The French Executioner

by C. C. Humphreys

  As the last of them parted, behind them was revealed a person who made all gasp and begin to whisper each to the other. She was in a simple shift that covered her to her bare feet. Her long hair was piled up in a bundle on her head and her eyes were cast down, seeming to focus only on the hands tied before her.

  She is beautiful. A vision of Anne Boleyn came to Jean, walking as slowly to her fate on Tower Green. And she too is bound for execution.

  Voices murmured excitedly all around. ‘The Queen, the Queen!’

  The murmurs were lost in the roar that followed as another man walked out onto the platform, alone, and moved slowly towards the crowd, without looking at the bound woman, who reached out to him as he passed. The roar filled the square, reverberated around the town, carried even to the besiegers’ lines outside.

  ‘David! David! David! David! DAVID!’

  Jean had noted the rich apparel of the Twelve, but this man’s clothes were sumptuous, studded with jewels that glittered in the bright sunshine, a crown upon his head of plain gold yet with an emerald the size of a gull’s egg in the middle. The face under it was ten years younger than the face of the youngest of the elders. A clear, unwrinkled brow, a straight nose, dark, heavily lashed eyes. As he raised his arms, bracelets of silver flashed from them.

  The movement instantly silenced the crowd. Then a voice that seemed to be made not of sound but of some exotic essence, rich as burning sandalwood, smooth as honey, reached out to caress every ear in the square.

  ‘My people,’ the voice spoke gently, yet clearly, as if it were weighed down by a sorrow too great to name. ‘Oh, my people.’

  The arms were lowered and the cry ‘David!’ echoed again from the arches of the cathedral. The arms were raised once more, silver and gold flashing. The voice came again, a hardness building within it.

  ‘And Jeremiah spake thus, chapter thirty-three, verse five: “Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as King and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” ’

  Here he paused, and seemed to look out at each individual in the crowd before continuing.

  ‘Am not I your David?’

  ‘Yes, Lord.’

  ‘Am not I your David?’

  ‘Yes, Lord, yes,’ came the reply from every hoarse throat.

  ‘And what shall become of the Jezebel who has betrayed me, who has been denounced by my own Elijah?’

  The Elder on the extreme left raised his stave and pointed it at the bound woman. At the gesture, her legs gave way and she sank to the floor.

  The crowd spoke just two words in one voice: ‘Hang her!’

  Bejewelled hands rose again, commanding instant silence.

  ‘No, my people, not the noose. For is it not written in Amos nine, verse ten: “All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword”? Is it not said that the beauteous Anne, Queen of England, martyr to the cause of reform, died thus?’

  It was as if Jean had been struck. He gasped. He could almost feel the hand bunch at his back as if summoned.

  The crowd roared, their King raised his arms again, raised his voice, pointed at the woman and cried, ‘I, King Jan of Munster, will be as generous as my sovereign brother Henry of England to my Queen. Let the justice of the Lord be swift and merciful.’

  He stepped aside, making way for a masked man holding a sword, almost identical to the one Jean’s captors clutched beside him. The weeping woman was raised up on her knees. Jean saw the executioner was experienced in his craft, for he used an old trick. Jabbing one point of the square blade into the base of the victim’s back, the head jerked up because of the sudden pain and was off in an instant, to bounce and roll at the feet of her former husband.

  And then this King-God did an extraordinary thing. He picked up the head, kissed it full on the lips, then threw it in a high arc out into the crowd, who went crazy with delight. Then their David went to the body, slumped in a fast-expanding pool of blood, and began to jump up and down on it.

  Jean Rombaud had witnessed all manner of barbarity in his life with the sword, and participated in much of it. But at this he turned away. Turned away and closed his eyes, reaching inside himself for some sight that would banish what he had just seen. In that instant he knew his career as an executioner was over.

  Beside him, the scab-faced man was cheering as loudly as any.

  ‘Who … who was that unfortunate woman?’ the Fugger was saying to him.

  A cackle came. ‘Unfortunate woman? That was one of the queens, King Jan’s second wife. Had too nagging a tongue on her, so they say. Hey, throw the head over here!’

  ‘Fugger,’ whispered Jean, for their faces were suddenly close together in the push of the crowd, ‘there was more sanity in your midden.’

  The Fugger was weeping openly. ‘My family is here somewhere. We must get them out.’

  Once more a trumpet blast stilled the noise. The battered body was gone, no doubt to decorate some battlement as a warning to others. The bangled arms were raised again, and Jan Bockelson, King of Munster, in a voice somewhat hoarser than before, called out again.

  ‘And now, my children, your father only has three wives. It is written that four is the number of the handmaidens of David. Who will take the place of this Jezebel, to be joined to me in a ceremony tomorrow night? Who desires that highest of honours?’

  If Jean thought the example of the former Queen’s end would deter others he was wrong, for he was swept up in the surge of women rushing towards the platform, shouting out, ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ The jostling allowed Jean to work again at the ropes binding him, for his guards were as distracted as any. Now, in this frenzy, he broke the last of his bonds. The beggar’s leader saw his prisoner’s hands come free and made to raise the alarm, but an elbow in the throat silenced him. Jean caught his sword as the man fell, and swiftly sliced through the Fugger’s knots. A dozen people separated them from their bags, so Jean reluctantly abandoned them and turned to try to force his way through the crowd.

  The Fugger made no effort to follow, allowing himself to be borne wherever the crowd willed, transfixed by what he was seeing. A woman, no more than a girl really, had been selected. As Jean turned back to tug at him, she was being lifted out from the crowd, her hand placed in the hand of the King.

  ‘Come, Fugger! Quickly, man! Do you not wish to look for your family?’

  ‘No need.’ The one-handed man waved his stump at the platform. ‘I have found them.’

  It had been seven years, and she had been a bud of a girl then, all apple cheeks and fair, coiled hair. She was thinner now, but she hadn’t changed that much. The girl being hailed as the next Queen of Munster was undoubtedly his sister Alice.

  ‘Fugger!’ yelled Jean, to no avail, for the man was moving as if in a trance towards the stage. Jean could only allow the momentum of the crowd to carry him in the Fugger’s wake.

  Nearer the front, the crowd began to thin as disappointed suitors made their way back. Some stayed to watch and jeer, because the girl’s father had now crawled up onto the dais and was pleading with those who held his daughter.

  ‘Lord! King of Kings!’ he implored. ‘She is the only child we have left. The only hope of her parents’ old age is a good marriage for her.’

  The beautiful face of Bockelson smiled down upon Cornelius.

  ‘Why, dearest brother and soon-to-be father’ – his voice was nectar, causing Alice to sigh – ‘can you think of a better future than to be one of the wives of the Lord’s anointed? To stand at his right hand at the day of judgement? Besides’ – and here he bent down until his face was closer, while the tone lost a little of its sweetness – ‘you talk as if you are trapped in the old days before the revelation of the Word. There are no good or bad marriages. There is only union under the Law of God.’

  ‘My only beloved son was taken from this world.’ Gerta had joined her husband on her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks
. ‘Do not let me lose my daughter. Not yet. She is not ready.’

  ‘Silence!’ roared Jan Bockelson, raising his arms above the two prostrate figures. ‘Silence, and hear the word of your David!’

  It was just then that the Fugger reached the platform. Two guards with halberds stopped his progress, but he was a mere few paces away from where his parents knelt, and he had heard their last declarations. Into the silence that awaited the King’s word, the Fugger’s voice exploded.

  ‘Mother!’ he cried. ‘Father! It’s me, Albrecht! He is not lost. He has returned!’

  There was the sound of breath being expelled and held. No one ever spoke when the King was about to pronounce. All had witnessed the terrible mutilations awaiting those who did.

  His parents, turning at his cry, saw the familiar yet alien figure who struggled with the guards. His mother looked, looked away, closed her eyes, opened them, looked again. His father stared, unbelieving. It was little Alice, clinging to King Jan’s raised arm, who broke the silence again.

  ‘Albrecht? Oh, Sire, Lazarus has risen! The lost have been found!’

  ‘Let him up here,’ bellowed the King. ‘The prodigal! The prodigal returns! Praise be to the Lord, for this is His Miracle!’

  The halberdiers parted and the Fugger fell onto the stage. His mother clutched his shoulders and both wept, while Cornelius looked on, eyes narrowed, hands twitching. Before he could speak, there was a further eruption before the stage as the last three of his would-be captors fell on Jean, and fell rapidly off again, clutching faces and sides.

  ‘Sire,’ yelled their leader through bleeding gums, ‘we caught these two sneaking into the city last night. They are spies, our prisoners, brought before you for your justice.’

  ‘Seize him!’ commanded Bockelson, and the halberdiers and some of the elders fell upon Jean. Once more his sword was taken and this time handed to the King.

  ‘Well, well.’ He turned the weapon over in his hands. ‘I’ve seen one of these before. Is it true? Are you spies, Philistine assassins come to slay me?’

  The Fugger, until then gripped by the power of once more holding his family to him, suddenly realised the danger he had put himself and Jean in.

  ‘Most Mighty!’ he cried, prostrating himself. ‘We had heard of your glory. One of the prophets you sent out came to where we rested and spoke the Good Word. I then knew I must return to the land of my birth, delivered by you from degradation. And my friend here is a mighty warrior who saw that your enemies were his enemies and comes to offer you the tribute of this, his sword.’

  Jan, who himself spoke in the language of apocalypse, liked it when others did the same.

  ‘Is this true, swordsman? Have you come to swear fealty to me?’

  Jean, who had fewer words and fewer ways with them, simply looked at him and said, ‘I have.’

  ‘And I can testify to his skill with that sword’ – the voice came from the back of the stage, pronouncing the words in heavily accented German – ‘for I have seen him wield it often enough.’

  ‘Uriah Makepeace,’ Jean said as the masked man came forward, pulling off his leather disguise.

  ‘The very same.’ The removal of the shroud revealed a bearded face, a nose long ago broken and badly reset, a head bald from nape to crown. He continued, in English. ‘Don’t worry about me revealing my face, they all know who I am. ’is lunatic-ness ’ere just likes the costumes. Oh,’ he continued with a smile, ‘and none of ’em speaks any English. Bit useful, that.’

  Impatiently, King Jan cut in, in German. ‘Is he English, this fellow?’

  ‘French, your Holiness,’ Makepeace replied in the same language, ‘and a famed executioner. It was he who cut the head off your precious English martyr what you was referring to earlier.’ Then he added, in English, ‘A contract that should have been mine, you poxy French scavenger. Oh and ’e’s a little obsessed with ’er “martyrdom”, as ’e calls it, ’is March-hare-ness is.’

  ‘You! You are to be honoured among men! You will come tonight and tell me of her beauty, of her sacrifice.’ The King’s handsome face was coursed with wonder and Jean, more and more confused, just nodded.

  ‘Enough!’ cried King Jan, as the tumult from the bleeding captors, reunited Fuggers, and a restless crowd built. He spread his arms over them all and a silence fell immediately. ‘Lo, are the sundered joined once again. Lo, the miracle of man and wife will soon be consummated. Lo, are new recruits gathered from all countries to fight for His righteousness. Now, as it is written, in Jeremiah, chapter thirty-one, verse four: “Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel. Again you shall adorn yourself with timbrels and shall go forth in the dance of merrymakers.” ’

  And speaking thus, the King of Munster began to spin his bride-to-be around and around. The trumpets played again and all the Elders, all the townspeople joined in, leaping to the music.

  Makepeace leant into Jean. ‘What I tell you? Mad, the lot of ’em. Why don’t you come with me, Rombaud? Unless you desire a dance?’

  Jean called to a still-weeping Fugger clutching his mother, his father a stiff and forlorn sight beside them. ‘Leave word where I can find you.’

  On receiving a nod, Jean followed the English executioner off the dais, filled now with whirling figures in Biblical robes. Around and around they danced, slipping in the patches of fresh blood that coated the wood. None of them seemed to care.

  FOUR

  THE JUDAS KISS

  The joy of the reunion lasted only until they crossed the threshold of the house.

  ‘My room,’ Cornelius ordered, disappearing into it.

  ‘I know you have had a terrible time, Albrecht,’ his mother whispered, stroking, for the hundredth time, his savaged wrist, ‘but so has he.’ She kissed him again, then let him go.

  As the Fugger entered the room with its terrible memories, he ducked far lower than the lintel required, seeming to become smaller, to shrink back in size to the boy who had wept so often within those panelled walls. He couldn’t help but look up. There it was, as it had always been and would be until Doomsday – the hazel switch, thrust into the gap where the beam and the loam of the ceiling failed to meet.

  ‘Well?’ His father had his back to him, standing before the heatless fireplace.

  The Fugger knew what his father wanted and it was as if seven years were snatched away in a moment. He had just lost the family’s gold at a roadside tavern in Bavaria. His stump began to throb as if newly sliced.

  ‘I was attacked, Father. Robbed. My hand …’ He held the stump up to the rigid back. ‘There were too many of them. There was nothing …’

  He faltered. The silence, the quality of the listening made him falter. It was like the moment after lightning, just before the thunder.

  ‘Nothing?’

  His father turned, his face blotched and purple, muscles twisted in the frenzy the Fugger had recalled almost every night of those seven years. He recoiled, shrank still further into himself, forming a barrier with his own body as he had against the fierce rains and scorching heat when crouched beneath the gibbet.

  ‘Nothing? Seven years gone, a family near ruined by your stupidity, and you say “nothing”?’ Cornelius was moving around the room now, his limbs shaking with rage. ‘All the problems that beset us, all, commenced at the time you lost us our gold. If we had had it safe in Augsburg with my cousin, I would not have had to remain in Munster, I could have got out sooner when the madness began. Now, we have lost almost everything.’

  He began to scrabble at the rock inside the fireplace. The Fugger looked up to see the stone come away and the light of the candle flicker on the bright metal inside.

  ‘Look! By my skill I have built up our fortunes again, double, treble what you threw away. But I cannot get it out of this city, and soon the forces of our liberators will take this town and wreak a terrible vengeance. They will not distinguish between the fanatic and men like myself. They will kill me and take my gold. And the
only child worth anything to me will have been plundered by a lunatic. If she survives she’ll be worthless!’

  The Fugger stuttered, ‘Father, they may spare the women—’

  ‘Spare? I care nothing about spare! She will be a broken vessel. I cannot sell the virginity she no longer has. She is livestock. Once she has Jan Bockelson, she may as well have a platoon of mercenaries, one after the other!’ He looked down at his cowering son. ‘And you! This all began with you, all of our misfortunes. You are as worthless as she will shortly be!’

  In the depths of the gibbet midden the Fugger had heard his father say all this before, a thousand, thousand times, had bent under the storm, wept into the dungheap, cried his unworthiness to the raven and the rats who were his only companions.

  But that was before he met Jean Rombaud.

  ‘No, Father,’ he cried, ‘I have done such things! The man I came to Munster with? Jean Rombaud? He is the man who took the head of England’s queen. He is my friend.’

  ‘A butcher for a friend? This is your achievement?’

  His father had to see! Yes, his son had fallen as low as man can fall. But he had risen again. He was part of a noble quest. He had entered the realm of the Devil and snatched the Devil’s prey. He had spoken to the shade of Anne Boleyn herself. His son was the knight errant of a Protestant queen. Surely Cornelius Fugger only had to hear to understand?

  ‘No, Father,’ he said again, and poured out the glorious tale.