The Devil’s Diadem by Sara Douglass

Then, achingly slowly, Raife unrolled the first of the vellum sheets and showed it to me.

It was full of drawings, of peoples and forests, and of crowns and imps. I looked back to Raife.

‘Raife? What —’

‘Just look, Maeb, I beg you, and understand!’

I looked back to the vellum sheet. Raife’s finger pointed at the first set of figures and I saw a group of people much like the Old People depicted on the walls of Pengraic chapel. They were grouped about a man wearing a crown.

Raife’s fingers tapped that figure wearing the crown and he lifted his finger, as if to point elsewhere, but at that moment a terrible stench filled the chamber and an imp appeared behind Raife.

‘What is this, then, master? Is this what we have watched you poring over, night after night?’

I shrieked, shuffling away from Raife and the imp to the other side of the bed.

At the same time, the imp leaned over Raife’s shoulder and made as if to grab the handful of pages.

Raife pushed the imp to one side and the vile creature toppled over onto the bed, one of his arms flailing out so that its hand hit my cheek.

Its touch was cold, moist, and nauseating, and I screamed once, then again.

The imp struggled to rise, as also did I, and for one moment we were both a tangle of limbs as we tried to escape the bed.

Raife had moved to the other side of the bed, reaching out a hand to try and pull me away, but I hit out at him in my panic and fear and all my resurrected loathing. ‘Get away from me!’ I shrieked.

Then, horrifyingly, the imp rolled right over the top of me — I felt its repulsive hand slide across my breasts! — and made an unsuccessful grab at the pages still in Raife’s hand.

Servants were at the door now, concerned by the commotion, but Raife shouted at them to wait outside.

The imp had taken advantage of Raife’s momentary distraction, lunging again for the pages. Raife stepped back, but the imp was quick. It had rediscovered both its balance and its senses and it managed to get its clawed hands about the pages. Raife and the imp struggled, back and forth, then Raife tore the pages from the imp and tossed them onto the coals of the fire, where they flared into flames.

‘Damn you!’ he cried, and I thought for one strange moment his voice was breaking. ‘Damn you to hell!’

‘Get out!’ I screamed at both of them.

‘Get out!’

The imp hissed in frustration as it saw the pages curl into ash, then it vanished, but Raife reached for me.

‘Maeb, please, you must let me —’

‘Get out!’ I shouted, angry and repulsed by his nearness, and wishing I had not allowed him to make love to me the night previous.

‘Get out! I do not care if I never see you again!’

I paused, breathing heavily. ‘Get out!’

He stepped back, his face impassive.

‘As you wish, wife.’

Then he collected his clothes, and left.

The moment the door closed I retched, struggling to the window to breathe in some air not yet befouled by either the imp or my husband.

I was so shocked, so terrified, I did not think again on what it was he’d been trying to show me.

Chapter Four

I was still out of sorts when I was summoned to the Tower just before midday. I wondered what had happened, why either Edmond or Raife could want me, but I called for Dulcette to be saddled, then I rode with a small escort as the sun was at its zenith.

The fields between the city buildings and the Tower, once used for jousting and games, were now humped over with recently dug plague pits.

I shuddered, and tried not to look.

It was a subdued world inside the gates of the inner bailey. I remembered the day I had ridden in here, jangling with nerves about my first day at court. Then it had been a bustling, crowded space.

Now there was one groom, two soldiers standing guard, a single horse tied to an iron ring in a wall, and no one else.

I imagined that Edmond must already have sent for more men-at-arms, for currently both city and Tower were horribly vulnerable.

The groom helped me dismount and I walked the stairs to the first-level entrance unescorted. The lesser hall was almost deserted. I saw Saint-Valery by one fire, and gave him a nod, gladdened to see him alive, and there were maybe fifteen others about, but that was it.

In the upper gallery de Warenne stood guard by the entrance into the great hall. He nodded as I came up. ‘They are waiting for you inside, my lady,’ he said.

I walked into the great hall. There was a table pushed close to the western wall’s central fireplace and around it sat Edmond and Raife. There were documents spread over the table.

They both stood as I walked over. I sat down and they resumed their seats.

Edmond pushed a ewer and cup toward me and I poured myself some small beer, sipping it as I looked warily at Raife, and then almost as carefully at Edmond.

Why was I here?

Raife seemed to be wondering the same thing as he looked at Edmond enquiringly.

‘It is time to end this,’ Edmond said softly, and I quailed internally.

He was going to tell Raife that he knew who he was, and Raife would know I’d told Edmond.

For all that my husband was, I still dreaded him knowing I had betrayed his trust.

Raife raised an eyebrow at Edmond. ‘End this?’

‘This madness,’ said Edmond, looking directly at Raife. ‘The diadem.’ Raife flicked a glance my way.

‘It is time to send you and your master’s diadem back to hell,’ said Edmond. ‘I have had enough. This realm, this people, have had enough.’

Now Raife looked at me fully, and I saw the hurt at my betrayal clear on his face.

‘Yes,’ Edmond said, ‘she told me. For pity’s sake, Raife, you expected her to keep this silent? To put to one side that she had unwittingly wed a servant of hell?’

Raife was still staring at me, and now Edmond banged his hand on the table, making Raife jerk his eyes back to the king.

‘By God, sir,’ Edmond said, ‘you have betrayed everyone! I have trusted you all my life, and for what? Adelie, her children — did they know? Of course not, eh? Have you spent the past almost forty years using this realm for your master’s black ends, eh? Have you —’

‘I have not betrayed either you, nor this realm,’ Raife said.

‘My only purpose as my master’s servant in this mortal realm was to find for him the diadem. No other. The petty concerns of this realm were of no interest to him.’

Whatever resentment and questions Edmond had bottled up these past weeks now spilled out.

‘For sweet Christ’s sake, Raife,’ Edmond said, ‘why sit here these past thirty-six years? Why not just take the form of some anonymous ploughman and take the diadem as you needed? Why take the form of a great noble, lest you meant to use that power against me at some point? And why here in England? Were you so sure that the diadem rested in England? Are there other of your master’s servants waiting in other realms? Can I expect them all to congregate here, in London, hoping to be the ones to lay their hands on this diadem? Can —’

Raife held up a hand.

‘Edmond,’ he said, ‘I am sorry for the deception. I have been a true friend to you all my life, and remain so now. You will probably choose not to believe me, nor to trust me — my wife prefers to think me utterly malicious and beyond redemption — but I will try to answer your questions as honestly as I may.

‘Why did I choose to take the form of a great noble? Edmond, do you honestly think I would have preferred to have been a ploughman living from day to day on the fruits of my toils in the mud? Besides, my nobility gives me access to most of the information that you have and access to all parts of the realm. A ploughman would have none of these. High nobility was needed.

‘Why for thirty-six years? I had to be born, Edmond. I could not suddenly take flesh, nor position within society. I had to come to it naturally.

‘Why here in England?’ Raife shrugged. ‘That was something of pure luck. My master knew where the starting point was — Ghaznavid, which was where the monk had re-emerged from hell — and we thought that he would have fled back toward Europe, as that was his home. Had I needed to I would have travelled. But, as luck had it … the diadem is currently somewhere within England, within London, and if I am to believe the rattling of the Templars, then it is somewhere with Maeb.