‘Forgive me,’ he was saying through tears, ‘please, please, forgive me.’
Jean’s tongue could form no words for his mouth was filled with his own blood, his throat choked once again with despair. But it was not the blows of the guards to his body nor the ropes’ cruel binding at the wrist that hurt him now. It was his left cheek where the pain was greatest, for it was there that a man he called his friend had placed a Judas kiss.
FIVE
OLD ENEMIES
‘Is it surrender?’ Haakon peered at the main gates where the first of the townsfolk were beginning to emerge.
‘I think not. Look at who’s coming out.’ Januc climbed down from the gunpowder keg he’d been standing on. ‘Let us go and get a better look.’
The third morning since Jean and the Fugger had entered the city had dawned cold, the grass lightly frosted, summer just beginning its slow fade into a memory of warmth. They had alternated the watch, shivering and in vain, all night before the tower but there had been no signal from their companions within.
‘Perhaps they will be among these?’ Haakon knew the hope was false as he said it.
‘The old, the young, and the women. This siege is nearly over.’
The scarecrows who straggled from the gates were empty-handed, bones thrust out from barely clinging rags. They limped into a gauntlet of jeering mercenaries who vented their frustrations at the hardship of the siege on their skeletal bodies.
Turning away in disgust, leaving the Norwegian to scan the crowd in faint hope, Januc watched a large party of mounted men ride into the camp, preceding and following an elaborately carved and decorated carriage. Reinforcements, Januc thought, until something about the carriage, the way the body of it sat on leather straps, stirred his memory. He looked again at the head of the column where a huge man was studying the crowd before him, seeking a passage through to the banners of Munster and Hesse. The man turned back and called an order, and Januc was able to get a look at his face. It was a wreck, a deathmask on a walking corpse, and he had seen it once before, and briefly in a street fight in Siena.
The janissary turned and pulled Haakon swiftly away to crouch behind a pile of fascines stacked ready to reinforce the nearby earthworks. The horsemen and carriage passed within a few paces of them.
‘And what, in the name of all our unlucky stars, has drawn that devil to this place?’ asked Haakon.
He had glanced over the fascines as the carriage went by, had seen the face that peered out of the window. He had last seen it beside a well in a town ablaze with St Anthony’s Fire, and he had hoped never to see it again.
Giancarlo Cibo was sure he had had a reason for this journey when setting out. But everything after Marsheim had become a blur of blood and confusion. Firm decisions dissolved in doubt, accompanied by a constant red disgorging through his lips. He found it hard to concentrate, to give directions. For the first time ever in his life, he allowed another to take control.
A spasm seized him, a handkerchief raised too late. Drops falling to join the stain that had spread across the chest of his travelling cloak. Cibo threw himself back against the padded seats of his carriage and dabbed, yet again, at his mouth. Beside him, Franchetto stirred and muttered. The man would sleep in his armour at the battle’s crest, the Archbishop thought. But at least sleep dulled his brother’s pain, for his personal legacy from Marsheim was to be bent almost double, his bones locked, every muscle strained. A gradual uncurling had taken place during the journey to Munster, accompanied by an agony of burning in every one of his limbs, but he had some way to go before he could stand straight. When he walked, he looked like a crow prowling for scraps. Only when he slept was there some respite from his constant moans.
And his brother had been one of the luckier ones. They both had. A dozen of his men had died at each other’s, or their own, hands. Died screaming, beset by demons, different for all yet the same in the richness of their horror. A sword plunged repeatedly into a chest might have been the actual reason for his departure from life, but no one who saw this leave-taking could miss the pitchfork that ripped the man’s soul from the flesh that housed it. All had been left with some impairment in body or mind. Another half a dozen men had deserted that first night to crawl back to their homes. Those that remained were a bent and twisted lot, clinging together in fear. The one man who appeared unchanged was the man leading the column now.
Cibo knew differently, for he saw that Heinrich von Solingen had taken embers from St Anthony’s Fire and placed them behind his eyes. He had gained a mind to match the wreckage of his face.
It was Heinrich who had organised them after the worst of the nightmares had faded, who had led the search for the hand and convinced his master that the executioner’s appearance and the taking of the hand was more than hallucination – a deduction the Abbot had confirmed, just before Heinrich killed both him and his young confessor. The pretence of holy crusade that had brought the Cibos to Germany had to be maintained. The crucifixion of a fellow prelate, if it got out, was unlikely to help in that.
Cibo appreciated the discretion of his bodyguard. This pretence had brought the party to Munster, for the Papal emissary, Petro Paolo Vergerio, had been embarrassed by their unexpected arrival in Frankfurt and had urged them on. The situation was delicate, he had explained, with the Emperor and Pope trying to convene a general council at Mantua that all sides, Catholic and Protestant, would attend. He did not want the eminent Archbishop upsetting any of the waverers.
‘Why not go to Munster, where Catholic and Protestant are united against the peasant Anabaptists?’ he had said. ‘It is a sign that we may resolve our differences. Offer your “crusading” skills there.’
Cibo had heard the tone in those words, had made a promise to himself that one day he would delight in humbling the pompous fool. But he had nowhere else to go while his spies criss-crossed the German states in the hope of hearing news of the hand. Some Bavarian hedge knights of Heinrich’s acquaintance had questioned a party matching the description of their quarry near the borders of their state. Some scowling Lutheran apprentices had admitted the same across those borders. Then … nothing. They had disappeared. So Munster seemed as good a place as any to wait for further news. He could be seen to pursue the Holy Church’s cause while he pursued his own.
Now, his coughing subsided, Cibo was drawn forward by the sound of cheering. Seeing that they were only a few hundred paces from the banners of fellow noblemen, he called Heinrich to a halt.
‘I must change into my holy robes before I greet those I have come to aid.’
‘And your brother?’
Cibo glanced across at the still muttering Franchetto.
‘Leave him where he is. We will have enough explaining to do. Go and announce me.’
In clean vestments, and with an honour guard of the dozen soldiers who could still walk upright, the Archbishop was led to the pavilion of the Bishop of Munster. He expected more formality in his entrance, the usual rituals of greeting between princes of Church and state. But the Bishop’s small tent was crowded and the Bishop himself too excited to remember the courtesies. Cibo had met him a few times, at the conferences that had punctuated the early years of the Lutheran schism. He was excitable, and common, overly familiar, as so many of the Germans were, and time had not changed that. It had merely added several jowls to a face that had never lacked excess flesh.
‘Ah, dear fellow, so good of you to come,’ Munster said, as if the Italian were there for supper. ‘I am sorry that we cannot receive you with more pomp, but your arrival coincides with a great day. The first signs that the enemy is about to break. They have sent out their women and children for lack of food. Soon, soon, I will have my city back. Have you met the Landgrave?’
A tall man, dressed in full armour, a helm clutched under his arm, a staff of office in his hand, looked up from a map in annoyance at the Bishop’s interruption. Philip of Hesse’s grey beard spilled over his gorget, and matching grey eyes sta
red out from a weather-lined face. He made no effort to bow and kiss Cibo’s ring, merely nodded stiffly, muttered something in German and returned to hearing reports from the soldiers around him.
‘Not one of us, I’m afraid,’ the Bishop whispered, his greasy face uncomfortably close to Cibo’s, exhaling an odour of stale cabbage. ‘Ah well, a new world. And he will help deliver my city to me again.’
Cibo endured a seemingly endless diatribe against the Anabaptists until a disturbance at the flap of the tent interrupted the Bishop and a soldier bearing his colours rushed up to whisper in his ear, handing him a small scroll of paper. Munster read it, clapped his hands together and called once more to the Landgrave.
‘My dear Prince, we must clear the tent. Only our most trusted officers must stay. I have news from within the city. News that will deliver it to us perhaps!’
Philip scowled at this loud demand for secrecy but gestures to various officers ensured the Bishop’s desires were swiftly obeyed. His meaningful look at Cibo brought the Bishop to his fellow Catholic’s defence.
‘He is here, with fresh men, to help us. He wants our enemies laid low as we do. He must stay.’
With ill grace, the Landgrave nodded briefly, then again to his guard at the tent’s entrance.
A flap was thrown back and two Fuggers, Gerta and Alice, were ushered in.
Januc had asked the Norseman, ‘How good are you at skulking?’
‘I never skulk,’ had been the proud reply.
So he’d said, ‘That’s what I thought. Which is exactly why I go alone. For whatever is happening within that tent, we must hear it.’
Thus Januc found himself wedged between two wine casks under the eaves of the Bishop of Munster’s pavilion. Rain gushed off its sloped canvas roof and sought out every crack of his clothing. Yet he was grateful, for the downpour meant that the guards, who might have patrolled round the tent, were now huddled into whatever shelter they could find nearby. Though he was well concealed, observant eyes might still have discovered him. The rain made listening hard, but fortunately agitated people always speak loudly.
‘I know this woman,’ the Bishop said. ‘She is the wife of Cornelius Fugger, a generous benefactor of the Church in Munster. He is a member of the great banking family. I’m sure you all know them?’
The Landgrave, like every German prince, did indeed know them; nearly all were severely indebted to the family. Nearly all hated them for that reason.
‘A Catholic and a Fugger? I thought they were all Jews.’ Philip of Hesse’s insult drew a sycophantic laugh from the half dozen of his commanders who stood around him. ‘The Emperor made a gross error in allowing Christians to practise usury. Does this Fugger want to sell us his city? We will take it for free, woman. And we will do it for him with “interest” added.’
There was more laughter, but if Gerta was scared of her august listeners, she was more terrified of her husband’s eventual wrath should she fail in her mission. That terror made her bold enough to speak.
‘My Lords, the Bishop here knows my husband to be a good son of Munster. And he would see his city saved from the evil that has consumed it.’
‘As it will be soon. The city is within days of falling,’ said the Landgrave.
‘My Lord, would that were true.’
‘It is true. You women coming out proves it. You have no more food in there.’
Gerta’s voice quavered. ‘My husband fears that, food or not, there will not remain a city for you to relieve. King Jan dreams of the final apocalypse, of Armageddon. That here and now the prophecies will be fulfilled.’
The Bishop snorted. ‘The fantasies of a madman!’ He turned to Philip. ‘You see what happened when your Luther translated the Bible into German? Lunatics chose to interpret God’s word directly.’
Before the Landgrave could counter the argument, the woman’s restraint broke and a wail burst from her.
‘But he is a lunatic who will burn my home rather than surrender! All our homes! And he has just been given the weapon he needs to hasten the flames!’
‘What weapon?’ Philip snapped at her. ‘No weapons have entered the city.’
‘He thinks it is a sign from the Saviour himself.’
‘A sign? What babbling is this? More Anabaptist nonsense?’ The Bishop’s patience had reached its limits.
Gerta continued through her tears. ‘A man was captured in the city yesterday. A Frenchman who had snuck over the walls with … with someone else. Concealed on him was this weapon. Their deliverance, they are all saying. It is … it is a severed hand.’ The tears overcame her.
‘A hand, you stupid woman?’ Philip of Hesse could pretend politeness no longer. ‘What use is a hand from some criminal’s corpse?’
‘They are saying it belonged to that English queen they executed in the spring. Anne … something. The hand, it … it …’
‘It has six fingers. It is a witch’s hand. The Devil’s work, for it does not rot nor wither!’ Alice finished her mother’s news in a burst.
Giancarlo Cibo had been standing quietly to the side, his mind separated from the conversation around him, coughing blood quietly into a handkerchief. When these last words reached him, he thought he was hearing them in another time, when the news first came to him in Siena that Anne was to be executed. Ever since Marsheim time had been strangely dislocated, the past forever pushing into the present. But when Heinrich beside him stiffened and actually dared to grasp the Archbishop’s arm, he realised the words had been spoken here and now and God or the Devil had guided him to this place. He didn’t much care which.
‘My Lords.’ He spoke quietly, but the timbre of his voice was as seductive as ever and the other men leant in to listen. ‘My Lords, I know something of this hand. I have seen the power it has to ravage men’s minds. If this madman possesses it, he may have found what he needs to wreak his apocalypse. He may leave you nothing but a city of ashes to recover.’
The words, so softly spoken, seemed to still Gerta’s tears and concentrate the minds of the princes of Church and state.
‘And so, woman, do you bring nothing but this bad news?’ the Landgrave barked at her.
Gerta swallowed nervously. ‘I also bring a way into the city, my Lord. If you will be so good as to take it. A secret way, that only my family know of. My husband awaits you on the other side of this passage, and servants will guide you to the city gates to throw them open to your army.’
The Bishop said, ‘And he will be blessed for this, in this kingdom and in the kingdom to come.’
Gerta seemed to have spent her store of courage; but Alice had always been a saucy girl, and her brief flirtation with royalty had added a boldness unseemly to her years and supposed station. Seeing her mother’s little resolve die away, she continued for her.
‘My Lords, my father wants something else to seal the bargain. He fears some of your soldiers, in the heat of the sack, might be … indiscriminate in choosing their victims.’
The Landgrave had been raised to at least aspire to a chivalric code. Here was a woman, and a not unattractive one, pleading for protection.
‘I will assign one of my officers here to guard you and yours from abuse.’
‘I thank my Lord.’ Alice curtseyed prettily and fixed the older man with the sort of look that had first caught the eye, and weakened the knee, of an aspirant king. ‘But my father would feel safer if a party of soldiers were sent to convey certain, uh, possessions we have, back out the same way he lets you in. With your guarantee of their safety.’
Everyone present knew what was being discussed here. The Fugger family’s wealth was legendary. And Philip sensed a way to reduce some of his own heavy debts to them.
‘My Lady’ – he inclined his head towards her – ‘I am delighted to offer you my personal guarantees. Men will be assigned. Honest men,’ he added with a glance around at his officers. Holding their eyes, he continued, ‘But which of you, my brave officers, will have the honour of being our Menelau
s, the first Greek to enter this Troy and throw open its gates to us?’
The eyes swiftly found other things to look at. All knew those in the vanguard of such an attack would be the most vulnerable, and they had all come to respect and fear the viciousness of these visionary defenders.
‘My Lords’ – the soft voice of the Archbishop commanded attention again – ‘we have come here to help in the crushing of God’s enemies. May I offer the services of my most trusted officer, a good German and defender of the faith? This is work for Heinrich von Solingen, who, I believe, you may know.’
Most men there had hesitated to regard Heinrich fully in the livid scar that was his face, but Philip of Hesse swallowed and did it now.
‘I have heard of you,’ he said. ‘Were you not one of Frundsberg’s officers?’
‘I was.’ The cobalt eyes were fixed at a point in the tent’s roof, above the Landgrave’s head.
‘And will you do this for us?’
‘I will.’
Marsheim had concentrated Heinrich’s mind on one objective: to kill the men responsible for his transformation. He would take Jean Rombaud alive, because his master required it, required from him information about the English queen which Heinrich would be delighted to extract. Once they had it, the last of the Frenchman’s cat-lives was promised to him. But the Archbishop had said that the gibbet keeper, the one who had thrown the burning liquid in the dungeon, could be slaughtered immediately – but that didn’t mean it had to be quick.
God wants me to do this, he thought. He has brought me to this place where the witch’s hand is. For where it is, there are my enemies. God’s enemies too, one and the same.
Januc stayed while the details of the assault were worked out. He heard enough through the rain to know that a diversionary attack would be made that night on the far side of the city at eleven bells, and that four hundred men would follow Heinrich down the secret passage one hour later. He would use his own soldiers, but the majority would be volunteers. Officers might avoid first assaults but men often craved them. The danger was the greatest there, but so was the opportunity for loot. And loot was the only enticement available now that the women had left the city.
The French Executioner Page 34