The Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwell

  Campion had picked a book at random from one of the tables. “Yes.”

  Edna smiled nervously. “You look as if you saw the ghost!”

  Campion smiled. “To bed, Edna.” Campion went to her room with thoughts of what had happened this day and what had not happened. She went in sadness. She wondered what kind of man it was who called himself a horse-master, yet moved like a ghost in great halls. In one second more, she knew, she would have forgotten her place, would have forgotten the marriage that was now arranged, and would have been in his arms.

  She dressed for bed, and even in her room she could hear the wind savaging the great house. It came from the northwest, a wind from the ocean beyond Wales, and it was made turbulent by the hills and heavy by the storm water.

  It hammered at the castle windows, blew boughs down in its woods and lifted thatch from the cottages.

  It took the barge, the pretty pleasure craft, and lifted it in one last voyage from the mud to topple and float and slowly sink. The cushions floated free. Three empty bottles bobbed unseen on the dark lake. Uneaten food, the crystal, the silver forks and knives, the white linen, all slid from the table and then, unnoticed in the storm’s anger, the barge sank.

  In the morning, on a lake littered with twigs and timber broken from the park’s trees, only one corner of the shining pavilion roof was above the gray water. Campion saw it then, saw the light reflected bright from the white paint, but she spoke to no one of the barge’s fate, preferring it to be unsaid, just as the word love had been unsaid the day before. The die was cast, her promise given, a man to be forgotten, and a life to be lived. She would be married.

  9

  O n the day before Lord Culloden left for London the bones that had hung on Two Gallows Hill were brought to the castle. They were pounded in a stone trough and, true to the Earl’s word, the sieved powder was mixed with the feed of the Home Farm pigs. The Earl declared that he wonderfully looked forward to the bacon. Campion, busy answering letters of congratulation, tried to ignore the jubilation that attended the final destruction of her attacker.

  The next day, the day on which Lord Culloden would leave, brought her the pleasure of a new phaeton that she had ordered from London. It was even more dashing, more dangerous than the old vehicle. Simon Burroughs looked suspiciously at the gleaming, fragile carriage that had been brought on a great wagon and unloaded down wooden planks to the forecourt. “Looks like a crow’s nest on wheels, your Ladyship.”

  She laughed. “It looks fast, Simon!”

  “Oh fast! It looks fast,” he said dubiously. “But you bit one stone in that, my Lady, and it’ll just be tinder for next winter’s fires.”

  She insisted that the bays, their coats clipped and gleaming, should be harnessed to the carriage. Burroughs, as the horses were backed into place, was relieved to see Lord Culloden strolling toward them. His Lordship touched his moustache ends with his gloved fingertips and walked around the new carriage. “Marvellous! Marvellous!”

  “You’ll take her Ladyship out, my Lord?” Burroughs said hopefully.

  “Of course! Why not?” He smiled at her. “Rattle down to Periton, my love?”

  Campion, who had ordered the carriage herself, had wanted to be the first to drive it, but she succumbed with good grace. The sad truth was that Burroughs, like every other man in Lazen, did not believe that a girl could drive as well as a man.

  Lord Culloden gave her his hand and she climbed to the buttoned leather seat and felt the vehicle sway as her betrothed climbed up beside her. He gathered the reins, pushed the whip into its socket, and shouted at Burroughs to let go of the offside leader’s head.

  They went slowly over the town’s cobbles, the hooves sounding crisp, and then they gained the dry, earth surface of the Shaftesbury road and Lord Culloden let the bays go into a quick trot. The wind tried to lift her skirts and she had to tread on their hems. She laughed with the speed of it, the marvel of the light carriage’s motion.

  To her right the Castle was spread in the spring sunshine, the vast banner of Lazen lifted over the Great House. She saw, on the sun-sparkled surface of the lake, the small white patch of the sunken barge’s roof, and then the road dropped into a grove of beeches and hid Lazen from her. The manes of the bays were bouncing with the speed, the bright new leaves of beech seemed to whip past in a blur of light and shadow. She laughed.

  “You’re happy?” He smiled at her.

  “I’m happy, my Lord.” They both had to shout over the noise of hooves and wheels, and then he handed her the reins and she let the horses run where the road bordered the Lazen stream.

  Two miles from the Castle she slowed the horses and turned them over a stone bridge that led to stone gateposts. The gatehouse, no bigger than a toll cottage, was empty. She trotted the horses up a drive that curved between thick laurel until the gravel opened out before a large, white painted house. It had been rebuilt in the fashionably classic mode, its lines severe, its windows regular.

  She let the horses slow and stop.

  Lord Culloden smiled. “Shall we go in?”

  She shook her head. The plaster inside was still damp and smelling, indeed, would not be dry, the builders said, for three more months; longer if the spring was wet. Then, when all the alterations were complete, and the plaster dry enough to take the paint and gilt, this would be their marriage home, Periton House. Stacked on the forecourt, amidst a litter of timbers and ladders, were bales of horsehair and barrels of lime, the ingredients for the plaster that still had to be put into the big reception room.

  Lord Culloden frowned. “There’s no one working!”

  “It’s the Spring Fair at Shaftesbury,” she explained. “Father said they could go.”

  He grunted in apparent disapproval.

  Behind the house the hill climbed steeply, thick with beeches, while before it a great lawn sloped to the Lazen stream. In the trees that edged the lawn she could see the haze of bluebells that would thicken in the next few days.

  Lord Culloden was leaving this day. He travelled to London in one of Lazen’s coaches, going to his regiment to sell his commission and wind up his affairs, and when he returned they would be married. First there was to be a great party, a celebration before the event, for which musicians were coming from London and fireworks from Bristol. The wedding, two weeks later, would be a quieter affair, as the fashion was; merely the Bishop, a few score guests, and a meal in the Great Hall that evening. The Earl, whose disease was wasting him and drawing ever deeper lines on his ravaged face, had sent to Lord Paunceley demanding, even ordering, the return of Toby for the celebrations.

  Campion looked at the windows above the pillared carriage porch of Periton House, windows that looked dark against the limewash, and she thought that there, behind the dark glass, was her new bedroom. That was where the mystery of marriage, the mystery that seemed so commonplace and uninviting, waited for her.

  Culloden’s gloved hand rested on her forearm. “We shall be happy here, my dear.”

  “Yes, my Lord.” She said it dutifully. She knew that he wanted to kiss her. She smiled and picked up the reins. “Home, my Lord?” She meant Lazen, and she turned the horses skillfully on the gravel turning circle of the house.

  She said her private farewell to Lord Culloden in the Long Gallery. Mrs. Hutchinson expressed her fear that, instead of selling his commission, his Lordship would discover the regiment riding to war and, as a true-born Englishman, go with them. Lord Culloden smiled at her. “If that happens, dear lady, I will bring a thousand banners to lay at your feet.”

  Mrs. Hutchinson laughed and lifted the sewing that lay on her lap. “Not too torn by your sword, I trust!”

  “And for you, my dear,” he lifted Campion’s hand and kissed it, “I will bring the crown of France, that France does not want, and make you a queen.”

  She laughed. She saw how the flesh of his neck bulged at his collar. In ten years, she thought, he would be as fat as butter. He smiled at her. “May I ask
a favor of you, my Lady?”

  “Of course, my Lord.”

  He turned to one of the many tables in the Long Gallery and picked up a small, framed portrait of Campion. “That I may take this as a foretaste of joys to come?”

  The painting had been done three years before. It showed Campion in a dress of cream silk. In her hands, held at her breast, was a bunch of pink-red campion flowers, and her face was an expression of shyness and delight.

  Mrs. Hutchinson smiled. “That’s my favorite of her!”

  Lord Culloden looked at the portrait in its gilt frame. “It is most beautiful, my Lady, but does not do you justice. But I would still ask it as a favor of you.”

  She laughed. “Then take it, my Lord, with all my heart.” And as she said it there came a memory of another man, taller and darker, who had stood in this room and stared at the Nymph portrait and, as she watched the small portrait picked up by Lord Culloden, she wished, with all her heart, that it was another man who took her likeness for his remembrance.

  He left in the spring sunshine. Campion, when the coach had disappeared between the gatehouses, went to her father’s room. She had made it her duty to clean him these days, to share with Caleb Wright the blood and the mess, and to give her father the love that alone made his pain and dying bearable. At least, she thought, her father would see her married before he died, and for that, if for nothing else, she was glad.

  Lord Egmont Paunceley was a contented man as he sat alone in his parked coach. He was well wrapped in a fur cloak that he had bought when, as a young man, he was attached to the British Embassy in Moscow. On his right side was a basket of comestibles; jellied duck, pies, a plum cake, and four bottles of good Burgundy. Lord Paunceley was on a day’s outing.

  On his lap was a book, a fine edition of the Histoire de dom B, a piece of illustrated French pornography that was deservedly famous among collectors. It was, he reflected, so much finer than the badly illustrated, crude, uncivilized works that now came from Paris. The new fashion, he thought sadly, was to write about perverted peasants, while his Lordship’s taste ran more to the humiliation of high-born virgins.

  It was a mild spring day, the crowd large, the hawkers of pies and lemonade loud. Lord Paunceley’s coach was within the private enclosure. He closed his book, placed it carefully in a pocket, then drew back the curtain of the right hand window. He nodded with pleasure at what he saw.

  The public stands were full. That was good. Moreover the crowd was in a good mood, which was interesting. Nothing could tell the temper of the country better than this crowd. Lord Paunceley raised a glass of wine to his ugly face. What was most astonishing, he decided, was the number of people present! Did they not have work?

  He saw Geraint Owen coming across the grass and he rapped on the window. He scowled as the Welshman climbed into the coach. “You’re letting in a draft, man!”

  “Good morning, my Lord! A fine one, yes?”

  “Passable. You brought the dispatches?”

  “No, my Lord, I threw them into the Thames.” Owen placed them on the table that folded down in front of Lord Paunceley.

  His Lordship stared distastefully at them. “Well?”

  Owen smiled. “You have the papers from last week’s meetings of the Committee for Public Safety, my Lord. Nothing of note except a letter to the American President requesting that he keeps his treaty obligations and declares war on us.”

  “Ha!” Lord Paunceley stared out of the window. “Is that all?” For a man who had just been given papers purloined from the highest committee of the French government, he sounded distinctly churlish.

  “A private letter for you, my Lord, from the Earl of Lazen.”

  A wrinkled, dry, claw-like hand was abruptly thrust from beneath the great cloak of wolf fur. “Give it to me.”

  Owen wondered whether he would be offered wine. He was not so fond as his master was of these expeditions, and a little wine would help him bear the festivities. As Lord Paunceley scrabbled the letter open and tilted it toward the light, Owen leaned forward to look out of the right hand window.

  Beyond the glass was a small, scrubby area of mud where a few blades of grass tried to survive. The patch of ground was almost entirely surrounded by tiers of seats, high enough to obscure the new buildings that had spread out from London to encompass what had once been the dairy land of Tyburn.

  In the center of this arena was “Albion’s Fatal Tree.” Once, Geraint Owen supposed, there truly had been a tree on this spot, but if so it had long since disappeared. It had been replaced by a great timber construction, three posts placed in the ground and joined, at their tops, by three long beams that formed a triangle supported twelve feet in the air.

  A ladder was against the beam closest to the private enclosure. A man straddled the great timber, looping a rope that ended in a noose.

  Lord Paunceley put down the Earl of Lazen’s letter, then spooned some jellied duck into his mouth. “Our fellow goes first, I trust?”

  “Indeed, my Lord,” Geraint Owen nodded.

  Their fellow was a Frenchman. He had claimed to be secretary to the executed Duc de Sallons, but Achilles d’Auxigny had asked him what color were the silk hangings of the Duke’s bed and the so-called secretary had said blue. Achilles had sighed. “They were pink, dear boy, always pink. Rather pretty, as I remember.” A search of the émigré’s luggage had revealed a paltry code book and instructions for the man to find out what ships were being constructed in Britain’s naval dockyards. He would be hanged this fine morning.

  Lord Paunceley waved his spoon at the rope. “It won’t be quick, I hope!” he said anxiously.

  “No, no!” Geraint Owen reassured him. They never hanged spies quickly. It spoiled the crowd’s enjoyment.

  Lord Paunceley peered at Owen. His Lordship’s reptilian, questing face was screwed in displeasure. “Do you drink wine in Wales, Owen? Or only water? Ale, perhaps? Or do you have some particular Welsh beverage? Crow’s blood? The bile of toads? The juice of virgins squeezed at midnight into coconut shells?”

  “A glass of wine would be most pleasant, my Lord.”

  “It’s very good wine,” his Lordship said dubiously.

  “I’ll do my best to survive it, my Lord.”

  His Lordship poured him a generous glass. “I do so enjoy these occasions. When you are my age, Owen, you will find that an execution is a most marvellous tonic. To be old and to see the young die! That is a measure of success, is it not? There. Sip it. I paid four shillings a bottle, and God only knows how high this war will drive that price. Where’s Lord Werlatton?”

  The sudden question merely confirmed Owen’s suspicion that the Earl’s letter had been about his son. “In the Vendée, my Lord.”

  “Not murdering people in Paris?”

  Owen smiled. “He’s in the Vendée, my Lord.”

  “How soon can we send word to him?”

  Owen shrugged. “Within a week.”

  A great cheer spread through the tiers of seats and Lord Paunceley peered anxiously through the window. “Ah ha! Our work, you see, is not in vain!”

  The Frenchman, dressed in boots, breeches and shirt, was a fine looking man. He stood in a cart, his head held high and the wind stirring his dark brown hair. Lord Paunceley chuckled. “A loss to the ladies, eh?”

  “Indeed, my Lord.” Owen was thinking that his Lordship would have done better to let the wine sit in his cellar for another two or three years. He decided it was best to say nothing.

  The cart that held the prisoner passed close to Lord Paunceley’s carriage. His Lordship laughed. “A brave young fool, Owen.”

  “Indeed, my Lord.”

  “And all so laughably pointless! They only had to read the Naval Gazette! Still, we must not be ungrateful for the entertainment they will give us.” Paunceley rubbed at a speck of dirt on the window. “The Earl of Lazen, Owen, wishes us to summon his son home. He is to come for his sister’s nuptials. Her virginity is to be sacrificed to some lum
pen ape of the aristocracy and I am supposed to bring Werlatton back so he can watch the proceedings! Oh, splendid!” This last was because the Frenchman, who had reached the gallows in his cart, was trying to make a speech about liberty. One of the jailers brought the speech to a swift end by the simple expedient of punching the man in the belly. The blow doubled him over and conveniently allowed the noose to be slipped over his dark head and tightened.

  Lord Paunceley was leaning forward, tongue between his teeth, watching. “Gently now! Gently!”

  The carthorse was urged slowly forward, and the Frenchman forced to walk backward by the tension of the rope about his neck. The crowd were silent. They grinned. There was small sympathy for the death of a Frenchie, except for a few women who thought it a terrible waste of a good looking man.

  “Gently! We don’t want to lose him!” his Lordship said anxiously.

  The prisoner’s feet came to the end of the cart, they were seized by the executioners who had jumped to the ground, and, as the cart went away, they took the man’s weight and lowered him slowly so that the rope tightened, his head tilted to one side, and then they let him hang.

  “Good!” Lord Paunceley smiled. The man would choke to death slowly, very slowly, his legs dancing for the entertainment of the crowd. “Very finely done, Owen, very finely done!”

  Geraint Owen looked, frowned, and looked away. French spies had to die, of course, but he would have preferred them to die a soldier’s death, standing before a firing quad. Yet he allowed that this slow, agonizing death might be a deterrent to others.

  The Frenchman jerked, his legs moving as though he were trying to swim upward in the air and take the choking, blinding pain from his neck. Lord Paunceley smiled as the crowd cheered. “That will teach him to count His gross Majesty’s ships!”

  “Indeed, my Lord.”

  “It seems, Owen,” Lord Paunceley had his head turned away from the Welshman, “that the Earl is dying. He would like his son to be at his deathbed. Touching, yes?”