A Crowning Mercy 02 Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwall

  'It seems everyone was wrong. My father, you, Scrimgeour, me.' She shrugged. She remembered Culloden pleading in the stable yard. 'He was a weak man, uncle.'

  'And now you've found yourself a strong one?' He smiled at her.

  She did not want to talk about the Gypsy. She half suspected that Achilles had arranged to be alone with her, but she was in no mood to be lectured about her birth and responsibilities. She changed the subject. 'I'm sorry about your Meissen. It was the best present and they broke it.'

  He waved a hand in dismissal. 'There's always more Meissen, dear Campion. I shall flood you with it. I'm sorry about the statue.'

  She laughed. 'You're forgiven for that.'

  Two swans flew over the Castle, turned, their great wings touched pink by the setting sun and then, riding the air on spread feathers, they glided down to seethe onto the still water of the lake. Achilles watched them. 'I think God made swans in one of his better moments.' He smiled at her. 'Why were you never presented at court?'

  The sudden question surprised her. 'I never wanted to be.'

  'Every other girl was!'

  She laughed. She hated London, hated the court, and had never wished to line up with the other nubile daughters of the aristocracy to shuffle across the floor and curtsey to the King, all the while being ogled by the courtiers. 'Father called it the Royal Fatstock Auction. He gave me a choice and I chose not to go. And I've not regretted it, uncle.'

  'When were you last in London?'

  She frowned. 'Three years? Maybe four.'

  He tutted. 'You really should go into society, dear niece.'

  She laughed. 'I am a widow since this morning, uncle, and already you are trying to marry me to some lord.'

  He blew a smoke ring and watched it drift towards the window. 'How about the Prince of Wales?' She laughed and he frowned. 'I'm serious!'

  'Uncle!'

  'I think I could bear having a niece as the Queen of England.'

  'I'm sure the Queen of England could bear having you as an uncle, but it will not be me, I promise you that.'

  'He'll fall at your feet. Rumours of your beauty have reached London, you know.'

  'You're embarrassing me.' She sipped her tea. 'I really can't believe that you want to marry me off so quickly. You'll forgive me if I say that your last suggestion did not turn out entirely happily?'

  He shrugged. 'I beat about the bushes, isn't that what the English say?' He laughed at himself. 'I merely suggest to you, dear niece, that you can marry the very highest in the land.'

  She made a wry face at him. 'As against the lowest?'

  He shrugged. 'Your words, my dear, not mine.'

  'I am not thinking of marriage, uncle.' She said it tartly.

  'No.' The smoke from his cigar wafted through the window. He sighed. 'You're in love, though. I can see it. I warned you against it, but you wouldn't listen. You think that nothing matters in all creation but one other person, as if all this,' he waved his hand to encompass the whole planet, 'was made as a shrine simply for two people.'

  He had spoken with unnatural vehemence. She looked at him. 'Is there anything wrong with being in love?'

  He nodded. 'I have known some of the great men of this world, my dear Campion. I have watched them plot and plan and calculate their every move, I have seen them tread the dangers of power with exquisite skill, I have admired them! And then I have seen them in love! No calculation, no plotting, no care, no plan, no wisdom, just a lust that tugs them like blind fools into misery. Why?' He frowned at her. 'Why, when we are so clever, do we allow this one decision, this one most important decision, be governed by the same emotion that drives a boar onto a sow?'

  She smiled, but her voice was cold. 'Uncle, I don't think I want to talk of love this night.'

  'No.' He tapped ash into a bowl. 'I didn't think you would. So talk of something else. Talk of the Fallen Angels.' He said their name with pure scorn.

  At dinner she and Skavadale had told Achilles of all that had happened, all that Culloden had said. Only one thing had she held back, and that with difficulty; the news that Toby still lived. She had wanted to shout that news from the rooftop, but Skavadale had been adamant. No one must know.

  Achilles smiled. The Fallen Angels! What a piquant name! It amuses me how grown men like such stupidities. The Illuminati! The Fallen Ones! Lucifer! Moloch! Belial!' He laughed. 'How apt that they chose my father's shrine! A place built by a madman for their lunacy. But have you thought that there might be method in their madness?'

  'Method?'

  'They want you dead. What better place to kill you than in France?'

  She stared at him. 'I don't know what you're saying.'

  'Oh, but you do. No one, dear Campion, has ever said you were a fool, but are you as clever as you think? They trapped you before, didn't they?' He blew another smoke ring and watched it drift away. They trapped you. They arranged for a man to attack you and they sent you a lord on horseback, a sword in his hand. What chance did you have? Every kitchenmaid dreams of such things! He rode straight into your life, all the doors magically opened by his seeming bravery!' He looked at her almost mockingly. 'Have they done it again?'

  'No, uncle.'

  'Have they sent you a man more handsome than the devil? Sent you a man who could break any woman's heart. Let her fall in love, let her have the sun and the moon! Let the stars be jewels in her eyes! Send her the Gypsy!'

  'No!'

  'It was all so convenient, dear Campion! He just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Not a moment too late! At the last second, when Lewis is tearing the clothes from you, a tall, handsome Gypsy rides to your rescue.' Achilles made a gesture of wonder. 'Does it not sound familiar? Twice? The kitchenmaids would envy you! But are you so blind that you can't see that these things do not happen by chance! Once, maybe, but twice?'

  She stared at him, shook her head. 'He killed Lewis. He killed three other men!'

  'And when Lewis rescued you, dear Campion, he killed his own man too. The parallels, my lovely niece, are horribly precise.'

  'No!'

  Achilles let her protest echo and fade. He sighed. 'Tomorrow, he says, he goes to see Lord Paunceley?'

  'Yes.' She was miserable.

  'We don't even know that he knows Lord Paunceley!' He looked at her. 'I think I shall go with him.'

  'Go with him?'

  'He claims he works for Paunceley. His Monstrous Lordship has never mentioned him to me.' Achilles shrugged, as though that might not be entirely surprising. 'But this is a plot against us! Against our family. It's our relatives who die, Campion, not Paunceley's. So I shall go with your Gypsy and I will find out if he does know Paunceley, and I shall find out if that depraved monster supports your Gypsy in wanting you to go to France.'

  'But I won't go anyway!'

  'Not even for love? Not for a love put there by the Illuminated Ones? The Fallen Angels?'

  'I won't go!'

  'You'd be a fool to go.' He said it tartly. 'Remember I have my own shadowy friends in Lord Paunceley's world. Do nothing, dear Campion, till I find out who this Gypsy is.'

  She nodded. 'I will do nothing, uncle.'

  He reached a hand to her and patted her arm. 'I am sorry if I have made you sad, dear niece.'

  She shook her head. 'You haven't.'

  'Oh but I have!' He gestured and the candlelight caught the dark red stone of his episcopal ring. 'Lovers have such a propensity for sadness, it is as essential to them as happiness. Only intensity of emotion convinces them that love is real. They cannot settle for contentment, oh no! It has to be the peaks of ecstasy or the chasms of melancholy, and they never understand that to throw up everything for one moment's joy is to risk an eternity of boredom.' He smiled. 'I feel a preaching mood coming upon me; I shall be quiet.'

  She said nothing. The darkness spread from the east, a velvet, soft darkness on Lazen. Lucifer still lived and she knew, staring into the enfolding night, that while he lived there would be
no peace in this valley.

  'A game of chess, dear niece?'

  She played, but her mind was elsewhere. She had thought that the Gypsy's swift sword had cut the tendrils that wrapped about Lazen, that he had defeated her enemies, but now it seemed that the man she would love could be the man who had been sent just to make her love. Love tore her, love tormented her, love drove her.

  She advanced her black knight. Achilles sighed and took it with his bishop. The small horseman, sword raised, went from the board and her queen was threatened. She could not win. She was in love, and love's misery, on this night of victory, engulfed her.

  Chapter 19

  Lady Campion Lazender, she refused to allow anyone to address her as Lady Culloden, had an overwhelming desire to tell Simon Stepper, bookseller of Lazen, to have a bath. It would be too hurtful, she decided, so instead she opened the upwind library windows and sat on the low, cushioned sill. 'Did you discover anything, Mr Stepper?'

  'I'm rather proud to say I did, yes!' He laughed to himself, a habit he had caught over the lonely years of sitting in his dusty shop waiting for customers. He pulled his bag of books onto the table and settled himself happily in a chair. He wore a scarf summer and winter which he twitched now to dust the cover of a large leather volume. 'Do you have the Tractatus by the Abbe Ferreau?'

  'No,' Campion said.

  'A mere four guineas, your Ladyship, and I could leave it now?' He peered hopefully over his spectacles.

  'Of course.' She smiled.

  'Splendid, indeed!' He laughed. 'Well, now, I've marked the places. His Latin is execrable, not what one would expect of the Roman Church, dear me, no! Would you care to look?' He pushed the open book towards her.

  Campion kept her judicial distance. 'Please, Mr Stepper, I had rather you told me.'

  'Of course. Well then, let me see, let me see!' He pulled the book towards him. He wore gloves that had the tops of the fingers cut off. The pages of the book crackled as they turned. 'Illuminati. Founded by a man called Weishaupt, Adam Weishaupt of Ingolstadt. I was there once, my Lady, many years back. I seem to remember a very fine Polyglot Bible, the Plantin, of course. Very fine. Beyond my humble means, of course, but…'

  'Mr Stepper?'

  'What? Oh, of course!' He laughed. 'How very wayward of me, indeed yes. We spoke of the Illuminati?'

  'We did.' She had asked Simon Stepper, the man whose mind ranged extraordinary distances in the confines of his book stacks, to discover what he could about the Illuminati.

  He turned a page. 'Of course the Abbe Ferreau is not, I think, the most reliable of authorities? A mere gossiper, my Lady, and his Latin is bad, most bad, doggish indeed.' He laughed. 'One might expect such Latin at Cambridge, but not in the Roman Church, indeed, no. Ah! He says, my Lady, and you will forgive a free translation?'

  'Of course.'

  He peered at her over his smeared spectacles. 'Although I daresay that even my humble translation will be an improvement on the original!' He laughed. 'Doggish indeed. Woof, woof. Dear me! Where were we?'

  'The Illuminati?' She hid a smile.

  'So we were. So we were.' He put a filthy fingernail on a line, frowned, and adopted the solemn, portentous voice he thought appropriate to the written word. 'They aim to establish and, let me think, propagate? Yes, propagate a new religion, my Lady, which is based on enlightened reason! Ah! They think they know what that is, do they? Dear me! Where was I? Yes. They wish to establish a universal and democratic republic, dear me! They aim to overthrow the existing church and governments of the world!' He leaned back, shaking his grey head. 'Ferreau may be wrong, of course.'

  'I think not,' Campion said quietly.

  Stepper had not heard her. 'On the other hand you must remember that Weishaupt started the movement in 1776!'

  She frowned. '1776?'

  'The Americans, my Lady? The rebel Washington?'

  'Of course.'

  'A bad year! Indeed so. Nothing will come of it, of course. The red men will drive them into the sea and that will be that!' He shook his head and tutted. 'I believe there's a fine press in Philadelphia, I saw a very satisfying Ovid. Very sad, very sad.' He reflected on the coming cataclysm in America until Campion, helping the breeze with one of the fans left over from the wedding, gently took him back to the Illuminati.

  'Yes! Of course! Dear me!' He fished in his bag and produced another book. 'You have Balthazar Bleibacht's Discourses, my Lady?'

  'Not to my knowledge.'

  'Three guineas?'

  She smiled. 'Of course.'

  'Splendid, splendid! Not that I know much of Bleibacht. Execrable printing, of course, I never did like black letter. Still, he has something to say, let me see, let me see. Here it is!' He took a feather from the page. 'The Illuminati, he says, are believers in Illuminism. I always wonder why Germans have to state the obvious. Let me see now. The possession of an inner light! That makes sense, what else does he think Illuminism is if it isn't that, eh? He says they're very secret. Ferreau concurs in that. Highly organized! They need to be! Overthrow the world's governments indeed!' He laughed. 'What else now, let me see, let me see. Ah yes! Bleibacht says they believe that the ends justify any means! Any!' He tutted.

  It all made sense to Campion. A secret movement devoted to republicanism and the overthrow of established monarchies. A movement of ruthless purpose. Behind her she heard wheels on the gravel of the driveway. The harvest was coming in, the wains loaded with grain. 'Do the books say if the movement has spread to England?'

  'No.' Stepper was polishing his spectacles on the end of his scarf. 'They merely say, my Lady, that it started in Germany, was driven south by the German Princes, and found a home in France. That's hardly astonishing, I suppose. Any lunatic can find a home there these days. Thomas Paine, indeed!' He chuckled at another private jest as he turned back to the Tractatus. 'Ah! Ferreau says that they're very strong in Italy.'

  'Italy?'

  'Indeed, yes. Ah! Here we are! A statement of purpose, no less.' He laughed to himself, twitched the scarf closer about his neck, and frowned as he translated for her. 'To deliver the peoples of the world from the tyranny of priests and kings!' He tutted. 'Whatever next! Extraordinary people!'

  A new voice startled both of them, a voice of harsh ugliness and loud confidence. The voice was rude, sudden, and mysterious. 'Extraordinary indeed!'

  The shouted words made Campion lean forward and she saw, at the library door, a man more ugly than she could imagine. An old man with a malevolent, leathery face beneath an ancient, filthy wig. A man with a small head that seemed to quest about the room on an unnaturally long neck. A man whose mouth seemed lipless and eyes lidless, a man of reptilian menace. He was wrapped in a great cloak. He pushed the helpless, protesting footman aside and walked further into the library. 'Cagliostro. Mesmer. Laclos. The Anarchasis Clootz, Restif de la Bretonne, and let us not forget the Count Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, now secretary of a Revolutionary Committee in Paris. All extraordinary!' He stopped. He glared at her. 'I presume you are the Lady Campion Lazender?'

  She stood. Her voice was icy. 'I am. And you, sir?'

  'Paunceley, of course.' He nodded to her in what she supposed was meant to be a bow. 'And who in Christ's name are you?' He pointed a finger at Stepper.

  The bookseller smiled. 'Stepper, Simon, sir. Bookseller.'

  'You stink, but you're right. They are extraordinary people. The Illuminati indeed! Cagliostro's a crook, Mesmer's a fraud, Laclos is a fool, Clootz is a clown, de la Bretonne a pornographer, and de Sade!' He pulled a chair from beneath the table and sat. His ugly face looked at Campion and his mouth twitched with amusement. 'De Sade, my Lady, requires his valet to sodomize him while he tups whores. I tell you not to cause offence, but to satisfy your evident curiosity. You have finished with this man Stepper Simon?'

  She was offended, not by his words, but by his manner. She felt more than offence, she felt awed by him. He had come into the room as if he had a perfect right to dic
tate to her, and he took for granted that she would know his power and influence. Yet she would not be cowed by him. 'My business with Mr Stepper is not concluded, my Lord.'

  'Then I shall wait for your attention.' He took a book from his pocket and Stepper, his professional interest aroused, leaned over the table.

  Lord Paunceley gave the bookseller a ghastly smile. 'The "Riche Heures de Madame la Dauphine". Illustrated. Twenty-five guineas.'

  Simon Stepper blushed.

  Campion tried to ignore Lord Paunceley, smiling at the bookseller instead. 'You found out more, Mr Stepper?'

  But Simon Stepper had been flustered by Lord Paunceley's sudden appearance. He shook his head nervously. 'Indeed not, my Lady'

  Lord Paunceley laughed harshly. 'Then go, bookseller! I need her Ladyship's attention!'

  She turned on him. 'My Lord! You have refused to answer any of my letters. You come here unannounced, and you presume to give orders where you have no authority. I would be obliged if you would desist!'

  He looked at her with feigned astonishment. Slowly, his cloaked shoulders heaving, he began to chuckle. He pointed at her. 'That's it! Attack an old man! Would you like to hit me? Shall I get you a pistol to shoot me with? You!' He twisted round to the footman who still stood in the doorway. 'You!'

  'Sir?' The footman was as terrified as the bookseller.

  'Before her Ladyship slaughters me I would like some tea and a fire lit. Quick, man! I may not have long to live.' He looked back to Campion. 'I have taken the unpardonable liberty of ordering a fire in my bedroom. Christ in his insane heaven, but it's cold!'

  'It's the warmest autumn for years!'

  'That's it! Bully me! I'm just an old man so you can bully me! I prayed, I hoped, I begged for the winter of my years to be peaceful, but I must be insulted by mere children. You!' He pointed at Stepper. 'You're still here! Your stink offends me! Go!'

  'Mr Stepper!' Campion checked the bookseller's flight. She was tempted to order him to stay, but something warned her that she should not oppose Lord Paunceley yet. Besides, it would be a relief to get the odorous bookseller safely into Lazen's open air. 'I shall see you from the Castle.'