And then the dead man moaned, and each of them turned again, a sword and an axe poised. And since both men had served with the English on campaign they both understood the youth’s next words in that language.
‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! How could this happen?’
The moan was all they got from Heinrich. The smaller stone had caught him in the killing zone at the temple, but had caught the edge of his helmet too, halving its force. He was in more danger from drowning in the muddied rut, so Jean turned Heinrich’s head towards them while he considered what to do.
‘We may need him later,’ was how he explained this act of seeming kindness.
The laughter had been a release, but now the situation returned to Jean, and with it some of his determination. His comrades were suffering the various after-effects of battle. All, including himself, were bruised, if not bleeding. Pursuit of Cibo had to be swiftly undertaken. Yet he had some obstacles to that and he dealt with the one he could speak to first.
‘Are you English then, young man?’
‘I was born there. In York. But I wouldn’t call myself English. My people have a faith not a country.’
‘Ah, a Jew.’ Jean smiled. ‘Now the slingshot makes more sense.’
‘Yes, a Jew.’ The strong jaw was thrust forward. ‘Any problems with that?’
‘No.’ Jean returned the other’s look. ‘My problems are all to do with the man we just let escape. We pursue this man not because we are “footpads” but because he has stolen something from us.’
‘We are equal in that. Giancarlo Cibo has something of mine as well.’
Jean paused at the naming of his enemy, and at the determination that underlay that naming. It seemed a match for his own, and it decided what he said next.
‘I am not in the habit of leading, but perhaps this common cause can bind us. Our quarry will go to ground in Toulon, in the Bishop’s palace or some other place where it will be hard to flush him out. One with skill such as yours could be useful. And perhaps our skills will prove useful to you.’
There was silence, appraisal in the dark brown eyes. Finally, the youth spoke. ‘I am not in the habit of following. But if your paths and mine are the same, I will walk with you for a while. And if your orders serve my turn, I will even obey them. Yet I am on my own quest, and someone’s life depends on me. To that mission my ultimate loyalty is bound.’
‘Good enough. My name is Jean.’ Jean spat on his hand and held it out. ‘To common cause.’
The youth spat and reached up. ‘Beck. Yes, common cause.’
Jean saw the young man before him and felt a young man’s grip, a squeeze of equal measure to his own. But there was another quality to the touch that made him think instantly of Anne Boleyn, of that moment when she’d laid her hands on either side of his head. It was strange. Was it the darkness of the eyes, similar to his Queen’s? He tried to look at them more closely, search them for a reason for this disquiet. But Beck had become suddenly busy, retrieving stones, so Jean set about his own preparations. Yet he found himself glancing continually at the young man, looking swiftly away if in danger of his glance being met.
The second obstacle was the unconscious bodyguard. Haakon had been for killing him there and then, but Jean disagreed.
‘We think this Cibo will seek the protection of the local Church. But he is cunning and knows he will be followed. If he goes to ground, this man’ – Jean raised Heinrich by the hair – ‘will lead us to him.’
The party assembled. Fenrir was in front, sniffing excitedly at the scents wafting from the sea ahead. Daemon rode on the Fugger, Haakon had the unconscious Heinrich lying on the biggest horse before him. When Jean mounted, he looked again at Beck, who waved them on.
‘My horse is tethered over the rise. I’ll catch up with you.’
Beck watched the party set off.
Why am I joining them? I always work alone. Was it this Frenchman’s handshake? Was it his laugh? Something as ridiculous as that?
Climbing the hill to the trees, hidden there from anyone’s sight, the youth began to adjust clothing. Things had come badly undone in the tumble down the hillside with the Fugger. Removing the baggy shirt, Beck fully unwound the cloth wrapped six times around the chest. Then, pausing only for a moment to rub her long-constricted breasts, she began to bind them tightly again into their linen prison.
TEN
UNSAFE HARBOUR
The Archbishop had not taken refuge with the Bishop of Toulon for two reasons. Firstly, he was known to be religious and it would mean hours of ceremony and prayer, plain food and watered-down wine. More importantly, this religiousness meant the fool kept only priests around him, and they would not be enough to stop his pursuers.
Cibo headed straight for the port. It was the first time he lamented the loss of his bodyguard, for Heinrich had arranged the passage, knew the captain and the boat by sight and was used to harbours such as these. Knowing only the ship’s name, Cibo had to search among the hundreds of mastheads himself, mixing with sweating humanity, the villainous swill of Europe and Africa concentrated in a small area with too little to do and too little money to do it with. He’d taken the precaution of dressing in the cassock lent to him by the Dominicans for the scourging. Their vow of poverty meant they were usually poor fare for robbers. Had any known that under the simple woollen shift he carried a saddle bag with the Bishop of Angers’ generous bribe, Cibo would not have survived the walk.
He found the ship after an hour. The Genoese master, a surly dog named Rudolpho reeking of sweet Malaga wine, who knew only that his nameless passenger wanted swift and secret passage, deposited him in his ‘accommodation’, a hammock stretched out in a hold that had recently contained dried fish, a feeble light coming from one open porthole.
Yet, once swinging, with an evening and a night to pass before they could sail with the dawn tide, Cibo was strangely content. True, he had lost the bodyguard he so loved to torment and, even more sadly, his beautifully trained horse, Mercury – a monk leading a stallion through the port would not have made his ship – but he had survived an ordeal that would top even the best story his mad brother, Franchetto, could tell. And it had been a welcome, active change from the labyrinthine politics of the Papal court, where ploys were more esoteric, betrayals a mental rather than a personally physical exercise. One didn’t administer poison oneself, or feel the joy of a dagger stealing a life. One had people to do that for one.
Of course, the main thing was that he had won, again! The hand was his, the witch’s hand, that monstrosity taken from a queen – what, could it be no more than a couple of weeks before? – in that crude island of Britain. That the hand had a great power over men he already knew – for wasn’t it the executioner, Jean Rombaud, the man he’d left to rot in a gibbet cage, who had leapt at his horse this afternoon? If the hand could encourage a man thus to cheat his lawful death and seek revenge on Giancarlo Cibo, what else could it do?
Glancing over at his saddle bag, he noticed something curious. He’d broken off the arrow shaft that had embedded itself in the bag at the ambush, but had not yet had time to dig out the iron tip. He realised now that there was a dark stain on the leather where none had been before. It wasn’t sweat but something thicker, and potent enough to penetrate cow hide.
He pulled the bag up onto the hammock and worked the arrow head free. The pocket beyond held the velvet bag which in turn held Anne Boleyn’s hand. He’d only looked at it briefly once, by moonlight, outside that inn. Now, he needed to see it again, despite the putrid flesh that would be clinging to it by this time – which smell, oddly, he’d yet to notice.
He sniffed; still no trace. Must be the fish.
Undoing the strap of the pocket, pulling out the velvet bag, fumbling with the drawstring, his hands shook with excitement. He reached in and touched the hand cautiously, then quickly withdrew his probing finger.
It was cold, which was understandable, but it was the smoothness that made him gag more than any put
rescence would have done. It seemed to be stuck somehow in the bag, and shaking would not dislodge it.
‘Enough!’ he said, and reached in. After some twisting, he pulled it into the light and saw where the arrow head had pierced it, saw the trail of fresh blood oozing down to the six fingers, pooling in the nails there.
It was not the blood, where there should have been none, nor the unnatural freshness of the hand that caused him to scream. It was the way the fingers suddenly bunched into a ball, the way just one slowly uncurled, pointing, in red and bloody accusation, straight into his eyes.
On deck, the sailors heard the scream and it froze them where they stood. After a moment, as the drawn-out wail died away to be replaced by a desperate sobbing, even the drunk of a captain began feverishly to cross himself. A mad priest was one of the most terrible things you could have on a boat. A mad monk was worse. Far worse.
There was next to nothing going on in the festering stew of Toulon harbour that Maltese Gregor did not know about. It was his business to know which ship was bringing in hashish, and which was bringing in slave girls. The price squid could fetch that day in the market, and who was trying to undercut that price. Which passengers were leaving, openly or in disguise, and which were arriving and might need expensive assistance or the thrust of a fee’d assassin’s knife. Knowledge was profit and power, and if he, the King of Thieves, did not earn the one and control the other, who would?
He knew one of the ships bound for the Indies contained twenty heretics in its stinking hold. They had paid handsomely for his silence. He knew a quantity of near-perfect fake ducats had just arrived from the silversmiths of Izmir. He had taken a handsome handling fee. And he knew that a Dominican monk had paid in gold to take ship to Livorno, the free port of Tuscany. Inconsistencies like monks with gold disturbed him and he felt a personal midnight visit might be required. He liked to handle inconsistencies himself because it was so hard to find people who would not try to cheat him. He’d personally garrotted a servant that morning for that very offence, and the memory of the incredulity on the man’s face made him smile.
There were always people looking for signs of weakness in him to exploit, and a good garrotting reminded them that he’d been in charge for five years and would be for some considerable time to come. He knew it couldn’t last for ever. Just till he’d amassed enough gold to return to his home and live out the rest of his life in luxury. And when he thought of Bavaria – for ‘Maltese’ was a title only from the days when that tribe ran Toulon – he smiled again. His personal fortune would already guarantee him the life of a successful burgher. Five more years, three if they were very good, and he could buy himself a title. Not bad for the bastard son of a butcher.
All it required was knowing everything there was to know, with no surprises. So when Heinrich von Solingen walked through his door, he was less than pleased for all sorts of reasons.
‘Heinrich!’ he beamed. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Inwardly, he had a vision of another garrotting. Someone would pay for letting this man near him unannounced.
Since the German bodyguard had never seen Beck, Jean had let the youth do the close shadowing, while he and the others followed from a safer distance. They’d managed to keep Heinrich in sight through the increasing frenzy of the town, and now met in the lee of a waterseller’s awning opposite the stairway their quarry had just ascended. Unnecessary caution, perhaps, for Heinrich was still shaking and rubbing his head, and had done from the time they’d dumped him outside the town walls at the moment when his groans indicated returning consciousness. On his weaving walk in, he’d failed to look back more than once.
While the Fugger went off to bargain for food and wine, the other three watched the only door of the house. Many came and left.
‘Judging by the activity,’ said Haakon, ‘I’d say he’s in a brothel.’
‘A pretty low-class one,’ Jean commented, observing the tenth man they’d seen in as many minutes go in. ‘All the scum of the docks. And they don’t seem to stay very long. Must be Dutch.’
Both men laughed and for some reason, Beck blushed. At that moment the Fugger came back and began to hand out bread, peaches, wine, pig’s trotters and roast chitterlings. The fruit basket he’d carried it all in, upended, made a table.
The Fugger was pleased with more than the food.
‘Daemon and I have news. Where do you think our quarry has gone to ground?’
‘A brothel,’ came a joint reply.
‘A good Catholic Bavarian like this fellow? How could you think such a thing? No, no, according to my friend the offal salesman – isn’t the pig’s intestine delicious, young David? – according to him, our fellow keeps illustrious company. Royal company!’
‘How’s that then, royal?’ Haakon was already well on the way to devouring his own pile, after sharing some with Fenrir, and was beginning to eye up the others’. Beck, who’d spat while the Fugger talked, shovelled her offal before the Norwegian and ate just peaches and bread.
‘Can you not guess?’ Feeding crumbs to his raven, the Fugger was enjoying himself. ‘Let me riddle it for you. Who’s the highest and the lowest and keeps his court to keep out of court?’
‘The King of Thieves,’ said Jean.
‘Bravo, Master, in one,’ said the Fugger. ‘Cunning and strength together. With you as our leader, how can we fail to triumph?’
Jean spat out a particularly chewy bit of gristle, jarred less by its consistency than by the Fugger’s jesting. He got up, stood with one hand raising the awning and stared at the doorway opposite.
A leader, he calls me. What have leaders to do with me? I who have always been led – to battle, to scaffolds. That’s the way for a man such as I. Responsibility for no one but myself. To fight the man in front of me, then the man after that, to strike at the neck presented. That has been my life. The Queen of England, the King of Thieves, the Archbishop of Siena. And I, Jean Rombaud, peasant of the Loire!
‘Do you ever think of failure, Frenchman?’ Beck’s voice was pitched low beside him, inaudible to their bickering companions at the table.
If I am a leader, he said to himself, then I must speak only of success, never doubt. But before he could frame words into an encouraging lie, Beck continued, ‘For I do, often. Sometimes it feels as if I have challenged the whole world. Then I can see no other end but failure. And seeing it, I despair.’
There was something else in the voice, something hidden in the eyes.
‘And how do you keep going then, when the despair comes?’ He turned, noticing peach juice glisten on lips.
‘I concentrate first on my cause, then on the strength of my good right arm.’
‘I wonder if that will be enough for me.’
A hand reached up and squeezed him just below his shoulder.
‘I cannot speak as to your cause,’ Beck said softly, ‘but your arm seems strong enough to me.’
The pressure lingered for a moment, and then the touch was gone. The boy returned to the table. Jean felt suddenly bereft, then instantly renewed.
The strength of the cause and the strength to pursue it. He had both. All he had to do was answer the simple questions one at a time. The first one being, what was the bodyguard of an archbishop doing with the King of Thieves?
Calling in a favour.
Heinrich had spoken the one sentence he needed to speak and now he leant on the table, resting his weight on his palms, staring down into Gregor’s eyes.
It was strange how memory worked. Maltese Gregor had spent years forgetting the last time he had seen the man before him now. It was a good night to forget, or a bad night depending on how one viewed it. He hadn’t considered it in years. Sometimes a bed companion would tell him he’d whimpered in his sleep, but what of that? Everyone whimpered sometimes. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t have to mean he was remembering Rome.
Like he was remembering it now, conjured fully formed in the cold eyes of his old comrade in arms
, Heinrich von Solingen.
Remembering how, before he became Maltese, he had been part of the same squadron of mercenaries as Heinrich. Even remembering the reason for going to Rome, for in 1527 the Pope had switched allegiances again, allying with the French, betraying the Emperor. And the Emperor, Charles, had failed to pay his soldiers for too long. They decided to get the money he owed them from his enemies and, despite all entreaties to turn back, had marched on the city. A lot of them were of the new faith of Luther and slaughtering Catholics was the closest they came to holy war, give or take the odd foray against the Turk.
Gregor remembered how he and Heinrich, as good Bavarian Catholics, had limited their pillaging to unconsecrated ground, their rapine to anyone other than nuns, salving their consciences thereby. The pickings were too easy to pass up. There was almost no resistance.
It was that ‘almost’ Gregor was trying most not to remember, hoping that the man opposite him would say something beyond ‘You owe me.’ But he didn’t. He just stared, and Gregor, for whom speech was never a problem, couldn’t think of anything to say. So he carried on remembering.
How at night, gorged with excess, soldiers would fall asleep wherever they happened to be and how it was then that the despoiled inhabitants would take such revenge as they could. How two sisters, brutally raped by Gregor and his cronies some nights before, had been left for dead in the smoking ruins of their house, alongside the bodies of their parents. How Gregor had made the mistake of revisiting the scene alone, sure he’d overlooked some booty, unwilling to share any of it. How those sisters had clubbed him to the ground, stripped him naked, bound him, hung him upside down and burnt and cut him, one starting at the head, the other at the feet. How they were just about to meet at the middle when Heinrich arrived. The sisters swiftly joined their parents in heaven or hell, while a blood-and-shit-smeared Gregor babbled eternal gratitude and the granting of any favour.
Nine years! And Gregor had nearly managed to forget about it all. But that one night in Rome had decided him that the mercenary life had lost its savour and began him on the road that led to Toulon. To the good life. To be reminded so suddenly of the inauspicious start to that journey was deeply unpleasant. To be immediately reminded that a favour was also owed was even worse. Hence his thoughts turning to garrotting, for if his lookouts had warned him of this man’s approach he might have had time to make arrangements for a dagger in an alley. For Heinrich von Solingen was not a man you said no to face to face.
The French Executioner Page 11