthrower, tyrant. Now. No. Had she but known it, he was trying to save her.

  A noise from her left. From the bell tower came a low man, his beard and hair long, nearly naked. He started when he saw her, his eyes like a deer’s that hears a sound in the wood.

  The knight beside her pecked towards the floor with his finger to indicate the man should bow. He did, hesitantly.

  ‘Go,’ said Philippa to her men.

  ‘Lady, this is a wild man. I cannot guarantee your safety.’

  Philippa said nothing, just allowed a royal brow to rise. The man deferred, and the retinue left the church.

  ‘You have been restoring this window?’

  He said nothing, just looked at the floor.

  ‘I think you have made a different picture to the one that was there before.’

  He tried to speak, stammering, but either could not shape the words or was too afraid to be able to speak them.

  Philippa approached the window. The colours were so deep, she had never seen anything like them. Each shade suggested something so much more – the blue was the blue of a summer night and it recalled the spangled stars, the brilliant moon, the hoot of owl and the song of the nightingale. The red was the colour of rubies, of throne rooms and blood. She recalled her husband, Edward, in his might, splitting heads at Crécy, she nervous on the hill.

  Yellow recalled the corn fields, the wheat bowed by the winds, alive and thrusting in the rain. Purple the robes of royalty, her first day in England and the robe they brought her. Green was Windsor, the trees and the pond in the sunlight, a frog on a lily that she could not recall if she had seen or imagined.

  The idiot, the low man, touched her. She almost leapt. Such an imposition was so unthinkable she hardly knew what to do. But when he held out his hand, she knew what he wanted.

  She reached within her purse and dug out the fragment of glass. The idiot crossed himself, knelt, extended his hand. In the window’s brilliant colours there was one chink of pinky white sunlight, a tiny imperfection in the blue of the knight’s eye. The blue fragment itself was bright now, as if lit from within by its own sunset, otherworldly and unseen. She dropped it into the idiot’s hand.

  He took it, stood and ascended the scaffold. Philippa watched as he took the glowing blue shard and placed it in the knight’s eye.

  The colours of the window burned so bright she had to look away. The scaffolding fell away and the idiot cried out as he fell with it. The window shattered, falling to shards about her feet.

  He stood before her, just as he had been in the window, a thing made of colour, a stained glass image come to life but real, moving. He laid his sword across his hands and presented it to her.

  ‘I am Mortimer, scourge of the Plantagenets, enemy of devils, come back to earth to re-establish the kingdom of God. I am your servant.’

  The sword before her was the silver of a lake’s surface, its colours swimming and shining. He was as bright as the dawn.

  She touched the sword. It was cold, and a tingle shot through her.

  ‘England must be cleansed,’ she said.

  ‘And France, from the sea to the mountains. This is God’s will.’

  ‘God will cleanse France Himself. My son will be dead on Poitiers field by now.’

  ‘Not so, Lady. Isabella fell at Poitiers.’

  ‘Is Satan here on earth?’

  ‘I cannot tell. God granted me only the moment of her death with her.’

  Philippa swallowed. What had happened at Poitier
s?

  Her men were in the church, bending their knees before Mortimer, thinking perhaps he was an angel. With Edward entranced the Black Prince was the ruler – all the men of England at his side, the might of Hell too.

  She had thirty loyal men and Mortimer to cleanse all of England, perhaps even France too, if the battle at Poitiers had gone to the English. A terrible thought rose up in her, terrible but irresistible. God’s will, for sure. With Edward under her command, she would be ruler of England, banisher of devils, establisher of a true line. She looked at Mortimer, the perfect, radiant knight. If he were to kill her husband no one could say God did not wish it so. She must have one more child in her, she thought, that would descend from the line God had chosen, a half-angel to rule, not the halfdevils she had served like a brood mare.

  A noise above the church.

  She went outside with her men, Mortimer beside her.

  Every one of her knights fell to kneeling, crossing themselves for protection.

  The sky above was black with devils, flying north-west on wings of leather, skin and stone. Flying to Calais? Flying perhaps even to England. She had never seen so many. The sun itself disappeared beneath the flapping mass.

  ‘These are the last days!’ said a knight.

  ‘Then rejoice,’ said Philippa. ‘For we are on God’s side. To Calais and to England. Death to devils! Let us herald the kingdom of God.’

  But even as she spoke, her words were drowned by the sound of the beating wings.

  Now the Son of the Night, his tale is done He is king and France his dominion But here lies not the end of our story For Lucifer comes on clouds of glory

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © Mark Alder 2017

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Mark Alder to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  This eBook first published in 2017 by Gollancz.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 575 11520 0

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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