The Crippled Angel (39 page)

“Then you are to be envied,” Neville replied. He sampled some of the cheese that Mary had laid out, and discovered himself ravenous. “And the angel-children? Those such as Margaret, my wife?”

“Their link with the angels is broken, Tom,” James said, passing his son back to Mary and helping himself to some of the bread and cheese that Neville was now munching down. “They will live out normal, mortal lives.”

He paused, toying with some of the food, then continued. “You gave mankind control of his own destiny that day you kissed Mary. The link with the angels is completely broken asunder. They raven, trapped in hell, while mankind chooses his own path here on earth. What man chooses to do with his life,” he shrugged, “is now his own burden to bear.”

Neville relaxed even more. “Then we are all but husbands and wives, living out our lives.”

James smiled gently. “Aye.”

Neville nodded, feeling happier than he thought he had ever felt before. “Margaret is expecting twins,” he said.

Mary and James grinned delightedly. “When you next come to visit,” Mary said, “you must bring her.”

Neville shot her a wry look. “I do not think she will come. But I will, if I may, and bring my children from time to time.”

He looked up at the sky, realising that the light had thinned. Dusk was not far off. “I should go,” he said. “No doubt both my uncle and my wife wonder where I am.”

They stood, and Mary and James escorted Neville back to the street door.

The bells were still ringing, and their sound made Neville turn one more time to James. “What of the Church?” he said. “It is useless—there is no God…while you…”

“No doubt it will continue for the time being,” James said, clearly not very interested. “Too many men have too many ambitions tied up in it. But eventually it will fail and fall into irrelevance. Neither you nor I should worry overmuch about it, Tom.”

Neville studied James’ face, then he nodded. “And so I will not.” He took his brother’s hand, then kissed Mary on the cheek.

“I am glad you are both contented,” he said, “and so shall I learn to be. I will go home to Halstow Hall, and raise my children, and learn to be a good husband for a wife who loves me very much.”

He paused, introspective, then his mouth curved in a very small smile. “Somehow I do not think that her love will be a wasted thing.”

“Love never is,” Mary said. “Go home and tend your garden, Tom.”

For more information on characters and places, please visit:
www.saradouglass.com/crucibworld.html

A
GINCOURT
: Small village (approx. 180 kilometres) to the north-west of Paris.

A
RCHIBALD
: fourth Earl of Douglas. His son is
ARCHIBALD
, Earl of Fife.

A
RCHIBALD
: Earl of Fife, son of the Earl of Douglas.

A
RMOUR
: the armouring of a knight was a complex affair, done in different ways in different countries and generations. Generally, knights wore either chain mail or plate armour or a combination of both, depending on fashion or the military activity involved. Chain mail was formed of thousands of tiny iron or steel rings riveted together to form a loose tunic (sometimes with arms); plate armour consisted of a series of metal plates fashioned to fit a knight’s body and joints—the full suit of armour was rarely seen before the fifteenth century. Helmets (whether
BASINETS
or the full-visored helms), mail or plate gloves, and weapons completed the knight’s outfitting.

A
QUITAINE
: a large and rich province covering much of the southwest of France. Aquitaine was not only independent of France, it was ruled by the English kings after Eleanor of Aquitaine brought the province, as part of her dowry, to her marriage with Henry II.

A
RUNDEL
,
WILLIAM
: Archbishop of Canterbury.

A
VIGNON
: the French-controlled town which is the seat of the rebel popes.

B
ALLARD, AGNES
: maid to
MARGARET NEVILLE
and nurse to
ROSALIND
.

B
ASINET
: an open-faced helmet (although many knights wore them with a visor attached) that was either rounded (globular) or conical in shape. See also
ARMOUR
.

B
AVIÉRE, ISABEAU DE
: wife of
LOUIS
, mother of
CHARLES
and
CATHERINE
.

B
EAUCHAMP, THOMAS
: Earl of Warwick.

B
EAUFORT, HENRY
: illegitimate-born son of
JOHN OF GAUNT
and his third wife
KATHERINE SWYNFORD
, Henry is the Bishop of Winchester.

B
EAUFORT, JOAN
: illegitimate-born daughter of
JOHN OF
GAUNT
and his third wife
KATHERINE SWYNFORD
. Now married to
RALPH NEVILLE
.

B
EAUREVOIR
: a castle north of Paris.

B
LACK PRINCE
: the now deceased first son of
EDWARD
III and his queen,
PHILIPPA
. The Black Prince was married to
JOAN OF KENT
, and was the father of
RICHARD II
.

B
OHUN
: Son of
THOMAS NEVILLE
and
MARGARET NEVILLE
. Named after
MARY BOHUN
.

B
OHUN, MARY
: heiress to the Hereford lands, titles and fortune, married to
HAL BOLINGBROKE
.

B
OLINGBROKE, HENRY OF (HAL)
: King of England, son of
JOHN OF GAUNT
and his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster.

B
ORDEAUX
: a port on the Garonne estuary in southwest France and capital of the duchy of
AQUITAINE
. Bordeaux was the
BLACK PRINCE
’s base in France (and in fact his son,
RICHARD
, was born there).

C
ATHERINE
: daughter of
PRINCE LOUIS
of france and
ISABEAU DE BAVIÈRE
, younger sister to
CHARLES
.

C
HARLES
: King of France, grandson of his predecessor, the deceased
KING JOHN
, son of
PRINCE LOUIS
and
ISABEAU DE BAVIÈRE
. Older brother of
CATHERINE
.

C
HARTRES, REGNAULT DE
: Archbishop of
RHEIMS
.

C
HATELLERAULT
: a heavily fortified town some twenty miles north of Chauvigny.

C
INQUE PORTS
: the five (thus ‘cinque’) important medieval southeastern ports of England: Dover, Hastings, Hythe, Romney and Sandwich. The barons of the Cinque Ports, as the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, were very powerful offices.

C
LEMENT VII
: the man elected by the breakaway cardinals to the papal throne after they declared the election of
URBAN VI
void due to the interference of the Roman mob. Clement rules from Avignon while Urban, who refuses to resign, continues to rule from Rome.

C
OOPER, WILL
: apprentice physician to
NICHOLAS CULPEPER
.

C
OURTENAY, SIR ROBERT
: squire to
THOMAS NEVILLE
. See also
SQUIRE
.

C
ULPEPER, NICHOLAS
: physician to
MARY BOHUN
.

D’ALBRET, CONSTABLE
: commander of
PHILIP OF NAVARRE’S
army.

D’ARC, JACQUES
: sergeant of the village of Domremy, in the province of Lorraine, France.

D
’A
RC
,
JOAN
(
JEANNE
, or
JEANNETTE
): second daughter of
JACQUES D’ARC
. Known as the Maid of France for her visionary prophecies.

D’ARC, ZABILLET (ISABELLE)
: wife of
JACQUES D
’
ARC
and mother of
JEANNETTE D’ARC
.

D
ATING
: medieval Europeans almost never used calendar dates. Instead, they orientated themselves within the year by the religious cycle of Church festivals, holy days and saints’ days. Although there were saints’ days every day of the year, most regions observed only a few of them; the average holy days observed within the English year, for example, was between forty and sixty; in Florence it was as high as 120. Years tended to be dated by the length of a monarch’s reign, each successive year starting on the date the monarch was crowned;
EDWARD III
was crowned on 1 February 1327, so, according to popular use, each new year during his reign would begin on 1st February. The legal year in England was calculated from Lady Day (25th March), so for legal purposes the new year began on 26th March. From the very late medieval period the
government gradually instituted clock and calendar time as we know it. See also
HOURS
, and my web page on medieval time for a full explanation for calculating the medieval year:
www.saradouglass.com/medtime.html

E
DWARD III
: king of England before
RICHARD II
. He died, mysteriously, during the Christmastide celebrations of 1378. Edward is the father of
JOHN OF GAUNT
and grandfather of
HAL BOLINGBROKE
.

E
XETER, DUKE OF
: See
HOLLAND, JOHN
.

F
ÉCAMP, ABBÉ DE
: the cleric in charge of Joan of Arc’s trial (see
D’ARC, JOAN
).

G
ABRIEL, SAINT
: an archangel of heaven.

G
ASCONY
: a province in the south of France famed for its wine and horses.

G
ILES, MASTER: BOLINGBROKE’S
chief engineer at the siege of
HARFLEUR
.

G
LOUCESTER
: see
WOODSTOCK, THOMAS
.

G
LYNDWR, OWAIN
: a prince of the Welsh.

G
RAVENSTEEN, THE
: the Count of Flanders’ castle home in Ghent, capital of Flanders.

H
ALSTOW HALL: THOMAS NEVILLE’S
home estate in Kent on the Hoo Peninsula near the Thames estuary.

H
ARFLEUR
: town and garrison at the mouth of the Seine River, guarding the river and road approaches to Paris.

H
ARRISON, RICHARD
: a London landlord.

H
ARWOOD, MARGERY
: a London housewife. Her husband is William.

H
AWKINS, EMMA
: a London prostitute. Her daughter is
JOCELYN HAWKINS
.

H
AWKINS, JOCELYN
: daughter to
EMMA HAWKINS
.

H
AWKINS, WILLIAM
: captain of
BOLINGBROKE’S
castle guard in
ROUEN
. (No relation to Emma or Jocelyn.)

H
OLLAND, JOHN
: Duke of Exeter and Earl of Huntingdon, son of
JOAN OF KENT
and Sir Thomas Holland, half brother to the murdered
RICHARD II
.

H
OTSPUR
: see
PERCY, HENRY
.

H
UNDRED YEARS’ WAR
: a period of intense war between France and England that lasted from roughly the mid-fourteenth
to fifteenth centuries. It was caused by many factors, but primarily by the English King,
EDWARD III
’s, insistence that he was the true heir to the French throne. The English and French royal families had intermarried for generations, and Edward was, in fact, the closest male heir. However, his claim was through his mother, who was the daughter of a French king, and French law did not recognise claims through the female line. The war was also the result of hundreds of years of tension over the amount of land the English held in France (often over a third of the realm).

H
UNGERFORD, LORD
: one of
BOLINGBROKE’S
commanders in France.

I
SABEAU DE BAVIÈRE
: see
BAVIÈRE, ISABEAU DE
.

J
OAN OF ARC
: see
D’ARC, JOAN

J
OAN OF KENT
: wife of the
BLACK PRINCE
, and a famed beauty in her youth. Mother of
RICHARD II
.

J
OHN, KING
: deceased king of France.

J
OHN OF GAUNT
, Duke of Lancaster and Aquitaine, Earl of Richmond, King of Castile, and prince of the Plantagenet dynasty: the deceased son of
EDWARD III
(Edward Plantagenet) and his queen,
PHILIPPA
, John of Gaunt was the most powerful and wealthy English nobleman of the medieval period. The name Gaunt (his popular nickname) derived from Ghent, where he was born. Married first to Blanche of Lancaster, then to Constance of Castile; both dead. By Blanche he had a son,
HENRY (HAL) BOLINGBROKE
; by Constance two daughters (who became the queens of Castile and Portugal); and by his long-time mistress,
KATHERINE SWYNFORD
, two legitimised children,
HENRY
and
JOAN BEAUFORT
. John of Gaunt died during the burning of the Savoy by the peasant rebels.

J
USTICIAR
: the chief political and legal representative of the King of England, acting as regent in his absence.

L
AMBETH PALACE
: the London residence of the archbishops of Canterbury, Lambeth Palace sits on the eastern bank of the Thames almost directly across from Westminster.

L
ANCASTER, DUKE OF
: See
JOHN OF GAUNT
.

L
EMAISTRE, JEAN
: Dominican Vicar of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Rouen.

L
OLLARDS
: the popular name given to followers of
JOHN WYCLIFFE
. It is a derisory name, taken from the fourteenth-century word “lolling”, which means mumbling.

L
ONDON BRIDGE
: for centuries there was only one bridge crossing the Thames. It crosses from Southwark on the southern bank into London itself, linking up with Watling Street, one of the great Roman roads in England. As with most bridges in medieval Europe, the bridge is built over with tenement buildings and shops.

L
OUIS
: only son of KING JOHN of France. Louis suffered an unfortunate encounter with a peacock which drove him insane, and now his son,
CHARLES
, has succeeded Louis’ father, King John.