Fallen Angels. Bernard Cornwell

to open his eyes. He was shivering. He wanted to break away from the centre of the floor and run from the slow, soft feet that came closer and closer to him. He imagined a blade reaching for him and he had to steel himself to stand still and keep his eyes closed.

      Something touched his shrinking, crawling flesh and he almost jumped and shouted in alarm.

      Fingers stroked his chest. Fingers that were soft and warm and gentle. The fingers traced down his ribs, over his belly, down to his loins. The relief was coursing through him. He had expected death.

      ‘Open your eyes.’ The whisper echoed about the high chamber.

      The naked man obeyed and, in front of him, smiling up at him, was a girl. She was pretty. She had a round, freckled face with red hair that had been tied back with a red ribbon. Her hair was full and springy because it had been washed. She smelt of soap because she had bathed before this ceremony. Like him she was naked. Her skin was pink, freckled, young and clean.

      She smiled at him and her hands stroked him.

      ‘Do you like her?’ one of the whisperers asked.

      ‘Yes.’ He felt embarrassed. Her hands were soft and shameless. They flickered and stroked, touched and kneaded his flesh.

      The naked man guessed the girl was nineteen or twenty. She had big, firm breasts and the wide hips of a girl who would be strong in childbirth. She leaned forward and licked the sweat on his chest, then reached up to pull his head down to hers.

      He kissed her. Her salty tongue was quick between his lips. She hooked a leg behind his legs and her strong thigh was warm on his skin.

      ‘Take her,’ the whisper commanded.

      She was pulling him down to the cold marble and he knelt, laid her down, and ran his right hand down her body.

      The girl closed her eyes. The gentlemen who had hired her from the Dijon brothel had promised her a huge sum for this night’s work. Half of it was already in her purse downstairs, the other half would be given to her after she had made this man happy. It was silly, of course, but what girl could refuse such a sum for such a small task?

      She opened her legs, thinking what an uncomfortable bed cold marble made, and opened her eyes and smiled into the man’s face. ‘Come, come.’

      The naked man ran his hands from her thighs to her breasts and she arched her back, moaned, and closed her eyes again. ‘You’re so good! Come to me.’

      ‘Take her,’ the whisperer ordered.

      He took her, and with a whore’s skill she made him feel that he was a lover greater than any in history. Her head turned from side to side in false pleasure, she moaned softly, she reached for him to pull him down, she pushed up with her hips, and the man, propped on his hands that were either side of her shoulders, smiled down on her as she locked her ankles behind his thighs.

      Each whisper so far had been in French. Now, suddenly, one of the hidden men spoke in English. ‘Kill her.’

      He froze, then knew that this was the test, that hesitation was failure and failure was death and he fell on her, his hands moving from the floor to her neck and he gripped her throat with his big hands, squeezed, and her eyes opened in terror as she still thrust at him, and then she twisted beneath him, tried to wrench her body free and she rolled on top of him, thrashing, kicking, clawing at him and he shook her head with his hands and forced her back to the floor again.

      Her fingers pulled at his wrists, but her strength was nothing like his and he had her beneath him and he beat her head on the floor.

      Still he squeezed. He could feel her pulse beneath his thumbs. Her legs beat on the floor. He knelt up, his knee slipping in liquid, and beat her head again. His teeth were gritted.

      She took a long time to die. When he took his fingers from her throat, he thought they would never straighten again. He was panting.

      Slowly he stood up. He stepped away from the body.

      As he stood one part of the marble wall of the circular chamber suddenly moved. Two wooden doors, cunningly painted in the manner of poor church interiors to look like marble, opened before his astonished eyes to reveal a hidden room. There was a table of black stone within the room. Candles stood on the table about which three figures sat. On either side of the table sat men in robes of black and gold, with great stiff cowls like monks’ hoods over their heads. At the table’s head, facing the naked man, sat a figure robed and hooded in silver. He was Lucifer, the day star, the prince of darkness, the leader of the Fallen Angels and, with due ceremony and courtesy, he welcomed the new member who henceforth, he said, could wear the black and gold habit of a Fallen Angel. The robe waited for him on a vacant chair. Then Lucifer gave the newcomer his name. From henceforth, he said, he would be known as Chemosh.

      The Fallen Ones met in the shrine built by the Mad Duke who had thought he was God. The shrine was behind the splendid Chateau of Auxigny. The Mad Duke was long dead, gone to meet the God he had failed to be, and his eldest son, the present Duke, was imprisoned with his King in Paris.

      One of the Fallen Angels did not sit at the black table, for he was a deaf mute. Lucifer had given him the name Dagon. He was a huge, shambling creature with the face of an idiot. The black and gold robe sat on his shoulders like a royal cloak draped on a dancing bear. His task was to care for the Chateau of Auxigny and its strange shrine, a task he did to the terror of the local children who spoke of strange things in the woods behind the Castle.

      When Chemosh had been admitted to the chamber, and the doors had been closed again, Dagon took the body of the girl downstairs. He stroked it, and from his throat came strange noises. Later, when the Fallen Angels had gone, and when Dagon was again alone in the Chateau of Auxigny, he would take the body to the dark woods behind the shrine and he would leave it for the ravens and the night creatures and her body would be flensed and the bones scattered and the remnants covered by the falling pine needles. She was not the first girl to die in this place, for every new Fallen Angel was initiated with death, and Dagon, as he ran his huge hands down her still warm flesh, hoped she would not be the last.

      * * *

      Lucifer gestured with a silver-gloved hand at the wine. ‘Drink, Chemosh. You need some wine after that nonsense.’

      Chemosh smiled. ‘Nonsense?’

      ‘Of course. Superstition! Yet we have to know if you believe what you say, that you believe reason is above the law, that you believe a reasonable man can do no evil. So we frighten you a little and give you a trifling test. Now you can forget it.’ He shrugged beneath the robes. His face was entirely hidden by the dipping cowl of his hood that made a black shadow from which his voice came so hoarse and low. It seemed to Chemosh to be an old voice, a voice that spoke from long and bitter knowledge. Once only, as the cowl was raised towards Chemosh, did the newcomer see the glitter of eyes that themselves seemed to be like two hard silver lights in the darkness.

      Lucifer, his voice as dry as dead leaves in a cold wind, spoke of the purpose of the Fallen Angels.

      He spoke of a war that would soon be declared between France and Britain. He spoke of the decision, by the Illuminati, to work for Britain’s defeat.

      His business, he said, was not with armies. France would fight, and France would win, and France would take republicanism and reason to Britain. But first the Illuminati would rot Britain from within.

      He spoke of the British Corresponding Societies that supported the revolution. They would need money, help, and arms.

      He spoke of the British journals and their writers, the scribblers who would take any bribe and spread any rumour.

      He spoke of that ‘mad, fat King’ who would be dethroned, of the scandals that would be spread in high places, of the foulness that would be smeared over Britain’s leaders and aristocrats, until the people of Britain had no trust in their government and would welcome the cleansing flood of republicanism.

      And all this, Lucifer said, would take money. ‘More money than you can dream of, Chemosh.