The Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwell

  “God knows why Vavasour didn’t educate you. Because you’re a girl, I suppose. Waste of time educating girls. They only grow into mothers and think they’re clever because they do what any cow can do. All right! French!” He sipped noisily at his tea. “I was sorry about Vavasour. I liked him.” He grimaced at her. “Pity about your brother, too.”

  “Thank you, my Lord.”

  “Can’t say I was sorry about Culloden. A shooting accident?”

  “So the Coroner said, my Lord.”

  He laughed. He dipped an oatcake into his tea and then sucked at it. “So your stinking bookseller, my Lady, has told you all about the Illuminati?”

  “He has told me what he could, my Lord.”

  Paunceley looked at the Welshman. “Tell her more, Owen. Illuminate thou her!”

  She decided she liked Geraint Owen. He had a quick, nervous smile, expressive hands, and an easy manner. He confirmed all that Stepper had told her, and then added more. “They have secrets within secrets, my Lady, small septs to perform specific tasks.” He pushed his long dark hair back from his pale face. “We think one such sept was behind the massacres in Paris a year ago, almost certainly another is the guiding group for the politics of France.” He shrugged as though he hardly expected to be believed. “And Mr. Skavadale seems to have discovered another group, my Lady. The Fallen Angels.” He smiled.

  She was sitting in the window seat. It seemed strange, with the Lazen valley golden behind her, to be hearing of these plots and secrets.

  Paunceley scowled at her. “So that’s it! A group of toads who call themselves the Fallen Angels! They want Lazen, it seems.” He peered at her with his small, fierce eyes. “And your uncle tells me that you won’t go to France to destroy them!” He said it with evident astonishment.

  “No, my Lord.”

  “Why ever not? I thought you girls enjoyed jaunts to France! My sister always enjoyed jaunts to France. Why won’t you go?”

  “I have learned to value my life, my Lord.”

  “Christ and His angels!” Paunceley guffawed. “Value your life! You sound like a threadbare Wesleyan! Have you been born again, my Lady?” She said nothing and he plucked the fur-edged cloak tighter to his thin body. “Do I have to explain it all to you as if to a child?”

  “If you wish, my Lord.”

  He scowled. “Your uncle claims you are not a fool. So be intelligent now. The Illuminati, my Lady, seek to take over the fortune of Lazen. To do that they need to kill your brother and yourself. They have been successful with your brother. That leaves you. You have avoided one clumsy attempt, does that make you feel there will be no more? You are suddenly immune to attack?” She said nothing. He scratched beneath his wig. “From this day on, my Lady, you are in danger. Every servant, every guest, every traveller on your roads may carry your death. Suppose that you marry? Suppose that, God help you, you spawn a child? Then that child is in danger, too!” He twisted his hands together as if wringing the neck of a baby, then waved dismissively at her. “So you’ll die! Your suckling infant will be dead, and Lazen will be lost! And all because you wouldn’t go to France! Well! I couldn’t care! I’m an old man! Soon they’ll be burying me!” He twisted to look at the Welshman. “Make sure it’s in the Abbey, Owen! In the choir! I won’t have a drafty grave!” He turned back to her. “So? You’ll go?”

  “Go?” She frowned. “My Lord, if I am in danger then I am perfectly capable of guarding myself.”

  He groaned. “Listen to her! You’re saying what half the dead nobles of France said! Don’t you understand, my Lady? They wish you dead! You will live in fear so long as Lucifer lives. Kill Lucifer, and you may rock your whining brat into slumber. But so long as Lucifer lives, you fear.”

  “I do not understand, my Lord…”

  “You’re a girl, that’s quite reasonable.”

  “I do not understand, my Lord,” and she did not hide the anger in her voice, “what purpose my going to France serves.”

  “You don’t understand?”

  “No, my Lord.”

  Paunceley stared at her. There was something malevolent about his reptilian face as he slowly smiled. “Two weeks from now, Lady Campion, the Fallen Angels are going to gather at Auxigny. All of them. They will gather for one purpose.” Slowly his hand came from his fur robe and a thin finger jabbed at her. “You are that purpose. But if you are not there, girl, then they will not gather, and if they do not gather then they will not be in one convenient place where my Bastard can kill them. Do you understand now?”

  She looked at the Gypsy whose face showed nothing, then back to Lord Paunceley. “No, I don’t understand.”

  Paunceley scowled. “Tell her, Bastard.”

  Skavadale smiled at her. His voice was soft. “Bertrand Marchenoir has offered me a place among the Fallen Angels. The price is that I deliver you to Auxigny. They will think I have come to join them, but I will have come to kill them.”

  “There!” Lord Paunceley leaned back in his chair. “What could be simpler? A jaunt to France? A little betrayal, a little death, and you’ll be back before the wheat’s milled. In my youth I would have asked for nothing more!” He looked at Owen. “You’ve got the Harvest Whore at Weymouth, yes?”

  “The Lily of Rye, my Lord. Yes. She’s waiting.”

  The vile, dirty-wigged, ugly face came back to her. “So what in Christ’s name is so worrying? We provide the boat! The Bastard looks after you! He kills your enemies, and he’s very skilled at that, and then you come home!”

  She said nothing. They all seemed to be waiting for her reply, but she gave none. She looked at Skavadale. In a sense, she thought, her uncle had been right. The Gypsy was working for the Fallen Ones as well as for Lord Paunceley, but which had his loyalty? She remembered Lord Culloden telling of the girl he had killed at Auxigny, of the death that was required as a sacrifice for every new Fallen Angel, and she shuddered to think that she was to be the next victim. She searched the Gypsy’s dark, strong face and she could not believe that this man was an enemy. The silence stretched.

  The Gypsy sighed. He was sitting on the library steps. He looked at Campion with a flicker of sadness, then shrugged to Lord Paunceley. “I have another girl who can go, my Lord.”

  Paunceley looked at him. “You do? So what does she look like?”

  “Blonde hair, same height.” He shrugged. “Of course, we’ll have to pay her.”

  “She’s used to taking money, is she?” Paunceley laughed. “Is she beautiful, this whore of yours?”

  The Gypsy nodded. “She’s thought beautiful, my Lord.”

  “What girl?” Campion asked.

  Paunceley scowled at her. “If you will not help us, my Lady, then pray do me the courtesy of not interrupting us!”

  She stood, inflamed by his rudeness. “What girl?”

  The Gypsy shrugged. “She’s an actress.”

  “So was Nell Gwynn,” Paunceley laughed. “Every whore calls herself an actress! There aren’t enough theaters in Europe for all the actresses!” He looked at Skavadale. “You’d better take her. Bastard.”

  “She’ll go in my place?”

  Paunceley’s voice was suddenly savage. “Lady Campion, I would not sacrifice a shilling to save this house, I couldn’t care if the Illuminati turn it into a whorehouse. But I do care about Britain. It may have a fat King and it may be filled with more fools than a carnival, but I would not like to see it seething with gibbering revolutionaries who will disturb my declining years. I am paid to keep the lunatics in Parliament, not to have them rampaging in our streets! Lucifer, my Lady, will turn this country into another France, a blood-filled charnel house! So I must kill him. That’s why fat George employs me! And if you will not help me, then, by God, I’ll pay every trollop in town to go in your place!” He looked back to Skavadale. “Pray excuse my intemperate interruption, Bastard, and tell me about this lubricious maiden you will escort through France?”

  Campion was staring in astonishment at the Gy
psy. “You mean this girl will call herself Campion Lazender?”

  He nodded. “Of course!”

  “She will not!”

  Her words were almost shouted. Paunceley smiled. It had been his idea to invent a fictitious girl who would go in Campion’s place. He looked at her. “You can’t forbid it.”

  She was astonished at the jealousy that had stabbed at her, the jealousy of some unknown girl having this man’s company in France. She looked at him. “How are you going to travel in France?”

  “With the Rom as far as Paris, after that the public stage.”

  There was silence.

  Paunceley chuckled. “Perhaps the actress would be better, Bastard? I doubt whether the Lady Campion could endure the discomfort.”

  She ignored him. She stared at Skavadale. She thought of Achilles’ warning, yet was not this assemblage in Lazen’s Library proof that the Gypsy’s loyalty was to Paunceley? Every scrap of sense warned her not to go, but at the same time she was being offered a chance to be alone with this man, away from servants and chaperones and gossip. She swallowed nervously. “And what happens at Auxigny?”

  Skavadale smiled. “The girl is my bait. She draws the Fallen Ones and I kill them.” Everyone in the room was staring at her and Skavadale took the opportunity to silently mouth another message. “Toby.”

  So Toby would be at Auxigny.

  Geraint Owen cleared his throat. “We’ll provide you with passports, travel permits, all the papers. It really will be safe, my Lady. We send men into France all the time!”

  “How many come back?”

  He smiled. “Most.”

  She touched the seals of Lazen at her breast. “If we went, when would we go?”

  Paunceley smiled. “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow!”

  “Unless you have other things planned?” he said sarcastically. “A small tea party, perhaps? Some friends to giggle with you!” He held up a hand to ward off her angry protest. “Do not tell me I am rude, Lady Campion! Remember I am made in God’s image!” He turned to Skavadale. “Take your whore, Bastard. This one can’t endure a small insult, and France is one great insult these days.”

  Skavadale said nothing. He watched Campion. He waited.

  She knew she would go. Achilles’ advice notwithstanding, she would go. She would go because Toby was there, but above all she would go because, if she did not go, then another girl would take her place.

  She would go to the land of death and madness. She would go to France and she knew, as the three men watched her, that she did it in the name of love.

  She took a breath. She thought this was the most fateful decision she had ever made, but if that kiss in the Temple, the touch of his hand, if that magic that had seared through her meant anything, then she must trust him. She looked at the tall, light eyed man who could set her soul aflame. “I will go to Auxigny.”

  That night, as Campion slept, Lord Paunceley waited alone in the library.

  A decanter of port was at his elbow, a book on his lap, candles beside him. The fire glowed red.

  He heard the door open, there was a second’s silence, then it closed with a soft click. The reptilian face lifted from the book. “Gitan?”

  “Oui.”

  “Come where I can see you.”

  Christopher Skavadale sat on the hearth fender. The fire lit one side of his face.

  Lord Paunceley stared into the dark, thin face as though he would read it like the book on his lap. Then he gave his thin, mischievous smile. “She’s more beautiful than sin, Gitan.”

  “Yes.”

  “I haven’t seen a girl so lovely in fifty years!” Paunceley sighed. “And so innocent! Do you like them innocent, Gitan? Do you have a taste for purity?” Lord Paunceley sipped his port. “She’s in love with you. That’s why she’s going, isn’t it?”

  Skavadale shrugged. “How would I know?”

  “You would know, Gitan, you would know.” Paunceley stared at him. “How sad, Gitan, that you were born in a ditch, eh? You’d make such a couple!” He laughed softly. “But it can’t be, can it? You can’t marry her, so you’ll take her to Auxigny instead, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Paunceley stared at him. In the Hall outside a clock struck one. Paunceley smiled a subtle smile. His voice was suspicious. “Did you tell her that her brother was still alive?”

  Skavadale paused, then nodded. “Yes.”

  “How clever of you. Does she believe you?”

  “She believes me.”

  Lord Paunceley closed his eyes. His harsh, grating voice was hardly louder than the sound of the log fire. “‘Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, “Yea,” ’” and he drew out the last word to a long, lascivious syllable and opened his eyes to stare at the Gypsy. The fire flickered and the candles shivered. “And what name, serpent, have you chosen from the angels?”

  Skavadale smiled. “Thammuz.”

  Paunceley quoted the Bible again. “The ‘women weeping for Thammuz,’ yes?” He laughed softly into the bright, light eyes of the Gypsy. “You’d like to be called Lucifer, wouldn’t you? It would suit you!” He waited, but the Gypsy did not respond. Paunceley smiled. “So what can I do?”

  Skavadale took a sealed letter from a pocket. “This has to be delivered to Larke.”

  Paunceley grunted as he leaned forward to take the letter. “You’re telling him to go to Auxigny?”

  “Yes.”

  Paunceley put the letter inside his book. “So innocent, so pure, so ready to be ravished. Do you ravish her, Gitan? Do you go to her in the night and make her moan?”

  “No.” Skavadale smiled.

  “More subtle than any beast of the field.” Paunceley laughed. “But you will, Thammuz! Before you deliver her to Auxigny, you will!” He waved his hand in dismissal. “Goodnight, Gitan! Oh, thou most excellent servant, goodnight!”

  The Gypsy went on silent feet to his room in the Garden House, and Lazen, beneath the infinite spaces of the dark sky, slept.

  20

  T hey lay in the sandhills that stretched inland, the dawn limning the spiky grass, and the sea crashing dully behind them. The gulls cried in the wind over the foam.

  Christopher Skavadale was beside her. He watched the road below them. “I always knew you’d come.”

  “Why?”

  He smiled. “It’s in the blood. Your father did it, your brother did it, perhaps your children will do it.”

  “I hope not.” She shivered.

  She was dressed as a gypsy with dark heavy skirts, a blouse, a vest, two aprons, and a headscarf that was bright with small gold disks. She felt conspicuous and foolish, yet Geraint Owen, the nervous, quick Welshman had explained why they used the gypsies to travel the dangerous, well guarded coast roads in France. Strangers, he had said, were always suspect in France, yet gypsies were the one kind of stranger that no one was surprised to see.

  She travelled with false papers, though her true protection lay with Skavadale. He had a paper signed by the Committee for Public Safety itself, a paper that would command instant obedience from any French soldier. They could, Skavadale said, have used the paper to commandeer a carriage, yet he preferred the hidden, secret travel of the Rom. It was best, he explained to her, that they did not attract attention. She believed that he preferred, for at least a few days, to show her his own people.

  They waited for vardoes, the gypsy wagons with their bright-painted roofs. When a vardo was built, he explained, the seller would stand inside the wagon at night with a lit candle in his hand. The buyer would prowl about the outside, and if so much as a single chink of light escaped through the narrow, jointed planks, then the vardo was reckoned to be unsound. If light could get through, then so could rain.

  She would travel the autumn roads in a vardo, sharing it with an ancient gypsy woman. Just to be in this country, Campion knew, condemned her to death, but as she waited for the travelli
ng people to come to this rendezvous, she felt oddly happy. This was an adventure and perhaps he was right, perhaps it was in her blood. Beneath her clothes she carried the seals of Lazen; she had debated whether to bring them, but she had thought they might give her strength. She was in France for Lazen, but so much more besides. The heart has reasons that reason does not know, and she travelled with the Gypsy.

  Ababina seemed older than Mistress Sarah. She was a tiny, white haired lady with skin wrinkled a thousand, thousand times. She still kept her own horse, fetched her own water, lit her own fires and cooked her own food.

  There were five vardoes in the group, the other four all driven by Ababina’s grandsons. On the second day, as Campion sat beside the old woman on the driving board, and they followed the wagon in front that clanged with buckets and chains and had four dogs tied to its back axle, the old woman tapped her pipe on the footboard and said she had once seen the old King of France.

  “You did?” Campion asked.

  “Yes, rawnie. He was an angel. He rode in a chariot of fire and gold.”

  Later, much later, Campion realized she meant Louis XIV who had died seventy-eight years before.

  “Of course I was only a child,” Ababina explained. “I’d only had one baby then.”

  Each hour was full of strange stories, yet not all were believable. One of the grandsons, a surly, dark bearded man who earned a living as a blade-sharpener, had a scar on his face that ran from his temple to his chin. Ababina said that he had fetched the scar as a tiny child when the cow that he had been put to suckle trampled on him. She laughed at Campion’s disbelief. “You’ll learn, rawnie, you’ll learn.”

  Rawnie meant “great lady.” Christopher Skavadale, whose single earring marked him as a leader of the Rom, insisted that she was treated with respect.

  Her travelling papers, forged in London, gave her name as Shukar. Skavadale had chosen it.

  She tried to learn some Romani from Ababina, yet there was not time to learn more than a few nouns. Grai was horse, jakel was dog, pal was a friend, and a man who had the tacho rat was a man of true Rom blood. It was not thought fit for such a man to marry a gaje, a non-gypsy.