His father let slip his hand, and Thomas floated away from the boy on the ground, up above the sacked priory buildings, over his native village of Much Wenlock. There was his home, the comfortable brick manor house built next to the covered market, location and manner befitting the squire of the prosperous Shropshire town. But it was not his home any more, he remembered now, others lived there, others who had conformed, who had profited from those who had not. He was no longer looking down but up – now he could hear the birds, now he was a boy again, see them diving, circling, squabbling over the body swinging in their midst. It was spinning around, faster, faster, he couldn’t see who it was until some unseen hand, perhaps his own, halted the whirling, scattered the birds back to their window perch. Now he could see the face, see that despite the protruding purple tongue, the rolled up whites of the eyes, it was utterly and completely his father’s.
Thomas had thought his scream was silent, held within a dream. But as he sat up quickly, the looks of those around him, Carafa’s men checking their arms and equipment, told him otherwise. Loosening the fold of cloak that had somehow wrapped itself too tightly around his throat, Thomas placed his forehead on his knees, began to recite his catechism, the principles of his faith, the familiar Latin words slowly having their effect. His breathing calmed, his heart steadied. He knew why he’d had the dream – the sacrilege of the sacking of Wenlock Priory, the sacrifice his father had made to oppose it, these were the goads Thomas needed to keep him on the path of righteousness. Even if he must do questionable things. And he’d never questioned anything before as he did this quest of Anne Boleyn’s hand.
The man he saw striding toward him seemed to have no such qualms, no night-time terrors. Thomas watched Gianni glance neither to right or left, watched big soldiers step out of his determined path. In their brief conversations, before setting out, in hurried rests on the road, Gianni had revealed little – and Thomas had an array of methods for finding out what he needed to know. The boy was folded over some internal flame. It shone out from his dark eyes, a yearning. The man who would be Pope, the Cardinal Carafa, had said in Rome that his protégé had ‘intimate’ knowledge of where the hand could be found. The way he’d said ‘intimate’ had made Thomas shudder.
Gianni covered the last twenty paces to them at a run. ‘You! Alessandro! Bring ten of your men. Armed. And follow me.’ To Thomas he added, ‘God has smiled upon our venture, Brother.’
‘He always does. How, particularly, now?’
But Gianni did not reply. He just turned and led the assembled company swiftly away.
Thomas struggled to keep up. His knee was always at its worst after sleep.
Gianni had spent the morning moving up and down the lines, talking with soldiers and officers, gleaning information. He’d heard the snatch of a ballad sung over a breakfast fireplace, familiar names leaping from the verse. The rebel Sienese who sang, who fought against their own republic, told him the ballad was of an infamous general within the city whose balls, it seemed, were held firmly in his harridan wife’s hands.
‘We’ll relieve her of that duty when we exiles get inside. This reckoning has been a long time a-coming. Just last week this Rombaud led the men who killed fifty of us at the Porta San Viene. Now he will pay!’ The officer’s eyes gleamed with vengeance as he spoke.
It was strange to hear his father and mother talked of thus. He’d left them at Montepulciano, a prosperous farmer-winemaker and his wife. Now it seemed they had returned to their former life, piling sin on sin, the subject of bawdy ballads. Well he, of all the family, would atone. He had achieved much in that line up to now, God be praised. The work he was about now would dwarf those accomplishments.
His seeking took him, near midday, down to the Porta Romana, gates he would later position himself beside to scan for his prey, to make sure they did not escape the city, but could be stalked within it. There was a crowd gathered there, for many starving citizens were testing the truce, had slipped out the sally ports to barter such treasure they had left for crusts of bread, scraps of meat. There were enough exploiters there to bargain with, not least the mercenaries who, by this honourable surrender, had been denied the looting of a captured city.
Not just looting, Gianni realized. Three soldiers, who one moment had been flirting with a ragged young girl, luring her to the side of the mêlée with promises of food, now grabbed her, a hand over her mouth, picked her up and ran her down into a little gully. He was about to walk away, to continue his explorations, when a vision of the girl’s face came back to him, just before the hand went over it, cutting off the scream. It had seemed familiar in that instant, almost as if he had seen that look of terror on that very face before. Then he realized that he had, and where, and he was running back to his men the next instant.
When they reached the gully’s mouth, sounds led them down the narrowing passage, sounds of terror, of laughter. As he pushed through the bushes, Gianni saw that Maria Fugger was lying, spreadeagled, pinned by two of them at arms and legs, the squat, bald sergeant crouched before her, pulling at the straps around his waist.
The sergeant, hearing them, turned and snarled, his face contorted into the grimace of an animal interrupted with its prey.
‘We found her first. You can fuck off and wait. There’ll be some left over when we’re done.’
Gianni paused. He had no particular regard for Maria, a stupid girl he’d enjoyed tormenting sometimes, who had early formed an alliance against him with the equally bovine Erik. She had probably brought this on herself with her sluttish, sinful ways. This was not like Wilhelm, these soldiers were not in training to be priests. As long as they didn’t kill her …
As he considered, a black-cloaked figure pushed past him.
‘What is happening here?’
Thomas had been a soldier himself, had turned away from such desecrations before. What he didn’t know was why Gianni was here watching it.
The young man told him. ‘God’s smile, Brother. She is the one we seek, whose father will lead us to our goal.’
‘And you would see her raped first?’
When he saw the young man shrug, anger surged through him, bile burning his throat. With it came the memory of his dream, the questionable decisions that must be taken for the greater glory of God. This Gianni was a part of all that, a weapon in his own right, part of what had to be tolerated. But there were other things that needn’t be.
‘Let her go.’
The sergeant’s hands held his belt, which he was about to discard. Instead, he reached down toward his sheath.
‘You’ll wait your turn like a good boy.’
Thomas was a soldier of Christ now, but he had been a soldier of England once. There were rules he had lived by then, rules he had not forgotten. So he acted on one of them – strike before you are struck.
He bent down, turning half away from the man before him, his body and cloak hiding his left hand until it was too late for it to be stopped. He used the heel of his palm, striking upwards and across, snapping the man’s nose, reeling him back against the gully wall. Both soldiers dropped the girl’s arms, reaching toward a pike and sword resting upright against a bush behind them. The sword was sheathed and buckled so Thomas went for the man with the pike, seizing it as the soldier was trying to bring its point down, driving the shaft back and up into the man’s neck, collapsing him. He swung it around toward the man who had unsheathed half the blade of his sword, who stopped when he saw the cutting edge in Thomas’s hand, dropped his sword, stepped back with arms upraised.
Gianni only had time to say, ‘You surprise me, Jesuit,’ when a cry cut across his words, and the sergeant, blood pouring down his face, knife in hand, ran at Thomas’s exposed back. The blade was a hand’s length away when it halted, seeming to hover there a moment, pointing like an accusation into the Englishman’s black cloak. Sounds emerged, but no words – blocked, no doubt, by the dagger that had appeared in his throat. The man dropped to his knees, his own knif
e still held before him, plunging it into the ground as he slowly sank forward, his forehead coming to rest on the ground almost between the terrified girl’s legs.
For a moment there was silence, save for the gasps of Maria Fugger, the deep inhalations of the Jesuit, the gurglings of the man whose neck held a blade. Gianni stepped forward, gently pushed the sergeant’s body with his toe until it keeled over onto its side. Then he bent and retrieved his dagger from the throat, wiping it on the man’s jerkin before straightening up again.
‘Did you have to take his life?’ Thomas threw the pike down as he spoke.
‘Now,’ asked Gianni, smiling, ‘is that gratitude?’
It was then that Maria’s tears, long held back, began to flow down her cheeks. She was staring at Gianni, disbelief mingling with the horror, words choked in water.
‘Hallo, Maria.’ Gianni’s voice was pleasant. ‘How’s your father?’
Sobs cut off any reply. Turning to the men behind him he barked, ‘Bind and gag her.’
There was a rush to obey. The men who followed him were Carafa’s and the Cardinal’s orders had been to do as this man bid them. Any question they might have had about doing that had ended when a thrown dagger had entered a throat.
When they began to truss the sobbing girl, the locket fell from her clothes. It was handed to Gianni, who opened it and nodded, showing the miniatures inside to Thomas.
‘The girl’s parents. This is the man we seek.’
As he spoke, the great bell in the Torre del Mangia sounded its first sad note. Gianni looked up. ‘Ah! Shall we see if we can find him?’
Thomas let all the others leave, Gianni at the head of his men, the girl pushed before him. The two soldiers had fled the other way, deeper into the gully, leaving the body of their comrade in the dust. Thomas bent over it now. The blood had pooled, forming a great circle, a halo of red around the head. Grasping even this small symbol of grace, Thomas swiftly genuflected, touching his fingers to his lips. The prayers had, of necessity, to be short, for all the bells of Siena were tolling in mad carillons and, under them, he could hear the beat of the French drums.
He found Gianni again as the first regiments, under their swirling banners, were already sweeping by their vantage point a few hundred paces before the Porta Romana. Blaise de Monluc rode at their head, glancing neither right nor left, his one eye fixed ahead as if on future battles. The soldiers that followed did not look as if they had withstood fifteen months of privation and siege, for the spring sunshine dazzled as it bounced from burnished armour and helm, from pikes proudly raised, swords swept up in salute. The French, and the mercenary companies among them, were birds of prey still, united in the glitter of their plumage, with their puffed and blistered sleeves, the linings pulled through the cuttes in a rainbow of colour, extravagant doublets of crimson or eggshell blue surmounting the clashing ochre or gold breeches, the black and silver hose. Thomas shuddered as he remembered the profits of his first sacked city in Flanders spent on just such finery. Putting it aside to don the sackcloth and rough wool of the noviciate had been like a second birth to him.
The Spanish lining the road jeered the French, who returned the favour, the mercenaries of both sides exchanging greetings and abuse with present enemies, past comrades, future allies. They took half of one hour to pass, the soldier in Thomas calculating their number to be about five thousand, each regiment accompanied by its goods and wounded in large wagons. When the last of these had passed there was a pause, as drumbeats receded down the road, the dust hanging thick in the air. Then there came through the gate a shrill cry of command followed by the roar of one word, the name of their city. Then the warriors of Siena marched forth.
The contrast to those who had gone before was marked. There were drums still, a few, and banners sporting both the city’s symbols, of wolf and founding fathers, and the mark of several of the Contradas – the Lion, the Unicorn, the Scorpion, the Broadsword. Beneath them, though, Thomas saw men and women in plain garb and practical armour, starved faces trying to stave off tears, failing, their bodies savaged by hunger and wound yet forced to march proudly from homes they might never see again. Their leaders marched among their people, distinguished only by their plumed hats, alike in the tears that flowed, in their bandages and their limps. Though it was clear the majority were not professional soldiers, yet they contrived to march in step, their footfalls stirring up more dust from the roadway. The drum, the heavy breaths of exertion, were all the noise that accompanied their sad exit. Their enemies watched in silence, save for the occasional exile who stepped forward to spit at some old rival’s feet, to receive not even a glance in response.
In their midst, in marked contrast to the huge wagons of the French, small dog carts were heaved, piled with groaning bodies, meagre goods. Thomas sensed the tension in the young man at his side, for Gianni had craned forward at the first sad beat of the Sienese drum, wrapping the hood of his cloak about his face despite the warmth of the sun, one hand holding an edge so that only his dark eyes were clear, studying the throng. Gazing at him, Thomas decided he would be better served watching this boy to whom he had been shackled like a slave on an oar bank. To better know this enigma, who lived in a monk’s habit yet killed like a street assassin.
Gianni saw Haakon first, of course, even though the Norseman was bent before a small cart, his huge hands gripping its two handles. His eyes immediately swept around the cart, missing what he sought, looking around, looking back, settling finally in a sort of wonder, for his father had changed in the three years since he had last seen him, changed mightily. It was not that he had shrunk, as Gianni knew parents did when sons grew older. It was more as if something had been cut from him, thus reducing him in size to this small, limping man struggling to push a dog cart. Something misted in his eyes and he reached a hand up, stunned to encounter moisture there. He wiped it away, sought his ready anger, forced the water down. He had vowed long before that he had shed his last tears for his family. Sinners were not worth the salt!
His sister walked on the other side of the cart in that calm gait he had so loved to mock, to imitate; yet he had never quite got right the way she seemed to hover over the ground. One of her hands was placed within the cart, he thought at first almost to tether her, to prevent her floating away. Then he realized that Anne’s hand held another, one that emerged from what he’d assumed was a stack of rags and blankets. Then Gianni saw the high forehead, the greying-black hair of his mother. Her eyes, the twins of his own, were hidden beneath her closed lids. He could see that she was alive and he could see that it was only just.
He did not know he had taken a step forward, that a word had escaped his lips, until the Jesuit had spoken beside him:
‘What? Do you see him? Shall I gather the men?’
Gianni raised a hand, stepped back, made sure that, as his family passed, no one else passed behind them. At last, when he was sure his voice was his own again, he spoke.
‘He is not with them. He would be, if he were leaving. He is still in the city looking for this.’ He toed the girl lying in a bundle at his feet, who moaned through her gag. ‘She’s told me their address. Shall we enter?’
Thomas let Gianni order the men, tried to settle his impressions of the last few minutes. He had been right to watch for he knew now that the calm young man he’d just met was capable of emotion – and emotion was always a useful tool. He had also seen what the young man had looked at, or rather whom, knew that his reactions could only have been provoked by people he loved or hated. Perhaps both, for sometimes the line between the two was hair thin. But then Thomas had become distracted by the girl walking beside the cart. No, not walking, floating somehow, as if allowing the cart to pull her along. She was air, translucent, a mote hovering in the sunbeams that streamed in the road dust, passing through the veil of her black, black hair.
It was only the young man starting forward that brought Thomas back from this vision, had him scrabbling for words. In action the
re was a course out of this confusion.
Though there was a scramble at the gates, the main conquering army would enter from the north-east, through the Porta Camollia, so it took them only a little time to force their way in. The gag was dropped long enough for the directions to the Fugger residence to be ascertained. It was as good a place to begin as any.
Gianni called to Alessandro, one of the troop leaders. ‘Take her to Rome, to the Lateran prison. She is to be released only when this locket is brought for her. Understand?’
Maria was thrown across one of their horses, and half his force accompanied her back out the gate. Gianni led Thomas and the remaining ten men away from the main Via Roma, where soldiers streamed toward the Campo, and up a narrow side street, the Via Valdimontone. He’d quite recovered from his strange reactions at the roadside, determined now to atone for even so slight a display of weakness. Ahead was a man who would help him in that atonement. A one-handed man who would help him atone for everything.
For the Fugger, searching frantically through the falling city, the bells were terrible goads pricking him on. Without his Maria there was no life, she was the last memory of her beloved mother, also called Maria, his wife’s shy smile, quick laugh, gentle touch still alive in those of his daughter. He had talked to his wife every day of the five years since the flux had taken her. He talked to her now, even after the last of the drum beats had faded, running down the side street that led to the ruin he had called their home for the last fifteen months.
Blood Ties Page 9