“Indeed, my Lord.”
“Ah! He’s watered!” Liquid dripped from the Frenchman’s dangling boots to the pleasure of Lord Paunceley and the crowd. “I like Lazen, he’s a good man. You know he once held my office?”
“I did know, my Lord.”
“He wasn’t as good as I, of course. Oh but this is magnificent!”
The Frenchman was twisting on the turning rope. His right leg was in spasm. Lord Paunceley watched avidly. He came frequently to the gallows for this entertainment. “The French are so inhumane, Owen.”
“They are, my Lord?”
“Machines for killing people! What next? They call it ‘sneezing in the basket’!”
“I had heard, my Lord.”
“Ridiculous! This is the natural way, Owen, God’s way! It gives the man time to dwell on his transgressions, to repent, to prepare his soul.” Lord Paunceley’s furswathed shoulders shook with laughter. “So how do I get Lord Werlatton back to England in a hurry? Tell me precisely so that I may reassure Lazen.”
The prisoner choked, loud enough for Lord Paunceley to hear. The man was twisting and jerking and the crowd was roaring its approval.
Geraint Owen had leaned back on the seat so as not to see the death agonies. He closed his eyes. He blotted out the baying of the crowd and thought instead of the small ships that plied the channel and decided the Navy was wrong for this task. To use the Royal Navy meant making a request of their Lordships of the Admiralty and answering God alone knew how many ridiculous questions. Instead, the Welshman decided, he would use one of the many smuggling ships that ignored the war to keep the gentry supplied with brandy and good wine. “I can have the Lily of Rye there within two weeks, my Lord.”
“The what of what?”
“The Lily of Rye, my Lord.”
“Sounds like a harvest whore. And have it where?”
“There’s a village called Saint Gilles. It has a small quay. We’ve used it before.”
“Then use it again, pray. What day should Werlatton be there?”
Owen thought again. In his remarkable head he kept, along with the myriad details of the secret war, a tide table of the Channel. “He has to be there on the nights of the fifteenth and the sixteenth, my Lord. The usual signals.”
“Whatever they may be. How you do enjoy your work, Owen. Very well. I will write to Lazen and tell him that His corpulent Majesty’s resources will be laid at the altar of his daughter’s virginity, and you will inform Lord Werlatton to come and witness the loss of his sister’s purity. Do you think she is a virgin, Owen?”
“My Lord, I have not the first idea.”
His Lordship chuckled. “One does doubt it. So few girls are these days. It goes out of fashion, Owen, like a full-bottomed wig. Soon it will be a mere word in the lexicon and the young will need to have it explained. Oh, how sad!” This last was not for the extinction of virginity, but rather because the prisoner’s twitching was slow and fading. “He’s going! You remember the one who lasted four hours?”
“The Gascon?”
“The very same.” Paunceley watched the hanging man and frowned. “He’s gone! It was hardly worth the journey, Owen.” The prisoner’s knees were slowly drawing up. “From being His Majesty’s prisoner, he has become His Majesty’s corpse. Do you think vulgar George would like it if I presented the body to him? With an apple in its mouth?”
“I would never presume upon the tastes of my betters, my Lord.”
Paunceley laughed. “Fat George isn’t your better, Owen. He’s not fit to lick your impediments. So, Saint Gilles? The fifteenth or sixteenth?”
“Indeed, my Lord.” Owen had never known his Lordship be so interested in the minutiae of an expedition.
“The Harvest Whore?”
“The Lily of Rye, my Lord.”
“Then so be it. Arrange it. Expedite it!” The tortoise-like face turned to Owen. “I suppose Lord Werlatton has not whined to you anymore about his family being persecuted?”
Owen smiled. “No, my Lord.”
“No tales of hooded men besieging his sister?”
“No, my Lord.”
Paunceley laughed. “I knew there was nothing in it! Nothing at all! What nonsense young men do utter!” He turned back to the window and watched as the body-men scrambled to cut down the corpse. They could fetch fifteen guineas from an anatomist for such a fine specimen. Paunceley smiled. “I intend to stay for more pendant pleasures, Owen. I believe we have a brace of women this morning! You wish to stay?”
“Your Lordship is very kind…”
“You were ever an accurate man.”
“But I will decline, my Lord.”
“So be it, Mr. Owen, I bid you good morning. Pray do not ventilate the carriage as you go!” Lord Paunceley shivered ostentatiously as the Welshman left, and then, before the next victims arrived, and before even returning to the book in his pocket, he wrote down the details of the ship and the rendezvous that would fetch Lord Werlatton home. He was getting old, he thought to himself, and the memory was not what it was, not what it was at all. Then, the details noted, he tucked his pencil and notebook away and settled back for more immediate and entertaining pleasures.
On a May night, a night warm and glorious with spring, Campion sat at her table in the Long Gallery. The windows were open. The curtains bellied slowly like a line of strange white ghosts.
Most of the gallery was in darkness. A few candles burned on her table where she sat beneath the Nymph portrait. The candle flames shivered in the soft breeze.
Before her, on the table, were four jewels.
“I love him, I love him not, I love him, I love him not.” She said the words aloud, sadly and slowly, placing the jewels one by one from her left to her right side. Each jewel had a long, golden chain that trailed on the table.
These were the jewels of Lazen.
They were seals for marking hot wax. Each golden, jewel-banded cylinder was tipped by a mirror-image of steel. One mirrored the axe that had taken St. Matthew’s head, the next St. Mark’s winged lion, the third bore a winged ox for St. Luke, while the last showed a serpent wound about the poisoned chalice of St. John.
She looked up at the Lely Nymph portrait. The first Countess, the first Campion, wore these jewels about her neck. It was said that these jewels, these seals of the Evangelists, had once controlled all of Lazen’s fortune, all its future.
Each of the gold cylinders unscrewed. Within each seal was a second symbol, fashioned in silver, though the significance of these hidden symbols had long been forgotten. In St. Matthew was a crucifix, in St. Mark a naked woman, in St. Luke a tiny pig, and in St. John was nothing. There had been something once, but someone in the past had taken the symbol out.
She unscrewed the seal of St. John and felt with her finger the rough edges of the small claws that had held whatever had once been inside. Something missing.
She felt an extraordinary sadness.
At least, she thought, the Gypsy was far away. She tried to persuade herself that her unworthy madness was over, that his face was a fading memory, and her shame a secret that receded into a forgotten past. Yet she knew she had not forgotten him. The prospect of marriage was made worse by the thought, the hope, that the Gypsy would come to Lazen with Toby. On a day when she should be most happy, she would be forced to see that haunting face and feel the awful, shameful, secret longing.
She slowly joined the two halves of the seal of St. John. Once this house had been under siege, and all of it for these jewels. Now they were kept in a locked box in a locked room and she doubted whether they were looked at from one year’s end to the next.
The age of chivalry, she thought, is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has replaced it.
Soon she would be married.
She touched the seals one by one. “I love him, I love him not, I love him,” she paused with the seal of St. John in her hand, then slowly put it with the others. “I love him not.”
The servants smiled differently at her, as though the prospect of marriage had changed her. It was childhood’s end, she supposed, her initiation as a woman was close, and she wondered why she felt nothing when Lewis Culloden touched her. She wondered if there would be magic in his kisses if he shaved off his moustache.
Marriage, she told herself for the hundredth hundredth time, is a compromise. It is a decision about money, about lands, about inheritance. It is an arrangement.
Love, she told herself for the hundredth hundredth time, is a fiction for kitchen girls. Love was not a sudden glory of light that dazzled and changed the world, it was something that grew. It was a responsibility.
She looked again at the splendid, smiling woman who was buried in Lazen’s old church, yet seemed to live on in the great portrait. The family said that she had fought for this house, that she had gone through the valley of darkness and hatred and war so that Lazen could exist. Did it all come down to marrying Lewis Culloden? Was all romance, and all glory, and all magic just a child’s tale, as insubstantial as the naked nymph who swam in the water-silk? Was love really this insidious, slow, calculating progress toward marriage?
Yet she was being unfair, and she knew it. Sometimes, in the dark nights of winter, she remembered the leering, filthy face that dribbled on her nakedness, the way the man had fumbled with his knife at her waist, and then she remembered too the savage joy of the hoofbeats, the sweep of the great sword that sounded so triumphant, the shout of fear, the crunch of the blade going home, then why, she thought, was love not invested with the same glory? Did Iseult feel disappointment when Tristan kissed her?
It seemed almost unfair that it should have been Lord Culloden who had rescued her, and she knew that to be an unworthy thought. Yet there were times when she imagined that it had been a man with black hair and an arrogant face who had ridden to her rescue. She imagined the Gypsy’s hands comforting her. She would try to fight that waking dream, but in her longest, loneliest nights it had been a curiously comforting dream to have.
There were times when, instead of shame at the memory of the two nights when she had come into this gallery to seek the Gypsy, she felt only regret. To be touched once, she thought, just once and feel the glory. If the glory existed.
She suddenly felt a terrible, terrible fear, as though that empty darkness above Two Gallows Hill was her future. The thing in its chains no longer hung there, but it seemed to her that the dry corpse, mere bones held by sinews like bowstrings, still danced and mocked at her. She was to be married, and where there should be life and joy and expectation was only a sullen dread.
And then, sensibly, she decided that her thoughts were no more and no less than the thoughts of any other young woman on the threshold of marriage. She was not special. She had no right to expect more from love than anyone else. In all things, she told herself once more, she had been blessed above others. In this one thing, marriage, she would be ordinary.
She smiled. She was a calculator too.
She put the seals in their box.
One by one she closed the windows, saving the servants the task, and shut the darkness out with the mirrored reflection of candlelight.
There was no certainty. There could be no certainty. The only thing to do was to live. Soon she would be married, she had promised it, and with that promise she had abandoned the hopeless dreams of love and had accepted the realities of life.
She closed the lid on the golden seals.
She was a calculator.
Then so be it. She picked up the box and went to bed.
10
T he walls of the room were undressed stone. Water dripped to make puddles on the stone floor. Despite the spring weather it was cold in this great, echoing hall of stone that was lit by high-bracketed torches. There were no windows.
It was night.
The echoes rose, fell, then rose again. Grunts, the slap of feet on the stone floor, the sound of flesh hitting flesh.
There was a deep shadowed gallery at one end of the hall, a place for people to watch the proceedings on the flagstoned floor below, though on this night the gallery was empty. It should not have been empty. Valentine Larke, one of the men in the hall, kept looking to the gallery to see if Chemosh had yet arrived. Larke frowned. If Chemosh did not come this night, then Chemosh would have failed the Fallen Ones and Chemosh would die.
Valentine Larke, Belial of the Fallen Ones, owned these premises. London knew them as Harry Tipp’s Rooms and it was here that the gentry came to meet the Fancy, the prizefighters, to box with Harry Tipp himself, to fence in the long hall, and to exchange stories in the steam baths that Harry Tipp kept filled with lithe-bodied foreign manservants who understood the needs of tired gentlemen.
Yet the greatest appeal of Harry Tipp’s Rooms, greater even than the curtained alcoves of the steam room, was the presence of the criminals who came to meet the gentry in the liniment stinking halls.
The gentry and the criminals were, in Larke’s view, made for each other. Each had a distaste for work, a passion for gambling, and no aversion to tipping the odds their way. The hungry, cruel men who came from the rookery of Saint Gilles could find employment of a sort at Harry Tipp’s; mostly commissions from gentlemen who wanted an enemy maimed, killed, or merely terrified. Harry Tipp’s was where a young man came to prove the part of his manhood that Abigail Pail’s establishment could not satisfy. It was a masculine institution, loud with shouts and brave with boasts, and, with the exception of Abigail’s profits, it was Valentine Larke’s most lucrative business.
Yet tonight the curtained alcoves of the steam baths were empty, the plunge pool’s surface was still, the punching bags rested, and no shoes squeaked on the French chalk of the fencing hall. No cooks served pie and eels in the echoing dining room, and the wine cellar was locked. Harry Tipp’s Rooms were closed by order of Mr. Larke. Closed but not empty.
In the echoing, stone hall Valentine Larke motioned with his hand for the big man to cease his work. He walked past him and stared at the naked man who was sprawled on the floor. The man was bruised and bleeding. One eye was almost closed, his lips were swollen, yet still the naked man seemed to spit hatred and defiance at Valentine Larke.
“Bugger’s got nerves,” Abel Girdlestone said grudgingly.
Abel Girdlestone, more than six feet tall, was one of Harry Tipp’s prizefighters. His face was mashed from the times he had stood toe to toe with opponents and hammered with bare fists for more than a hundred rounds. Girdlestone had once gone a hundred and eight rounds with the Jew, Mendoza, before that famous fighter had pounded him insensible to the turf. That defeat was among Abel Girdlestone’s proudest memories. His fists, hardened by spirit and the leather punching bag, were like hammers of scarred flesh and bone. He was stripped to the waist, his great chest gleaming with perspiration.
“Bugger’s got nerves,” he said again. “If you’d just let me hit him proper, sir.” He added eagerly.
Larke shook his head. “He has to live.”
“We have all night.” The man who had spoken, his voice like something from the pit, was even bigger than Girdlestone, a man of such vast size that to look at him was to be astonished. Harry Tipp was a Negro, rumored to be an escaped slave, and seemingly made of ancient, blackened oak. Tipp had stood a hundred and nineteen rounds against Mendoza until, in awed admiration, the Prince of Wales had declared the fight to be drawn and then ordered the cheering spectators to pull the two bloodied heroes back to town in an open chaise.
To be a confidant of Harry Tipp was now the height of fashionable ambition in London. He called no man “My Lord,” even the Prince of Wales only received an occasional and grudging “sir.” To be praised by the huge, unsmiling Negro was an achievement more prized than the Garter itself. He stood over the naked man, looked at him with an expert eye, then turned to Larke. “Use the girl.”
Larke considered the black man’s suggestion. Behind him, at a small table, the two lawyers said nothing. They were awed b
y the two huge men, terrified of the violence they had seen, and hoping only that this night’s work would soon be done. Larke nodded slowly. “The girl mustn’t know I’m involved.”
Tipp jerked his massive head at the balcony. “Watch from there.”
Sir Julius Lazender moaned. His tongue, exploring his swollen, bleeding lips, found a tooth missing. His body seemed to pulse with the pain of the great fists, yet, like a mastiff that would not see that the bear had him beaten, he tried now to get to his feet and strike at Valentine Larke who had arranged for this pain and humiliation.
Harry Tipp casually slapped Sir Julius down. Girdlestone laughed. “You snicker him, Harry.”
“The girl will be quicker. Help me with him.”
There were iron rings high on the stone wall, rings left from the time when the hall had been a warehouse, and the two huge men lifted the naked, bleeding Sir Julius and, ignoring his kicks and shouts, tied his wrists so that he hung with his back to the stone. There was blood in his cropped, black hair, blood on his ribs and thighs, yet still the belligerent, twisted face snarled and cursed them.
Valentine Larke left them. He climbed the winding gallery stairs. He ducked under the low door at the top and there stopped. He felt a sudden, welcome relief. At the balustrade, silhouetted against the flamelight of the fighting hall, was the tall figure of Chemosh. The man had evidently just arrived, was even now shrugging his caped greatcoat from his shoulders, Larke, who had feared treachery, suddenly knew that the plans of the Fallen Ones were still intact.
Chemosh stared down at the naked, beaten, bleeding man. He turned as he heard Larke’s footsteps. “He doesn’t give in easy.”
“He’s stupid. He has a brain of bone. You’re late.”
“For which I apologize.” Chemosh sounded unworried by the curt, ungracious words. He dropped his hat and cane on the floor. He was superbly dressed, his silk stock tied to perfection, his blue jacket brilliant with embroidery. Beside him Valentine Larke, in dull, dark cloth, seemed drab. Drabness had become a way of life to the politician, a man who preferred to stand in the shadows and let others dazzle the fools in the crowd.
The Fallen Angels Page 17