A small window gave on to the lane at the rear of the palace. Pushing open the shutters, Jean leant through the bars and whistled, was answered by a familiar caw. Daemon settled onto the ledge and immediately began to groom his feathers. A moment later, the Fugger was crouched below.
‘Is all ready, Fugger?’
The German hopped from foot to foot in his strange shuffling dance.
‘Oh yes, oh yes, the finest three horses that my winnings could buy await us.’
‘If all goes well, you will hear the commotion from the square before you see us. Be ready.’
‘I will, oh, I will.’ The Fugger disappeared down the alley.
‘Will he be all right?’ Haakon was occupied in honing his axe blade.
The risk of the next few hours, the poverty of the plan and the sudden weight of having even two men to command had made Jean edgy.
‘Perhaps you would prefer to join him and hold his one hand?’ he snapped.
Haakon smiled. ‘Oh, I think not. Sounds like there’s more fun to be had in the square.’
‘Fun?’ Jean snorted. ‘You have a curious way of having fun, my friend. You’re more likely to leave that square dead than alive.’
The big man let out his rumbling laugh. ‘To die fighting is the Norwegian way of having fun. Death or glory and a speedy passage to Valhalla. What a story that would make!’
Jean snorted again and turned away so the other man could not see him smile. Jesu save me, he thought, pagans and madmen are my followers. And animals, he added, as Fenrir echoed his master’s humour with a bark.
The door was flung open and in swept Marcel. He had changed clothes since the abattoir, his hair gleamed now with oil, his slashed velvet jacket a blue and yellow shimmer.
‘Amateurs!’ he wailed. ‘Why will they not leave it to those who understand these things?’
‘Monsieur is having a problem?’ Haakon offered the distraught man a chair.
‘A problem? Yes! It was all so perfect. The Archbishop was to march with my master from the palace here, preceded by those beautiful boys singing the “Te Deum” in their angelic soprano, the golden cross aloft, incense filling the air. And now …’ He sobbed, regained control of himself and went on. ‘Now the tedious man has decided to join the Flagellants.’
‘Flagellants, Monsieur?’ Jean brought Marcel some wine.
He gulped at it and continued, ‘Yes, Flagellants. Dominican monks. Twenty of them, they were to lead the Count de Chinon and the four heretics from their cell, scourging themselves every step of the way. Now this … this Cibo has joined them. They are to be the very last to appear, with the Archbishop the last of all. Such vanity. Such an … amateur!’
Wiping his eyes, he started fussing around the execution party. He had reluctantly agreed that Haakon should be Jean’s assistant on the scaffold but was appalled at the state of their clothes, their drab grey cloaks, unadorned brown jackets and vests, single-colour leggings. Headsmen, he was reminded, dressed not to be noticed. But what truly incensed the steward was that the hound would be accompanying them, although he ceased complaining when Fenrir’s jaws closed in on the waving arm that came too close and gently applied some pressure.
Marcel led them down narrow corridors to the palace’s great hall. Doors swung open upon a babel of shouting, flailing preparation.
Leaning down to Jean, Haakon whispered, ‘Should we not warn the Fugger of this change?’
‘No, it doesn’t alter the plan. You heard this Marcel say the Archbishop will be the final Flagellant, so we will know him then. And there is another man to watch for, a tall German, looks like a priest, a scar down his face. He was the one who felled me at the inn when I was captured. I think he is the bodyguard. I know he is dangerous.’
Haakon’s grip tightened on his axe. As the gates of the palace were opened on to the square and the crowd roared its excitement, he said, ‘Then I look forward to seeing him.’
Behind the palace, the Fugger already had.
Checking on his horses, he was muttering to Daemon when the Archbishop’s bodyguard entered the stable. He could hear what the tall, scarred warrior was saying to the grooms – at least he heard words spoken, orders given, but the power of understanding speech had been removed from him by the appearance of the speaker. For this was not the first time he had seen Heinrich von Solingen.
His right hand began to throb, always a strange sensation since it wasn’t there. The last man ever to hold it, however, was. His mind throbbed too, in a burst of white-light pain that merged with the flare of the groom’s reed torches, removing both the Fugger and his countryman from a stable in Tours to a tavern in Bavaria seven years before.
‘A Fugger?’ the mercenary with the long fair hair and a wound running from brow to chin had cried. ‘That family of Jews who bankrupt honest knights with their usury?’
‘Not Jews, Sir. We in Munster follow the word of Luther. And money-lending is now legal, thanks to the Emperor’s favour,’ the sixteen-year-old Albrecht Fugger had bravely said, the last brave thing he’d ever said.
‘Worse and worse, and worst for you.’ The face leant in, eyes afire with hate. ‘Seize him!’
No matter that it was a public place, no matter that Albrecht was a gentleman on his first mission for his illustrious family, entrusted with bringing coin to their tin mines in the south. A table was swept clear of platters and beer, his body thrown upon it, stretched out by willing helpers.
That face again, the scar livid in the fire glow, the mouth speaking foul words.
‘If I’d met you alone on the road, you’d be dead by now. You are lucky in that. But your money-grasping hands have ruined many of us. No one here can deny a Catholic son of Bavaria the right to give you fitting punishment.’
The blade had glittered so high above him and fallen so fast, bringing the first flash of that white-light pain, blanking out the world. When he returned to it, his servants, his money, his hand were gone. Gone too his former life, severed as surely as his flesh. There would be no taking the road back to Munster, a cripple, in disgrace. His father, Cornelius, would not see a maimed son, he would see only his lost gold. And he would reach up into the ceiling of his study and pull down the hazel wand he kept there for special punishments.
No, the road could only lead away from that. Lead eventually, by diverse lanes and crossroads, to a gibbet in the Loire.
Cowering back into the stall, lowering his pulsing head upon his pulsing wrist, the Fugger wept.
The crowd had been waiting and drinking for hours. Now, as the first notes of the choir reached them, they surged against the rank of guardsmen who, pikes at port, kept the space before the scaffold like a storm break in a harbour. As the headsmen ascended the ramp, through the eyeslits in his leather mask Jean saw other soldiers in two lines forming a channel across the square to the gates of the town hall, like the parting of the Red Sea for Moses.
Reaching the platform, the parade dispersed across it, Jean and Haakon to either side of the two thrones that sat centrestage. The Bishop placed himself before one of them, the other occupied by an archbishop’s robes and mitre. Behind him ranged ten priests, each with a boy chorister before him, their white surplices a background to the Bishop’s of brilliant red. Before them the trumpeters, in their tunics of blue studded with fleurs-de-lis and the town symbol of mace and key, blew a fanfare that gradually hushed the crowd.
In the silence, the doors of the town hall opposite slowly opened and a single drum struck up a steady beat. The Count de Chinon did not so much walk as stroll from his gaol. His hands, as was customary for his rank, were free and he used them to acknowledge the crowd. He looked more like a triumphant general than a man marching to death, and his attitude, youth and handsomeness had an effect on the crowd. The soldiers in the lines had a hard time beating them back with their pikestaffs.
He mounted the platform with easy strides. Raising his hands, he tried to calm the crowd to hear his final speech, but a gesture from t
he Bishop brought guards to the Count’s side, pulling him away, forcing him to kneel with his back to a mob whose frenzy increased when the four heretic weavers were swiftly led out and tied to their stakes before the scaffold.
Another trumpet blast, another near silence. Then, from within the darkness of the hall’s entrance, two new sounds clearly carried: a sharp snap and a groan poised between pleasure and pain. Figures appeared, shrouds hiding the faces, torsos bared, cassocks cinched at the waist. Pausing, each raised a thin, knotted-rope scourge high above his head then brought it down, sharply and in unison, across his shoulders. The crack as the scourges bit into flesh made the crowd collectively wince. The twenty Dominican monks moved forward in a huddle, one shrouded figure trailing slightly behind. With every strike and step, they intoned the penance of guilt: ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.’
They beat themselves along the Via Dolorosa created by the soldiers. The odd oath or drunken laugh that had greeted their appearance died away now, leaving only the dirge of voices and the crack of whips biting home.
The rhythmic blows, the chanting, the pulse of the drums; Jean felt himself slipping again into familiar ritual. His hands began to clasp and unclasp on the sword hilt, his mind to focus on the stroke that was to come.
No, he told himself angrily, I am not part of this. I am here for Anne Boleyn.
He tried repeating her name like a chant. But on this scaffold, the memory of that other one seemed a mere dream, the voice in his head dying away. There was no vow, no six-fingered hand, no moment when a door opened and revealed his lost loves. There was only this ritual of death, and his function in it. He looked ahead to a kneeling man, a sword raised, a perfect swing.
The Dominicans, on reaching the scaffold, lowered their shrouds then took their places by the wood bundles that surrounded the four stakes, each lighting a torch from the braziers there. All save the last man, their still-shrouded leader, who stood dripping blood at the scaffold steps. The trumpets sounded again and the Bishop walked forward, spreading his arms wide in blessing.
‘Brothers in Christ,’ he shouted, ‘we welcome this, your example of true faith and sacrifice. It shines forth as a beacon to those who would accuse the one true Church of sin and decadence. And see, see, oh my flock, how even a prince of our faith is prepared to take on the pains of our Lord.’
Jean found he was gripping Haakon’s arm.
‘This is him,’ he said, through his teeth. ‘At last, I will know my enemy.’
The bloodstained man had raised his hands to the shroud on hearing the Bishop’s words. Now, as he lowered it, all on the scaffold heard the puzzlement in his voice as he said, ‘I am flattered by the title, my Lord Bishop, but I am simply the Abbot of the Dominicans.’
The Bishop of Tours stood staring, his mouth opening and closing like a freshly caught fish on a river bank. Jean had stumbled forward, sword and scabbard gripped tight. In the shocked silence that greeted the Abbot’s voice, Haakon’s whisper came clearly to him: ‘Look there. There! At the centre, where the lines meet.’
Still dazed, Jean followed the Norseman’s pointing finger. A group of some twenty men, each in a large hat and cloak, had massed at the junction of soldiery directly before the scaffold. As Jean and Haakon looked, they saw each man reach within his cloak and hold his hand there.
One of the men looked up. For a moment their eyes met, and Jean recognised the Count de Chinon’s companion, the Count de Valmais.
The explosion shattered the first floor of the town hall, flames bursting through the crumpled leaded glass, a huge column of smoke belching into the night air. Everyone ducked and Jean heard a single shout of ‘Now!’ Looking down, he saw each of the muffled men pull a dagger from beneath his cloak and stab the soldier directly in front of him.
Instant mayhem. Those at the back surged away from the explosion and the flames, while those nearest the front, witnesses to the soldier’s sudden assassinations, tried to go the other way. They imploded into the middle and the guards who had lined what had been the path simply dissolved into the crowd. Those on the fringes rushed for the side lanes, swiftly blocking them, rebounding into the only gap that now existed – the area around the scaffold. The potential martyrs were engulfed in the wave, picked up bodily, still attached to their posts, and swept along in the torrent.
Only the men in cloaks knew exactly where they were going. They moved forward over the writhing bodies of the soldiers to the stairs.
The Bishop had regained his voice. ‘The Count! Heretics come to free the prisoner. Seize him!’
These orders were shouted at Jean and Haakon. Neither had any intention of obeying, the cause was not theirs. But the rescuers were not to know that, for de Chinon was still kneeling at the centre of the scaffold behind the executioners. And there were now swords as well as daggers in many of the rescuers’ hands.
Crouched beneath his horses, locked into foul memories, the Fugger was only startled back to consciousness by the sudden explosion, the sound crashing down the lane from the square, causing his animals to whinny and pull against their tethers. In calming them, he calmed himself a little. He had returned so utterly to the gibbet midden, its safety and familiarity, that he did not want to come back fully to this world.
The man who had caused him thus to slip back had stepped outside the stables, where the Fugger had heard him pacing up and down. A few minutes after the explosion, he came back inside. He was no longer alone.
For yet another moment the Fugger thought he was truly back, safe again, within the gibbet midden, for it was while lurking there that he’d first heard the seductive voice that he heard again now.
‘I couldn’t resist seeing the Bishop’s face,’ Giancarlo Cibo was saying, ‘but it seems he has received an even greater shock than the one I intended for him. Are the horses prepared?’
‘Here, my Lord.’ Heinrich untethered the Archbishop’s stallion. ‘And here are your travelling clothes. But the rest of our possessions, they are in the palace.’
‘We will have to leave them. We need to get through the city gates before they are blocked. This town is closer to the heretic than we thought, something else I will have to discuss with the Pope. I will shed my Dominican garb on the road to Toulon.’
The Fugger saw the two men straddle their horses. He ducked down lower into the hay of his stall.
‘Do you have the Bishop of Angers’ gold, at least?’
‘Here, my Lord, in my saddle bags.’
‘More importantly, where is the witch’s hand?’
‘In your saddle bags, my Lord. As always.’
The Fugger heard leather being patted.
‘Good,’ came that voice, ‘then let us ride.’
The horse’s shod hoofs clattered on the cobbles, the sound swiftly swallowed by screams, by the crackle of wood on fire and the clash of arms, all coming from the direction of the square. The Fugger could tell that men were fighting and dying down there.
Jean’s weapon was still in its scabbard, so it was the haft of Haakon’s axe that deflected the first two swords away from the Frenchman. Then the scabbard was shed, and with a sharp uppercut Jean took the third sword away from Haakon’s exposed flank and threw it high into the air, reversing the arc to bring the flat of the blade down on the assailant’s head. The man fell back with a cry, arms flailing, blocking the approach of five more of de Chinon’s rescuers.
‘This is not our fight, Norseman. Our quarry has fled,’ Jean yelled.
‘Tell them!’ Haakon gestured at the men now leaping over their comrade’s fallen body.
There was no time for debate. Five men were trying to kill them and three of them died, the last two pulled off by their fellows who had reached and freed the Count de Chinon. Swept into their midst, his white shirt disappearing under a cloak and hat, the remainder of the Count’s men pushed away from the scaffold, moving as solidly as only a body of determined men can through chaos.
The lane from the square, though
a major route out of it, was still no broader than a cart, putrid and greasy from the sewer running down its centre, piles of garbage clogging the edges. Many fled the carnage with Jean and Haakon, slowing them down, and it took a while to reach the rendezvous of the stables.
‘Fugger?’ Jean pushed the doors open with his square-tipped blade. ‘Are you here?’
It was Daemon who appeared first, surging out of the pile of hay where the Fugger had hidden. The bird’s master followed, paler than ever, eyes moving as if they would leave his head.
‘What is it with you, Fugger? You look like you have seen a devil.’
The teeth chattered still, but words came out.
‘I have, oh I have. One such as I thought I’d never see again. And I heard another, though he has the voice of a fallen angel.’
‘We have no time for this, Fugger,’ Jean snapped. ‘The Archbishop has gone.’
‘He … he has. He rode from here just now. He—’
‘Then let us follow. No, no more words. We can talk when we are clear of the town. They will be closing the gates soon to try and keep the Count and his followers inside.’
They rode through an unguarded town gate, the watch called to quell fire and riot in the square. They halted on a hill just beyond the city walls to confer.
‘Even if we knew their destination, how can we pursue them on these?’
Haakon spoke from the back of the biggest horse and his feet almost reached the ground. With their big bellies and slung backs, they knew the animals were fit for the working farm but not for a pursuit of thoroughbreds down country roads.
‘But we do know their destination.’ The Fugger’s breath was coming easier now, though his eyes still moved about. ‘I heard him say it. Toulon.’
‘Toulon?’ Jean looked into the darkness ahead. ‘So they make for a harbour and a boat back to Italy, do they?’
‘How far is Toulon?’ Haakon asked.
‘Three nights and a day if you ride by the main road. But’ – Jean smiled – ‘there is more than one way to Toulon, to a man who knows his way. These horses might not move fast, but I’ll bet they are bred for the hill paths.’
The French Executioner Page 9