The Crippled Angel. Sara Douglass

other rubbed even more vigorously at Marie’s back.

      Catherine moved her eyes from Marie, looking at Joan.

      There was no venom, nor even triumph, in her gaze. Once she’d hated and loathed Joan, but now she realised that the struggle taking place within Joan was even worse than that which consumed Marie.

      Of all people, a child of the angels herself, Catherine was one who empathised with those the angels used and manipulated. She also knew that, riven by her doubts, Joan was no longer such a terrible threat to the cause of Catherine and her fellows.

      She wondered again, as she had so many times over the past few months, why the angels believed they could afford to alienate Joan.

      Was Thomas Neville now so much their man?

      Catherine frowned slightly. The small amount of news she’d managed to glean about Thomas Neville over the past few months indicated anything but that. He’d abandoned his vows, and married Margaret Rivers, half-sister to the Demon-King himself, Hal Bolingbroke. Surely Neville was more in the Bolingbroke camp than in that of the angels?

      A particularly intense moan from Marie—more of effort than pain—made Catherine turn back to the woman. The midwife waiting to catch the child had moved forward now, her hands held ready, her eyes intent. Marie threw back her head, bearing down with every ounce of strength that she had.

      She gave a sudden wail, almost of surprise, and Catherine saw the baby slither forth.

      “’Tis a girl!” cried the midwife, who laid the baby on the waiting linens and was securing the cord as Marie herself sank down to the floor.

      Catherine looked back to Joan.

      The girl was staring unblinkingly at the scene before her, her eyes round, almost starting from her head. Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead and cheeks, and Catherine thought them less a product of the chamber’s warmth than the intense emotion within Joan herself.

      Catherine saw that the cord binding Marie and the baby had now been cut, and the child was wrapped securely in some linens.

      She walked over, and took the child from the midwife. “I will bring her back momentarily,” she said at Marie’s murmured protests, then walked slowly back over to Joan.

      “See this child?” she said, half holding the baby out to Joan, even though she knew Joan would not take her.

      Joan stared down at it, her form trembling slightly.

      She was a beautiful child.

      Angelic.

      And… something else.

      “Can you feel what she is?” Catherine said softly, so that neither Marie nor the two midwives could hear.

      Joan’s mouth half opened, and her tongue flickered over her lips. Her lips moved, but no sound came forth.

      She was still staring at the child.

      “Can you feel what she is?” Catherine said, more forcefully, but still low.

      She is a demon, Joan. You can sense that, can’t you?

      Joan’s face twisted in agony, and she finally managed to tear her eyes from the child to Catherine’s face.

      The lack of malice—worse, the understanding—that Joan saw there appeared to distress her even more.

      “Can you now see,” Catherine said, “how ‘demons’ come into this world? How is it that we are hated and vile creatures, Joan, when our only sin has been to be abandoned and loathed by our fathers? Who is the more hateful, Joan? The child… or the father?”

      “I don’t… I can’t… ” Joan said, then she shuddered so violently that Catherine took some pity on her.

      “Go now,” she said. “I will come to you later, and speak with you honestly.”

      Joan stared at her, blinked, looked once more at the child, then fled the chamber.

      Joan stumbled as if blinded through the passages and hallways of Charles’ palace in Rheims. She managed to gain her small chamber having fallen only twice, and immediately groped her way across the darkened room to a small altar in the corner.

      “Saint Michael?” she whispered. “Blessed saint?”

      Even now, even though Joan’s mind knew the corruption of the angels, she refused to accept it. She wanted the archangel to appear and reassure her. She needed him to demonstrate to her how she’d been misled, how she’d misunderstood, and how there was a reasoned explanation for all she’d just witnessed.

      After all, surely the ways of the angels were strange to the poor minds of mortal men and women?

      “Saint Michael? Blessed saint… please… I need to hear your—”

      What? My explanation?

      Joan’s head jerked up from where it had been bowed over her clasped hands, but there was no physical sign of the archangel. No light, no glowing form, nothing but a heavy coldness that felt as if it had stepped all the way down from heaven.

      I owe you nothing, Joan. I care not what you choose to believe. You have proved yourself fragile and useless. I cannot believe that I ever had faith in you.

      “Saint Michael, please—”

      Please what? Do you expect me to explain myself to you? I have finished with you. Done.

      “The child. Tell me about the child!”

      The cold intensified, and Joan gasped with pain as it wrapped itself about her.

      You have been as nothing. We had thought once to have need of you, but you have proved yourself a passing foolishness on our part. You no longer please us, and we rescind our favour.

      The cold, impossibly, grew more intense, and Joan shrieked as iciness enveloped her lower body.

      We return you to your normal womanly self, Joan, and leave in place of our favour all the loathing for your kind that we bear. We have no longer any need for you, Joan, and, not needing you, we choose to despise you.

      And with that, the icy grip of the archangel gave one final, agonising clench, and then it, as the archangel’s presence, vanished, leaving Joan collapsed and weeping on the floor.

      There she lay for long moments, unable to cope with the weight of the archangel’s loathing and betrayal on top of witnessing the birth of Marie’s child.

      She suddenly lurched to her feet, her face twisted and wet with tears, and tore from the wall where they hung the sword and banner of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel.

      She took the banner, and tore it first in two, then each of those two pieces into many more, shrieking and panting in her anger and sense of betrayal.

      How could she have been so credulous, so naive, as to let herself be used by such corrupted beings as the angels?

      The banner shredded easily, almost as if it too recognised the lies with which it had been constructed, and Joan only paused in her maddened destruction when the banner lay in pieces at her feet.

      Then she reached for the sword.

      She held it for a moment, staring wild-eyed at it, her sense of betrayal growing even stronger with every second that passed. Then she took it and dashed the blade against the heavy stone sill on the window.

      The blade shattered into three jagged sections.

      Joan screamed, allowing the useless hilt to fall clattering to the floor.

      How could she have made herself the instrument of evil? What if her entire life had been a lie? A cruel hoax, and she the only one not to realise it? Had all of France, all of Christendom, been laughing at her?

      She should have stayed home, and tended her father’s sheep. That, at least, would have occasioned