The French Executioner

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘This piece of bread against your salt fish that the big man bleeds to death when they take that splinter out.’ Haakon held out his hand.

  Jean took it. ‘Done. He looks like he’s survived worse than that.’

  The noise was still building and Corbeau and his gang were powerless to stop it, their yells and whip cracks lost in the furore. They had retreated to the gangway, Corbeau shouting for his arquebus, when there was an explosion of gunpowder. All men ducked instinctively.

  ‘What is the meaning of this outrage?’

  A nasally voice spoke into the sudden stillness. Captain Louis St Mark de la Vallerie, universally known as Big Nose, stood on the afterdeck. Behind him, twenty soldiers lowered smoking guns.

  He had been on deck as little as possible during the voyage, only appearing to supervise manoeuvres. He hated it up there, the stench was intolerable. Only in his little cabin with its small promenade, the wind coming from aft and blowing them along, something scented always clutched to permanently flared nostrils, was there some respite from it. Corbeau and Augustin, the sergeant-at-arms in charge of the eighty soldiers, could receive their orders just as well away from the putrid smell. Of course, they always brought some with them, and were quickly dismissed. Louis was happy to be left alone to play with the weapons that lined the cabin walls, shooting arrows he made himself with the Turkish bow he’d seized in a sea fight at a float tethered to the ship’s aft, and reading the outrageous writings of that bawdy ex-monk Rabelais.

  He had been part way through a delicious passage in Gargantua that pierced, delightfully, the pomposity of so much Church humbug when the steady build of noise distracted him, making him lose track of the complex argument. Then Augustin had appeared at his door, yelling in his excitable way about ‘rebellion at the oars’.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Louis and, clutching a large metal pomander filled with dried violets in one hand and a pistol in the other, strode to the deck.

  The volley, fired high, had been his idea of course. He had few enough rowers as it was, and Augustin wanted to shoot some of them? The man was incapable of organising an orgy in a brothel! As the smoke cleared from the raised platform that dominated the aft end of the galliot, the chaos below was brought into full view. The full stench came with it. He clutched his pomander ever closer to his face and spoke around it.

  ‘Well, Corbeau, can you explain why I have been called up here to restore the order you have so obviously lost?’

  Corbeau’s one eye glimmered in fury. ‘It was that bastard baboon,’ he stuttered, drawing a chorus of ape noises from the freemen now gathered around, ‘and this piece of Provençal gutter filth.’

  Corbeau was from Gascony, and proud of it. He took another kick at the prostrate Nicean, who yelped.

  ‘Get that scum back to their places,’ the captain shouted, and the freemen dodged back from the swinging whips as they ran, making snorting noises through their noses. Corbeau hoped the captain didn’t understand. He was angry enough.

  He was also oblivious. The only thing that concerned him was the instant restoration of order. These men had to be taught to obey commands the moment they were issued. It was the difference between victory and defeat in a sea fight. Defeat was something that preoccupied his mind, because he knew that if he was unfortunate enough to survive one, his impoverished drunk of a father would never come up with any ransom money and he would probably end up chained to one of these benches himself. It wasn’t the brutality he feared. It was the stench.

  ‘Bring the offenders before me!’

  Locks were unclasped, the chain that linked each man to the other was slipped through, and Mute was thrown easily onto the gangway below the captain. Ake proved a more difficult proposition. The loss of blood had caused him to faint and he was a large weight to move. Corbeau and his two subordinates finally managed it, and the big man lay beside a now wide awake Mute.

  ‘And who started this?’

  There was instant uproar as most of the white men yelled that it had to be the black’s fault. Flailing whips soon quietened them, but one voice emerged from the Muslim benches. It belonged to Mugali, youngest of the Niger tribesmen, who had managed to pick up some French.

  ‘Steal!’ he cried out. ‘He steal!’

  He repeated this in his own tongue, which drew full vocal assent from the others, quickly again silenced by the whips.

  ‘Are you a thief, man?’ said the captain.

  Mute’s tongueless denial was overwhelmed by the roar of laughter and repeated snorts that greeted the question.

  Colouring in anger, de la Vallerie nonetheless carefully weighed up the options. All rowers were scum, and if he could punish them all now, he would. But he was already twenty short of a full complement and he needed every man who could row. But guilty or not, it was obvious the Negro was bleeding to death while the gesticulating mute was recovering. Blaming and punishing minorities had the weight of tradition behind it and could be used as a good example to discourage the rest of the scum. There was a long summer of campaigning ahead and such an example now would be most salutary. Really, in the end, like most decisions, it was an easy one.

  The pomander was removed briefly from before the nose. ‘Hang the black hog by his ankles from this railing. Flay him alive.’ There was some cheering as Corbeau and his minions struggled to hoist Ake into position at the captain’s feet, who added, ‘Oh, and tie his hands behind his back. If he pulls that stick out he’ll be dead before the sentence can be carried out.’ De la Vallerie had had a weapon stuck in him once, in a duel. Its removal had nearly killed him.

  When they were done, and a bucket of sea water had been thrown over Ake to revive him for his torment, the captain spoke again. ‘You will see now what happens to those who seek to disrupt the proper working of the Perseus. Row well, keep out of trouble, obey orders. If anyone fails me just once, that man will repeat this fate.’

  With a nod, he signalled Corbeau to begin.

  Haakon, Jean and Januc were in the small minority of people who looked away as the knife point was slipped into the first few layers of skin on the back and a large flap was torn away. They could not block their ears though, and even if they’d made this weakening gesture it would not have kept out the high-pitched shriek, more animal than human, like a weasel in a trap gnawing its own leg off. Most men, including a delighted Da Costa, watched in awe.

  Sickened, Januc turned his gaze to the horizon. He was thus the first person on the ship to see the three sails. His eyes had always been sharp and even at that distance he could recognise the distinctive curves of Arab corsairs. I should know them, he thought, his heart beating quicker, for I have captained a few.

  He didn’t tell anyone. News travelled fast around a ship and would, too swiftly, reach the ears of his gaolers.

  Praise be to Allah, thought Januc. May my silence be another breath in your sails.

  TWO

  KALEIDOSCOPE

  Giancarlo Cibo, Archbishop of Siena, had every reason to be happy. With a following wind from Toulon, the crossing to Livorno had been mercifully short, a mere three days. There his discomfort and false poverty came to an end, for his manservant, Giovanni, was at the dock to meet him with the palace carriage and the trip to Siena had taken less than a day on roads unusually empty, clear and dry under a burning Tuscan sun. He’d even got his bodyguard back, for Heinrich had staggered aboard the boat just prior to its sailing with the tale of their enemies’ hanging, swiftly told before oblivion took him.

  Now he lay in a bath, a thing he did occasionally in the old Roman fashion, with a feast of welcome planned for the evening and an orgy to follow, organised in her usual impeccable fashion by his voluptuous mistress, Donatella.

  So he had won again! Even against the unexpectedly serious opposition. Winning always brought him pleasure, despite the fact that he did it so often. Yet he wasn’t content and the reason for this lay in the saddle bag, road- and bloodstained, resting on a chair less than an arm’s le
ngth from him. Even now he thought he saw movement from within it, a slight pressing outward of the leather. Cursing, he looked away; but just as they had been when he’d seen the hand four days earlier on the ship, his eyes were drawn back now to the dreadful prize of his victory.

  ‘I don’t believe in you!’ he shouted, the cry drawing a servant tentatively into the room, dismissed with an angry wave.

  It had been the exhaustion, that was the only explanation. The hard journey, little rest – he hadn’t eaten properly in days. Hermits who fasted, mutilated their bodies, deprived themselves of sleep, wouldn’t they then soar to ecstatic heights where wondrous visions danced before them?

  ‘And if they can see the Madonna or Our Lord himself …’

  Yes. His hardships could explain the horrifying vision of the unputrefied hand reaching out to him, the finger that pointed in bloody accusation.

  But there was one thing hardships could not explain – quite the reverse. Where was his cough? His sickness had been a part of him for several years now – some days better, some days worse, but always a continuous presence. Until now.

  Cibo shifted in the cooling water, aware of his puckering skin.

  There had to be another explanation. Maybe the appearance of the hand was coincidental, his illness due to disappear anyway. The combination of his surgeon’s treatments, the mercury and herbs, the letting of his blood, the prayers of his priests, all these had finally effected the cure. He was not some credulous peasant raised from his sick bed by the touch of St Mark’s collar bone. The six-fingered hand was a symbol only, a method of controlling minds.

  And yet … Cibo raised his own hand to his lips, tried to cough. Nothing. No blood flowed unchecked through his lips, staining his endless supply of handkerchiefs. He knew. It was not prayers, or his doctor’s ineffectual ministrations.

  ‘No!’ he screamed at the saddle bags. ‘No one has power over me. Not popes, not princes … and not the Witch Whore of England!’

  The servants came again and this time he let them stay, rub him dry with soft linens, anoint him with oils to ease still aching flesh, wrap him in clean robes. While they ministered to his body, his mind worked.

  Perhaps he was looking at it wrong. The hand had power as a symbol, yes, but could not its true power lie within the strangely uncorrupted flesh? Just as gold lay within baser metals?

  Of course! He had been ignoring the obvious. The answer lay in alchemy, the quest he passionately pursued to transform mere metal into gold, which was itself only part of the true quest. If the Philosopher’s Stone were found, the ultimate substance from which all other substance, flesh and form derived, it would give the finder untold riches. But what it would truly yield was the quintessence of life itself, with the power to cure illness, restore youth.

  Or bring the dead back to life.

  The idea entranced him. God and his mind working in harmony. There was one man who could verify this for him. And he … existed, would be the correct word, not very far away.

  Dismissing the servants, Cibo seized the saddle bag and held it as far from his body as he could manage, with his other hand plucking a torch from its socket on the wall. Its light surrounded and comforted him a little.

  I’ll need it, he thought, for dungeons are always dark and the lowest levels the darkest of all.

  There was the world and there was its shadow, and Abraham had long ago lost the ability to differentiate between the two. When he was first imprisoned he used to struggle with it, striving to place an object on one of the planes, to grasp its form, to quantify it with all the acuity of his scientific mind; but then something previously solid would lose all cohesion, or an empty space would suddenly be colonised by a shape. This would distress him, for he was a man who had always needed to know the world around him. Gradually, though, he realised just how fragile was this thing he used to think of as reality. It no longer mattered that he could not subject the phenomenon he encountered to all the rigorous tests he would have applied in his own laboratory. That was not the point. It was not why he was there. Rigid laws of science only applied in the so-called real world outside. Not here, never here.

  Some phenomena could still be felt though. He was always burning himself on the crucible because he would sit too close to it, observing the shifting patterns on the melting metal surfaces, molten worlds created and destroyed in an instant, as Yahweh had created, as Yahweh could destroy. There was a key there and sometimes he felt he could reach in and pluck it from the bubbling depths, had almost done so on more than one occasion, until some little remnant of restraint stopped him. As it was, his skin was traced with the scars gleaned from too curious reachings.

  There was no time within this world, so now he sat back on a chair he had not realised was there. The lead was not near the point where it could be useful, where he would be able to siphon off its essence in the form of its smoke, capture and distil its emanations in his glass retort. Waiting was easy though, for he had only to look up and once more see the kaleidoscope.

  Cascades of colour, greens plucked from a forest, magentas and blues hauled from an ocean’s depths, fired Tuscan umbers and ochres, more vibrant than any seen in the country outside, shifting constantly and not just in the reflection of crucible heat nor the flickering of reed torches placed beyond the translucent walls. Shifting of themselves, glass taking breath and moving, now a steady pulse, now a ripple of falling shards. As his world turned, the petals of a rose realigned themselves into a butterfly’s wings, into a crimson angel now bearing apples, now the helms of fallen warriors from whose eye sockets poured streams of river pearls. Droplets of silver, lozenges of emerald and agate. The jeweller Abraham had been linking the tumbling stones into a necklace of flame.

  The ceiling revolved above him, bringing new riches. He knew beyond the torchlight was a great darkness, but he was not to dwell on that, he had been told it no longer concerned him. His whole world was within the shimmering kaleidoscope, bounded by glass without and the bubbling contents of the crucible within. Only these should occupy him. He had no other wants, not food nor drink, of which there was plenty, though he had little appetite. Above all there was the pipe that so smoothed over the inconsistencies of his life with its sweet smoke, blurring the false line, showing him the lie of existence as it seemed, enabling him to focus on the real truths within this kaleidoscopic world.

  The secrets were apparent to him with every turn of his head. His task was to make them manifest to the man who had placed him there. The man who even now descended the dank stairwells under his palace, a reed torch in one hand, a saddle bag held carefully away from his body in the other.

  The final stairs were especially treacherous, crumbling and damp, and Cibo took his time. The slow pace allowed his breathing to calm, his mind to turn slowly inwards, as it always did on the descent to this netherworld where the usual laws of time and space, and perceived truth, simply failed to apply. His torchlight flared off dripping walls, off the seams of agate within the harder rock from which this special place had been carved.

  A masked gaoler struggled with keys to the first of two doors. When it finally creaked open Cibo entered another ill-lit corridor with three cells lining each side. There was rustling from within them as he strode past, but whether of man or beast he could not tell. Both, probably, and a mix, for the enemies who occupied these dank regions had been hidden from the light long enough to have become half-beast. He couldn’t even remember who they were or why he’d condemned them. Good, prudent reasons, he felt sure.

  He glanced to each side and feral eyes glimmered back through bars in the flicker of his torch. Something slammed hard against the cell door furthest along and a growling was heard as he waited for another faceless guard to open the second iron-studded barrier.

  At least they do not lack for water. The idea amused him. He’d ordered an underground stream to be diverted to flow through his dungeons. It was so wearisome to carry tortured bodies up the stairs and get them away f
rom the palace with no one seeing or raising an alarm. Now, a trap-door lifted and a mangled corpse was dumped; it would career through the subterranean waterways that criss-crossed Siena and fetch up leagues away, on river bank or pondside, and no one could tell where it had come from.

  He laughed, and the guard, thinking it was impatience, muttered something apologetic and fumbled with another key. Then the second door screeched on its rusty hinges and admitted him into a world that was very much his own invention. He never failed to feel the pride of the creator when he returned to it after an absence and looking around now, he smiled.

  The geometry of the vaulted chamber was flawless. Yet the aesthetics were incidental, the light from the dozen reed torches failing even to illuminate the ceiling. It was the astrological alignment that mattered far more, a hard trick to get right so far below the surface of the earth. The apex of the vaulted roof was both a chimney to bear fumes away and a funnel of power to draw down the forces of the heavens. Directly beneath its centre, aligned to the accuracy of a hair, lay a glass room.

  Layer upon layer of glass rose above this centre, with chambers the width of a hand in between, filled with fragments of coloured glass in every shape from diamond to lozenge, arrow head to star. Each chamber was connected to a water wheel, and each moved with the rising and falling of liquid levels in glass amphorae positioned at each end. From the outside, it looked like a random tumbling of misshapen pieces. From the inside, it looked like what it was. A kaleidoscope.

  Within the kaleidoscope lay the source of the heat whose glow could be made out through the shifting chambers. It came from a huge cauldron whose lower half was buried in the floor, heated to a white intensity by unseen flames beneath.

  Peering through the walls, Cibo made out the swaying figure of a man beside the cauldron.

  The Archbishop felt within his robes for a piece of purple and yellow glass. Inserting it in a hidden vent, a portion of glass swung upwards and he ducked underneath it and entered the translucent room.