And had somehow this iciness also managed to infect his parents with pestilence? Had their chid been so distant he had murdered the spark of life in them?
After the death of his parents, Neville had sought escape in the harsh world of men; in fighting and battle, in the thrill of dealing death to others, in a frenzy of using women to sate his bodily needs.
When Alice had died Neville sought relief in the embrace of the Church, and the Church, as had God’s angels, welcomed him.
After all, was he not one of their own? A Beloved?
Is this what the angels chose you for? The great pious priest, whether in orders or not, cold enough to cast even the most innocent into the flames for God’s great cause.
Was this what God’s great cause needed? A cold-hearted, self-righteous shell of a man?
Oh, sweet Jesu! He could feel the emptiness in his bed. He could feel the emptiness within himself.
It wouldn’t hurt to love her… would it? No, surely not. Surely not. He could still make the fateful decision later, when he needed to.
But for now, he needed to fill that emptiness, or die.
Neville clenched his fists, tensing his entire body, fighting to bring his emotions under control, and then rolled over.
Margaret was a huddled shape on the bench set into the great glassed bow window. She was leaning against the glass, looking out across the dark winter landscape.
Neville rolled quietly out of the bed, grabbed a blanket to wrap around his nakedness, and walked over to the window.
It was a magnificent construction, one of the many new and luxurious features Lancaster had built into Kenilworth. Sitting in an alcove fully ten feet long, six deep, and twelve high, the leaded glass window looked over the fields as they rolled away from the castle. The window made this chamber one of the best in Kenilworth, but Neville was fully aware that it had been given to Margaret and himself for her sake, not his.
He sat down on the padded and cushioned window seat and drew the blanket tighter about his shoulders against the chill that radiated off the freezing glass.
He did not sit close to Margaret. Since that night—that shocking night—she recoiled every time she thought he might attempt to touch her. Neville had not even held her hand for three months, let alone caressed her face, or kissed her.
The great pious priest, cold enough to cast even the most innocent into the flames for God’s great cause.
Cold enough to send a wife to be raped for a worthless cause.
Too cold to love?
Margaret turned her head slightly to look at him—even though she did not speak, at least she was prepared to acknowledge his presence.
Neville held her gaze for a brief moment. She was beautiful in this frosty night: her hair a dark mass save for the faint glimmer of those ethereal golden streaks; her face so pale; her eyes as dark and unreachable as the clouds that chased themselves across the night sky. She was wrapped in a black cloak, wrapped so tightly that not even her hands or neck showed beyond its protective folds.
Neville looked out the window. Far below, the fields of Warwickshire stretched for miles. He caught his breath, for the winter landscape was impossibly beautiful.
The fields were covered in snow, the bare branches of trees cloaked in ice; clouds hurried across the sky, billowing and bulging, sending shadows chasing across this otherworldly countryside; the icy trees swayed and dipped; a lone fox—its ears flattened against the wind—loped across a frozen laneway and disappeared into some black bramble bushes.
The winter beauty reminded him of another wondrous landscape—a wonder he had denied.
“When I traveled through the Alps,” Neville said, keeping his eyes on the landscape, “I met a young man called Johan Bierman. I was both puzzled and angered by him, for he used to stare at the black icy mountains and proclaim his admiration for them, exclaim at their beauty.
I thought the mountains ugly and ungodly… useless mounds of rock that served only to frustrate man’s purpose, and which refused to be tamed to his needs.
“Now?” Neville shook his head very slightly. “Now I can understand why Johan believed them so beautiful.”
Margaret did not answer. She did not want to get drawn into a conversation with him.
Neville looked back to her. “Once I thought you ungodly, and useful only if you could be manipulated to serve my needs. Now? Now I think you as beautiful and worthy in your own right as is this landscape stretched before us. You said you were of the angels, and tonight, as you sit suspended above this spectral landscape, it has never been more apparent, nor
you more lovely.”
He hesitated, wanting her to look at him, but she kept her face turned away, her eyes fixed stolidly on the landscape outside.
The chill of the window glass struck him with renewed force, and Neville shivered and pulled his blanket yet further about him.
“I have been the most cold-hearted of men,” he said, forcing the words out. “The most unfeeling of men. All that has ever been important to me has been my own path, and I have trodden into the dirt all who have stood in my way. No wonder, as you said, Saint Michael chose me for God’s great cause.”
The last three words came out harsh and grating, and Margaret looked away from the window and stared at him.
Neville took a deep, shuddering breath and looked at her. “As we relaxed this past evening, I looked and wondered at those who sat with us. Lancaster and Katherine… sweet Jesu, Margaret, I have never seen such love in my life as that which exists between those two people! And then my uncle Raby and Joan … not the love that Lancaster and Katherine share, but a deep respect and caring that will probably develop into the same depth of love as the years pass.
“And then,” Neville said softly, “Hal and Mary. Coolness and fear. No respect. And then,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “you and I…”
He turned his eyes back to the frozen fields. “Both Hal and myself are lost on a cold, dark sea, Margaret, and I, if not he, want to come home.” Again he turned to face her. “How do I do that?” “Ask your God, Tom, not me!” “It is not God I want to come home to.”
“Beware, Tom, for you edge too close to the precipice of damnation for comfort.” “Ah,” he said softly. “That wicked prophecy. If I hand you my soul then mankind is damned.”
He lapsed into silence again, pulling at a thread in the blanket. Margaret sat stiff, staring at him.
“You know,” he said eventually, looking at her with a strange new expression in his eyes, “I have been sitting here wondering how best to frame your beauty in words. But,” he grinned, and its boyish charm took Margaret by surprise, “I am not a poet, and I cannot find the words.
I wish we were home at Halstow, for then I would have the redoubtable talents of Master Tusser to aid me.”
The grin deepened, and Margaret realized with a jolt that he was teasing her. “I should command his presence before me,” Neville continued, “and I would require him to write me one of his damnable verses to commemorate your beauty.
“Can you imagine what he would present me with to court you? ‘Good lady, your face is more seemly than the hay in sunshine, your lips more delicate than the sturdiest hop poles.'”
Margaret gaped at him, wondering if he had gone mad. Then, as his lips twitched, and his eyes danced with merriment, she realized that what he was doing was showing her his true self—a man that no one, save perhaps Bolingbroke, who’d always had the faith that he’d existed, had ever seen. Perhaps even Tom had never seen this man … and certainly Tom’s God had never seen this whimsical fellow.
Neville’s smile broadened as he watched Margaret’s stunned expression. ” ‘Your form is more beauteous than a newly plowed field, your grace more exquisite than a newborn calf.'”
Margaret could not help herself, she smiled… and as Neville held her gaze, and smiled with her, that smile became a laugh.
For his part, Neville’s breath caught in his throat as he realized that this was the very first time he’d ever heard her laugh.
“And then,” he said, his smile fading as long-repressed emotion consumed him, “I should ask Master Tusser to compose me some verse that I might the more surely convince my lady that I do most truly love her.”
THE ARCHANGEL strode down the corridor, incandescent with rage. His fiery form glimmered and glowered, his half-raised fists twisted and clenched, sparks crackled and snapped from his hair and face.