Fallen Angels. Bernard Cornwell

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      FALLEN ANGELS

      BERNARD CORNWELL

      and

      SUSANNAH KELLS

       Copyright

      HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain 1983

      Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 1983

      Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018 Cover images © Stephen Dorey - Bygone Images / Alamy Stock Photo (scene); Shutterstock.com (texture)

      Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content or written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780007176427

      Ebook edition June 2008 ISBN: 9780007290031 Version: 2018-10-16

      Fallen Angels is for Sean and Kerry

      ‘… the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators, has succeeded: and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.’

      ‘Our antagonist is our helper.’

      Edmund Burke, 1729–1797

      From Reflections on the Revolution in France Published 1790

      Table of Contents

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       Prologue

       Chapter 1

       Chapter 2

       Chapter 3

       Chapter 4

       Chapter 5

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       Keep Reading

       About the Author

       Also by Bernard Cornwell

       About the Publisher

       PROLOGUE

      Death’s kingdom is the night. When the church bell strikes the small hours, when the owls hunt, when the land is black with night; death reigns.

      They are the witching hours, when castle and cottage are closed against the dark, yet cannot stop the reaper who comes to grin his skull-grin and give the gravedigger employment.

      At such an hour, on a night furious with storm, the Lady Campion Lazender woke into nightmare.

      A scream woke her. She heard hooves on the gravel and a man shouting. His words were snatched to oblivion by the wind and rain that slashed dark at the Castle’s windows.

      Edna, the maid whose scream had jarred Campion awake, pounded on the door. ‘My Lady! My Lady!’

      ‘I’m awake!’ Campion was already pulling