Fallen Angels

‘I assure you he is not.’ Larke smiled.

She chose to ignore his assurance. ‘Only this week, Mr Larke! He bit a girl! Horribly, Mr Larke! I can’t work a scarred girl!’

‘You put it on his bill?’

‘Of course.’

‘And the girl?’

Mrs Pail frowned. ‘I can’t put a girl on the streets just before Christmas, Mr Larke! It’s not Christian!’

‘Indeed not.’ He stood, to show that the interview was over. ‘Indeed you may keep her in the house, Mrs Pail, so long as you wish.’ He knew the loyalty that Abigail had to her girls. She educated those that could not read and always ensured that those who were not communicants in the Church of England learned their catechism and were confirmed by a bishop who was one of the house’s steadier patrons. By day the bishop conducted the girls towards heaven, and at night they returned the favour.

Larke bowed over her fat, ring-bright fingers. ‘I will stay a few moments.’

‘Of course, Mr Larke.’ She smiled archly. ‘You’d like company?’

He shook his head. ‘Thank you, but no.’

When she had gone, and when the door was locked, he took from his waistcoat pocket a message that had come to him at the House of Commons. He opened it, read it for the third time, then tossed it onto the grate that was piled with glowing coals. He watched the letter curl, burn, and break into wavering scraps of black ash.

Chemosh had not done what he had said he would do.

Larke stared into the fire.

Chemosh had promised that the girl would never marry because no man would marry her. She would be poxed and scarred, yet she was neither. She lived still with her beauty and her virginity. Chemosh had not done what he had promised he would do.

He put his head back, the corrugated black ridges of his hair crushed on Mrs Pail’s chairback, and he wondered when the Gypsy would next come. The Gypsy was the messenger who connected Larke and Marchenoir, carrying the coded letters that none but those two politicians could read. Larke hoped the Gypsy would come soon for he needed to pass on to Lucifer, by way of Marchenoir, the news of Chemosh. Lucifer would have to decide what was to be done. The timing of this thing was like the workings of a chronometer; gleaming, valuable, and exact. Chemosh was threatening to fail.

They dared not fail. Valentine Larke, staring into the fire, thought that they could not fail. Lord Werlatton was hunted by Moloch, Sir Julius by Belial, and the Lady Campion by Chemosh, and the joy of it was that not one of the victims knew of the hunters. He sipped his brandy and thought of Chemosh. The man had not done what he had promised, but he had not yet necessarily failed. Nor, Larke reflected grimly, would he fail. They were the Fallen Ones, and they did not fail.

Nor would he fail with Sir Julius. He smiled and took another sip of the wine. Sir Julius was baited and hooked, and Larke could reel him in whenever he wished. It could wait, he decided, till after Christmas, and then Belial would strike and the Fallen Ones would tighten the invisible ring that would choke the life from Lazen Castle. He smiled. He drank to the victory that would follow Christmas, to the victory that would lead the Fallen Ones to the Day of Lucifer and the fall of Lazen.

Uncle Achilles ran the blue ribbons through his fingers. ‘You’re going to wear these?’ His tone suggested that perhaps she should burn them instead.

‘I won’t wear anything if you stay here.’

‘My dear Campion, I am far too old to be excited by a woman getting dressed, let alone undressed. Besides, you forget that I’m still a priest. They never unfrocked me.’

‘And I’m not unfrocking while you’re here. Go away.’ She smiled at him and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘I’m glad you came.’

He smiled. ‘And glad that my mother didn’t?’

‘She would have been welcome.’

He laughed. ‘I like your Lord Culloden.’

‘He’s not mine.’

Mrs Hutchinson was laying out a dress of white crepe with Brussels lace at the neck and cuffs. Uncle Achilles looked at it where it lay on her bed and smiled. ‘A wedding dress?’

‘Go away.’

‘But I do like him, truly!’ Uncle Achilles took a pinch of snuff, crossed to her dressing table, and sat down. He opened a pot of rouge, dabbed a finger in it, and rubbed it experimentally on the back of his hand. ‘Not my colour.’

She crossed her arms. ‘I’m going to be late, uncle.’

It was only four o’clock in the afternoon, yet already Campion had ordered candles lit in her bedroom. It was gloomy outside, the sky grey and darkening over the Lazen valley. Uncle Achilles twisted on his chair and stared down at the townspeople who walked in excited groups towards the Castle’s entrance. ‘You English make a great fuss about Christmas.’

‘We don’t make any fuss at all. We simply have a good time. Those of us, that is, who are allowed to dress.’

He grinned at her. He was clothed, Campion thought, lasciviously; there was no other word. He had a suit of gold cloth, a new wig with silk tails, gold-buckled shoes of satin, stockings of white silk, and the faintest touch of cosmetics on his face. He saw her looking him up and down. His voice was teasingly anxious. ‘You think I’m presentable?’

‘You look wonderful. Just like a bishop.’

He laughed. He dipped her powder puff into the china bowl and brushed it against his hand. He held the hand out to the window and frowned critically. His nails were varnished. ‘In London they think I’m very elegant. But then I’m French which always impresses the English. They feel inferior to us for one very good reason.’

‘Because they are?’ She smiled. She thought how bored Achilles must be; an elegant, clever Frenchman only half employed in a strange country. He smiled at her. ‘Exactly, dear niece. You are so sensible for a mere woman.’ He crossed his legs, taking care not to crease his silk stockings. ‘The English have a sneaking suspicion that we know something about life and elegance and beauty that they do not know, and it is every Frenchman’s duty to continue the illusion. It is even, dear niece, the duty of someone like yourself who has the blessing of being half French.’ He smiled seraphically. ‘Has he asked you to marry yet?’

‘I haven’t known him five weeks yet!’

‘How proper you are, dear niece.’ He smiled and turned to the dressing table again. He dipped his finger into the cochineal ointment she would use on her lips and painted a heart on her mirror. He ignored her protests. He pierced the heart with an arrow. Above its fletches he wrote ‘CL’, by its point he wrote ‘LC’. He inspected his work. ‘There’s a certain symmetry to the two of you.’

Mrs Hutchinson, who had not understood a word of the French they had been speaking, understood the drawing. She laughed.

Campion, who was dressed only in a full length bed robe of coloured Peking silk, sat on the chaise longue. She smiled at her uncle. ‘You think the symmetry is important?’

‘I think it’s wonderful!’ He was fastidiously wiping his finger on one of her towels. ‘After all, lovers always seek fate’s happy signs. One says “I was born on a Monday” and the other says “and I also!”, and from that mere, unimportant coincidence they deduce that heaven has had a hand in their conjunction.’ He shrugged. ‘I think CL and LC come into that happy, heavenly category, don’t you?’

‘You want me to marry him?’

He smiled wickedly. He liked teasing her, not the least because she never took offence, however shocked she might be by his words. ‘Do you wish to marry him, dear Campion?’

‘What I wish, uncle, is to get dressed.’

He stood, bowed, and smiled again. ‘I retire defeated from the field. You will dance with me?’

‘Of course.’

‘If Lord Culloden will let you. Do you think he’s the jealous kind? Men with moustaches often are.’

‘Go away.’

He did, crossing in the doorway with Edna, Campion’s maid, who had fetched a bowl of warm water and hot towels.

It was Christmas Eve, the traditional day of celebration, the day when the town came to the Castle and the Castle provided bowls of frumenty and plates of pies and vats of punch and music from the gallery and fires in the great hearths and hogsheads of ale and puddings that had seeped their smell from one end of the huge building to the other and, as midnight drew near, great platters of roasted geese would bring cheers from the throng in the Great Hall.

A throng which expected the Lady Campion to marry. The word seemed to haunt the Castle. The rumour was like a whisper in every room, in every corridor, in every smiling face that greeted her. Lord Culloden had been in Lazen just a few weeks, yet all the Castle, all the estate, expected there would be a marriage.