The Assassin of Verona

by The Assassin of Verona (retail) (epub)

  ‘Where is my daughter?’

  ‘Gone,’ said Oldcastle.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Valentine,’ answered Oldcastle. The many rehearsals of this moment had tortured him greatly but he had his answers ready and he gabbled them out now.

  ‘Why did you not stop him?’

  ‘My lord, recall. He had left before you yourself departed. It was only once you were gone that your servants dared reveal their intelligence, knowing of your great anger at it.’

  ‘Is it so? Well. Well.’ The Duke’s crop came down to strike against his boot in rhythm with his words, as he paced the room.

  Oldcastle eased himself from the wall to put the table between him and the enraged Duke whose crop once more levelled itself at Oldcastle.

  ‘Tell me why there has been no pursuit. Why you proceeded not against these feats so crimeful and so capital in nature.’

  ‘Two reasons, my lord, which to you may seem much unsinewed and yet to me they were strong. The first was that my lieutenant, Russell, whom you know, by cunning made himself of their party.’

  ‘What? Why did he not prevent their flight? We are betrayed, betrayed.’

  The Duke sat heavily upon a chair and ran his hands through his hair. Worry for his daughter was writ in his fingers’ every tremble.

  ‘Not so, my lord. No. No. Think, my lord, what followed if my man ran hastily to speak of their departure? They put on greater haste and are gone before we can prevent it and now without knowledge of their intended destination and’ – Oldcastle paused to lend what next he said a greater emphasis – ‘alone, unchaperoned.’

  The Duke raged up as he imagined the course of events that Oldcastle set out with his words and saw, in the man’s insinuating eyebrow, the frightful implications of his daughter’s flight. His anger would have gratified Oldcastle greatly, showing itself a tribute to the power of his rhetoric to paint a scene but, alas, his enjoyment was quite cut short by the piteous sight of the Duke at once tearful and storming against his daughter, hurling whatever came to hand one moment, the next with head in hands.

  The thunder receded and Oldcastle peeked out from his place of refuge. The Duke was panting from the effort of his storming and his words came in angry gasps.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ve yet to receive his sending of his whereabouts,’ said Oldcastle, ‘but rest assured it comes.’

  The Duke did not look comforted. ‘I must gather my men, horses, we must ride out. Disaster threatens. My very success with the Count Claudio will be my undoing. The man rides forth to marry within the week. His bags and baggage he sends ahead, that preparation for the wedding feast may be made. His strong purpose, his urgent action, all commend him to me. Now I will present him with an empty wedding bower. My honour, oh God, my honour is undone.’

  In distress he clutched again at his hair and more of the furniture suffered beneath his lashing crop.

  ‘I ride tonight. To horse.’

  ‘No, my lord, let me counsel you,’ said Oldcastle, coming to the crux of his much imagined argument. ‘For you would ride without knowing where and whilst you were absent and your few men with you, what of the priest?’

  ‘The priest?’

  ‘Thornhill,’ said Oldcastle. ‘Hear my second reason for delay. You had not left the palace long enough for the dust from your horses’ hooves to have faded from our sight but Father Thornhill accosted me, bearded me in your great hall with questions about your purpose in leaving, your daughter’s flight.’

  The Duke was across the room in an instant, pressing close to Oldcastle, grasping him by the collar.

  ‘You told him—’

  ‘Nothing, good my lord. I am not so much a fool as that. Only I said that you were rode to view your estate, your daughter following on a whim, escorted by my man, John Russell.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  ‘There’s more. He had taken your prisoner, the outlaw, and put him to the question.’

  ‘What? That damnable outfaced rogue. He presumes upon my command. Absent me a while from this place and I will return to find him lord of my own palace.’

  ‘Curled within like a snail in its shell, impossible to remove,’ agreed Oldcastle. Oldcastle’s heart still beat a merry pace but he began to have hope that the Duke might yet take his word and the course of his anger be diverted toward the hateful priest.

  ‘My lord, if you depart now in armed retinue so soon after your return ... Well, Thornhill will make of that what he will and... his will tends to the unwholesome for all that he is holy.’

  Oldcastle grinned at this last, which he thought rather fine. The Duke paid it no heed, Oldcastle’s Italian being a tattered thing whose meaning came mostly through gesture and was not made for punning. Instead, the Duke became lost in thought. He tapped absently on Oldcastle’s shoulder with his finger.

  ‘You shall go.’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Have you not my commission against these outlaws? We shall say it is that. Then there need be no mention of your true purpose, to find my daughter.’

  It was to this Oldcastle had worked.

  ‘Oh wise, my lord, wise. Might I suggest one thought more: let me go alone. Like Orpheus I shall descend into the Underworld and bring back Eurydice, but I shall keep my faith.’

  ‘Madness,’ said the Duke. ‘Go alone into that nest of vipers?’

  ‘But it must be, for only then may I travel unseen. The soft tread of one man passes unnoticed, whereas the tramp of an army...’ Oldcastle completed his argument with another of his most expressive shrugs and his head tilted to the side to admire the stratagem. As if to say, do I not speak the wisdom of a Hannibal, a Caesar, a Pompey? He had been particularly pleased with his Orphean simile, which in the imagined arguments of the day had brought a smile to the Duke’s face. It failed to do so now.

  ‘Blast it, man,’ said the Duke. ‘The whole scheme turns on the image of your sweeping the outlaws clean from the woods. You’re Hercules and they the Augean stables, not damned Orpheus and his lyre.’

  Oldcastle opened his mouth to protest. His plan for escape turned on finding Hemminges alone and the pair making haste for England by such circuitous route as most promised safety. Comfort be damned, he’d had enough of soft beds and thorny problems. What he wanted now was home. Let haste take precedent over luxury. To be trailed by a troop of the Duke’s guards would make impossible such a plan. The Duke, however, for whom haste always took precedence, had already turned from Oldcastle and was calling for his captain of guards. He turned to Oldcastle again.

  ‘I had my fill of painful metaphor with Valentine; from a soldier I want plain dealing, not plays on words. You’ll ride at dawn. Advantage shall there be in your numbers, your man Russell will thereby know of your coming and convey the message to you where he and my daughter rest. Her found and safe returned, destroy the lousy thieves that infest these woods. If you find them not then join with the Count Claudio’s convoy and bring it safely home to the palace.’

  At the door the Duke turned to Oldcastle and made a last expressive pass with his crop. ‘Bring me Valentine, alive if you can. His head if you cannot.’

  And from his bosom purge this black despair

  The Veneto

  Ahead of her Hemminges strode with angry tread upon the ground. Clouds of leaves and branches shot up as he kicked away obstruction. Aemilia hurried to follow, with Valentine behind.

  ‘That was magnificent,’ she panted as she came beside him. ‘Such skill at arms, I have never seen its like.’

  Hemminges merely grunted and carried on.

  ‘Master Russell, will you again teach me the sword?’

  He stopped and rounded on her, his stopping so sudden and so unexpected that Valentine, still moving with his head down, collided with her and sent both stumbling forward. Hemminges looked at them with distaste and shook his head.

  ‘Popinjays playing at adventure.’

  ‘I am not,’ said Aemilia, pushing Valen
tine away so that she might the better confront Master Russell with her sincerity. ‘I have studied war. I know my Vegetius and I know my Machiavel and can discourse upon the criticisms of the latter against the former. I have been with my father in his councils. I ride, I am a fair shot with the bow, if I’m to be the master of my own destiny why should I not learn the sword?’

  ‘I’ll have no more of this,’ said Hemminges. Indecision, a sensation most unaccustomed in his breast, now stuffed it out to bursting. He did not want to thwart Aemilia’s will but the same love of her that made him want to give her all that she desired made him desperate of her safety. Her seeming wilful ignorance of the dangers about her was both a source of wonder and of worry. He chided himself for a lovesick fool. There was but one course. ‘We must return to your father’s palace. This prank is done.’

  ‘Never. I will never return to my father until he gives to me the dignity that I demand.’

  ‘And I cannot,’ croaked Valentine. His head still rang from the blow that Hemminges had given him and his jaw swelled and throbbed most painfully. He cared not if the Duke granted him any dignity so long as he would have granted him his hospitality once more. The thought of its loss brought tears to his eyes. Hemminges looked at them both and shook his head again.

  ‘You understand we are hunted? You think these thieves will run from us now because I took them by surprise? Because you showed them mercy?’

  ‘Why not? What do we have that they would want?’

  ‘Oh foolish, foolish woman to say such a thing even if you were not carrying a sack of opals.’

  Hemminges dismissed the conversation with a wave of his hand and set off again at a pace. Aemilia considered herself much insulted. Her admiration for Master Russell, which had been growing with each labour he performed, flickered. How dare this servant tell her what she might or might not do? It was only his cowardice that meant they still trudged through the forest when they might have sat by the outlaws’ fire and shared their supper. She strode after Hemminges to tell him so.

  As she approached he stopped and sniffed the air again, as he had done when the outlaws first surprised them. Aemilia stopped herself and looked about. The afternoon sun was still bright. The trees, bare of their branches, showed themselves all around. What did he see or hear to halt so? Then she heard it too: a cry, a moan upon the wind. Hemminges motioned for her and Valentine to stay. Valentine, his nerves taut already from the earlier fracas, thrilled at the strange keening and with eyes wide with fear shrank to the ground and clutched his hands about his knees, as if he could have shrunk himself into a walnut shell and hid for safety there. Aemilia would have none of it. Ignoring Valentine’s frantic waving, she followed after Hemminges. He, creeping ahead, turned and saw her and joined with Valentine in gestures of denial. She set her lips and shook her head. At last, exasperated, he motioned her that if she must follow to do so in silence and set off again after the elusive sound of sadness on the wind.

  Ahead, a small bank rose up and it was from beyond that the sound came. Hemminges bent to the ground and crept closer with Aemilia hard behind. They peered beneath gorse bushes and over the edge. A small brook ran below at whose side there stood an old and antique oak tree, roots rising proudly from the bank beside the stream, its canopy bare even as those of other trees had begun to come into leaf. Sequestered within the knot of roots there lay a stag, its side pierced by an arrow, heaving for breath, moaning in pain. Each groaning breath seemed to stretch its hide almost to bursting. From its eyes tears rolled down its nose and down the bank to the black rocks of the brook.

  It was not this piteous sight that caused Hemminges’ sharp breath. Bent over the stag was a figure, of middling height, gaunt, the face unremarkable save for the dark eyes that quested over the dying stag’s body. The man was crying too, for all that his hands held bow and arrows fletched with goose feathers, the same as those in the one that pierced the stag’s side. The man bent down to rest his hand on the stag’s face.

  ‘Poor deer,’ the man said, you make a testament as people do. Your tears and mine roll into this brook, giving more to that which has already too much.’

  The man looked up and about. ‘Where are your friends to succour you in your hour of need? Gone, all gone. It is right. Misery should leave the flux of company.’

  As if in answer to his words the far bank was suddenly filled with the spark and jump of feet as a herd of deer raced past. The man stood to watch and cried angrily after them: ‘Go then, go, you fat and greasy citizens. Ignore your bankrupt, broken brother here.’

  From there he broke into a rant against the tyranny of men who brought with them nothing but death, unhappiness and subjugation. Finishing, he sat heavily down beside the newly dead stag and buried his head in his hands from which closed room emerged the sound of sobbing.

  Aemilia shook her head at the mad scene of the hunter weeping over his prey. Outlaws, madmen; the forest was full of incident. Had she but known she would have come earlier to view it all.

  Beside her she heard Hemminges let loose the breath he’d held and whisper, ‘Oh Will, Will.’

  The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

  Hemminges stood and called, ‘Will.’

  The man’s head shot up and he stared. ‘John?’ He got to his feet.

  Aemilia could not understand what the man said next for he spoke in a language she did not know, but she saw him turn to address the stag and thought him more clearly mad than any man she’d seen.

  Had she ventured that opinion to Hemminges, who did understand Will’s English, he might well have agreed with her conclusion.

  ‘I’ll not believe it,’ said William. ‘Yet there you are, John Hemminges I’ll call you, friend, companion of my travels. Yet you cannot be here, for sure you are dead with the others. Have we not had this tale before? No matter, it is a good one and will bear retelling. Or is here purgatory and I the ghost?’

  He looked down at the stag. ‘You see that? The ghost summons me but I’ll not go. He may lure me to a place of danger and there take from me my wits.’

  William’s words had some sense to them but no reason. Hemminges strode down the bank to stand on the other side of the brook from him.

  ‘Will, what...’ Words seemed to fail him. What question to begin with?

  William spoke instead. ‘You look well for a ghost. An apparition should not look so plump, think you?’ He spoke again to the stag.

  ‘Jesu, Will. Are you mad? I am no ghost. Do you not know me? How come you to these woods? Where is Isabella?’

  This torrent of questions William ignored until the last, which seemed to pull him from his reverie.

  ‘Dead.’

  With that word William heaved a cry and turned away from Hemminges, his arm coming up to hide his eyes.

  ‘Christ’s will,’ said Hemminges, his shoulders sinking beneath the sudden burden of the news. ‘Christ’s will. I am sorry, Will, truly. Her illness?’

  ‘No other hand but God’s or so the doctor assured me,’ said William over his shoulder.

  Hemminges looked about him and seeing no other way, sprang across the brook to where his friend stood. He turned him about and took him in a great embrace that the younger man withstood passively, his arms by his sides, staring beyond him. Hemminges broke his hug and held William at arm’s length. He looked gaunt, his pale cheek and hollow eyes, his grief, had added ten years or more to him.

  ‘Tell me what has passed.’

  William shook his head. ‘I scarcely know and it is a tale of tears and woe to bore with the best of them. Isabella’s dead, there’s all of it.’

  ‘Will, Will, is there no more?’

  ‘No more but this, Isabella being dead my protection in Venice died with her. I fled, fell in with rogues, and came in search of venison.’

  He began to laugh and the laugh soon took him over until he was forced to sit and catch his breath. ‘All this way, all this way,’ he panted. ‘To be again a poacher of deer.’
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  Hemminges crouched by his unhappy friend and put a hand on his shoulder. William looked drawn and tired. His was not the laughter of happiness but the humming strain of a bowstring too tightly drawn.

  ‘It is good to see you, John,’ said William when the breath was back with him.

  ‘And you,’ answered Hemminges.

  ‘Who is the woman?’ asked William.

  Hemminges, puzzled, looked to his friend and then followed his gaze to where Aemilia stood. She had come down from the bank, but the brook was too broad for her to safely vault as Hemminges had done. She waited, watching expectantly. Hemminges could not understand why William called her woman. Her disguise was sound enough for the outlaws’ leader at half the distance that William now sat from her. No, it is not her disguise that’s broken but poor William’s mind, Hemminges thought rapidly. It was better, surely, to maintain the fiction that she was Valentine’s page until he knew exactly what occurred here with his friend. He signalled to Aemilia to wait and turned back to William.

  ‘That’s no woman, Will, but a lad, Sebastian, a page to the lord Valentine.’

  William patted Hemminges on the leg.

  ‘So, so, no woman but a lad, then. And I am Adam!’ William pulled Hemminges close. ‘But you should know, Hemminges, I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is in the right quarter,’ he looked to Aemilia, ‘I know a hawk from a handsaw.’

  William walked over to the stag, took his dagger from its sheath and began to dress the beast with swift, clean cuts.

  ‘Will, what are you about?’

  William straightened and looked surprisedly at Hemminges. ‘Why, preparing this venison for portage.’

  ‘I meant, what are you doing now? Where do you go?’

  William’s puzzled brow creased deeper. ‘I have just said, John.’

  ‘You spoke of the company of rogues.’

  ‘I did, though they are poor players at the part. They know little of their business and their leader would be better at philosophy than at outlawry. Still, I must play my part and that’s as huntsman.’