The Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwell

  Valentine Larke’s father had been the tenth Earl of Melstead. His mother had been the wife of Lord Melstead’s coachman. Valentine Larke was the eldest son of an Earl, and all for nothing because he was a bastard.

  He had hated his coachman stepfather who had fawned on Lord Melstead, bringing up his Lordship’s bastard and thanking his Lordship for that honor and for every new favor. And favors there were many. Lord Melstead educated the boy, encouraged him, and secured him employment as a clerk in the Admiralty. Valentine Larke spent his long days copying state documents and working his silent, obedient way up the hierarchy of the civil service.

  And his nights he spent as a hunter.

  The tenth Earl of Melstead died and was succeeded by his son, and Valentine Larke hated his young half-brother who had set about dissipating the fortune which, according to Valentine Larke, should have been his birthright.

  At night, the ink still on his fingers, Valentine Larke followed the eleventh Earl until he knew the places where the Earl whored and gambled and drank and vomited and whored again.

  There was war then. A French army, helping Washington’s rebels, was driving Britain out of the thirteen American colonies, and somehow the French government always knew when new British Battalions sailed and where they sailed to, and how many ships escorted them, and what the fleet orders were.

  Valentine Larke had a sober, serious, painstaking reputation as an Admiralty clerk, while his air of discretion and willingness to work long hours brought him advancement. He worked on papers of the highest secrecy and each paper, carefully copied, was paid for by the French. At night that money was used for other purposes.

  He gambled and discovered that his intelligence, his love of science and mathematics, made him a formidable player of whist. He never won too much, and took care to lose when it was politic to lose.

  He was tolerated by the quality. They did not know who he was, except that he spoke well enough, dressed with modest elegance, and paid his debts. If he needed to cling to their coat-tails then they were happy to let him. He was the butt of their jests, the object of their insults and a willing runner of errands. They thought it was pathetic to see the gratitude he showed whenever he was noticed.

  The eleventh Earl of Melstead, ten years Larke’s junior, did not even recognize his half-brother. They had rarely seen each other in childhood, and Larke did not remind him of their relationship. He did not even give his first name when they met.

  “Larke! Old coachman called Larke!” Melstead guffawed. “Up early, what!”

  Larke ruined him that night. No one knew, of course. They saw Larke win a modest thousand pounds and took no notice when Melstead pushed his note of hand across the table with a bored air. “Settle you soon, Larke.”

  “Of course, my Lord. Thank you, my Lord.”

  The eleventh Earl had turned his fat, stupid face to the rest of the company. “Anyone fancy Mother Tillie’s tonight?”

  They left Larke and went noisily into the night and Melstead tupped his last whore. He came out of Mother Tillie’s in the small hours and found two men waiting. They were huge men, one black, the other white, and they had been hired for this night’s work.

  “Larke! Damned inconvenient. They were positively rough!”

  Valentine Larke had not said a word. As if laying cards on the table he put down the Earl of Melstead’s notes of hand. He had bought them, bought half the Earl’s debts, and on his broad, intelligent face there was no sign of mercy.

  “The bailiffs will be at all your houses today.”

  “Larke!”

  “You call me ‘sir’!”

  He had, too. Larke smiled at the memory. The fat fool had begged on bended knees, had wept when Larke had threatened him with debtor’s prison, but had fallen into abject, terrified silence when Larke played his last card with exquisite care.

  “You want the world to know that your coachman’s son is now your master?”

  The Earl of Melstead had signed the papers prepared by Larke’s lawyers and then, on that same morning, blown his brains out. Two huge men who wanted to make their names in the Fancy ensured that he did so, and thus did Valentine Larke secure his first great property, mortgaged to be sure, but redeemable. He had left the Admiralty, regretted by all, claiming that a maiden aunt had left him a modest windfall.

  Wherever the quality went to enjoy themselves, there Larke was. He was mocked still, no one knew he was the money behind the whorehouses and behind the gambling clubs and cockpits. He was Valentine Larke, rumored once to have been a clerk and now, by a lucky will, a man of independent means. He was still good for an occasional loan, for a bottle of champagne, even to run out into the rain to call a coach, yet no one ever thought to connect Valentine Larke with the men who disappeared, who ran from their country, who committed suicide, who sold their last acre and last jeweled pin.

  He became a member of Parliament, buying a Midlands constituency that he never visited, but which regularly returned him to Parliament in return for his gold. He bought it, not to be respectable, but because the Illuminati had ordered it. They hoped for a revolution in Britain, a revolution like the one they had sparked in France, and Larke spied out the land for them. He was a politician, a man of business, yet above all he was a hunter.

  He hunted the privileged. He enticed the gaudy beasts into his garden of earthly pleasures, and there he picked his prey. Only one of his victims had escaped, and that was Chemosh. Instead of running or fighting, Chemosh had recognized Larke’s strength and had proposed that they join forces. Chemosh went where Larke could not go. He scouted victims for Belial. They had hunted together for seven profitable years.

  Now Chemosh smiled as he stared down into the wet, stone hall. A girl had been admitted through a side door. “Who on earth is she?”

  “A whore.” Larke stood in the shadows. “One of Abigail’s.”

  “She’s very fetching.”

  “She was.”

  The girl crossed the stone floor and the sound of her rustling dress carried easily to the balcony. She had lustrous, heavy hair, dark brown, that was looped beneath her ears and pinned with pearl clips. Her face was sensual, wide mouthed and big-eyed.

  Sir Julius Lazender watched her approach. His breath rasped in his throat.

  The girl stopped six feet from him. Harry Tipp stood on one side of her, Abel Girdlestone on the other.

  She stared with loathing at the naked man, then, slowly and deliberately, she untied the laces of her bodice. She did not speak. Sir Julius licked his swollen, bloodied lips.

  She pulled her dress down to show scarred breasts. She let Sir Julius stare at her. “You did this.”

  He shook his head in pathetic, hopeless denial.

  She pulled the dress up and tied the laces. She turned to Harry Tipp and held out a hand. The Negro took pincers from his breeches pocket and placed them in the girl’s palm. “There’s a razor too.” Harry Tipp held the girl back for a second. “And don’t touch his right hand.”

  She nodded. “I don’t want his right hand. I want the teeth he bit me with.” Harry Tipp let go of her shoulder and, for the first time since she had entered the room, she smiled.

  “No!” The shout was a wail, a moan, a scream that rose as the two big men came to hold Sir Julius’s legs and the girl walked slowly forward.

  On the dark balcony Valentine Larke smiled. “Harry was quite right. She’ll break the bastard.” He turned to Chemosh. “I think we need somewhere quieter.”

  The noise faded as Larke led Chemosh to Harry Tipp’s private quarters. One scream seemed to linger in the deserted buildings, but then was cut off as Larke closed the sitting room door. The noise was replaced by the sound of a spinet, an odd sound for such a masculine establishment. Larke gestured Chemosh toward a chair. “You’re getting fat.”

  “So?” Chemosh smiled. “Aren’t husbands supposed to get fat and comfortable?”

  “I have never,” Larke said, “been married.” He grunted as he
pulled the cork of a bottle of Sillerys. “Harry Tipp is not pleased with you. He’s distressed about Scurdon.”

  “I’m sorry.” Chemosh did not sound sorry. He sounded surprised that the matter of Jemmy Scurdon had even been raised.

  “Tipp’s a very loyal man. He looks after his people. He wanted my assurance that Scurdon had to die.”

  “Of course he had to!” Chemosh said.

  Jemmy Scurdon, poxed, drunken and long past his fighting prime, had been hired to attack Lady Campion on the Millett’s End road. Chemosh had travelled to Lazen to scout the attack, but his first glimpse of the girl, six days before Scurdon arrived, had put the idea of marriage into his head. What better way to effect an introduction than to save her from rape? It was so simple that any fool could have thought of it. And what better way to ensure that she did not marry the wrong man than for one of the Fallen Ones to be her husband? Thus, at the last moment, he had changed his plans and, instead of depending on Scurdon’s ravages, he had decided to sacrifice the London man.

  Larke raised his glass. “My congratulations on your betrothal, my Lord.”

  “You’re very kind, Larke.”

  “You’ve done well.” Larke was grudging.

  Lord Culloden laughed. “I’ve been the bashful suitor, Larke. I’ve had to put up with the God-damned country! Have you ever spent Christmas in the country?”

  “No.”

  “It’s positively barbaric! Hunting’s decent, but as for the rest!” Lord Culloden shook his head. “Do you know I even go to church for her!”

  Larke did not smile. “I hear she’s uncommonly beautiful.”

  Culloden sat, reached down to his coat on the floor, pulled it till he could get his hand into one of the capacious pockets, and brought out a paper-wrapped package. “See for yourself.”

  It was the gilt-framed portrait that showed Campion in her cream silk dress with the flowers at her breast. Larke sat opposite Lord Culloden and stared at the small painting. “A good likeness?”

  “Excellent. If anything she’s prettier.”

  “A figure to match?”

  Culloden laughed. “Scurdon showed me enough of it.” He sipped his champagne, remembering how he had stared from the bushes as Campion’s clothes had been torn from her. He could see the thighs now and remember his excitement that had been so intense that he had almost been too late in fetching his horse that had been hidden in a hollow. “She’s quite beautiful, Larke, quite utterly beautiful. Better than anything you keep at Abigail’s.”

  Larke still stared at the portrait. “She’s half a d’Auxigny, of course. Marchenoir said her mother was beautiful.” Larke smiled and hefted the portrait. “Perhaps we should send this to Citizen Marchenoir, eh? Whet his juices a little.”

  Culloden said nothing. In the next room Mrs. Tipp played her spinet, the notes tinkling and bright.

  Larke’s voice was low. “Are you in love with her?”

  Culloden laughed. “In love? I fancy her, any man would, but by God you couldn’t live with her! She’s so…” he paused and waved his hand, “dutiful? I had almost forgotten what goodness was like, Larke, how utterly boring it can be. And I do not really think I can live with that unending passion for horses and books. Yet she does have such obvious compensations, don’t you think?”

  Larke stared at the portrait. “She does. Indeed she does. You could fetch a hundred guineas a night from her.” He laughed. “I think I shall send it to Citizen Marchenoir. He likes pretty aristocrats.”

  “Likes them?”

  “Likes killing them.” Larke smiled and gestured with the portrait. “You don’t mind?”

  “My dear fellow!” Lord Culloden said expansively.

  Larke put the portrait carefully on the table, stood, and his rippled, oiled hair shone in the candlelight as he crossed the sitting room that was lavishly decorated with red velvet and with framed prints of Harry Tipp’s famous fights. There was a large portrait of Mrs. Tipp smiling in young, coy prettiness toward the artist. She was indeed young, she was pretty, but hardly coy. She ruled the huge fighter with the same ease with which she ruled the finances of his business.

  Larke drew back a curtain and stared down into the street. “Lucifer is worried.” Culloden said nothing. He was expecting this conversation. Larke let the curtain drop. “He is worried because the will was changed.”

  “Hardly to our disadvantage,” Culloden said mildly.

  “Not to yours, my Lord.”

  For a few seconds neither man spoke. The spinet stopped next door, paused, then Mrs. Tipp made another attempt at a difficult trill of ascending chords. The ormolu clock on Harry Tipp’s mantel whirred, then struck midnight.

  Larke returned to his chair. “How is the Earl?”

  Lord Culloden shrugged. “Half dead.”

  “Good.”

  “I just have to marry the girl before he goes, I can’t wait through a period of bloody mourning.”

  “No, you can’t.” Larke’s voice was soft, his face unreadable. “And then, Lewis?”

  Lord Culloden smiled. “When her brother dies, she inherits.”

  “Which will leave you as heir to Lazen. And when she dies, Lewis, it will leave you as owner of Lazen, and you do know that she has to die, don’t you?”

  Lord Culloden said nothing. He twisted the champagne glass in his fingers, wondering where the bubbles came from that appeared magically and streamed endlessly from the bottom of the glass. He watched for a dozen heartbeats, then turned his oddly hooded eyes to Larke. “Sir Julius gets five thousand a year. His heir will inherit Lazen, not me.”

  “And if he has no heir?”

  “Then I inherit,” Culloden admitted. He put his glass down and smiled. “Does that worry you, Larke?”

  “Oh no!” Larke’s voice was sarcastic. “We’ve only worked for two years to give you the biggest damned fortune in England. I’ve only spent forty thousand to get nothing! Of course it doesn’t worry me, Lewis, whatever made you think it worried me?” He stared malevolently at Chemosh. “Does it worry you?”

  Culloden said nothing.

  Larke looked at the portrait. “It must be a pleasant prospect, Lewis. Bed her, take her money, and let Lazen protect you? Had you been thinking that? Had you been thinking that as lord of Lazen you would be beyond the reach of the Fallen Ones?”

  Culloden, who had considered just that, smiled. “Of course not.”

  Larke closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “It must be most tempting, Lewis, most tempting, but don’t think of it, don’t even think of thinking it.” He opened his eyes and stared at the moustached man. “You do not know Lucifer, but I will tell you one thing, Lewis, and that is that he is clever.” He let the word hang like a threat. “Clever! He knows your temptation. Do you think he has not planned against it?” He reached into his pocket and brought out a sheaf of papers. “It was your idea, Lewis, to marry the girl rather than make her unmarriageable, but did you think Lucifer would not take some precautions against the danger of your changing loyalty?” He threw the papers on the table next to Lord Culloden. “You will sign these, my Lord. You will sign and you will seal them. If you do not…” He did not finish his statement.

  He did not have to. Culloden had seen what Abel Girdlestone and Harry Tipp had done to Sir Julius. He had been summoned from Lazen and he had thought hard about refusing the summons, but Lord Culloden, better than most men, knew Valentine Larke’s hidden reach. If he had refused, then he would have had to guard his back every moment until his marriage, and the likelihood would be that no marriage would take place because the groom would be dead. Lord Culloden, who had enjoyed tantalizing Larke these few minutes, knew that enough was enough. He reached for the papers.

  The first was a confession that he had hired James Scurdon to attack the Lady Campion Lazender and that he had then murdered Scurdon as a means of ingratiating himself with the Lady Campion.

  The second paper only became effective at his marriage. It agreed that wha
tever property he thereby acquired, and whatever property he inherited at the death of his wife, was transferred to…there was only a blank space. In consideration of this forfeiture the agreement promised Lord Culloden an income of twenty thousand guineas a year for life.

  Culloden tapped the blank space. “Lucifer?”

  “Of course. I’ve signed a similar paper, Lewis.”

  Lord Culloden smiled. He was signing away a fortune, yet he knew it was a fortune he could never have held. The Fallen Angels would see to that. In its place he was receiving a prince’s income. It was, he knew, a fair agreement. It was what he had hoped for when he came to London in answer to Larke’s summons. He scrawled his name on the papers, dripped wax, and stamped his signet ring down to make two bright seals. He lifted the paper that was a confession of murder. “What will you do with this?”

  “Trust me, Lewis. It will be safe. When we have won it will be returned to you. Until then?” Larke smiled and reached for both sheets of paper. He put them into a pocket, then poured more champagne in a gesture of conciliation. “You say the Earl will die soon?”

  Culloden laughed. “It’s astonishing he’s alive. The Castle believes he clings on to see his dear daughter married. After that?” He clicked his fingers. “Goodbye.”

  “And Lord Werlatton, you’ll be delighted to know, is trapped. He will not be at your wedding.” Larke did not expand that good news. “So we can be sure that father and son will be dead within a few weeks. One by sickness, one by war.” He smiled at the thought. “Deaths, Lewis, which no one can lay at our door. And after that, we must find a similarly elegant solution for your wife.”

  Culloden stretched out his shining boots. “A riding accident. She’s utterly besotted with horses. Told me the other day she wants to breed the fastest damned horse in Britain. Why can’t she take a fall? Break her pretty neck? It’s simple enough, Larke, no one will be astonished. But do give me time to roger her first. It’s not often I get a hundred guinea whore for free.” He laughed.