The Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwell

Lord Paunceley relished the information. “He screamed?”

  “So they say, my Lord.”

  “I wager he screamed! I wager he soaked his royal breeches too.” Lord Paunceley smiled at the thought. “I would heartily like to see their execution machine work, Owen.”

  “I’m sure it could be arranged, my Lord.”

  “On fat George, you think?” Lord Paunceley chuckled evilly. “Damned Hanoverians! Why we have foreigners for Kings I do not know, and why we choose fat foreigners I cannot think, and why, of all the blubbery mad idiots in the world, we choose farmer George the God-damned bloody Third I have no idea. Doubtless you will report me now, Owen, and have the pleasure of watching my humble neck stretched in the noose?”

  Geraint Owen smiled. He was Lord Paunceley’s secretary, Lord Paunceley’s memory, Lord Paunceley’s admirer, and, to a certain point only, Lord Paunceley’s confidant. His Lordship, from his lavish Whitehall office, fought a secret war against Britain’s enemies about the globe. He did it, Owen thought, brilliantly, despite an avowed hatred of his King.

  Lord Paunceley leaned back in his chair. He wore a massive fur-lined cloak over his old, thin body, a cloak so big that, with his long neck and ugly questing head, it made him look uncannily like an ancient, malicious turtle. A fire roared in the hearth. Curtains and closed windows tried to shut out Whitehall’s winter drafts. “So tell me what that young fool Werlatton was doing in Paris. I didn’t send him to Paris. He’s a fool. I should have sent him to Wales, that would have been punishment.”

  Geraint Owen refused to take the bait. He was as thin as his master, with a shock of black, unruly hair that fell over his forehead. He gestured with Toby Lazender’s letter. “He went on private business, my Lord.”

  “Private business!” Lord Paunceley spat the words out. “His only private business is to unhook his breeches and give Lazen an heir. If he’s capable of it.”

  Geraint Owen forbore to remark that Lord Werlatton might well have done just that if only Lord Paunceley had not leapt at the chance to employ him. Men whose French was as fluent as their native English were rare in this service, rare and valuable. “He went to Paris, my Lord, to kill one of the men who killed his bride.”

  Lord Paunceley stared at Owen. On his Lordship’s face, wrinkled like old leather, there appeared an expression of mock astonishment. “God in His insane heaven! He went to kill a man who killed his bride?”

  Owen nodded. The Welshman had a manner of modest diffidence that he had learned as a charity scholar, yet the diffidence, as Paunceley knew, hid a sharp mind. Owen was the only man who could test Lord Paunceley at chess. His Welsh voice was soft and gentle. “He says, too, my Lord, that the French attempted to apprehend him.”

  “You can’t blame them,” Paunceley said reasonably. “Anyone with hair that red is asking for trouble.”

  “They had no cause, my Lord. We were not at war at the time, and they could not have known of this man Brissot’s death. It is his belief, my Lord,” and here Owen shrugged as though he did not fully believe what he had read in Toby’s letter, “that the French have a particular and peculiar interest in his household.”

  Lord Paunceley began to laugh; a croaking, hoarse, terrible sound that grew like the cackling of a strange bird. “He thinks what?”

  “He says, my Lord, that the death of his bride was particular. She was selected, not at random, but with precision. He cites his own experience in Paris. He claims that the names of his bride’s killers were given to him to lure him into captivity.” Owen gestured with the letter. “It’s all here.”

  “His brain’s addled. He must have Welsh blood.”

  “Most of the great families do, my Lord,” Owen observed mildly and with satisfaction. He was rewarded with a thin smile.

  “Go on.”

  Owen put the letter on his Lordship’s desk. “You did yourself warn us that the French, if war came, would be looking for a source of money within this country. Could they be trying to take Lazen’s money?”

  “Bah!” Lord Paunceley stared at the Welshman. “You shouldn’t listen to me, I’m an old fool.”

  Geraint Owen pushed the hair off his face. It was sweltering hot in this room. The fire would still be burning, he knew, in August. “Lord Werlatton begs you to consider his proposals, my Lord.”

  Lord Paunceley picked up Toby’s despatch as though it was smeared with the Black Death. “Begs me! Proposals! No doubt, Mr. Owen, he wants his fat Britannic Majesty’s resources diverted to his own private end, if he has one?”

  Geraint Owen always knew when he was being dismissed. At that moment he was, for the first and only time, called “mister.” “It would not hurt to read his letter, my Lord,” he said as he stood up.

  Lord Paunceley held Toby’s despatch over his wastepaper basket. “Hurt? It will pain me extremely!” He let the letter drop among the other litter. “Tell him to get on with what I sent him to do. Tell him to forget his fancies! Tell him, with my profoundest respects, that he is a cretinous ape.” He smiled. “Good night to you, Owen.”

  Owen paused, as if he wanted to argue with his master, but he knew it would achieve nothing. He nodded. “My Lord.”

  Paunceley waited until the door was closed, until he heard the creak of the floorboards that told him Owen was some feet down the corridor, and only then did he lean to his right and pluck Toby Lazender’s letter back from the basket.

  He laid it on Leda and the Swan. He read it through once. Then, with apparent effort, he stood and shuffled to the fire. He threw both sheets of the letter onto the coals and watched till the last scrap had been consumed.

  He went back to his desk, moved the precious book and took a clean sheet of paper. He unstoppered his ink, selected a quill, and wrote a letter that would not, quite definitely not, be entrusted to His Britannic Majesty’s messengers. The letter concerned itself with the fortunes of Lazen. As his Lordship’s quill scratched quickly down the single page his face seemed set in an expression of pure malice. He sanded the letter, folded it, sealed it, then, as the bells of St. Margaret’s sounded the witching hour, his Lordship sounded the bell that would summon his coach.

  It was convenient, he thought as he carried his rare book with the letter hidden its priapic pages, that the Gypsy was in London. The Gypsy would carry this letter, for the Gypsy was a servant of Lord Paunceley, and this letter concerned the matter upon which the Gypsy was engaged. His Lordship, as he climbed into his coach, peered up into the smoky darkness of London’s sky as though he could smell in that sooty blackness the tendrils of evil and intrigue that went from here to Paris and to every capital of Europe. Evil, intrigue, plots, and stratagems; those were the business of Lord Paunceley, that ancient, most savage, most clever and secret man.

  March brought a thaw to the valley. It brought brisk winds that tossed the bare trees and drove gray clouds low over Lazen.

  It also brought to the valley a Festival of Loyal Britons that declared, not to anyone’s surprise, that Republicanism would never sully this corner of Dorset, and that if the Damned French marched up the Dorchester Road then they could expect many a stout blow from Lazen men. The Festival, in truth, was not so much an affirmation of patriotism as an excuse to force the Earl to provide two oxen that were roasted whole, a dozen hogsheads of beer with which to toast the monarch, and wine for the men of substance to drink in the Lazen Arms’ Assembly Room that overlooked the humbler festivities in the main street. A good time was had by all, undisturbed by Republicanism or French invaders. George Cartwright, whose jealousy had blazed at Christmas Eve, married the heavily pregnant cause of that jealousy. Spring was coming. Marriage was much in Lazen’s mind.

  Yet March did not bring a proposal of marriage to the Lady Campion Lazender.

  April’s first day brought sunshine to light the primroses in Lazen’s hedgerows. The second day brought a letter from Toby.

  The Earl of Lazen showed the letter to Campion. He watched her as she unfolded it. “What is it? You
look as if you’ve seen a spider.”

  “Nothing.” She laughed. Instinctively her heart had quickened at the thought that the Gypsy must have brought the letter, yet she dared not betray her interest by asking. She tilted Toby’s letter to the window.

  He was well. He was fighting. The Vendée was in full rebellion, Frenchmen fighting Frenchmen. He had, he wrote, adopted a nickname to frighten his enemies. Campion laughed.

  “What?” her father said. Caleb Wright had just brought him luncheon on a tray. Campion knew he would eat little of it.

  “Calling himself Le Revenant!” A revenant, in English as in French, meant a creature come back from the dead to haunt the living. She laughed again. “He should call himself carrot head.”

  Her father smiled. “Young men are full of fancies, my dear. I know another young man who suffers the same way.”

  “Who?”

  “Look out the window.”

  She did. She dropped the letter. She put her hands to her mouth. Her father thought it was a gesture of delight. “Go down.”

  “Father!”

  “Go on! Caleb and I will watch.”

  She went downstairs, out to the forecourt, then to the lakeside where a line of amused servants stood waiting for her. Lord Culloden bowed as she approached. In his hands was a white rope.

  At the far end of the rope, graceful and gleaming, floated a pleasure barge.

  Campion knew that the barge existed. The second Earl was supposed to have built it, and Campion remembered seeing the old boat, its paint long flaked, upside down on hurdles in one of the dim, dusty Castle buildings. Over the years it had been stacked with timber, had been home to mice, sparrows, and cats, gathering dust and cobwebs like so many other half-forgotten splendors in the Castle’s storerooms.

  Now Lewis Culloden had rescued it. He had more than rescued it. It looked new. It gleamed with white and gold paint.

  The barge was thirty feet long with benches for six oarsmen at the bow. Above them, rearing proudly upward, was a gilded, carved prow that bore the arms of the Lazenders in fierce colors.

  The stern half of the barge, where the gunwales flared outward, held a small pavilion, curtained beneath an elegant, white-painted, wooden roof. The curtains were drawn back, showing cushions heaped about a table spread with food. Behind the pavilion was a small platform where a helmsman could stand.

  Lord Culloden smiled. “If we were doing it properly we would have a second barge, with musicians.”

  “Doing what properly?”

  “Our voyage of discovery.” He bowed and offered his hand to let her step on board.

  “Voyage!” She laughed. It was a forced laugh. She knew why this thing of beauty had been rescued and repainted. She guessed that all the servants knew too, and that their smiles and laughter were not just for the boat, but for the question they knew would be asked within its curtained pavilion.

  She took his hand, stepped precariously on board, and the servants clapped her as if she had done a great thing.

  Lord Culloden followed. He shoved at the spongy bank with his foot. “Into the cabin, my Lady!”

  The servants were laughing. The barge rocked alarmingly as Lord Culloden took up a long pole and thrust it into the lake bed. The barge moved from the bank.

  Campion peered from beneath the carved canopy. “Aren’t we to have oarsmen?”

  “Your servants are all landlubbers!” Lord Culloden said.

  “You’re going to pole us? We’re going in circles!”

  It was true. The barge, rather than cutting a straight, elegant course into the lake’s center, lumbered in an erratic circle as Lord Culloden thrust the unwieldy pole into the water. He drew it out, weeds and mud dripping from its tip, and swung it inboard. “We shall drift, my Lady.”

  Drifting into marriage, she thought. She had wondered, as winter turned to spring and the bright leaves showed budlike on the trees, why Lord Culloden had not asked for her hand. Her father’s permission had been given, and then nothing had happened! Now that the moment had come she felt oddly unprepared, though she had thought of little else in her private moments.

  She leaned back on the cushions. She wondered, for the thousandth time, what she would feel when the question was asked. She decided it was all rather embarrassing. Perhaps, she thought, these things would be better done by letter. She laughed at the thought and Lord Culloden smiled to see her happy.

  The sun was reflected in ripples of light on the white-painted pavilion ceiling above the lavish food. There was a cold pheasant with sauce, a frilled ham, two raised pies, tarts, a custard, and three bottles of white wine that lay in ice. Lewis took a corkscrew and opened the first bottle, carefully pouring the liquid into the crystal goblets.

  Campion threw bread for a duck that swam past. The servants, as the barge drifted away, turned back to the Castle.

  He handed her some wine. “Your health, dear lady.”

  “And yours, my Lord.” She supposed that, once the question was put and answered, he would kiss her. It all seemed rather indelicate. One of her friends who had married the year before had told Campion not to worry. Being kissed was just like being nuzzled by a horse.

  Luncheon was delicious, unsullied by any proposal of marriage. He fed her plate with the best morsels, and kept her glass full. The barge, turning with the small breeze, finally lodged gently on the mud by the reeds at the western bank, swung broadside to the lake and stopped. Lewis undid silken cords that let three of the curtains fall, thus making a pavilion with an open side that looked out onto Lazen.

  Campion, sitting with her knees drawn up, stared at the Castle. “It’s beautiful.”

  “More so than any house I know.” He grunted as he pulled the second cork.

  The house looked wonderful, its elegant facade showing against the bright emerald leaves of early spring and the gentle hills where the lambs were growing. She smiled. “Perhaps the barge should be left here. We could come and sit and watch Lazen through the seasons.”

  “I think it intends to stay anyway.”

  “What!”

  He laughed, cleared some cushions and rugs, and lifted the boards. The water was dark in the bilge beneath them.

  “We’re sinking!”

  He smiled at her. “I think it would be more accurate to say we have already sunk. George Hamblegird said we should soak the thing to let the wood expand, but if we’d have waited for that we’d be waiting till summer.”

  “How do we get off?”

  “I shall summon a boat.” There was a small dinghy that was kept by the old church on the Castle forecourt, used to clean the lake’s banks and cull the lilies that threatened to spread over the entire surface. Lord Culloden put the boards back. “We’ll sink no further.”

  She leaned back on the cushions, still staring at the Castle, and listened as he told her of the secrecy that had surrounded the rebuilding of the barge. Three of the estate’s carpenters had worked on it, under Hamblegird’s instructions, always fearful that she might discover the gorgeous craft in their long workshop. Lord Culloden admitted that he had half expected the boat to sink the moment it was launched.

  “Didn’t you caulk the seams?” she asked.

  “Are you trying to teach us sea-faring men how to make ships? Of course we did. Still sunk, though,” he laughed.

  She turned to look at him. His downward slanting, hooded eyes looked amused. His moustache was flecked by the custard. She decided she did not like his moustache. The water slapped on the boat’s side. She laughed at the thought of sinking.

  He held out the bottle. “More wine?”

  She wondered if he was using the wine to raise the courage to propose to her. She suddenly thought the whole thing was funny and then she thought how mortified he would be if he knew, and that thought also seemed funny to her, and to cover her untimely hilarity she held out her glass for more wine. “We should do this every day.”

  “Sink?” He smiled and leaned back on the cushions. He loo
ked at her, his face suddenly serious.

  Dear Lord, she thought, here it comes.

  He frowned. “I must go to London in two weeks.”

  “You must?” She thought she had sounded rather relieved, so she repeated the words in a more anxious tone.

  “I have some small business with the regiment.” He shrugged as if it was unimportant, and poured her more wine. “You had a letter from Toby?”

  She began to think that perhaps he was not going to propose after all. “Yes.”

  “How is he?”

  “He’s tediously bloodthirsty. He claims to have killed eight French soldiers. I’m not sure if I approve.”

  “That’s because you’re half French.”

  “True.” She closed her eyes. It was warm. The three closed curtains had stopped the wind coming into the pavilion. She decided that if he was going to ask he would have asked her already. Then came the thought that perhaps he wanted her to sleep so that he could wake her with a kiss. She wondered if the Sleeping Beauty’s Prince had a moustache. She decided the wine had made her sleepy. She wondered if people always got drunk to propose marriage. Perhaps that was the best alternative to an engagement by letter.

  Lord Culloden said nothing. He stared at the fitful sunlight on the gray water and saw the clouds thickening to the north, and then he looked down at Campion and saw the extraordinary delicacy of the girl, the clearness of her skin, the beauty of her face. Her eyes were closed. He thought of their meeting, and he knew that if it had not been for his slicing sword on the winter road, he would not be here now. He smiled at the memory.

  “What’s funny?”

  He looked down to see her very blue eyes staring at him. “I thought you were sleeping.”

  “I’m not. Why are you smiling?”

  “It’s forbidden?”

  “When you’re in a sinking ship, yes.”

  “Sunken?”

  She laughed. She closed her eyes again. The water made a pleasant, gentle slapping sound against the gleaming paintwork of the barge. Occasionally the craft would lift sluggishly as the wind tugged at the pavilion and bellied the curtains. Campion felt the barge move as he shifted his weight on the cushions, coming closer to her.