Larke pulled the gummed red wafer from the paper.
He unfolded it. The message was in French.
Not a muscle moved in his face as he read it. To anyone watching it would have seemed as if the message was of trivial interest. The flat, bland eyes read it twice, then he leaned over to the man who had brought it. “Who gave it to you?”
“Fellow outside, Larke. Handsome beggar!” He saw he had not satisfied Larke. “Tall, blue eyes, black hair, young. Civil sort of fellow. Apologized for troubling me. Not a bit, I said…” He spoke to air. Larke had stood and, with a curt bow to the Speaker, left the House.
Valentine Larke crossed Westminster Bridge and turned right toward Vauxhall. He walked fast. It was a warm night, the river’s effluent stinking. He shrugged off the whores who accosted him as he came close to the Pleasure Gardens.
He stopped at the entrance and, for two pence, purchased one of the black masks which were popular with the Garden’s clients. Yet he did not go inside. He could hear the music and laughter, but his summons did not lead to the shadowed walks and private arbors of the Vauxhall Gardens.
He put the mask on.
He carried a heavy stick which he thumped heavily on the cobbles as he walked into a small, slinking side street that led to the river. The street was dark. It was a likely place for footpads, yet Larke’s size and the confident sound of his stick carried him safely to a windowless brick building.
The building had large, double doors like a warehouse. A single torch lit the entrance. Cut into one of the doors was a smaller door on which Larke knocked hard.
A shutter was pulled aside. An eye inspected him. “It’s a guinea to come in. Two for the bottom tier, three for company.”
“Fetch Harvey.”
“Who are you?”
Larke pounded the heavy stick on the door. “Fetch Harvey!”
A minute later, without paying a penny, he was inside the notorious Harvey’s Palace. The proprietor bobbed in front of him, telling him what a privilege it was, and would he like an artiste for company? Larke snarled at him to be quiet. “What staircase for room six?”
“The third, sir. Over there, sir.”
“Now leave me.”
“Some wine, sir?”
“Leave me!’
It was dark inside Harvey’s Palace. The building was a huge, echoing, brick-built cavern. In its center, like a grotesque half-built ship supported by timber balks and surrounded by spidery scaffolding, was a great wooden bowl. Chinks of light slashed from between its planks. The room was oddly silent, though Larke guessed that in the high cabins that were built above the bowl were probably a hundred or more people.
Stairs rose between the scaffolding, rickety stairs that creaked as Larke slowly climbed to the first tier of rooms. He had to peer closely to see the number six crudely chalked on one of the doors. He knocked.
“Come!”
Larke entered. He found himself in a square room, its walls, floor and ceiling made of wood. It had a table, three chairs, and a wide bed crammed into its small space. One man waited for him, a man sitting in shadow who growled as Larke closed the door. “Take the mask off, Belial.”
Larke felt a shiver of pure fear. When he had heard that the Gypsy had delivered the message he had thought he might find the Gypsy himself here, or even some other emissary from Marchenoir, yet the man who waited for him was no emissary. It was Lucifer himself.
The leader of the Fallen Ones was swathed in a great, black cloak. He had told Larke to remove the mask, yet he wore an identical one himself. The black nosepiece appeared on him like the beak of some dark bird of prey. His eyes glittered behind the holes of the cheap lacquered disguise. “Come and sit, Belial.”
On the far wall, beside which Lucifer sat, was a curtain. Bright light showed at its edges. Lucifer, as Larke edged by the bed, gestured at the table on which were plates of cold food. “Eat if you want, it’s foul enough.”
Larke, before sitting, pulled the curtain back, letting in a flood of light.
He was looking down from a hooded window. The upper half of the bowl was entirely composed of similar windows, tiered above each other, and all hooded so that the patrons of Harvey’s Palace could not be seen from any other window. They could see only down to the floor of the bowl where, six feet below Larke, two girls writhed on a carpeted floor. Their naked bodies glistened.
As Larke watched, a hatch opened at the bowl’s side. He sensed a sigh from all the hidden, hooded windows.
A man struggled through the hatch. The sigh turned to quiet laughter.
The man’s monstrous body defied belief. He was huge. His naked, grease-smeared flesh wobbled as he heaved and grunted and finally rolled onto the floor of the pit. His fat hung in great dewlaps. He had breasts that fell to his navel while his belly, like a sack of fat, hung like an apron. He grinned from beneath a yellowed wig that made him look uncannily like the King. He turned to lay on his back and the great rolls of greased fat quivered and rippled and settled as the man spread his arms and legs wide. The two girls made small, squeaking noises as they crawled toward him and as, like white worms on a huge yellow slug, they pulled their thin, sinuous bodies onto the quivering slapping mound of his heaped, bunched flesh. Larke let the curtain drop.
Lucifer sneered. “Squeamish? Or are you worried that this place takes profits from your own whorehouses?”
Larke looked into the masked face. “This is my place.”
Lucifer laughed. “Then you might serve decent wine. This stuff is piss and vinegar. And for Christ’s sake, sit down.”
Larke sat. He was nervous. He had never met privately with Lucifer, only Marchenoir did that. Lucifer spoke to Moloch, and Moloch sent the coded messages with the Gypsy to Belial, and Belial spoke with Chemosh. That was how it should be, yet here was Lucifer, his eyes glittering like pale stones, sitting in the dusty darkness of Harvey’s Palace.
Lucifer poured some wine for Larke. “Tomorrow, in Paris, there will be an announcement.” He spoke in French. He pushed the glass toward Larke. “Moloch will announce that an enemy of France is dead. Le Revenant. The Lazender boy. The sixth Earl is dead. Burned to an ember. Dead.”
Dead. Valentine Larke stared at Lucifer. Slowly, as the news dawned, he smiled. Toby Lazender dead! The sixth Earl dead! The Fallen Ones victorious!
Lucifer laughed. “Surprised you? Thought it would never happen? Well, he’s dead. Burned to death, and just to make sure they’re chopping off his charred head today with Dr. Guillotin’s machine.” He raised his glass. “Dead.”
Larke raised his own. He felt the enormity of this news grow in him like a stupendous bubble of joy. They had done it! They had won!
Lucifer sipped his wine. “Moloch has done well, Belial.”
Larke nodded eagerly. “He’s done well.”
From beyond the curtains came grunts and slaps, moans and cries. The two men ignored the sounds. Lucifer scratched beneath the nose-piece of his mask. “Moloch has done well. You have done well.” He paused to sip his wine. “Chemosh has yet to do anything!”
Larke frowned. He had sponsored Lord Culloden for the Fallen Ones and if Chemosh failed it reflected upon Larke. His voice was guarded. “He’s marrying the girl on Saturday.” He looked sharply at the dark-cloaked man. “My God! If she hears about her brother’s death…”
“She won’t! I told you it’s not being announced till tomorrow.” Lucifer paused to sprinkle pepper and lemon juice on an oyster. “From Paris to Lazen must be at least six days!” He tipped the shell’s contents onto his long tongue and his adam’s apple slipped up and down his thin throat. One of the girls in the pit screamed. There was laughter from the tiered cabins.
Lucifer leaned back in his chair. “Where is the new Earl of Lazen?”
“In one of my houses.” Sir Julius was a virtual prisoner who fed, drank and whored at Larke’s expense. He had the pox, he had a skin disease, and he could hold little in his belly.
Lucifer traced a sta
r on the table with spilled wine. “You go to Lazen in the morning, Belial. I want you to arrive during the wedding service on Saturday. You can do that?” Larke nodded. Lucifer spoke softly. “Take men with you. Take the new Earl. Let the girl get married, then break the news of her brother’s death to her.”
Larke smiled. It was dawning on him that the plan had worked, had really worked! The fifth and sixth Earls were dead! Julius was the seventh, and he had signed his life away, while the girl, the final obstacle, was to be married. They had won. The Fallen Angels, unseen, unheard, and unsuspected, had taken the greatest fortune in England and made it theirs.
The girl screamed in the pit again. Voices in the cabins shouted for more. Lucifer smiled. “How many girls die here?”
“Two a month? More in winter when it gets busier.”
“And the bodies?”
“The river.”
Lucifer’s black, shining mask looked toward Larke. “What are your plans for the Lady Campion Culloden?”
For a moment Larke wondered if Lucifer was suggesting that she should be brought to this place. The thought amused him, but he hid his smile. “Marriage and death, just as we planned.”
“That was not what we planned.” Lucifer’s voice was gratingly low. “I thought we planned to give her the pox, to disfigure her. It was Chemosh who decided to marry her.”
“Which he will do,” Larke said defensively.
“Then how will she die?”
Larke shrugged. In truth he did not know what Lord Culloden had decided. “A riding accident? It seems the girl likes horses.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
Lucifer did not speak for some seconds. From the pit came gasping sounds, low moans, and the slap of flesh. The shining black mask was staring at the table. “If her father dies, and her brother dies, and then she dies, will there not be men in this country who will take some small interest?”
Larke nodded. “I made that very point to Chemosh.”
“And his solution?” the mask looked at Larke, who could do nothing but spread his hands helplessly.
“I don’t know.”
“If indeed he has a solution.” Lucifer leaned back. “Our friend Chemosh must think himself most fortunate. He’ll be plowing a pretty field, yes?”
“Indeed.”
“I must thank you, Belial, for sending the portrait to Moloch. He was most pleased.” He paused, and his voice was like the whisper that echoed in the Mad Duke’s shrine. “Most pleased.”
“Good.” Larke was nervous.
“Moloch, who has done well,” and the voice was lower still, nothing but a sinister sibilance from the hunched, dark figure, “would like to meet the girl.” He laughed.
Larke said nothing.
Lucifer seemed to shiver, as if controlling some terrible emotion. “Moloch has a peasant’s appetite, a priest’s cruelty, and the strength of an ox. Would you like to see the girl with Moloch?”
Larke lipped his lips. It was known among the Fallen Angels that Lucifer favored the grim Frenchman most. “It would be amusing.”
“But difficult?”
Larke nodded agreement. “Of course.”
“Not difficult at all. And most convenient.” Lucifer laughed. “Think about it, Belial. Suppose the world thinks that the girl went to France to fetch back her brother’s body. Such devotion! And suppose, in France, she is caught by Citizen Marchenoir and killed. Who will be surprised? Who will be suspicious? It would be her own fault. The world will say, truthfully indeed, that she was foolish to do such a thing. Does the scheme not answer our difficulties?”
The mask was close to Larke’s face, close enough so he could feel Lucifer’s breath. Larke nodded. “It would answer them.”
Lucifer chuckled hoarsely. “So how would you get her to France, Belial?”
Larke shrugged. He was scared of this man, this clever, clever man. “It will need thought.”
“It will not,” Lucifer laughed, “because I have thought already. I will make her walk to Moloch like a lamb. I will pluck her across the channel and she will walk like a bride into Moloch’s arms. She will die, and we will have Lazen.”
There was silence, but for the sounds from the pit. Larke looked at the dark, masked face. He hesitated, but sensed Lucifer wanted the question asked. “How?”
The mask turned to him. “By reason. How else? But there will be a sacrifice that I shall ask of you, Belial.”
Larke hid his nervousness. He nodded. “Whatever you ask.”
“I ask for Chemosh.”
Larke tried to divine what was behind the brittle, beaked mask. “Chemosh?”
“Chemosh. I am not pleased with Chemosh. He lacks, Larke, a certain ruthlessness? Besides, I am not sure he is not half in love with the girl. Are you certain he will kill her?”
“He says so.”
“He says so, but he does not say when. I think it is time for Chemosh to die and for the Fallen Angels to gather, Belial. So listen to me.” Lucifer spoke for ten minutes. He spoke concisely, his orders clear, and when he had finished his pale eyes, behind the shining mask, were close to Larke. “You do understand me, Belial?”
Larke nodded. “I understand.”
“She will die in France, because there will be no suspicion if she dies in France; yet she will go to France willingly, out of her own foolishness.” Lucifer chuckled softly. “Now you may leave me.” The dismissal was abrupt and callous. “You must prepare yourself to travel tomorrow.”
“And you?”
“I am always prepared, Belial. If not, how could we succeed?” He laughed his dry, humorless laugh and then, with his thin hand, plucked back the curtain. He turned and his black, beaked mask quested over the sill to stare into the pit. “The dark haired girl is pretty.”
Larke glanced down into the arena. “Yes.”
“The river, you say?”
Larke nodded. “The river.”
The mask turned to Larke. “How old would you say she is?”
“Thirteen?”
“She has the body of a ten year old. Send her to me, Belial. Just as she is.”
Larke picked up his mask. The curtain dropped and Larke, looking from the door, saw Lucifer like a cloaked, dark bird; something evil, hunched and clawed in a foul corner.
“Remember, Belial! Be surprised by nothing you see at Lazen!”
Larke went. He paused on the dusty, dim landing, and, as he tied the strings of his cheap mask, he felt a dread of this man who planned so cleverly, thought so clearly, and whose day of victory was now less than a month away. At Auxigny, where the shrine of the Mad Duke waited, the Fallen Angels would gather again, and this time the body that would be sacrificed, that would be pawed by Dagon and carried by him to the beasts of the dark woods, would be the body of Lady Campion Lazender.
Uncle Achilles arrived in a whirl of powder and perfume. “I’m late! My God!”
“It’s all right, uncle!”
“You think so? My wig isn’t dressed! My breeches have to be pressed. That fool of a servant has torn my lace jabot! I’ve got nothing to wear now, nothing!”
She laughed. “Uncle!”
“I am late because of mother. She has been impossible! Quite impossible! A polyp in the nose. It is painful. I grant her that it is painful, but the operation is so utterly simple! You sit in the chair, put your head back, and the best surgeon in London goes snip! My dear! You would have thought her virginity was being pried from her! Such a fuss! She thinks her beauty is impaired for eternity! I have had enough, dear niece! I can take no more! My God! Are you wearing that?”
“Yes.”
Achilles stalked about her bed as though something peculiarly nasty lurked there. “It is white,” he said dubiously.
“What’s wrong with it?”
He gestured helplessly with his hands. “It lacks a certain frisson of excitement? It does not cry joy to me. It is, in truth, a plain dress.”
“It’s a plain we
dding,” she said grimly.
“So you chose that?”
She had not wanted to wear the beautiful wedding dress for this delayed, simple ceremony. Instead she had chosen a dress of white silk, simply cut, with a high neck. “It’s got balloon sleeves,” she said defensively.
“I hoped you wouldn’t mention them, Ah, well!” He sighed and sat on her chaise longue. “Too late to change it now, I suppose.”
“Uncle!”
He smiled at her. “I forgot! You have this strange objection to letting me watch you undress. Very well, niece!” He plucked a gold watch from his fob. “I shall return in a half hour! And then?” He stood, he kissed her on both cheeks. “And then I shall lead the most beautiful girl in the world to the altar.”
She laughed at him. She wanted to cry. She would be married.
She carried the last roses of summer.
There was a sigh from the servants in Lazen’s Old Church. Never had such beauty walked to its altar to be married.
Her face, thinner since her father’s death, had shadowed cheeks that only served to enhance her loveliness. Her eyes were bright, shining like her hair that showed beneath the great, silk hat.
About her neck hung the four seals of Lazen, the golden jewels of the evangelists.
Lord Culloden touched the points of his moustache. She smiled shyly at him and then Uncle Achilles let go of her elbow and she heard Lord Culloden’s spurs clink as he turned to face the Reverend Horne Mounter.
This was not how she had imagined marriage. She had thought to be married with her family about her. She had thought she would be married in Lazen and that her children would grow with Toby’s children to fill Lazen with laughter, tears, ponies, games, nursemaids, happiness and life. Instead this marriage seemed furtive, secret, shameful.
Lord Culloden made the responses in a bluff, confident voice.
She made them nervously. She felt oddly embarrassed to be saying the words in front of the servants. She found her thoughts drifting down, down beneath the flagstones, down to those velvet-palled coffins with their coronets that lay beneath her feet. She thought this service was not worthy of them. She thought the first Campion would not approve, that perhaps even now she should turn and walk from the church, suffer the embarrassment, but then the Reverend Mounter demanded that she hold out her hand. Duty held her. She would not run.
The Fallen Angels Page 27