Ah! These devilish temptresses do not stop only at man—they tempt even the angels
themselves from heaven! Listen you, and hear this vileness, for this is the vileness you must wipe from the face of this earth.
As with men, so the angels of heaven cannot resist the foul tempting of women. Every so often, screaming with self-loathing, the spirit of an angel descends to earth and lies upon one of these sleeping whores, and puts into her womb what should never have left heaven. And as his spirit ascends from her, the angel weeps with self-loathing, and heaven weeps with him for the manner of his trickery.
These women birth abomination and wickedness, deformed children, demons all! There, did you know that? Did you? Yes, demons only exist and draw breath through the intercourse of angel and foul women—they are not Satan’s creation, but they are Satan’s servants, and they belong in hell with him, there to burn and scream through eternity.
And if I had the power I would send down into hell every one of their foul temptress mothers as well…
Listen you, whoever you are. It was once my task, and now is yours, to remove the angels’
spawn into hell. Every year some twenty or thirty of them are conceived and born—is there no end to the vilenesses of women?—and once they have grown into some manner of strength (but before they have grown too strong), perhaps when they are five or six years old, then is the time they should be thrown into hell.
Listen you, whoever you are. There is a place called the Cleft…
Neville scanned the next lines quickly, for de Worde only wrote of what Neville knew, and then read more slowly again.
There you must go every year at the Midsummer Solstice, and there you must open the book you found with these pages. You will find an incantation of Calling, and this you must speak.
The Calling will summon those demons strong enough—those of five or six years of age—
from wherever they are across Christendom to the Cleft. They will travel slowly, reluctantly (and why should they not, for they travel toward their doom!), and it will take some six months for them to gather at the Cleft.
Thus, at the time of the Winter Solstice, the Nameless Day, that day when the worlds of earth and hell touch, you will return to the Cleft, and then you will speak an incantation of Opening, and the Cleft will awake, and reveal the gateway to hell.
Then call forth the deformed imps, and then speak the incantation of Incarceration, and they will be forced through the gates into the fiery abyss they deserve … thus will you rid Christendom of evil, the foul issue of the angels’ temptation.
There was more, but Neville could not read it. His hands began to shake so badly he had to lay the pages down.
He sat a very long time, staring into space.
The spirits of angels descended upon sleeping women, and made them pregnant.
Dark wormy temptresses all…
But were these women “dark wormy temptresses”? Neville thought of Blanche, Bolingbroke’s mother. He’d never met her, but felt he knew her through reputation—both Lancaster and Katherine had spoken of her often. Blanche had been beautiful, but pious and modest, her behavior proper at all times.
Blanche was no “incubus-suckling sow.”
Were any of them?
Neville suddenly felt physically ill, remembering what St. Michael had said to him: Women exist only for one reason—to bear children. Otherwise they are to be used and discarded with as little thought as the daily sending of excreta on its journey into the cesspool The angels were not the victims here … the women were.
These women were violated when asleep.
They were raped.
“Rape” was not a word Wynkyn de Worde had ever used, and clearly, the concept had never crossed the old friar’s mind. Women tempted angels, and thus women were at fault and not the angels. Was not Wynkyn de Worde the product of the teachings of the Church … as Neville had once been?
“Sweet Jesu,” Neville whispered, and leaned on the table, one hand covering his mouth as thoughts and images tumbled through his head.
He knew beyond any measure of a doubt that had he read this a year ago he would have accepted de Worde’s stance completely.
A year ago he had not loved.
No wonder Hal and Margaret had needed so badly to have him love her.
He lifted Wynkyn de Worde’s litany of hatred, carefully folded the pages so he could not see
their writing, and pushed them away.
Then he spread his hands on the table, and wondered if they would ever stop shaking.
Angels came upon women, and lay with them—in spirit if not in flesh—and spawned the creatures known as demons.
Satan’s servants, if not his creation. Satan’s servants, to be pushed into hell.
Then why were they Christ’s servants also? Why had Christ exhorted Thomas to love Margaret?
Neville had no doubt whatsoever that he’d been graced with the presence of Jesus Christ Himself in that inn on the way from Kenilworth to London … and had no doubts that Christ had meant for Neville to love Margaret.
“Love does not doom,” he whispered, “it only saves.”
Why had Christ taken the part of demons? Why had He—?
“No! No!” Thomas leaped to his feet, staring with horror at Wynkyn de Worde’s pages and the book lying just beyond them.
If the spirits of angels lay with women and created demons, then what did that make Jesus Christ, the product of a similar union between God and the Holy Virgin?
“Aye,” said a soft voice behind him, and Neville whipped about.
Bolingbroke.
“Christ is our brother and our Lord,” he said, “who rests trapped in heaven.”
Neville put his hands to his ears, and twisted away, and screamed.
CHAPTER IV
Horn Monday
In the second year of the reign of Richard II
(l0th September 1380)
— IV —
“DEMON IS WHAT our fathers name us,” said Bolingbroke, walking farther into the room and watching Neville carefully. “It is a name of hatred. But who are they to say what is good and what is bad? Our only sin is that our fathers have loathed us—and wherefore does that make us ‘evil’?”
“Are all unwanted children therefore demons, Tom?” said Margaret, standing in the door. She looked at Bolingbroke, then slowly walked to one of the chairs, and sat down, leaning on Bolingbroke’s arm for assistance.
He gave her a small smile, and grasped her hand, briefly reassuringly.
Neville dropped into a chair across the table from Margaret and Bolingbroke. He could not look at them, nor at the book and papers lying on the table before him. Instead, he stared into the cold, unlit hearth as if something in its stonework might save him, or wake him from this monstrous nightmare.
“May we speak further, Tom?” Margaret said softly.
He made a small gesture with his hand, which could have meant anything. He still did not look at her.
“I do not know where to start,” Bolingbroke said, sitting down himself. He was careful not to scrape the chair across the floor.
Again Neville jerked his hand in an indeterminate gesture.
Bolingbroke and Margaret exchanged glances again. Where could they start?
“How long … ?” Neville said, his voice sounding like that of an old man grating out his last few words of this life. He had begun to rock backward and forward, very slowly, as if he were a lost and unloved child himself.
“How long have the angels been coming upon mortal women?” said Bolingbroke.
Neville jerked his head in a nod.
“As long as there have been women to lust after,” Margaret said, “and none of us knows how far distant into the past that stretches.”
“As far as we understand,” Bolingbroke said, “the children of these matings were for long generations allowed to grow and live naturally among their mothers’ peoples. These men and
women, like us, grew to fill important roles within their cultures, and led their mothers’ peoples into directions they might never have gone.”
“What do you mean?” Neville said, in a low voice. He still would not look at them.
Bolingbroke gave a slight shrug. “You know of the giant rings of stones about England? Yes?
Well, they were built under the auspices of angel-children. Have you heard of the great mathematical temples of stone built in the lands of Egypt? Well, likewise.”
“Paganism,” Neville said. “Evil.”
“So your Church has taught you to believe,” Margaret said. Again she shared a look with her brother, then continued. “But almost fourteen hundred years ago, Tom, everything changed.
For millennia God had watched the lusts of his angels, and so He thought to—”
“No … no … no …”
“Yes, Tom,” Bolingbroke said. “Yes. Jesus was a Godchild, and he was far more powerful than any of the angel-children hitherto born.” He paused. “Far more dangerous.”