The French Executioner

by C. C. Humphreys

  There was something familiar about the man who dismounted. Cibo knew he had seen him before. And when the man reached down and picked Anne Boleyn’s hand off his chest, Cibo remembered where. He even knew his name.

  ‘Rombaud. Jean Rombaud,’ he croaked.

  The executioner gave no sign he had heard, just kept staring down into the velvet bag. He didn’t even look at Cibo when he got up and moved away. This annoyed the Archbishop. He deserved more than that. He had left this man in a gibbet cage to rot. Was he not worthy of revenge?

  ‘Kill me.’ The words came clear in his new-found tongue. ‘You cannot leave me here. Kill me.’

  The executioner didn’t look back until he was in his saddle again. Finally, he said something Cibo couldn’t quite hear. Then the four horsemen rode from the square. Hell opened once more and Giancarlo Cibo’s further pleas were lost in the wailing of the damned.

  Jean had said, ‘You are in hell. Why should I set you free?’

  To Januc and Haakon, it was incomprehensible. To have a mortal enemy at your mercy – why would any man let that opportunity pass?

  Jean could not explain it. The moment he saw Cibo, slouched against the town well, covered in vomit and blood, Jean had thought, It ends here. I will use my sword, perhaps for the last time, to take the head of our enemy. But it was Anne herself who stopped him. Not by appearing in a flash of celestial light, nor even by gently whispering within his mind. It was the memory of a word he had spoken to her, sworn his oath by, recalled now by the touch of that hand, even though he felt it through the velvet of the bag. The hand he had kissed, been shocked by, heard her laugh about. The hand he had sworn, by that word, to save from the forces of hate embodied within the man at his feet.

  The word was ‘love’. Remembering it, Jean suddenly saw that to bathe the hand in blood now, however justified the shedding, however prudent the action, went against the spirit of what he’d pledged to do. He had enough stains on his own hands in trying to gain hers back. Now he had reclaimed it, so effortlessly compared to all he had been through, now the quest was nearly over, he wanted to return to the feeling of the oath, to the core of it, to that one word. To love.

  He could not explain that to his friends. He was not a man of words and they were, like him, warriors unaccustomed to such sentiments. But then a thought came, and it made him smile as they rode from a town still burning with St Anthony’s Fire. One of the benefits of leadership was that he didn’t have to explain anything.

  TWO

  SIEGE

  ‘Do you not know a safer way, Fugger?’ Jean had asked.

  Three days they had been on the main road north from Marsheim. Three days and they had barely crossed the border out of Bavaria, and that only because Jean and Haakon had remembered some of their Catholic prayers – enough, anyway, to convince a large party of hedge knights they were not heretical Lutherans.

  Across the border into Württemberg – same day, different faith. It was the Fugger who was called upon to declaim the Little Monk’s teachings to dour and doubtful apprentices in a small town square.

  ‘Watch the road north,’ one of the interrogators, a little friendlier than the rest, had warned, tapping a grimy finger to his large nose. ‘The Brotherhood of the Shoe lies in wait for parties the size of yours.’

  The Fugger had later explained about the peasant rebellion of twenty-four and twenty-five, fought under the symbol of the worker’s wooden clog.

  ‘Most of them were slaughtered at the war’s end by their former masters,’ he’d said, ‘but some still must lurk in the passes.’

  ‘Maybe I can pacify them with words from the Koran.’ Januc had felt left out in all the religious declarations.

  Then Jean asked his question about a safer way.

  ‘I know some paths through the woods that few tread,’ the Fugger had offered. ‘But the forest roads are strange and the going slow.’

  ‘No one travels slower than the dead,’ Jean had said. ‘So we’ll take your strange ways.’

  All too soon, Jean was regretting his choice. On the main route, at least the enemy was in plain sight, armed and demanding. In the dark woods, spectres lurked in every shadow, behind the moss-encrusted humps of dead trees, in the tendrils spread across the rotted-leaf floor. The path was mostly too narrow to ride so they led their horses, stumbling over the roots of trees whose branches folded upon them, pressing down; the sky, when glimpsed, was black and louring. Rain thudded ceaselessly onto the roof of the canopy, never seeming to penetrate to the forest floor. The light changed from grey to greyer and the little fires they lit at night only drew the darkness closer.

  Everyone folded into themselves. Barely a few words were snapped at each other, no stories were told to brighten the camp fire’s gloom. All suffered, but for Haakon it was worst.

  On the fifth day out of Marsheim, he started developing ‘tree fever’, muttering to himself at his horse’s head. On the seventh he was seeing trolls behind every other tree. On the eighth he seized his axe and ran into the forest to chop at a small, gnarled oak that had insulted his mother. To a man used to the horizons of the sea, the confinement was intolerable.

  That night, with Haakon halfway up an alder in an effort to see the heavens, the faithful Fenrir whimpering at the foot of the tree, Jean took the Fugger aside.

  ‘How much more of this?’

  ‘Not much,’ said the Fugger. ‘Oh no, no, no, not much at all, isn’t that right, O Daemon dear?’

  The raven let out a strangled caw, not even bothering to lift its beak from under its wing.

  ‘ “Not much” is not the answer I seek.’ Jean was suddenly annoyed, as if the endless forest were the one-handed man’s fault. ‘And why have you started to babble to that bird again? I thought you’d stopped all that.’ He grabbed the dancing figure by the collar and held him. Only the Fugger’s feet still scuffed a bit on the ground and his eyes moved here and there. Jean tried to speak more gently. ‘Is it just the forest, Fugger, or what lies beyond it? Come, man, we all know how hard it can be to go home. That’s why many of us never do.’

  But the Fugger was not hearing sympathy, nor was it a friend’s concerned grip on his collar. And he was not looking down into sympathetic eyes but up into ones hard as slate, set in a jowled, mottled face, the voice like jagged shards from the same stone.

  What have you done, Albrecht? Where have you been these seven years?

  I lost my hand, father. And then your gold. And then …

  ‘Fugger? Fugger?’ A hand was shaking him. ‘How much longer in the forest? How many days before we reach Munster?’

  ‘Another day, and one more night in the forest. We will be there near noon the day after.’

  ‘Good.’ Jean released the Fugger, patted him on the shoulder, then went to help Januc persuade Haakon down from his tree.

  The Fugger sank down beside a silver birch, pressing his face into the moss spread like a rug around its base.

  Munster! It had been his suggestion as a rendezvous, when Beck had insisted she would join them in Germany as soon as Abraham was safe, even though Jean had argued she should wait for him in Venice. It was the Fugger who had finally come up with the solution of his birthplace. He said there would be a welcome there, coin for the road ahead, fresh horses. Yet only he knew the true reason why he had suggested it.

  It was the only way he could go home.

  Look, father. See what I have achieved? See who are my companions? Hear them testify to my worth, my courage along the hard ways we have travelled together. I am part of a glorious quest – and all for a Protestant queen.

  No! It would not do. Such an explanation could merit only one response. No matter that the Fugger was a grown man, had been to university, could speak five languages and read the Bible in Greek. He had lost the family gold. He had betrayed the family trust. And Cornelius Fugger would still reach up into the roof, as he had always done, to the beam where there was a gap between wood and loam. He would pull down the haz
el switch that rested there. He would raise it up on high …

  It was as the Fugger said. By noon on the tenth day out of Marsheim, the forest had thinned until even Haakon was satisfied, gulping down the sight of a horizon like a near-drowned man gulps air. Soon they were into cultivated fields, and vineyards that reminded Jean of the Loire. The way they had followed through the darkness merged with a bigger route; even the rain ceased, the late August sun once more warming the land.

  They were riding to the top of what the Fugger had promised was the last hill, from whose crest the majesty of his city would be revealed. Before they reached it, though, they all heard a dull thump that had the other three reining in.

  ‘What? What was that?’ said the Fugger, who had ridden past, oblivious.

  ‘What would you say, Januc?’ Haakon turned to the Croatian. ‘Culverin or saker?’

  The janissary shook his head. ‘Sounded more like a bombard to me. But they tend to haunt me. Three months, night after night, while your Emperor besieged Tunis. Thud, thud, thud. It was all I could do to keep my wives satisfied.’

  ‘Culverins? Bombards? What are you talking about?’ The Fugger brought his horse back level with them.

  ‘Well, wood sprite’ – Haakon had become convinced, one night in the forest, that their guide was a demon leading them to a green doom – ‘unless your reformed Munsterites have had news of your arrival and are attempting to salute you, yonder is the sound of a city under attack by cannon. And that,’ he added, tipping an ear in the direction of a new sound, ‘is musketry.’

  The crackling, interspersed with another three booms, accompanied them the final hundred paces to the hill’s crest. Once there, they gazed down upon a sight familiar to all three warriors.

  The city was spread over three hills, its walls undulating up and down the slopes, encircling it entirely. There was a ditch before them and two hundred paces before the ditch a set of earthworks paralleled the walls all around, though these were not continuously linked, more a series of extended bastions and emplacements. It was, beyond doubt, a siege.

  Jean turned to the Fugger, whose twitching had been shocked into stillness by the sight. ‘There was a disadvantage coming by the back ways to your city. We had no news of this. Who would be attacking Munster?’

  The Fugger squinted at the besieger’s lines. ‘I can’t think, Jean, unless … there do seem to be a lot of white and blue banners outside the city. With gold crosses.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It is the sign of … wait! Of course! The Bishop of Munster! He who would suppress the Reformation. Of course!’ He clutched at Jean. ‘Suppression! The town was one of the first to declare for Luther. The Catholic Bishop is trying to get it back.’

  ‘Oh good, just what we need,’ Jean sighed, ‘another war.’

  ‘Holy war!’ said the Fugger, suddenly bright-eyed.

  ‘Is there any other kind?’ Januc’s smile never reached his eyes.

  Jean walked his horse a little apart and cursed fluently and continuously for a full minute. All hopes of a swift reunion with Beck, a swift departure for France with fresh horses and fresh Fugger gold, were gone. It was possible that she had not made the city yet, that she was even now approaching from the south. But they had left Montepulciano a month and a half ago and not only had they travelled at the slow pace of the Archbishop’s carriage, they had also contended with the endless forest. Beck had promised speed once she’d settled her father in Venice. So travelling alone and fast by the main routes, she had to have arrived by now, and would have had to make this same decision about whether or not to enter the city, to go to the Fugger’s family house. If they missed each other here, they could chase across Europe for years, they could pass at a dozen paces in the night and never meet.

  Rendezvous, however difficult, had to be kept. Really, he thought, there is no choice.

  Turning back to the others, he said, ‘All we can do is descend and find out what this war is about. We won’t be able to attempt the city till nightfall.’

  The Fugger was aghast. ‘Attempt the city? What do you mean, “attempt the city”? How will you get through the siege lines?’

  Jean looked at Haakon and Januc and smiled grimly. ‘Oh, there are always ways through those. As Beck might already have found out. Shall we go and look for some old comrades?’

  It was Haakon who found Johannes. Or rather the other way around, for the old Swiss musketeer caught sight of the huge Norwegian as Jean’s party was stopped and questioned for the fifth time since entering the besieging lines. Jean was explaining again how they were there to volunteer when a voice roared out from a group of wounded lying on the ground.

  ‘Now I know the Devil comes for me, boys, because his bastard whelp stands over there!’

  ‘Johannes Brauman!’ Haakon threw back his head and laughed. ‘Haven’t you given up this game yet? You must be a hundred!’

  Haakon picked a path through the moaning bodies until he reached a man leaning against a cart axle. The others followed, including the officer who had been questioning Jean.

  ‘You know these people, Johannes?’ he asked.

  ‘I know this big lout. Nearly broke my back outside Bologna, falling off a bridge. Are these others friends of yours, Hawk?’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘Then they obviously lack any judgement. Do they follow the trade?’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘Stupid as well, then, if they are here to offer themselves in this Godforsaken war.’ The old man tried to spit, but began to cough instead, blood flecking his lips. When he had regained his breath he said to the officer, ‘It’s all right, Piet, I can vouch for them. Haakon here wouldn’t know an Anabaptist from His Eminence’s arsehole.’

  The officer nodded, and moved back to his post.

  Johannes gestured to the ground beside him. ‘Make yourself comfortable, friends. I’d take you to my tent, but I have to await the attentions of that butcher-surgeon.’ He nodded to a tent from which some heavy moaning had been coming steadily. It quickly built to a shriek, instantly cut off. ‘God have mercy on my body, then my soul.’

  Jean looked at the old man. He was a big Switzer with hardly a hair on his head – except in his ears, where it grew in a profuse disorder of mottled white. His face was as lined as if someone had taken a knife and cut a score of furrows from the back of his head over to his chin, with gashes left and right level with his nose. Thick wattles of pallid flesh hung at his neck. His left eye was a cloud, the other red-streaked and gummed. His breathing was raspy and he clutched to his side a filthy piece of crimson-stained cloth. Jean didn’t think he’d ever seen an older man in any company he’d served in. It wasn’t a profession that encouraged length of service.

  ‘Would you like me to take a look?’

  Johannes one-eyed Jean with suspicion until, at a nod from Haakon, he slowly peeled away the makeshift bandage. A gush of blood followed the revealing of a soaked undershirt. Jean, probing with his fingertips, felt the hard lump of metal wedged between two ribs under the skin. There was no bubbling of foam around the wound, so Jean knew it had not pierced the lungs.

  ‘Musket ball?’

  ‘I doubt it. Those scum in Munster don’t have many of those left. Ayee! Careful, will you? No, it’ll be a bit of rusted bucket, or a coin perhaps. They don’t believe in money, see, so they’ve been firing them at us for weeks now.’

  The Fugger laughed. ‘Don’t believe in money? The people of this city are renowned for their desire never to let a single thaler go.’

  The old man squinted up, wincing, as Jean continued to probe. ‘How long since you have been here, sonny? They have overthrown the Church in there and set up what they call “the New Jerusalem”. Though the money lenders weren’t driven out, they were strung up by their balls and burnt to death. Christ, man, what are you about down there?’

  Without replying, Jean went to his saddle bags and returned with his barber’s kit. He said, ‘You can wait for the butcher,
or you can let me work.’

  Januc, who had had an arrow head removed by Jean on the Perseus, said, ‘He is good, old man.’

  With a nod, Johannes turned his face away. Jean had worked the edges of the metal piece free and now grasped the end of it with his pliers. At a glance from him, Haakon and Januc held the old man down. When they had him, Jean jerked the fragment free and swiftly stemmed the flow of blood with a cleaner cloth. Johannes fainted, but a swig from Haakon’s flask – grappa from Montepulciano – revived him. Jean handed him the bloody piece of metal he’d removed.

  ‘Pah!’ spat the old man. ‘Looks like a piece of a comb. Not even a little profit in being hurt.’

  Jean used more grappa to cleanse the wound, stitched it, then wrapped an unstained cloth round and round the big chest. At the end of the procedure Johannes was pale but still awake.

  ‘I think you will be all right. But do not remove the bandage for at least a week.’

  The Switzer painfully leant over towards his pack. ‘I do not have much money to pay you with, surgeon. Can you wait? We are on a bonus when we take the town and as much loot as we can carry away. You can have your share then.’

  ‘Keep it, old man. I’ll swap my skill for some information – if you feel up to talking.’

  ‘If you help me back to my tent, there’s food and wine for you there. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’

  Johannes’s ‘tent’ turned out to be a hut of reasonable size. Smoke from the cooking hearth filled it, and a begrimed servant hurried about to provide a meal for his master and his new friends.

  Once settled on his large truckle bed, a mug of hot beer in his hand, Johannes listened to Haakon’s shortened version of why they were there.

  ‘Sure I can help you get in. You’ve both served in sieges, I take it? There are always ways in and out. But why you’d want to enter that hell hole …’ Johannes spat. ‘They’re all madmen in there. And mad bitches too. They don’t fight for money like all the other good Germans I know. They fight for God. It’s so unreasonable.’