The Assassin of Verona

by The Assassin of Verona (retail) (epub)

  ‘I am honoured to attend His Grace,’ the Count spoke over Thornhill’s shoulder, then he turned back to Thornhill. ‘We shall speak again, Father Thornhill, tonight. You have given me much to think on.’

  And let me see thee in thy woman’s weeds

  The Veneto

  Hemminges arrived in time to hear Aemilia say again that she was the Duke’s daughter.

  ‘And you know it to be so, Corporal,’ she said, pulling off her cap to let such hacked hair as remained frame her face. Are you not the man that taught me to ride? Will you deny me now?’

  ‘My lady, it is so. But how come you here? You walk among our captors, those that killed our loyal Ancient.’

  Hemminges reached out and pulled at Aemilia’s arm. ‘What, by the name of Christ, are you about, woman?’

  She shook off his arm. ‘I am not “woman”, Master Russell. You will call me by my title.’

  ‘I’ll call you fool, rash, intemperate, headstrong—’

  ‘Enough, I know my business and my state, even if you do not,’ said Aemilia. She turned back to the Duke’s soldiers, who watched with open mouths. Hemminges, pacing nearby, saw that William too had come to watch and that Orlando and some others of the outlaws had risen from the fire and were making their way over.

  ‘I am sorry that you are shackled here, sorrier still that the noble Ancient died. He did so honourably, in defence of his men, and for that we will a tribute pay when time allows. But now I speak to you as your mistress, will you be ruled by me?’

  ‘To what end, lady? It was but moments ago we took you for an outlaw and now you stand before us, in strange garb, your hair shorn, and with doubtful company. How freely do you speak? For we speak with no freedom at all.’

  ‘My father has decreed I am to marry the Count Claudio.’

  ‘So it is said.’

  ‘He is a cruel and strict master.’

  ‘So it is said.’

  ‘I’ll none of him.’

  ‘My lady, your father’s will is that you marry him. This is no soldier’s business but your own.’

  ‘I am the heir of my father’s house. The man I marry will rule there in time. The fate of all that owe my father fealty turns on the choice of him. You cannot wish Count Claudio as your lord.’

  There was a general muttering from the soldiers that the corporal quelled with a glare.

  ‘What of wishes, lady? We are soldiers. Our all are orders. So it seems it should be with a dutiful daughter. If you have sway here, let us be freed, then we may escort you safely home to your father.’

  ‘I did not come to speak to you of home.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Aye, what then?’ growled Hemminges.

  ‘Count Claudio sends his train of baggage for the wedding feast ahead. It was your order that you meet it in these woods as it crossed into my father’s lands and bring it safe to the palace.’

  The corporal hesitated. He turned and glared at the others in the troop and then lit on Oldcastle, walking free nearby.

  ‘You have told her this,’ he cried. ‘Traitor, beshrew me, a damned traitor for commander, to reveal our orders.’

  Oldcastle protested, ‘I never told her aught of it.’

  ‘It’s true, he did not. Though it would not have been treachery to speak to me of my father’s orders or of my betrothed’s plans. Count Claudio’s train will be rich with my dowry. I propose that it be taken and I ask for your aid in the task.’

  Aemilia’s proposal was met with loud cries, laughter from some, shouts of shame from others, thoughtful silence from a few and a look of sorrow from the corporal.

  ‘We are not thieves, lady,’ he said with solemn brow.

  ‘Nor are you,’ said Hemminges from behind her. Aemilia was not to be dissuaded. She felt a certainty of purpose previously unknown to her. She wanted more than all the world to be the mistress of her own fate. Shorn of false duties save that to her own soul’s demands. When she’d learned how soon her father wished to see her married and of the arrival of Count Claudio’s train and of how it bore her dowry, it was the further spur and opportunity she needed.

  ‘How can I steal that which is already promised me?’ she said to Hemminges, a smile on her lips.

  ‘The train will be strongly guarded. There will be no night-time ambush such as we took these peaceably with.’

  ‘No night-time ambush but the train must pass across the bridge near Tregnano, there might we surprise them.’

  ‘You talk of slaughter. Many will die. These outlaws are not enough to make success of it even if we took Count Claudio’s guards abruptly, in full amazement at our attack.’

  ‘I talk of taking what is mine and I speak to my father’s men because I need them with me in the action.’

  Again, Aemilia’s words set up a hubbub among the captured soldiers but now it was joined by talk from the outlaws. Their amazement at Sebastian’s true nature was layered over with delight at the thought of this rich train and the capture of the dowry.

  ‘We’ll none of it,’ said the corporal. His whiskers seemed to bristle at the very talk of it.

  ‘Well I think it sounds like a splendid idea,’ said Orlando, coming up behind. His eyes gleamed with a wicked delight. He clapped Hemminges on the back and passed in front of him to make a courtly bow to Aemilia.

  ‘So many mysteries solved, Lady Aemilia,’ he said as he straightened. He reached out and took her hand and pressed it to his lips. ‘My admiration for your courage, Sebastian, is redoubled. And for your spirit, the measure is not made that could encompass my respect for it.’

  He turned to the soldiers. ‘Come, fellows, your lady commands you to the action. Why make us ransom you when we might all be the richer at Count Claudio’s expense?’

  It was clear the thought appealed to many of the troop. It did not appeal to the proud corporal.

  ‘We are not thieves, knave. Are you so base that you think all as cowardly and villainous as you?’

  Among the outlaws many were angered by the corporal’s words but Orlando merely shrugged at them. He pointed to the corporal and gestured to his men to seize him.

  ‘Do not kill him,’ said Aemilia hastily.

  Orlando paused and looked down at Aemilia’s hand on his arm. She did not take it away.

  ‘He is an honourable man, and does not deserve death because he does his duty.’

  Orlando covered her hand with his own. ‘Lady Aemilia, I am no callous killer and if I were, your pleas would be commands to me to change my ways. I merely mean to have the corporal taken to his horse and escorted, blindfold that he may not know his route from here, to a place from which he may make his way back to your father. Someone must carry our demands.’ Orlando smiled at Aemilia and then looked up at the corporal. ‘I can think of no one better to convey them.’

  The corporal looked from face to face. Brave he might be, but to have gone from expectation of his death to life and freedom in the passage of a minute would shake the bravest of men. He opened his mouth to speak but stuttered and was hauled away to be set on his horse and sent on his way, taking his noble but unhelpful thinking with him.

  ‘Now perhaps,’ said Orlando, ‘we ought to speak a little further, Sebastian, for so I’ll call you till I see you in your woman’s weeds, before we make our plans.’

  Ha, ha, what a fool Honesty is!

  Such a day of bargaining, plots and remonstrances followed Aemilia’s doffing of her disguise. No sooner had Orlando brought her to the fire than Hemminges sought to bring her away again to have more private counsel. This was the first argument, and was settled by expedient of Aemilia planting herself on the fallen trunk of tree beside the fire and refusing to be moved.

  That first was vanguard to a dozen more. Should the outlaws attack the convoy of the Count Claudio? Aemilia and Orlando argued so, Hemminges scoffed at their foolhardy talk and spoke of danger and how reward should benefit the dead little. Very well then, should they not seek the service of the troop
of soldiers that remained? Aemilia spoke of their certain honesty to her good fortune. Orlando and Hemminges now made common cause in reply against her: the one because such men could not be trusted once they were no longer compelled to obedience, the other arguing against complicity in the corruption of their oaths of fealty to their sovereign lord, the Duke. So, so, all well and good, but could they hope of success without their aid? Aemilia, Orlando and Hemminges, in answer of this query posed, fell upon each other in such a cacophony of dispute, the each professing reasons for their rectitude, that clarity of argument fell victim to the rising passion of their voices.

  Then Zago spoke. The man seemed both an angrier and a meaner figure than even his ordinary self, though none but Aemilia and William knew the cause of his distemper or saw the fear that filled him to realise he had importuned, in the surliest terms, the daughter of a lord. Anger and fear informed his speaking now, pointing out that they had already within their possession that which was worth a dowry, namely Aemilia, and they should simply ransom her. Hemminges, now in such a height of passion as Oldcastle had rarely seen him, near drew at that suggestion but sheathed his half-drawn sword again when he realised that this would see Aemilia safe home. He then became the plan’s most earnest advocate. Aemilia in her turn raised a great tempest at the perfidy of her brothers of the woods, threatened to take her own life rather than be sent back to her father trussed like a Christmas goose. She lashed Zago across the face with her hand and a general brawl might then have started till, at the last, the idea was quashed for all and good by Orlando’s loud refusal to consider such dishonour to the guest rite. He wished, he said, to return to Aemilia’s first proposal, to raid the convoy of Count Claudio.

  From there, the argument began again, spiralled deeper into the difficulties and dangers of the task, the chance of death, considered high by all and most especially so by Hemminges, whose eloquent description of death in battle brought tears to Luca’s eyes at thought of his dead brother, and blanched the face of many among the outlaws.

  At this Aemilia, proudly standing forth, spoke to curb their cowardly humour. ‘Is it that I, a woman, am more resolute than you? Dare I when men cower? Well then, I’ll not insult you, call you cowards, base and fearful, but rather speak in praise of you, say that you are sensible men, wise men, who look to the business as one does a ledger – reckoning profit and loss. Yet I do wonder, when I call my father’s men to this deed and march together with them, will you then sit idly by while courage in a woman’s form stalks on to glory?’

  ‘Nay,’ several cried.

  ‘There’s the spirit. I doubted it not. I have seen in you, be you never so base, a noble lustre to your eye. You are those that will dare and dare with me. And with our glory shall come riches, rewards for those that dare, for those that have the courage to show here, to show now, that though they be made of base metal yet they have been forged in the soot and fires of suffering and emerged as steel.’

  To Hemminges’ surprise a ragged cheer rose from the bandits’ throats.

  ‘Don’t let pride be a horsefly to sting you from your common sense,’ cried Hemminges, but he went quite unheeded under the cheering of the common crowd at Aemilia’s oration.

  ‘Which of you is with me?’ she called.

  Hemminges could only watch, his blood both boiling and freezing, as Aemilia was borne in state to where her father’s men now lay in trembling wait, not knowing the cause of the outlaws’ excitement. Shorn of their corporal’s resolve, weakened by relief at finding the outlaws cheers were for the promise of their company and not for prospect of a crueller resolution of their fate, they proved most willing to accede to Aemilia’s plan. She was, they proclaimed, agreeing with her argument, the daughter of their sovereign lord and her command, offering both freedom and riches, had much to be commended in it. Aemilia herself led them in three cheers, at each round of which Hemminges’ head stooped lower on his shoulders.

  William, sitting by Zago, watched all with his bright eyes hooded and his head dipped. Oldcastle, watching him in turn, wondered at his stillness and if he slept or no but saw him hum or seem to speak aloud some poem as the course of the debate roamed about.

  When all was done, Orlando and Aemilia, victorious, turned to planning of the fight to come. Hemminges, slump-shouldered, turned away and kicked the ground as he came to Oldcastle.

  ‘Bloody, bloody, bloody fools,’ he said and bent, plucked up a stick and hurled it with main force against a nearby tree where it shattered from the blow.

  ‘Was it not for love of her strong will that you followed her to these woods?’ asked William, coming up behind them and witnessing the stick’s destruction.

  ‘This is not will but recklessness,’ said Hemminges.

  ‘All rivers flood their course from time to time, but drawing back leave richer the land they covered. So may it be with her.’

  ‘For Jesu’s sake I liked it better when you were silent, Will. People are not fit for metaphor, they demand plain speaking. The woman is not a river but an innocent. She does not flood, she rages. She is sick with her own freedom and others will catch cold of it and die. As may she.’

  William spoke with excitement: ‘You see it, then? You see it as clearly as it can be seen.’

  William looked from Oldcastle to Hemminges but their faces showed no understanding.

  ‘In plain speaking are we not free to go? These outlaws have quite given over the thought of ransom, their heads are turned by talk of honour gained in the bloody field. Nick they no longer value even at his false worth. And, even if you did not see the dangers in her, Hemminges, you see that this woman no longer cares for your guiding hand. Has thrown it off. Slapped it away. There is no more here for any of us. Let us three then depart.’

  Oldcastle was nodding. ‘Yes, John, this is a dry company that we keep. I have been foolish in my fancies and I will no more of such foolishness. Let us go now, as you have yourself urged us to do.’

  ‘And watch her die? Watch others die for her?’ said Hemminges, shaking his head. ‘No, no. I brought her here. I will not abandon her at the moment that she first strays. It is now she needs me most.’

  He walked away without saying more and Oldcastle made to follow but then stopped with William’s restraining hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Hers is not the only sickness,’ William said. ‘The illness must run its course.’

  ‘And what medicine shall we apply? William, are you returned to us now? To guide us?’ said Oldcastle, looking at his young friend. His searching gaze held hope and trepidation and sadness in equal measures.

  ‘Time, Nick, is the balm for all hurts. Heart’s ease, it numbs but it does not cure. The cure’s within. I shall give him what he wants. Not what is needful but what he desires.’

  He turned his face away and would have left but Oldcastle tried to draw him back. Oldcastle longed to engage his friend, as he had so often done in the past, when in their cups or speaking of some matter conjunctive to their interests they would let wit play on wit and build from it a fire of amusements that blew their thoughts to heaven. Oldcastle felt his loneliness, he who hated that sensation more than any other in the world. Now his friend’s face shifted from shrewd to blank in an instant and he could not see where the man had gone within.

  ‘How pregnant sometimes your replies are, William. But are they the happy accident that madness hits on, that reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of?’ Oldcastle’s eyes still searched his friend’s face. ‘Will, Will, where did you go and have you yet come back to us? Will, what is the matter?’

  But William made no reply save to clasp a hand, too briefly, on his friend’s shoulder and then to walk away leaving Oldcastle alone in the forest.

  A shrewd knave and an unhappy

  Hemminges was not the only one of Aemilia’s lovers unhappy at the morning’s news. Valentine had risen late and, having risen, remembered his resolve of the night before and hurried to find Petro at the church. H
e’d left before Aemilia had revealed herself to her father’s men and returned to find her the feted Joan of Arc to Orlando’s Dauphin, the talk on everyone’s lips her plan to seize Count Claudio’s convoy. In vain he sought to draw her aside. A crowd of fawning outlaws had surrounded her and when he’d wormed his way to the centre of their sphere she’d waved him away. Redoubling his demand, he’d been interrupted by Orlando putting before her another piece of planning for the raid and she, distracted, had given his plea for her attention no heed at all.

  Forlornly, he had sloped away. Wandering from the centre of the camp he’d sat and pulled his commonplace book from its satchel and begun to write: a poem to soothe his soul. His peace had been brief. The madman Adam had come up and taunted him to distraction with idle comments and sharp insults. At last he had sent him away but calm was lost to him. That Adam had a way of saying things that seemed half a fool’s mummery and half an augur’s prophecy and caused one to brood on him and his proverbs long after he had left.

  Looking up he saw where the corporal of horse was being led past upon his palfrey, straight-backed, wrists bound and blindfold. Another who is sent away, Valentine thought. He wandered over, looking back at Aemilia gathered in the tight knot of outlaws as he walked, and thought of his abandonment. Soon this corporal, for all he suffers now, will be back on the couch of luxury while I stay here on a bed of thorns. A sudden thought came to Valentine. He scribbled hastily in his commonplace book.

  ‘You ride to the Duke?’ Valentine called to the corporal, coming closer.

  The soldier’s sneer was all his answer but Valentine did not care. ‘Hold a moment, ho,’ he said to one-armed Jacopo who led the man. Jacopo ignored him so he ran a little forward and walked close to the mounted man’s knee.

  ‘Give my cousin my apology,’ said Valentine up to him.

  ‘He’ll see you swing for your treachery,’ growled the corporal at the simpering voice.

  Valentine placed his hand upon the man’s leg. ‘Tell him, I most earnestly desire his forgiveness.’