Sara Douglass – The Wounded Hawk – The crucible book two

Finally Neville raised his face and looked to Bolingbroke and Margaret. His face was ashen, his dark eyes ringed and haunted. “Why?”

“Because,” said Margaret, “he threatened the equilibrium of heaven… because he threatened to free mankind from heaven’s clutches.”

“Christ preached of love and freedom,” Bolingbroke said, “not of hatred and bondage. And that, simply, is the path that all angel-children walk in. Abandoned and unloved as children, we ever after seek love, and never deny love to any who need it.”

He grinned suddenly, mischievously. “And for that we are labeled ‘demon’ and mankind is told that we are humped and deformed imps from hell, determined to destroy mankind.”

“For virtually your entire life, Torn,” Margaret said, “you saw with the eyes that the Church gave you. In the past year you have begun to see with the eyes that we have given you … the eyes that love has given you.”

“But Jesus …,” Neville said.

“Jesus opened heaven’s eyes to the danger of continuing to allow angel-children to walk among mankind,” Bolingbroke said. “Having set the Jewish priesthood against Jesus, God and the angels snared him into heaven’s clutches, and then created the vehicle via which they could ensnare all angel-children ever after. The Church.”

Bolingbroke stopped, visibly upset. “A Church created in Christ’s name!” he eventually whispered. “What foulness! The angels took Jesus Christ’s message, designed to free mankind from heaven’s clutches, and twisted it so that instead it would push mankind yet further into heaven’s bondage. And the angels called it a message of salvation! Foulness?

Nay, that went far beyond mere foulness.”

“I cannot accept any of this!”

“You must accept it, Tom!” Bolingbroke said, then leaned forward and tapped Wynkyn de Worde’s pages of hatred. “I do not know the precise words de Worde wrote here, but I know that they corroborate much of what my sister and I have just told you. I can see that by the horror in your face!”

“Hal,” Margaret said, “perhaps we have said too much. Tom needs time to think, to—”

“No!” Neville yelled, rising to his feet. “I want to hear it all, now! Hal, are you this ‘Demon-King’?”

“I am the lord of all angel-children walking the earth, yes, but servant to the great Lord Jesus.”

“What is your purpose?”

“The purpose of all angel-children, Tom, is the same as Christ’s purpose. To free mankind from the grip of the angels and of the teachings of the Church, and to allow the people of this earth to fulfil their potential in love.”

“And that is an almost impossible purpose,” Margaret said with a wry look, “for mankind has been so steeped in the grip of hatred that it will take many, many generations to forget it—

and who knows if mankind shall ever be able to forget?”

Bolingbroke was about to say more, but Neville, now pacing back and forth behind the table, waved him to silence.

Neville thought a few minutes, then said, “Etienne Marcel? Wat Tyler?”

“They fought for mankind’s freedom, Tom,” Bolingbroke said softly. “You know that.”

“They were also Hal’s and my brothers,” Margaret said. “Both the Archangel Michael’s children.”

“And you approve of what they did?” Neville said. “Stirring up rebellions that murdered many?

How is that lave}”

“I disapproved heartily of their methods,” Bolingbroke said. “Not of their purpose.”

“And your ‘purpose’?” Neville asked quietly, coming to a halt and staring at Bolingbroke.

“Your ‘method’?”

“My purpose is to free mankind into his potential. My method is one which involves a much greater gradualness than violent rebellion. As King of England, and perhaps even France, I can guide my subjects gently onto the path of freedom rather than thrust them screaming and protesting through the door.”

“We expect our work to take generations, Tom,” Margaret said.

“But when I soar,” Bolingbroke said, “I mean to take mankind with me. Believe it.”

Neville turned away, again spending long minutes thinking. When he finally did speak, he did not look at Bolingbroke or Margaret.

“You can shape-shift. This form you now present to me, to the world, is not your true one.”

“This form is our most ‘usual’ one,” Bolingbroke said, “and the form we assumed at birth. But it is not our natural form.”

“Then you are horned imps,” Neville said, swinging about to face them. “I have seen your true forms and they are vile!”

“You have seen only what heaven, via the Church’s teachings, has taught you to see,”

Bolingbroke said calmly, holding Neville’s furious stare. “After all, heaven does need to justify the ongoing murder of scores of angel-children each year, doesn’t it? What better way than to present them as vile, deformed hulks who will destroy mankind if given half a chance?”

“Then show me what you are. Now!”

“We can shape-shift back to our true forms,” Margaret said, “but it costs us dearly.”

“Do it! Now!”

“I have done it recently, and it would kill me to do so again so soon,” Bolingbroke said. “Do you know of what I speak?”

Neville remembered Bolingbroke’s exhaustion just after de Vere’s body had mysteriously

“appeared” under the hooves of Richard’s horse. “Devilish imp!” he said.

To his absolute fury, Bolingbroke actually burst into laughter, and even Margaret chuckled.

Neville’s face reddened, and the other two quickly dampened their smiles.

“Tom,” Margaret said, “all angel-born women must give birth in their true form, or risk death.”

She patted her belly. “It will not be long before I give birth. Will you sit with me while I birth your son? Will you save your judgment of me and mine until that day?”

“That’s why …”

“That’s why I had to rid myself of Joan and Maude’s attentions when I birthed Rosalind,”

Margaret said quietly. “I could not give birth in my true form with them present. And the fact that I’d had to endure so long a labor in this form,” she waved a hand down her body, “was why I was so near death afterward.”

The thought of the children he had generated with this … this … this demon-angel-woman sent Neville’s mind spinning in a new and unwanted direction.

“Rosalind?” he said. “Is she—?”

“She is more mortal than angel,” Margaret said. “She has no angel-form within her, she cannot shape-shift, she is ‘human in every possible way.”

“Tom,” Bolingbroke said, rising. He walked to within a pace of Neville. “There is more that you will eventually hear and know, but for now you have heard enough. All I ask of you, Tom, all Margaret asks of you, and all that our kind ask of you, is that you save your judgment of us until you sit through the birth of your son. But watch not with the Church’s eyes of hatred, Tom, but rather with the eyes of love.”

Now Margaret rose. “I will be taking Rosalind out to enjoy the sunshine in the herb garden, Tom. Join us there if you will.”

Neville watched her leave the chamber, then turned away, not wanting to see Boling-broke’s face.

A moment later Neville heard him leave the chamber as well.

CHAPTER V

Horn Monday

In the second year of the reign of Richard II

(10th September 1380)

— V —

HE STOOD BEHIND a hedge of hawthorn interwoven with honeysuckle and sweet briar and watched them as they sat on a small lawn in the center of the herber.

He could not count the time that he stood there, but it was long enough for his legs to stiffen and begin to ache, and for the afternoon shadows to start their creep across the central open space of the herber.

He watched his wife and his daughter and he wept.

As he could not count the time, neither could he put into coherent thought the reasons why he wept. He watched Rosalind and knew that he loved her unconditionally. He looked to Margaret, and knew that even though she’d manipulated him and used him, he loved her also.

But would that love free him, as the rest of mankind? Or would it trap them forever?

He had been so foolish, and so foolishly arrogant in his self-confidence. He had known that his soul was to be the battleground between “good” and “evil” and he had thought the battle would be so easily won.

How could he have known that his perceptions of good and evil were to be so radically challenged?

The fate of Christendom would hang on whether or not he handed his soul on a platter to a woman.

Somehow Thomas had managed to push that knowledge to the back of his mind in these past few months. He had loved, and had convinced himself that God would not ask him to sacrifice the woman he loved.

But now he knew that God would ask it of him, and Neville had no idea what his decision would be. The choice was not whether he chose to hand his soul to Margaret or not… but to decide what fate he should hand mankind.