The French Executioner

by C. C. Humphreys

  The other ship, the Black Crescent, had finally cleared its rigging and wreckage and had borne around. It was nearly as big as the Silver Serpent, which meant that it still had twice the number of men onboard that had started the fight on the Perseus. Januc had hoped that the execution of their leader might have taken their appetite for battle away, but if its captain, Tarrak ben Youseff, had not the mad courage of his former leader, he knew an advantage when he saw one. His cannon shot was aimed at the front of the Perseus, the high foredeck just protruding ahead of the Silver Serpent’s aft. Fortunately for Ganton and his men the shot was high, but Youseff was not concerned. Once he’d swept around the front of his former commander’s vessel and grappled the Perseus on the other side, the day would be his.

  After the elation of his victory, this vision of imminent defeat was hard to bear for Januc. Suddenly very tired, he sank down upon one knee, rolling the head of his enemy like a ball across the deck where it buried itself in the serpent’s silver mouth.

  ‘By all the devils, Jean,’ he sighed, ‘we were so close.’

  But the Frenchman was paying him no attention. Instead he was looking intently at the bow of their ship, before which the Black Crescent was soon to pass.

  ‘Did you,’ he said, turning suddenly to the prone janissary, ‘hear this ship fire any shots at us?’

  ‘No. The Black Crescent did, but Hakim wanted us undamaged. Why?’

  But he received no reply, for Jean was racing away from him towards the bow of the ship, picking up Haakon in his wake, brushing through the weary victors and the less sullen defeated who now saw their salvation about to pass the front of their vessel.

  Two men still stood on the gun platform, holding swords. Taking no chances, Haakon lifted his axe and butted them with the haft in their faces. Jean ran forward and looked down the cannon’s mouth. As he suspected, a large ball lurked in its depths.

  ‘Do you know anything about artillery?’ he said to the Norwegian.

  ‘Nothing. You?’

  Jean shook his head. ‘Can’t be that difficult though, can it? We point this at something and light this.’ He gestured at the firing pan, then squinted along the barrel. ‘Seems to be aiming highish and we want it low. How do we lower it?’

  ‘Those. What are they called? Those wheels raise and lower it.’

  Jean looked out. The Black Crescent was just starting to pass before them.

  ‘Not enough time.’ He tried to lift the end. ‘Jesu! Impossible.’

  Haakon looked at him and laughed. ‘Stand aside, little man.’ He bent to the tip of the cannon’s carriage, crouching down on his haunches, tucking his huge hands under the wood. He took a deep breath and lifted, every muscle and tendon bulging. For a brief moment nothing happened. Then, at first slowly, then quicker and quicker, the carriage end began to rise and the barrel end dip.

  ‘Enough!’ called Jean, and grabbing the powder chest, he pulled it under. Haakon lowered the tip of the cannon onto it. Sweat fountained off him, carving channels through the blood, smoke and gore which covered him.

  Jean looked out, and the Black Crescent was exactly level with them. He grabbed the taper and plunged it into the pan, just remembering to yell ‘Move!’ to Haakon, hands on knees and breathing heavily at the carriage end.

  Within the space of two heartbeats the two men leapt sideways. There was a fizzle in the pan followed by a huge roar and an eye-tormenting flash. The gun lurched backwards, snapping its stays, hurling itself off the powder box and skewing to the side. It narrowly missed crushing the prone Jean. He scrambled up and over the wheel and tried to make out anything through the smoke.

  It cleared a little, and the Black Crescent was before him. The ship was just as he’d seen it before the cannon’s blast. There was no mark or any damage visible on its side.

  Haakon, coming up beside him, looked too and wearily reached for his axe. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘more fighting to be done. Today is as good a day to die as any, for I’ll not work those oars again.’

  Oars! It was the oars that made Jean realise what was wrong. The enemy had stopped rowing. The boat was stationary in the water. As the realisation came, so the sight before him changed: the Black Crescent suddenly leant over away from him revealing a huge gaping tear at its waterline. And the strange silence that had hung over everything, the silence that follows or precedes a scream, was suddenly shattered by hundreds of them as the crew of the stricken ship began to hurl themselves over its side.

  Of the forty freemen and prisoners who had taken up arms on the Perseus only thirteen, including Jean, Haakon and Januc, remained standing. The eighty soldiers had been reduced to twenty-five upright and ten more with severe wounds. Ganton, the old gunner, and Augustin, the sergeant-at-arms, had been killed in the last Arab assault on the aftdeck. Corbeau, if he lived, would not be using a whip again, his right arm severed by a scimitar slash below the elbow. He lay, clutching a rag to the oozing stump, staring at his captain, trying to recognise him through the pain distorting his vision. There was something different about him.

  Captain Louis St Mark de la Vallerie could not smell a thing. This was normally a source of joy to him, but not now, for the flat blade of the heavy sword that had knocked him off the stairs on the Silver Serpent had smashed in his visor and crushed his nose, breaking it and skewing it to the left side of his face where it rested now, swollen and bloodied. It quite took away from the joy of the victory, accomplished through his skill and force of arms.

  Jean stood facing the transformed captain with Haakon resting on his axe behind him. He had asked the question twice and received no reply, just a snuffling from behind the huge kerchief. He had also noticed that in the time he had waited, the aftdeck had filled up with the remnants of the Perseus’s soldiery. Shifting his sword onto his other shoulder, he asked his question again.

  ‘Monsieur, is it not time we sailed for France?’

  De la Vallerie kept the kerchief at his face and said, in muffled tones, ‘Our mission is to Valletta.’

  ‘Monsieur, we had an agreement.’

  ‘We may return to France after Malta, we may not. When we do, we may talk again. Until we do, you will take your place at the oars.’

  Haakon growled behind him. Jean raised a calming hand.

  ‘That is not acceptable.’

  The captain glanced around, saw all his men in position.

  ‘Acceptable?’ he roared, sending a shudder of pain through his tortured face, doubling his fury. ‘I decide what’s acceptable on the foredeck of my ship! You put down your arms, pick up your oars and row like the gutter scum you are or I’ll have you flayed, fucked and fed to the fish!’

  ‘We’ll fight you,’ Jean said simply.

  ‘Then you’ll die,’ replied de la Vallerie. ‘There’s barely ten of you left.’ And he nodded at his new sergeant-at-arms to move forward.

  As he approached, Jean and Haakon vaulted over the guard rail and landed on the deck below. The ten other freed prisoners nervously gathered around them. Then there was a twittering, as of a flock of starlings lifting from a field, and fifteen black shapes rose from the benches. They all clutched weapons taken in the confusion of the fight. In their midst was the huge shape of Ake, pink flesh gaping as a result of the cruel wounds of the flaying knife, the shive still buried in his chest. Yet he called out in a strong voice, ‘They die, you die.’ And fifteen pairs of bare feet hammered in unison on the deck, fifteen throats opened to unleash the same battle cry.

  A shock ran through everyone, Muslim and Christian, prisoner and slave, soldier and pirate.

  ‘Shoot them! Shoot them all!’ bawled the captain.

  Over the rustle of lowered firearms, a single voice was heard: ‘I think not.’

  The voice, though soft, had a commanding tone to it and everyone on both ships stopped and looked up. On the aftdeck of the Silver Serpent that still towered over the aftdeck of the Perseus, dressed now in the flowing black robes of his former mortal enemy, a white tu
rban crowning his head, Januc was leaning on the basilisk that the late John Hood had been just about to fire when an arrow snuffed out the light in his eye. John Hood’s taper burned in Januc’s left hand.

  ‘I think not,’ he repeated, and swung the muzzle of the gun around and down until it pointed directly at the soldiers who had primed their weapons below.

  The gesture was enough. The soldiers shifted uneasily; then, as one, they shouldered their arquebuses. They had seen enough of short-range flying metal for a lifetime.

  With a small nod, Jean turned back and climbed up the stairs, Haakon still shadowing him. The soldiers gave way, and Jean found himself staring once again into the bloodied, furious face of the captain.

  ‘I have just decided what we will do. We—’

  De la Vallerie screamed, ‘I do not negotiate with peasants!’

  Jean smiled. ‘One day, we peasants will be tearing down your pretty little chateau. But for both of us to survive to witness that glorious day, you will now shut up and listen to me. Or my friend up there will end this conversation forthwith.’

  Januc waved the taper. The captain, attempting to snort, grimaced in pain.

  Jean continued. ‘We have two ships, and the two smaller vessels that were attached to the big galley. Shall we divide the spoils?’

  ‘I am not leaving the Perseus,’ came the snuffled reply.

  ‘My dear Captain, who would deprive you of that? No, you keep the Perseus, we’ll take the Silver Serpent, and part, if not friends, at least not as enemies.’

  De la Vallerie glanced at his cowed and exhausted men, then up into the muzzle pointed down at them.

  ‘It seems I have no choice,’ he said sourly. ‘Very well. I will keep my slaves to take us back to Toulon to re-equip. You can use the Arabs and blacks to row you to hell.’

  Jean looked back towards the main deck. His eyes sought those of Ake. He was standing, despite the pain and loss of blood, proud and upright in the centre of his people.

  ‘No,’ said Jean, turning back. ‘In my brief acquaintance with it, I find I do not like this slavery. All men who wish to come with me will be free to do so. Those who wish to return to France can go with you. Ake and his people can take one of the Arab small boats and go where they will.’

  De la Vallerie was stunned by the whole idea. He could only blurt out, ‘And the Arab defeated? It is my right as conqueror to chain them to my oars as they would have chained me!’

  ‘Any Arab can take the other small boat. It will be crowded, but they can join their brothers on that crippled galley out there.’

  The news passed swiftly, in a variety of tongues, up and down the two ships. The consensus in both Arab and Christian thought, was that the man was mad. But it was said in some way, in all their tongues, that madness can be a special gift from God. And this madness was going to lead to freedom. Once indulged, however, the fear in all was that the madness would be recognised and stopped, so as soon as they could slip their chains the pirates and the Negroes divided up and, taking what food and water they could easily carry, scrambled into the two dhows on the far side of the Silver Serpent.

  Jean watched from the foredeck of the larger galley as Ake’s men skilfully manned the oars. Freedom gave them a new zest for rowing, and the small sail was soon catching the wind. As it pulled away, Ake, standing up in the prow, his chest now bound in sailcloth, turned and caught Jean’s eyes for a final time. A little bow, and he was gone.

  Jean felt a movement beside him. Once everything had been decided, it was Januc, with a corsair’s deck once more beneath his feet, who had organised it all. He stood now at Jean’s side and said, ‘Well, my friend, have you thought now where you want this galley to sail?’

  He had. The way was clear. Again he felt the pull, gentle but insistent, of a six-fingered hand.

  ‘Italy. As close to Siena as I can get.’

  ‘Is there profit in it? You have a corsair to command and you and I and that big lout of a Norseman could make a fortune in these waters.’

  ‘Profit?’ Jean nodded. ‘Of a sort. Redemption is a better word.’

  ‘It sounds like a good story. You’ll be able to beguile the journey with its telling.’ And the Croatian turned away.

  ‘Wait.’ Jean had realised something. ‘Why didn’t you go with the other – forgive me – pirates? Doesn’t your home lie that way?’

  Januc looked back. ‘One home. But men who fought us and lived will have recognised me. I am now a corsair captain who fights his own. Besides, Hakim i Sabbah is one of a dozen brothers, each as vicious as the other. After today, I would forever sleep with one eye open. So I will consider my options as I ferry you to Livorno. It’s in Tuscany, maybe a day’s ride from Siena. Will that suit?’

  ‘Will it suit you?’

  ‘Livorno is a free port, a rat’s nest of thieves, prostitutes and murderers, where men and women would slit your throat for a sou and gamble their grandmothers on a roll of the dice.’ He smiled. ‘My kind of town.’

  The Perseus had finally been untangled from the Silver Serpent and even as Januc spoke of their destination Jean watched the two ships suddenly part. Few rowers had elected to join de la Vallerie, preferring to follow Jean, and soldiers were manning most of the oars – and making a feeble attempt at it. Da Costa, who had wives in too many French ports to take up a pirate’s life, lay on their gangway, his foot set in splints by Jean. They were still close enough to hear him declaim, to the other wounded around him, ‘Sho I shays to my friend Januc, I shays: try to remember to ushe the bow ash I taught you …’

  Jean watched de la Vallerie, the only officer left, pick up the whip Corbeau had dropped and begin lashing. Turning his back to the sight and to the setting sun, his thoughts went ahead to Tuscany and back to a vow.

  ‘A little longer, my Lady Anne,’ he murmured quietly. ‘Just a little longer.’

  Up on the foredeck, Januc was already ordering the running of his ship. A fresh wind was picking up and the evening star was giving him his first clue as to direction.

  A huge shape loomed between him and it.

  ‘Just tell me,’ Haakon rumbled. ‘It has been annoying me all day.’

  ‘What has, Norseman?’

  ‘You said there were three things we needed to survive a fight on a galley. You only told us two. Hide under the bench …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘… wait for the second volley …’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘… and the third?’

  ‘The third?’ Januc clasped his hands to his face. ‘You mean, I didn’t tell you the third? But the third is the most important of all!’

  ‘Yes,’ exploded the Norwegian, ‘you said! What is it?’

  Januc winked. ‘Don’t get killed.’

  FOUR

  DUNGEON

  It was faint and almost lost in all the other sounds of the dungeon – the constant drip of water running down the green seamed walls, the scurrying of rats amid the rancid straw, the muttering, weeping and snoring of his fellow inmates who spanned the range of sanity, alike only in their handless state. Despite it all, though, the sound of someone in torment carries to those who have an ear for it.

  The Fugger had such an ear. He had listened to himself long enough and to those at his gibbet. Two of their company of seven handless men had disappeared through the cell door. Neither had returned and only the occasional bat-squeak of terror marked any sense of the hours passing, though he thought they had been there a night and part of a day. He hunched further into the corner, taking care not to lean on the raven still tucked into the small of his back. There was comfort in its warm body pressing there. A small comfort.

  ‘What have I done, oh Daemon dear?’ he whispered, the sound making a bundle of rags next to him start and shout some nonsense, then rejoin the others in sleep. A keg of wine had been left for them and they had emptied it between them, all save the Fugger. He wanted his wits about him. They were all he had.

  And m
uch good may they do me, he thought. I have swapped a gibbet midden for a death cell, the furies in my head for ones of all too real, stinking flesh. What was I thinking, trying to be some hero in an ancient story? What can I do here except echo the screams of those who have gone before?

  A different kind of scream, the hinges of the door swinging open.

  Heinrich von Solingen stood there, the flames of a reed torch silhouetting him in the doorway. The two Germans looked at each other. The Fugger had managed so far to control his reactions to this nightmare from his past; if he shook a little more now it suited the role he had adopted. Heinrich merely regarded him as another tool for his master.

  ‘Seems you’re next,’ he said, and beckoned the Fugger to follow.

  ‘Oh yes, Master, all too happy, all too happy.’ He belched and laughed. ‘Such a kind master. Such good wine.’

  Along with the wine to warm them against the dungeon’s chill, they’d each been issued with an old and stinking blanket. His was red, barely holding together, its wool unravelling. Clutching this around him, and keeping his head down, he shambled and staggered after his gaoler.

  The broad back preceded him into a dank corridor, guttering torches throwing their shadows over the rough walls and the misshapen cell doors that studded them. The floor sloped down and the cold and the wet increased, a chill forcing itself into his bones, the threadbare blanket a useless ward against it. Then, strangely, it began to get warmer and the iron-banded door they approached seemed to glow.

  Heinrich rapped upon it three times. Three bolts were pulled and a key inserted and twisted. When it swung open, the heat struck the Fugger like the slap of a huge hand. The light was intense; there were dozens of reed torches, three score of huge cathedral candles, a fire blazing in a brazier, near which stood a table of metal implements he didn’t want to consider. The light was intensified by the glass vault at the centre of the room. It bounced and was magnified by hundreds of crystalline, many-coloured chambers that made up the dome.

  To its right, movement drew his eyes. Two men were crouched over some sort of hole, a wooden lid propped up beside it. From it came the sound of fast-moving water. They were pushing something into the darkness there, and he caught a swift glimpse of what looked like a leg suddenly disappearing. As the men replaced the wooden cover, he noticed that beside the hole lay two tattered blankets.